Actually, Peter Pan did go on past Wendy & Co. going home. Wendy did return for some spring cleanings, but Peter, just being a boy, eventually forgot and Wendy grew old, too old to fly. She had a daughter and when Peter eventually remembered to come again to the Darlings, he confused the girl for Wendy. Wendy graciously allowed the daughter to visit Peter for spring cleaning...
Presumably there is no global lack of lost boys to populate Neverland...
You have a valid point for a 14,000 pound vehicle, but for passenger cars up to about 4000 pounds power brake and steering aren't required provided that the design is optimized for manual control. I had a 1966 Corvette with manual steering and brakes. That was a 3200 pound car that wasn't optimized for ease of use, and it wasn't too difficult to operate under severe conditions. Old, crude tech.
Throttles controlled by cables have always been designed to close if the cable broke. In fact, it was at one time the law that two return springs were required in case one failed.
Parking brakes require attention. They're usually feeble in the first place, and don't get better as they age. The cables can stretch and the mechanisms come out of adjustment, so that a parking brake on a poorly maintained old car is almost useless. Even some states with mandatory inspections don't bother to check.
Low taxes, other things being equal, necessarily lead to higher standard of living and better civilization. The obvious extreme case is communist countries up to the breakdown of the USSR, which had an extraordinarily low standard of living because for all practical purposes the government took everything.
The key issue, as always, is incentive. If you can't keep what you earn, why bother? The second issue is that government is inherently nonproductive.
Modern civilization relentlessly pursues improvement, which includes increased efficiency, which does mean pennies on the dollar. And there's no benefit to putting a large portion of those pennies into government.
The failure to get all the blood possible out of the afterbirth and into the infant reduces the health of the infant. Although it's common in modern childbirth to cut the cord as soon as possible, it's very very bad practice.
Unions have helped bring the human component to our work lives
Biggest laugh I've had all day. Unions have no interest in the outperformer. To the extent that they seem to help members, they protect the mediocre, the inferior, and those that could make an effective cause celebre. Unions want their members to appear interchangable, otherwise collective bargaining is an obvious fraud.
Unions, guilds, cabals, "protection societies", whatever -- it isn't going to work. Doctors and lawyers need a physical presence for most of their work. CPAs don't and are thus on thin ice, but at least their signature means something. A program can come from anywhere and is very anonymous. It is often built upon the work of many people, its authorship lost in the mists of time. Code reuse is efficient and practical, and dilutes authorship. In short, your cabal couldn't prove that a program wasn't written by the one licensed programmer in a company who magically produced 1e7 lines of code a year. Insisting upon programs provably written by a licensed professional is an effective way to price yourself out of business.
According to wikipedia production cost of the PS3 is now about $240, so Sony is able to sell at a profit. Parts have become less expensive, design changes have reduced costs, and production efficiencies have helped.
In actuality, most work is done at the application level. The user has only minimal interaction with the OS, and much of that interaction is similar between Windows/Linux. Linux has by default more easily available power (bash shell). This means that a Linux user unfamiliar with Windows will find it difficult to do some things in Windows and have to learn tedious workarounds. A Windows user trying to use Linux will be ignorant of the greater power available, and procede at his Windows-limited rate.
It's not true that all of the real world of business is Microsoft. It's dominant, and some degree of compatibility is needed, but not all business needs Windows and the fraction that does is shrinking.
What is good for the individual is not necessarily good for all of society and vice verse.
Most people will assume your statement means "screw the individual, society is all that matters", and I think that's what you meant. Furthermore, I'll point out that whenever an individual's good differs from someone else's good, the good of all of society does not exist, because one person or the other must be excluded from the "all".
The problem in the USA is not education funding; funding is already at ridiculously high levels. On a state-by-state basis, funding and results are not in agreement. The problem is idiotic curricula, misallocation of resources (for example, $100,000/yr to teach some moron incapable of significant learning or earning a living sufficient to pay back the cost of education), union control, tenure, promotion based on longevity and political pull, excessive and silly state regulations, et infinite cetera. Learning (i.e. student-side) can be very inexpensive; very little is required beyond internet access, self-motivation, and a helpful librarian. Teaching is much more expensive, but still need not come anywhere near what it costs in the US today. It should be below $3000 per student-year, most of which goes to paying the teacher.
I can think of a whole bunch of places more dangerous than a space flight. Ankle deep in a lava flow. The bottom of the Marianas Trench. In an alligator's mouth. In a hangman's noose. In a running tree chipper.
Space flight was developed in the context of the cold war and if you weren't alert in the 1950s you probably don't understand the intense pressure to develop rocketry rapidly. The idea was that if the US couldn't keep up it would be dead or enslaved. The result was that enormous funds were poured into developing space flight, and wastefully so. (For example, yet ironically, the Vanguard program was developed in parallel to military programs because of a foolish insistence that the first US satellite be nonmilitary.)
