It is obvious to anyone with an education that hundreds of millions of plastic bags that will never rot is a bad thing.
That's why they were putting recycling containers at the stores.
You cannot wait for companies who are interested only in their own profits. They will not change.
Of course they will -- if the customers want them to. If the customers will pay extra for a pretense of ecological concern, then a store that refuses to provide plastic bags and uses only paper would do so. They'd get the customers who won't go to a store with free plastic bags.
We have a co-op* in our town. Two stores, actually. They carry all the free-range this and organic that and compassionate coffee and all the right warm-fuzzy earth-friendly stuff. They're doing quite well despite the arrival of a Walmart* and the previous existence of several Safeways and an Albertsons. Their prices are much higher compared to every place else, but they have the customers because the customers exist and want what they sell.
The Albertsons folded.
The fact that the stores aren't doing what you think is the ecologically-friendly thing on their own is proof that the customers don't want it. It is much easier for the eco-active to coerce the governments to do what they want than to educate all the people to why it is better to do things their way, so that's what they do. If you can convince 7 people with a lefty bent to start with that they should tell everyone else how to live, that's much easier than actually getting everyone else to think you're right.
* -- the Co-op. Ecologically/earth friendly. They built one of their stores around a tree. A small tree at the time. A very large tree until a year ago. Instead of thinking ahead ("this tree will grow and we'll have to do something, so let's not build around it") or caring for the earth ("let's move the store so the tree can be free...") they cut it down. Chainsaws.
* -- Walmart. Scum. They handed out free reusable semi-cloth bags on their grand opening day. Free! I got two. A smart move by a store to build brand loyalty. None of the other stores gave them out for free. Then the third time I went back the cashier made a point of charging me for the free reusable bag. They got to put all the stuff I had just tried to buy back on the shelves. Now I carry the free Walmart bags to the other stores to tweak their noses for not providing the bags themselves. That is when I don't do my shopping in the next town over to avoid the city-imposed eco-nuttiness.
Bigger plastic bags, if you can actually get them, are good for lining the bathroom trash can but nothing else.
I live in a city that has decided to micromanage the local shops by outlawing "single use" plastic bags and forcing a charge for the paper bags that used to be free. You can plan ahead and go into a store to buy a few things carrying a bag of your own, and then find they've got a special on something you want to buy a lot of. But you can't carry it all home without paying for what you would get for free in the next town over.
I've found that those "single use" plastic bags that you can't find any use for other than lining a trash can make great bags to carry groceries home in. That's what they were designed for, and that's what I'm using them for now. They're light, small, and three or four fit in a pocket without any trouble at all. But if you have three and need four...
Honestly, is plastic that much cheaper than paper? I can see no other advantage to plastic.
You don't have to cut down trees to make plastic bags. My fair town is also in a place where logging is an issue. On one side the logging brings in money and jobs that the counties are dying for lack of. On the other logging cuts down happy smiling trees and kills baby seals. And makes owls move.
They'll discover quickly that those products hurt and they have an incentive to make them better.
FTFY. Yahoo mail. Abysmal.
Every time I go there on the web, I am told to upgrade to a Firefox that has been optimized for Yahoo, and then I get told to pick a new theme. Every damn time.
At least the quality is consistently 'neo', both for groups and email.
Now I just leave my speakers off and only turn them on when I actually want to listen to something.
I usually am already listening to something, and the offending websites want to play without notice and at full volume.
The NYT used to have (still has?) an excellent four page (double side) daily summary of the news. HP used to provide free access to that service as a way of increasing sales of ink-jet inks. They included software to automatically download and print any of several different sources, and I found the NYT summary to be just right. It had a daily crossword, too!
I tried to get the same result using things like crayon and other news aggregation systems. I think I even tried writing one myself to create summaries of certain early online newspapers, but nothing was ever quite as professionally done as the NYT summary.
Of course they want to take your money. They just don't want to have you telling them how to deliver their product or to make a special system just for you.
The main difference is that only 2 nukes were ever used to kill people, and then the world decided that doing that again would have to be an absolute last resort.
I'm not sure "the world" made that decision. I think it is more like the people who had them decided it was a last resort, and decided that it would be good to try to keep them from people who haven't necessarily come to the same conclusion.
Crazy thing is the airline industry has done a lot of work making sure that problems don't end with catastrophy.
Yep. And what they've done is endless training of pilots in emergency procedures and how to create NEW emergency procedures when the old ones don't fit the problem.
The problem would be if the system itself failed,
Or ran into a failure mode that it wasn't programmed to deal with. Like a complete loss of hydraulics like the Sioux City flight had, where three pilots managed to get the aircraft almost to the ground and saved a large number of lives by doing so.
On the other hand, there was the Airbus in England where the engine controls were cross-wired and a single engine failure wound up with both engines off. Unfortunately, the pilots didn't catch on quick enough because they were too low to recover. I wonder how a perfect computer would deal with this, and would it be programmed to catch on to the fact that shutting the "bad engine" down had resulted in no engines at all?
but there have been times when the squishy flight controllers have all failed as well.
This has convinced me. The fact that human pilots can fail is the perfect argument for putting imperfect computers programmed by imperfect humans in charge.
Planes receive a unique flightplan and detailed instructions for take of and landing that are steered by a central traffic control to make sure that there won't be any other planes nearby. Thats possible because EVERY plane has to receive instructions from them.
I'll stop you there because you've just shown you don't know what you are talking about. Even if we just limit the discussion to large commercial aircraft, your claim that each receives a "unique flightplan" is ridiculous. The initial parts of the flightplan (departure) are so UNunique that they print them in books and give them names. A common departure clearance would be something like "United 123 is cleared to [destination], Farmington 3 departure, SHADO (an intersection somewhere on the filed flight plan), then as filed, maintain 3 thousand, departure frequency 123.45". Pretty much every aircraft going the same direction gets the same thing.
When the aircraft gets close to the arrival airport, it will get yet another UNunique approach, by name. "United 123 cross BILBO at 5 thousand, cleared for the ILS 14 right approach". That ILS approach will start at some initial approach fix (maybe BILBO, maybe after) and then bring every aircraft on that approach through the same course. The goal of the approach controller is to get them all lined up at a nice, regular spacing all coming down the same ILS with sufficient spacing that as soon as the preceeding one clears the runway the next one is about to land.
An important thing to know about the system is that even with a filed flight plan and a clearance "as filed", the flight plan does not specify the approach procedure. That bit of critical info isn't known until close to arrival. Usually the last approach controller will tell the pilot "expect the ILS 21" or whatever. The automated weather system may contain that planning information, too, but the pilot is free to ask for something else if he wants it, and he isn't cleared to fly that approach until the words "cleared for..." come out of the controller's mouth. If communications is lost enroute, the rule is that the pilot can fly any appropriate approach procedure.
The second bit of foo is "steered by a central traffic control". The pilot steers the plane. ATC issues clearances and gives instructions, but the pilot steers. And "center", despite its name, it not a "central control". There are a lot of them, and each "center" (New York Center, for example) is split up into sectors. Since we're currently limiting our context to large commercial passenger aircraft, yes, there will almost certainly be a "center" involved in the flight, but they take over only after the aircraft has gone through the departure controller at the airport, and will hand the flight off to the approach controller for the destination airport (for airports large enough to have their own). For destinations that aren't large enough to have their own approach, or their own control tower, this "central control" will actually cut the aircraft loose to talk on the CTAF (common traffic advisory frequency), so this IFR aircraft on a "unique" flight plan will now have to mix in with all the VFR traffic at the airport, even the student who is up in the pattern practicing landings. See and avoid.
These ATC folk don't make sure there aren't any other planes nearby. Only for IFR traffic (which anything above 10000 feet must be in the US) do they provide traffic separation. They will issue instructions to keep two IFR aircraft apart, but the vertical spacing can be just 1000'. In airspace where VFR flight is permitted, and outside ATC control, it is quite possible for another aircraft to be "nearby" and less than 1000'.
And the final nail? "Thats possible because EVERY plane has to receive instructions from them." It's severe clear outside here this morning. I could drive to the airport and fly off to someplace else where there is commercial service, and the only time I'll have to talk to ATC is when I'm within 5 mi
2) human eyes cannot see the infrared spectrum.. so what's the risk?
Human eyes can also not see the ultraviolet spectrum. Or the microwave spectrum. As Weird Al says, stick your head in the microwave and get yourself a tan.
And when defeated you get in trouble,. In a controlled environment its easy to detect defeated/nonfunctional ones.. you have 10 kids in class but only 8 register on the map...
No, more like a phone call to the parents. "Billy hasn't been in class for a week. Could you provide a parent's release or doctor's note, please?" Even though the name of the place was "College", the ages are high school -- 14-17.
And that is the good reason for the tracking system. Attendance for headcount purposes, and so the attendee can be found easily if the parents call saying "his Mom is in the hospital, can you find him and tell him to come home?" When the parents expect schools to keep track of the kids, they get a little unhappy when the schools don't actually keep track of the kids.
This is why when I hear those desperate voices by the pundits; "they can't keep their doctor" -- I'm like, in what Universe is my Doctor that important?
You don't have one so your doctor isn't important to you. No doctor knows you from a stray dog because you never see any of them more than once or twice.
I've got one I see regularly. He's good. He looks at tests before I see him to discuss them, and even sends them to me ahead of time -- with comments. He doesn't know everything, but he's got a much larger picture of what's going on than I do, and I want to keep him.
My previous doctor, I never saw. He had a couple of PAs who were ATROCIOUS at passing on information or dealing with patients. I went to one appointment after getting some tests done to talk about the results. The PA came in, plopped down, and said "so, why are you here today"? A week after some other test work I called the office to see if the results were back. No return call. The next day I got a call from an equipment salesman who told me "wow, you got a really bad case of..." and wanted to arrange a time to drop off the equipment (which wasn't the right solution to the problem to start with) my PA had ordered for me.
I would never go back to that quack or his ducklings. If the government promised that "if you like your doctor you can keep him, period" and then passed a law that forced my insurance to change so I couldn't see my current guy anymore, I'd be livid.
People who listen to the disclaimers to "consult your physician" before X, Y or Z have not gotten the memo; you are on your own to make sure you are healthy.
No, you aren't on your own. Your health is your responsibility, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use all the resources available to help out. One of those is an educated professional who can say "that symptom is serious" or "that number is low but not significantly so". Or he can say that you should avoid certain things because you are likely to have a bad reaction. I was started on a certain cholesterol med and immediately developed a chronic dry cough. I didn't think it was significant, he did. He changed to a different med, no more cough. But now there is a record that he knows not to prescribe certain drugs because I am allergic to them, and I know to ask "is that the same kind of thing" if he tries to change me.
And he'd be the guy I ask before X, Y, or Z because even if he can't answer off the top of his head, he can look in my records to see if there are any reasons not to X, Y, or Z that I wouldn't be aware of.
Yes, people do have ongoing relationships with their medical professionals and benefit from that relationship. You aren't one of them. But thanks to ACA you will be, or you will pay for the privilege of not being one of them.
because the USB spec does not actually allow delivering these crazy, over 1A currents which is needed. But what can you do...