If space flight had been developed privately, it would have been done much more slowly and economically. Part, perhaps most, of the development would have been done by rich individuals without a profit motive beyond their own satisfaction. Look at rocket hobbyists today. However, the profit motive would eventually assert itself. The idea of communications satellites was there before spaceflight was possible, and the idea of weather satellites was fairly obvious. Much of the expense of developing space flight would be lower if it had waited for the development of the advanced computers that exist now, and improved materials, etc.
there are just some things in this world that require massive, coordinated action -- best run by governments.
Yes, there's war, and there's... uh... and... well uh... Government is inherently wasteful because of several reasons that do not necessarily apply to private enterprises (political pressures both internal and external prevent straightforward action, funding comes from people some of whom object (occasionally violently) to having funds removed from them, etc.) And what constitutes "best" is open to debate.
And gratuitous libel of Objectivists is getting really old.
We cheerfully drive cars that kill tens of thousands in the US every year
Ooh, a car analogy, and a defective one. Automobile deaths are almost completely the fault of drivers: intoxication, inattention, recklessness, driving in a manner not appropriate for conditions (ice, snow, etc.) and so on. Very few automotive deaths are caused by equipment failure. I suspect equipment failure is more significant in big trucks, but still not the dominant cause. On the other hand, all US space travel fatalities have been caused by equipment failure.
Rush's use of "weasel words" is in contrast to Rush's opponents who lie in full knowledge that they are nowhere close to the truth.
I frequently use phrases such as "as far as I know", "I've read that", "this person said", "it appears that". This is what an honest person does, making it clear that someone else deserves credit for an idea, that I am not certain about a point, and so forth.
What you call "weasel words" are a hallmark of an honest person.
So you're another idiot who thinks that since the US is better off financially than all other "1st world nations", we should copy the countries that are worse than us.
"Universal healthcare" is universal theft.
To "fix healthcare", it is necessary to remove all incentives which make it more expensive than it should be.
End laws which make employee health insurance an untaxed expense.
Make possible the purchase of medical insurance across state lines.
End the absurdly high lawsuit rewards that make insurance for doctors so expensive.
End the FDA control over medicine approval
End licensing of healthcare professionals.
There are many more, and the amount that these would reduce expenses is surprising. Did you know that insurance companies always negotiate payments, and usually end up paying about half the billed amount? Just the five above would cut medical expenses by roughly 75%. That brings medical care into the price range that any moderately careful person could afford without insurance, excepting only catastrophic events requiring intensive longterm care. For this last case one might buy catastrophic medical insurance, at prices much lower than the absurd rates we see today.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, Peter Pan did go on past Wendy & Co. going home. Wendy did return for some spring cleanings, but Peter, just being a boy, eventually forgot and Wendy grew old, too old to fly. She had a daughter and when Peter eventually remembered to come again to the Darlings, he confused the girl for Wendy. Wendy graciously allowed the daughter to visit Peter for spring cleaning...
Presumably there is no global lack of lost boys to populate Neverland...
Jeez, this is sad. It hurts to type this.
You have a valid point for a 14,000 pound vehicle, but for passenger cars up to about 4000 pounds power brake and steering aren't required provided that the design is optimized for manual control. I had a 1966 Corvette with manual steering and brakes. That was a 3200 pound car that wasn't optimized for ease of use, and it wasn't too difficult to operate under severe conditions. Old, crude tech.
Throttles controlled by cables have always been designed to close if the cable broke. In fact, it was at one time the law that two return springs were required in case one failed.
Whether you lose control due to rear-wheel lockup when using the parking brake depends entirely upon how hard you apply the brake.
Back in about 1973, I spent a very foolish month driving a car without working front brakes. Gotta be careful and pay attention.
Parking brakes require attention. They're usually feeble in the first place, and don't get better as they age. The cables can stretch and the mechanisms come out of adjustment, so that a parking brake on a poorly maintained old car is almost useless. Even some states with mandatory inspections don't bother to check.
It's Gary Coleman
Low taxes, other things being equal , necessarily lead to higher standard of living and better civilization. The obvious extreme case is communist countries up to the breakdown of the USSR, which had an extraordinarily low standard of living because for all practical purposes the government took everything.
The key issue, as always, is incentive. If you can't keep what you earn, why bother? The second issue is that government is inherently nonproductive.
Modern civilization relentlessly pursues improvement, which includes increased efficiency, which does mean pennies on the dollar. And there's no benefit to putting a large portion of those pennies into government.
The had the mice fill out a questionaire after they were separated.
The failure to get all the blood possible out of the afterbirth and into the infant reduces the health of the infant. Although it's common in modern childbirth to cut the cord as soon as possible, it's very very bad practice.
So you want to take your body cells from where the sun doesn't shine.
Biggest laugh I've had all day. Unions have no interest in the outperformer. To the extent that they seem to help members, they protect the mediocre, the inferior, and those that could make an effective cause celebre. Unions want their members to appear interchangable, otherwise collective bargaining is an obvious fraud.