Supply a dual-connector cable to plug into two USB ports, which USB DVD-RW and a couple of external disk devices I've bought have had. One is data and power, the other just power.
The biggest problem with our healthcare system is the cost, and the ACA did nothing whatsoever to address that.
Well, what it tried to do about costs was to push them onto relatively healthy young people by forcing them to buy insurance. What the smart relatively healthy young people are doing is accepting the penalty for not buying insurance because it will ultimately cost them less. They'll simply wait until they get some "pre-existing condition" and then get insurance to cover it, never actually paying into the system more than they take out.
Or they'll be in the same situation the CT law school student is, where he's so 'poor' that he gets free health care and doesn't have to pay even the $39/month he was paying for insurance anymore, but would be paying much much more were he to participate in the exchange plans.
And when you consider the astronomical deductables that are in the ACA exchange plans, you have to be pretty sick to save money by having insurance anyway.
AP story about Oregon's CoverOregon -- nobody has been signed up yet. One woman sent in the paperwork to sign up in early October, she just got back the documents so she can actually know how much the plans will cost her and sign up for real. A 19 page form. She waited for more than a month for just the information, and she needs to sign up by December 15 (less than a month now) if she's going to get insurance on Jan 1.
The last time I took a blood test to my GP (ordered by my dermatologist) she said "Hmm, I don't normally order that test.
That's why your dermatologist should have been interpreting the results and discussing them with you. Specialists may often order tests that general practitioners don't.
A previous poster who asked why he should get an appointment and drive around and then have someone read him results over the phone demonstrated a more serious problem than just having to visit a doctor. He's got a doctor that doesn't care and doesn't explain what the results mean. Or doesn't have time to care. As more people go to the same number of doctors because they've now got insurance, that problem will get worse and not better.
I've seen this problem firsthand. My previous GP was my GP in name only; I got handled by his PA, and after one test I learned of the diagnosis from the medical equipment salesman calling to set up a time to deliver the equipment I was supposed to use instead of from the PA or GP. My current GP is much different.
So, yes, I do have the knowledge to do that.
Some people do. The vast majority do not. The vast majority will see low value on a test result and find the absolute worst possible interpretation on the web, ignoring the more common less serious possibilities. Kind of like, "OMG, I've got red spots all over my face, I must have measles", instead of thinking "I drank myself into a stupor and my frat buddies had a good time with a red sharpie." Like "OMG, my vitamin D numbers are low, I must have..." instead of "eat more veggies with vitamin D and get more sun, or take a vitamin pill".
You might think you won this debate. I think you're barking mad.
You have conveniently avoided answering the simple question I asked: "who is being inconvenienced?" Until you can do that you have not actually participated in any debate, you've only gone hyperbolistic over a simple question. Somehow someone is being killed, but you haven't even said who you think that is. Apparently it is you, even though you are nowhere near.
Wouldn't care except you seem to think that you should be able to smoke in people's faces.
I've said nothing close to that. Nobody sane, honest, or rational could come up with such a twisted interpretation.
You took a specific hypothetical situation being used to explore the reasons for blanket smoking prohibitions even outdoors and lept to some ridiculous idea that I want to kill you by "smoking in your face". You're a looney. Your tinfoil hat is a bit too tight and it's cutting of the blood supply to your brain, or you've forgotten to take your meds, or maybe both.
Stop being stupid. "Being inconsiderate" means being inconsiderate, not killing people. Someone standing on a street corner smoking near nobody else does not rise to the level of being inconsiderate, much less killing someone.
It is because of delusions like this that we have laws. Go move to Somalia if you want to smoke in people's faces.
Your chances of dieing from my lifestyle choices are zero, especially when it comes to my choice about smoking. If you are in such a lather over that choice then you must really be scared of people who actually do smoke, and even more scared of everyone else who has any freedom to do anything else you don't like. Where you came up with "smoking in people's faces" from the situation I proposed, I can't imagine, except that you are so rabidly fanatic that you can't have an adult conversation exploring the reasons for your hatred for others.
I'm sorry, but that's a nonsequitor. I tried examining the justification for the laws against smoking in certain places, which involved exposing others to some "danger". Who am I being inconsiderate to in this situation, and is "being inconsiderate" something that should rise to the level of a crime?
I don't want to die from your lifestyle choices.
Your chances of dieing from my "lifestyle choices" are so remote as to be effectively zero. Certainly in the situation I proposed, since you aren't anywhere close at all, your chances of dieing from what I am doing are less than the chance you'll win the lottery without playing.
Note that I didn't say anything about confiscating guns, I was just saying that "the argument that there are too many guns so it would be impossible to limit their presence is weak." All of your points don't change that.
You used guns and explosives in Europe as an example, and I pointed out that the thing that made most of them go away was not laws or criminalization but that most people simply didn't want to keep such things laying about. It wasn't the government deciding that people shouldn't have unexploded bombs stashed in their garages, it was the people themselves. One or two stories of a dufus who found a WWII grenade and was tossing it about like a baseball when it went off and killed him does much more at reducing the number of people who would keep such things than any government ban.
The value of collectable military weapons from WWII proves that. People want those around because they are collectable and valuable. The government didn't make them go away.
Also, do I really need some kind of stats or citation to claim that there are less "grenades and explosives" floating around in Europe now than during WWII?
You didn't say simply "less", you claimed that they effectively went away. You missed the point that I agreed with you that your claim about explosives was probably correct, questioning only the one about guns. And I pointed out that the guns are the counterexample that shows why your claim about the reason for the decline is wrong.
Using an example of the war on drugs as a success that could be applied to guns is just silly.
Exactly, we should also legalise rape and murder, because criminals don't follow those laws either.
I'm sorry for feeding the troll, but let's examine your simple-minded hyperbole for a moment and see if we can glean any relevant contribution. Perhaps doing so will help reform a recalcitrant troll into a productive member of society.
Your comparison fails for one simple reason: just as rape is illegal, so is shooting someone, and nobody is talking about making the act of shooting someone legal because some people do it despite the law. They're talking about the ineffectiveness of banning guns as a means of eliminating gun violence.
If we were to follow your rape analogy, then the current discussion would be about the government's attempt at banning "plastic penises" (simple dildos) because they can be used to rape and they are undetectable by x-ray or metal detectors. The discussion would then expand into the idea of simply banning penises altogether as a means of eliminating rape. People would point to Europe as the example of how banning penises has stopped rape, and others would point out that the cultures are different and that in the US people expect to be able to own a penis without government intervention.
We'd have side-threads about how difficult it is to get a concealed carry permit for a penis, and that penises can be used for self-defense as well as raping others. Some people would point out that they've never pointed their penis at anyone else in anger and use theirs only for target shooting.
But, in the long run, most people would admit that the idea of banning penises, or creating penis-free zones where nobody can carry a penis, wouldn't be an effective way of preventing rape, because most people would accept that there would be people who break the law by having a penis. That it would take a massive effort by the government to confiscate them all, and that a large percentage of the population (somewhere approaching 40%, perhaps) would react negatively to any such attempt.
When owning a penis is criminalized, only criminals will own penises.
The point is, if we were actually going to attack the Russians (or anyone else) there would be a lot of chatter between stations,
Why? Certainly not radio chatter. Why would there be? Anything within CONUS is connected by wire. It's only extra-CONUS comms that might need some kind of radio link.
Let them listen.
Why, so they can gather more data to use to determine our encryption and CCC techniques?
The most critical point in this whole discussion is that were the Russians trying to spy, they'd do so in a spy-like fashion. They'd buy a house where they wanted antennas using a dummy purchaser and install whatever they wanted. I'd be willing to bet that they already do that near any military installation. Quick, tell me, is that ATSC antenna on that roof over there connected to a TV or to a broad-bandwidth communications monitor?
In nearly all of Europe after WWII there were guns, grenades, and explosives all over the place. They seem to have done a good job at makine most (but not all) of them go away and not be widely available.
1. Europe doesn't have the US Constitution 2nd Amendment.
2. Most people, when they find a grenade or unexploded bomb or mine while they are digging in the garden, don't think "oh boy, I've got a valuable relic I might be able to take to World Famous Gold And Silver Pawn Shop and haggle with Rick for a lot of money".* That is what they'll think when they find a gun. So, while your unsubstantiated claim that "grenades and explosives" have "go[ne] away" seems reasonable, I think you need better stats to back up your claim regarding guns.
3. Before you can run off and confiscate guns, you need to know where to run off to.
* And yet, every so often, you read a story about someone who found such an item in the back of his barn or similar place, tossed it into the back of the pickup truck, and drove it to the local police station to get rid of.
I don't know about you, but I don't think a nuke going off 300 feet away vs 6 feet away is going to be significantly more survivable.
Yes, but when your autonomous vehicle parks in your neighbor's garage instead of yours, and he's a jealous 320' linebacker who already thinks you are messing around with his wife, you'll probably be wishing for that 6 foot accuracy vs. 100 yards.
"Smoking is different, when used properly and as intended, your smoking harms the person next to you"
I'm standing on the street corner on my college campus, during classes, and there is nobody within a block of me in any direction. I light up. I'm violating the law. Who is this "person next to me" I'm harming?
Secondly, when used properly and as intended, firearms harm something, somewhere, maybe not a person, maybe not next to you,
Are you a member of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Paper and Clay Targets?
If anything, 3d gun printing makes the second amendment obsolete.
If anything, printable guns makes the 2nd amendment even more critical. The more things the government gets pushed by hysterical scaredy-cats to ban, the more we need the enumerated rights to keep them from being banned.
Not really. They're selling you a data plan with a price based on some assumptions about usage patterns. If you're tethering something, or serving as a NAP for other people, you're using more data.
But it's somehow legal.
As well it should be. It's a private contract between you and your service provider. They should be free to offer you service, just as you are free to decline to buy from them. Government intervention isn't always required, nor is it always a good thing. Personally, I think if you agreed to not tether your device to get service, you should respect that and not tether your device.
It's tantamount to having a toll road forbid anyone from using their road because they passed over a bridge a few miles back
No, it's more like you driving your 18 wheeler on the toll road and expecting to pay the automobile rate. Or you getting a motel room at a single rate and having 20 of your friend stay over with you. Where you had your phone before or which motel you stayed at last night isn't relevant.
but as I said before, this illustrates a greater point. And that's that we like to find excuses to find ways around rules to partake in exploitative behavior.
Yes, people like to find excuses to get around rules, even rules they agreed to abide by in order to get what they are trying to get around in the first place. Human nature.
The question of it being right or wrong never even entered into their minds; instead it's, "Can I get way with doing this?"
They aren't trying to "get away" with anything, they're trying to keep from having to massively increase capacity for people who are paying the lowest rates and using the most data.
Should they invest in infrastructure to improve service? As a customer, I say "of course". Is their hesitancy some grand plot to keep their jackboots on the throats of the people? No, not really.
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It is obvious to anyone with an education that hundreds of millions of plastic bags that will never rot is a bad thing.
That's why they were putting recycling containers at the stores.