Unions, guilds, cabals, "protection societies", whatever -- it isn't going to work. Doctors and lawyers need a physical presence for most of their work. CPAs don't and are thus on thin ice, but at least their signature means something. A program can come from anywhere and is very anonymous. It is often built upon the work of many people, its authorship lost in the mists of time. Code reuse is efficient and practical, and dilutes authorship. In short, your cabal couldn't prove that a program wasn't written by the one licensed programmer in a company who magically produced 1e7 lines of code a year. Insisting upon programs provably written by a licensed professional is an effective way to price yourself out of business.
According to wikipedia production cost of the PS3 is now about $240, so Sony is able to sell at a profit. Parts have become less expensive, design changes have reduced costs, and production efficiencies have helped.
In actuality, most work is done at the application level. The user has only minimal interaction with the OS, and much of that interaction is similar between Windows/Linux. Linux has by default more easily available power (bash shell). This means that a Linux user unfamiliar with Windows will find it difficult to do some things in Windows and have to learn tedious workarounds. A Windows user trying to use Linux will be ignorant of the greater power available, and procede at his Windows-limited rate.
It's not true that all of the real world of business is Microsoft. It's dominant, and some degree of compatibility is needed, but not all business needs Windows and the fraction that does is shrinking.
Most people will assume your statement means "screw the individual, society is all that matters", and I think that's what you meant. Furthermore, I'll point out that whenever an individual's good differs from someone else's good, the good of all of society does not exist, because one person or the other must be excluded from the "all".
The problem in the USA is not education funding; funding is already at ridiculously high levels. On a state-by-state basis, funding and results are not in agreement. The problem is idiotic curricula, misallocation of resources (for example, $100,000/yr to teach some moron incapable of significant learning or earning a living sufficient to pay back the cost of education), union control, tenure, promotion based on longevity and political pull, excessive and silly state regulations, et infinite cetera. Learning (i.e. student-side) can be very inexpensive; very little is required beyond internet access, self-motivation, and a helpful librarian. Teaching is much more expensive, but still need not come anywhere near what it costs in the US today. It should be below $3000 per student-year, most of which goes to paying the teacher.
The concepts of leaders and followers are inseparable, and both are vile. Think and act for yourself.
This sounds like the perfect opportunity for a universal Freedom of Information Act demand.
Make it mandatory that only the manufacturer of the vehicle can operate it, and they only get paid at the end of a successful flight.
I can think of a whole bunch of places more dangerous than a space flight. Ankle deep in a lava flow. The bottom of the Marianas Trench. In an alligator's mouth. In a hangman's noose. In a running tree chipper.
The universe in which Home Depot and Lowes sells generators.
Space flight was developed in the context of the cold war and if you weren't alert in the 1950s you probably don't understand the intense pressure to develop rocketry rapidly. The idea was that if the US couldn't keep up it would be dead or enslaved. The result was that enormous funds were poured into developing space flight, and wastefully so. (For example, yet ironically, the Vanguard program was developed in parallel to military programs because of a foolish insistence that the first US satellite be nonmilitary.)
If space flight had been developed privately, it would have been done much more slowly and economically. Part, perhaps most, of the development would have been done by rich individuals without a profit motive beyond their own satisfaction. Look at rocket hobbyists today. However, the profit motive would eventually assert itself. The idea of communications satellites was there before spaceflight was possible, and the idea of weather satellites was fairly obvious. Much of the expense of developing space flight would be lower if it had waited for the development of the advanced computers that exist now, and improved materials, etc.
Yes, there's war, and there's ... uh ... and ... well uh... Government is inherently wasteful because of several reasons that do not necessarily apply to private enterprises (political pressures both internal and external prevent straightforward action, funding comes from people some of whom object (occasionally violently) to having funds removed from them, etc.) And what constitutes "best" is open to debate.
And gratuitous libel of Objectivists is getting really old.
Ooh, a car analogy, and a defective one. Automobile deaths are almost completely the fault of drivers: intoxication, inattention, recklessness, driving in a manner not appropriate for conditions (ice, snow, etc.) and so on. Very few automotive deaths are caused by equipment failure. I suspect equipment failure is more significant in big trucks, but still not the dominant cause. On the other hand, all US space travel fatalities have been caused by equipment failure.
Rush's use of "weasel words" is in contrast to Rush's opponents who lie in full knowledge that they are nowhere close to the truth.
I frequently use phrases such as "as far as I know", "I've read that", "this person said", "it appears that". This is what an honest person does, making it clear that someone else deserves credit for an idea, that I am not certain about a point, and so forth.
What you call "weasel words" are a hallmark of an honest person.
So you're another idiot who thinks that since the US is better off financially than all other "1st world nations", we should copy the countries that are worse than us.
"Universal healthcare" is universal theft.
To "fix healthcare", it is necessary to remove all incentives which make it more expensive than it should be.
There are many more, and the amount that these would reduce expenses is surprising. Did you know that insurance companies always negotiate payments, and usually end up paying about half the billed amount? Just the five above would cut medical expenses by roughly 75%. That brings medical care into the price range that any moderately careful person could afford without insurance, excepting only catastrophic events requiring intensive longterm care. For this last case one might buy catastrophic medical insurance, at prices much lower than the absurd rates we see today.
Haven't been following the news much in the last 40 years, have we?