You cannot wait for companies who are interested only in their own profits. They will not change.
Of course they will -- if the customers want them to. If the customers will pay extra for a pretense of ecological concern, then a store that refuses to provide plastic bags and uses only paper would do so. They'd get the customers who won't go to a store with free plastic bags.
We have a co-op* in our town. Two stores, actually. They carry all the free-range this and organic that and compassionate coffee and all the right warm-fuzzy earth-friendly stuff. They're doing quite well despite the arrival of a Walmart* and the previous existence of several Safeways and an Albertsons. Their prices are much higher compared to every place else, but they have the customers because the customers exist and want what they sell.
The Albertsons folded.
The fact that the stores aren't doing what you think is the ecologically-friendly thing on their own is proof that the customers don't want it. It is much easier for the eco-active to coerce the governments to do what they want than to educate all the people to why it is better to do things their way, so that's what they do. If you can convince 7 people with a lefty bent to start with that they should tell everyone else how to live, that's much easier than actually getting everyone else to think you're right.
* -- the Co-op. Ecologically/earth friendly. They built one of their stores around a tree. A small tree at the time. A very large tree until a year ago. Instead of thinking ahead ("this tree will grow and we'll have to do something, so let's not build around it") or caring for the earth ("let's move the store so the tree can be free...") they cut it down. Chainsaws.
* -- Walmart. Scum. They handed out free reusable semi-cloth bags on their grand opening day. Free! I got two. A smart move by a store to build brand loyalty. None of the other stores gave them out for free. Then the third time I went back the cashier made a point of charging me for the free reusable bag. They got to put all the stuff I had just tried to buy back on the shelves. Now I carry the free Walmart bags to the other stores to tweak their noses for not providing the bags themselves. That is when I don't do my shopping in the next town over to avoid the city-imposed eco-nuttiness.
Bigger plastic bags, if you can actually get them, are good for lining the bathroom trash can but nothing else.
I live in a city that has decided to micromanage the local shops by outlawing "single use" plastic bags and forcing a charge for the paper bags that used to be free. You can plan ahead and go into a store to buy a few things carrying a bag of your own, and then find they've got a special on something you want to buy a lot of. But you can't carry it all home without paying for what you would get for free in the next town over.
I've found that those "single use" plastic bags that you can't find any use for other than lining a trash can make great bags to carry groceries home in. That's what they were designed for, and that's what I'm using them for now. They're light, small, and three or four fit in a pocket without any trouble at all. But if you have three and need four ...
Honestly, is plastic that much cheaper than paper? I can see no other advantage to plastic.
You don't have to cut down trees to make plastic bags. My fair town is also in a place where logging is an issue. On one side the logging brings in money and jobs that the counties are dying for lack of. On the other logging cuts down happy smiling trees and kills baby seals. And makes owls move.
They'll discover quickly that those products hurt and they have an incentive to make them better.
FTFY. Yahoo mail. Abysmal.
Every time I go there on the web, I am told to upgrade to a Firefox that has been optimized for Yahoo, and then I get told to pick a new theme. Every damn time.
At least the quality is consistently 'neo', both for groups and email.
Now I just leave my speakers off and only turn them on when I actually want to listen to something.
I usually am already listening to something, and the offending websites want to play without notice and at full volume.
The NYT used to have (still has?) an excellent four page (double side) daily summary of the news. HP used to provide free access to that service as a way of increasing sales of ink-jet inks. They included software to automatically download and print any of several different sources, and I found the NYT summary to be just right. It had a daily crossword, too!
I tried to get the same result using things like crayon and other news aggregation systems. I think I even tried writing one myself to create summaries of certain early online newspapers, but nothing was ever quite as professionally done as the NYT summary.
They don't want to take my money.
Of course they want to take your money. They just don't want to have you telling them how to deliver their product or to make a special system just for you.
The main difference is that only 2 nukes were ever used to kill people, and then the world decided that doing that again would have to be an absolute last resort.
I'm not sure "the world" made that decision. I think it is more like the people who had them decided it was a last resort, and decided that it would be good to try to keep them from people who haven't necessarily come to the same conclusion.
Crazy thing is the airline industry has done a lot of work making sure that problems don't end with catastrophy.
Yep. And what they've done is endless training of pilots in emergency procedures and how to create NEW emergency procedures when the old ones don't fit the problem.
The problem would be if the system itself failed,
Or ran into a failure mode that it wasn't programmed to deal with. Like a complete loss of hydraulics like the Sioux City flight had, where three pilots managed to get the aircraft almost to the ground and saved a large number of lives by doing so.
On the other hand, there was the Airbus in England where the engine controls were cross-wired and a single engine failure wound up with both engines off. Unfortunately, the pilots didn't catch on quick enough because they were too low to recover. I wonder how a perfect computer would deal with this, and would it be programmed to catch on to the fact that shutting the "bad engine" down had resulted in no engines at all?
but there have been times when the squishy flight controllers have all failed as well.
This has convinced me. The fact that human pilots can fail is the perfect argument for putting imperfect computers programmed by imperfect humans in charge.
Pilots are not permitted to fly more than 100 hours per month.
Citation required. I'm a pilot and I know of no such limitation.
Planes receive a unique flightplan and detailed instructions for take of and landing that are steered by a central traffic control to make sure that there won't be any other planes nearby. Thats possible because EVERY plane has to receive instructions from them.
I'll stop you there because you've just shown you don't know what you are talking about. Even if we just limit the discussion to large commercial aircraft, your claim that each receives a "unique flightplan" is ridiculous. The initial parts of the flightplan (departure) are so UNunique that they print them in books and give them names. A common departure clearance would be something like "United 123 is cleared to [destination], Farmington 3 departure, SHADO (an intersection somewhere on the filed flight plan), then as filed, maintain 3 thousand, departure frequency 123.45". Pretty much every aircraft going the same direction gets the same thing.
When the aircraft gets close to the arrival airport, it will get yet another UNunique approach, by name. "United 123 cross BILBO at 5 thousand, cleared for the ILS 14 right approach". That ILS approach will start at some initial approach fix (maybe BILBO, maybe after) and then bring every aircraft on that approach through the same course. The goal of the approach controller is to get them all lined up at a nice, regular spacing all coming down the same ILS with sufficient spacing that as soon as the preceeding one clears the runway the next one is about to land.
An important thing to know about the system is that even with a filed flight plan and a clearance "as filed", the flight plan does not specify the approach procedure. That bit of critical info isn't known until close to arrival. Usually the last approach controller will tell the pilot "expect the ILS 21" or whatever. The automated weather system may contain that planning information, too, but the pilot is free to ask for something else if he wants it, and he isn't cleared to fly that approach until the words "cleared for ..." come out of the controller's mouth. If communications is lost enroute, the rule is that the pilot can fly any appropriate approach procedure.
The second bit of foo is "steered by a central traffic control". The pilot steers the plane. ATC issues clearances and gives instructions, but the pilot steers. And "center", despite its name, it not a "central control". There are a lot of them, and each "center" (New York Center, for example) is split up into sectors. Since we're currently limiting our context to large commercial passenger aircraft, yes, there will almost certainly be a "center" involved in the flight, but they take over only after the aircraft has gone through the departure controller at the airport, and will hand the flight off to the approach controller for the destination airport (for airports large enough to have their own). For destinations that aren't large enough to have their own approach, or their own control tower, this "central control" will actually cut the aircraft loose to talk on the CTAF (common traffic advisory frequency), so this IFR aircraft on a "unique" flight plan will now have to mix in with all the VFR traffic at the airport, even the student who is up in the pattern practicing landings. See and avoid.
These ATC folk don't make sure there aren't any other planes nearby. Only for IFR traffic (which anything above 10000 feet must be in the US) do they provide traffic separation. They will issue instructions to keep two IFR aircraft apart, but the vertical spacing can be just 1000'. In airspace where VFR flight is permitted, and outside ATC control, it is quite possible for another aircraft to be "nearby" and less than 1000'.
And the final nail? "Thats possible because EVERY plane has to receive instructions from them." It's severe clear outside here this morning. I could drive to the airport and fly off to someplace else where there is commercial service, and the only time I'll have to talk to ATC is when I'm within 5 mi
2) human eyes cannot see the infrared spectrum.. so what's the risk?
Human eyes can also not see the ultraviolet spectrum. Or the microwave spectrum. As Weird Al says, stick your head in the microwave and get yourself a tan.
And when defeated you get in trouble,. In a controlled environment its easy to detect defeated/nonfunctional ones.. you have 10 kids in class but only 8 register on the map...
No, more like a phone call to the parents. "Billy hasn't been in class for a week. Could you provide a parent's release or doctor's note, please?" Even though the name of the place was "College", the ages are high school -- 14-17.
And that is the good reason for the tracking system. Attendance for headcount purposes, and so the attendee can be found easily if the parents call saying "his Mom is in the hospital, can you find him and tell him to come home?" When the parents expect schools to keep track of the kids, they get a little unhappy when the schools don't actually keep track of the kids.
This is why when I hear those desperate voices by the pundits; "they can't keep their doctor" -- I'm like, in what Universe is my Doctor that important?
You don't have one so your doctor isn't important to you. No doctor knows you from a stray dog because you never see any of them more than once or twice.
I've got one I see regularly. He's good. He looks at tests before I see him to discuss them, and even sends them to me ahead of time -- with comments. He doesn't know everything, but he's got a much larger picture of what's going on than I do, and I want to keep him.
My previous doctor, I never saw. He had a couple of PAs who were ATROCIOUS at passing on information or dealing with patients. I went to one appointment after getting some tests done to talk about the results. The PA came in, plopped down, and said "so, why are you here today"? A week after some other test work I called the office to see if the results were back. No return call. The next day I got a call from an equipment salesman who told me "wow, you got a really bad case of ..." and wanted to arrange a time to drop off the equipment (which wasn't the right solution to the problem to start with) my PA had ordered for me.
I would never go back to that quack or his ducklings. If the government promised that "if you like your doctor you can keep him, period" and then passed a law that forced my insurance to change so I couldn't see my current guy anymore, I'd be livid.
People who listen to the disclaimers to "consult your physician" before X, Y or Z have not gotten the memo; you are on your own to make sure you are healthy.
No, you aren't on your own. Your health is your responsibility, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use all the resources available to help out. One of those is an educated professional who can say "that symptom is serious" or "that number is low but not significantly so". Or he can say that you should avoid certain things because you are likely to have a bad reaction. I was started on a certain cholesterol med and immediately developed a chronic dry cough. I didn't think it was significant, he did. He changed to a different med, no more cough. But now there is a record that he knows not to prescribe certain drugs because I am allergic to them, and I know to ask "is that the same kind of thing" if he tries to change me.
And he'd be the guy I ask before X, Y, or Z because even if he can't answer off the top of his head, he can look in my records to see if there are any reasons not to X, Y, or Z that I wouldn't be aware of.
Yes, people do have ongoing relationships with their medical professionals and benefit from that relationship. You aren't one of them. But thanks to ACA you will be, or you will pay for the privilege of not being one of them.
because the USB spec does not actually allow delivering these crazy, over 1A currents which is needed. But what can you do...
Supply a dual-connector cable to plug into two USB ports, which USB DVD-RW and a couple of external disk devices I've bought have had. One is data and power, the other just power.
The biggest problem with our healthcare system is the cost, and the ACA did nothing whatsoever to address that.
Well, what it tried to do about costs was to push them onto relatively healthy young people by forcing them to buy insurance. What the smart relatively healthy young people are doing is accepting the penalty for not buying insurance because it will ultimately cost them less. They'll simply wait until they get some "pre-existing condition" and then get insurance to cover it, never actually paying into the system more than they take out.
Or they'll be in the same situation the CT law school student is, where he's so 'poor' that he gets free health care and doesn't have to pay even the $39/month he was paying for insurance anymore, but would be paying much much more were he to participate in the exchange plans.
And when you consider the astronomical deductables that are in the ACA exchange plans, you have to be pretty sick to save money by having insurance anyway.
AP story about Oregon's CoverOregon -- nobody has been signed up yet. One woman sent in the paperwork to sign up in early October, she just got back the documents so she can actually know how much the plans will cost her and sign up for real. A 19 page form. She waited for more than a month for just the information, and she needs to sign up by December 15 (less than a month now) if she's going to get insurance on Jan 1.
The last time I took a blood test to my GP (ordered by my dermatologist) she said "Hmm, I don't normally order that test.
That's why your dermatologist should have been interpreting the results and discussing them with you. Specialists may often order tests that general practitioners don't.
A previous poster who asked why he should get an appointment and drive around and then have someone read him results over the phone demonstrated a more serious problem than just having to visit a doctor. He's got a doctor that doesn't care and doesn't explain what the results mean. Or doesn't have time to care. As more people go to the same number of doctors because they've now got insurance, that problem will get worse and not better.
I've seen this problem firsthand. My previous GP was my GP in name only; I got handled by his PA, and after one test I learned of the diagnosis from the medical equipment salesman calling to set up a time to deliver the equipment I was supposed to use instead of from the PA or GP. My current GP is much different.
So, yes, I do have the knowledge to do that.
Some people do. The vast majority do not. The vast majority will see low value on a test result and find the absolute worst possible interpretation on the web, ignoring the more common less serious possibilities. Kind of like, "OMG, I've got red spots all over my face, I must have measles", instead of thinking "I drank myself into a stupor and my frat buddies had a good time with a red sharpie." Like "OMG, my vitamin D numbers are low, I must have ..." instead of "eat more veggies with vitamin D and get more sun, or take a vitamin pill".
You might think you won this debate. I think you're barking mad.
You have conveniently avoided answering the simple question I asked: "who is being inconvenienced?" Until you can do that you have not actually participated in any debate, you've only gone hyperbolistic over a simple question. Somehow someone is being killed, but you haven't even said who you think that is. Apparently it is you, even though you are nowhere near.
Wouldn't care except you seem to think that you should be able to smoke in people's faces.
I've said nothing close to that. Nobody sane, honest, or rational could come up with such a twisted interpretation.
You took a specific hypothetical situation being used to explore the reasons for blanket smoking prohibitions even outdoors and lept to some ridiculous idea that I want to kill you by "smoking in your face". You're a looney. Your tinfoil hat is a bit too tight and it's cutting of the blood supply to your brain, or you've forgotten to take your meds, or maybe both.
When it kills people? Yes.
Stop being stupid. "Being inconsiderate" means being inconsiderate, not killing people. Someone standing on a street corner smoking near nobody else does not rise to the level of being inconsiderate, much less killing someone.
It is because of delusions like this that we have laws. Go move to Somalia if you want to smoke in people's faces.
Your chances of dieing from my lifestyle choices are zero, especially when it comes to my choice about smoking. If you are in such a lather over that choice then you must really be scared of people who actually do smoke, and even more scared of everyone else who has any freedom to do anything else you don't like. Where you came up with "smoking in people's faces" from the situation I proposed, I can't imagine, except that you are so rabidly fanatic that you can't have an adult conversation exploring the reasons for your hatred for others.
Smokers are rarely that considerate.
I'm sorry, but that's a nonsequitor. I tried examining the justification for the laws against smoking in certain places, which involved exposing others to some "danger". Who am I being inconsiderate to in this situation, and is "being inconsiderate" something that should rise to the level of a crime?
I don't want to die from your lifestyle choices.
Your chances of dieing from my "lifestyle choices" are so remote as to be effectively zero. Certainly in the situation I proposed, since you aren't anywhere close at all, your chances of dieing from what I am doing are less than the chance you'll win the lottery without playing.
Note that I didn't say anything about confiscating guns, I was just saying that "the argument that there are too many guns so it would be impossible to limit their presence is weak." All of your points don't change that.
You used guns and explosives in Europe as an example, and I pointed out that the thing that made most of them go away was not laws or criminalization but that most people simply didn't want to keep such things laying about. It wasn't the government deciding that people shouldn't have unexploded bombs stashed in their garages, it was the people themselves. One or two stories of a dufus who found a WWII grenade and was tossing it about like a baseball when it went off and killed him does much more at reducing the number of people who would keep such things than any government ban.
The value of collectable military weapons from WWII proves that. People want those around because they are collectable and valuable. The government didn't make them go away.
Also, do I really need some kind of stats or citation to claim that there are less "grenades and explosives" floating around in Europe now than during WWII?
You didn't say simply "less", you claimed that they effectively went away. You missed the point that I agreed with you that your claim about explosives was probably correct, questioning only the one about guns. And I pointed out that the guns are the counterexample that shows why your claim about the reason for the decline is wrong.
Using an example of the war on drugs as a success that could be applied to guns is just silly.
Exactly, we should also legalise rape and murder, because criminals don't follow those laws either.
I'm sorry for feeding the troll, but let's examine your simple-minded hyperbole for a moment and see if we can glean any relevant contribution. Perhaps doing so will help reform a recalcitrant troll into a productive member of society.
Your comparison fails for one simple reason: just as rape is illegal, so is shooting someone, and nobody is talking about making the act of shooting someone legal because some people do it despite the law. They're talking about the ineffectiveness of banning guns as a means of eliminating gun violence.
If we were to follow your rape analogy, then the current discussion would be about the government's attempt at banning "plastic penises" (simple dildos) because they can be used to rape and they are undetectable by x-ray or metal detectors. The discussion would then expand into the idea of simply banning penises altogether as a means of eliminating rape. People would point to Europe as the example of how banning penises has stopped rape, and others would point out that the cultures are different and that in the US people expect to be able to own a penis without government intervention.
We'd have side-threads about how difficult it is to get a concealed carry permit for a penis, and that penises can be used for self-defense as well as raping others. Some people would point out that they've never pointed their penis at anyone else in anger and use theirs only for target shooting.
But, in the long run, most people would admit that the idea of banning penises, or creating penis-free zones where nobody can carry a penis, wouldn't be an effective way of preventing rape, because most people would accept that there would be people who break the law by having a penis. That it would take a massive effort by the government to confiscate them all, and that a large percentage of the population (somewhere approaching 40%, perhaps) would react negatively to any such attempt.
When owning a penis is criminalized, only criminals will own penises.
The point is, if we were actually going to attack the Russians (or anyone else) there would be a lot of chatter between stations,
Why? Certainly not radio chatter. Why would there be? Anything within CONUS is connected by wire. It's only extra-CONUS comms that might need some kind of radio link.
Let them listen.
Why, so they can gather more data to use to determine our encryption and CCC techniques?
The most critical point in this whole discussion is that were the Russians trying to spy, they'd do so in a spy-like fashion. They'd buy a house where they wanted antennas using a dummy purchaser and install whatever they wanted. I'd be willing to bet that they already do that near any military installation. Quick, tell me, is that ATSC antenna on that roof over there connected to a TV or to a broad-bandwidth communications monitor?
In nearly all of Europe after WWII there were guns, grenades, and explosives all over the place. They seem to have done a good job at makine most (but not all) of them go away and not be widely available.
1. Europe doesn't have the US Constitution 2nd Amendment.
2. Most people, when they find a grenade or unexploded bomb or mine while they are digging in the garden, don't think "oh boy, I've got a valuable relic I might be able to take to World Famous Gold And Silver Pawn Shop and haggle with Rick for a lot of money".* That is what they'll think when they find a gun. So, while your unsubstantiated claim that "grenades and explosives" have "go[ne] away" seems reasonable, I think you need better stats to back up your claim regarding guns.
3. Before you can run off and confiscate guns, you need to know where to run off to.
* And yet, every so often, you read a story about someone who found such an item in the back of his barn or similar place, tossed it into the back of the pickup truck, and drove it to the local police station to get rid of.
I don't know about you, but I don't think a nuke going off 300 feet away vs 6 feet away is going to be significantly more survivable.
Yes, but when your autonomous vehicle parks in your neighbor's garage instead of yours, and he's a jealous 320' linebacker who already thinks you are messing around with his wife, you'll probably be wishing for that 6 foot accuracy vs. 100 yards.
"Smoking is different, when used properly and as intended, your smoking harms the person next to you"
I'm standing on the street corner on my college campus, during classes, and there is nobody within a block of me in any direction. I light up. I'm violating the law. Who is this "person next to me" I'm harming?
Secondly, when used properly and as intended, firearms harm something, somewhere, maybe not a person, maybe not next to you,
Are you a member of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Paper and Clay Targets?
If anything, 3d gun printing makes the second amendment obsolete.
If anything, printable guns makes the 2nd amendment even more critical. The more things the government gets pushed by hysterical scaredy-cats to ban, the more we need the enumerated rights to keep them from being banned.
Which is... Well absurd when you think about it.
Not really. They're selling you a data plan with a price based on some assumptions about usage patterns. If you're tethering something, or serving as a NAP for other people, you're using more data.
But it's somehow legal.
As well it should be. It's a private contract between you and your service provider. They should be free to offer you service, just as you are free to decline to buy from them. Government intervention isn't always required, nor is it always a good thing. Personally, I think if you agreed to not tether your device to get service, you should respect that and not tether your device.
It's tantamount to having a toll road forbid anyone from using their road because they passed over a bridge a few miles back
No, it's more like you driving your 18 wheeler on the toll road and expecting to pay the automobile rate. Or you getting a motel room at a single rate and having 20 of your friend stay over with you. Where you had your phone before or which motel you stayed at last night isn't relevant.
but as I said before, this illustrates a greater point. And that's that we like to find excuses to find ways around rules to partake in exploitative behavior.
Yes, people like to find excuses to get around rules, even rules they agreed to abide by in order to get what they are trying to get around in the first place. Human nature.
The question of it being right or wrong never even entered into their minds; instead it's, "Can I get way with doing this?"
They aren't trying to "get away" with anything, they're trying to keep from having to massively increase capacity for people who are paying the lowest rates and using the most data.
Should they invest in infrastructure to improve service? As a customer, I say "of course". Is their hesitancy some grand plot to keep their jackboots on the throats of the people? No, not really.