When I'm President, the VA rules will be simple: did you serve in the Armed Forces? If "yes," then you get full medical coverage at the doctor and hospital of your choice. I personally oppose our military buildup and oppose war in general, but given that we have a military, and that every person in uniform is theoretically running the risk of being sent to a live-fire zone, I think lifetime medical coverage is the least we can do for them. I don't give a damn whether the illness is service-related or not.
Personally I view a significant cogitative or social defect that has a one-percent chance of ocurring to be unacceptably high. That's several kids in each class year in any medium-sized elementary school.
So, yes, I would consider an increase from 1% to 1.5% to be important. Granted, reducing the base probability would be far more useful than dealing with the age-related increase, but either way, these are large numbers compared with, say the usual "cancer risk increases by 5x" headlines which ignore the base risk being maybe 1E-6.
Next you'll tell me that my company's email administrator can see email I send at work, through the server they administer.
And the root problem here is that (thanks, FCC) email is *still* not considered a communication the way POTS or USmail is. If some company said "hey, you dropped your US mail envelopes in an Out box that we own, so we can open all your mail," they'd go to jail. Same goes for voice comms. But e-mail somehow magically belongs to the owners of the server? That's crap and the law should be changed. In the meantime, I'll just point out that the ethics (Hey, United Technologies Ethics Officer, I'm talking to YOU) of email spying is beneath despicable.
Yeah, well, misusing the word "exceptional" doesn't change the facts of your children's medical condition(s). And you should take a step back and consider just how incredibly selfish you sound when you claim you wouldn't give them a cure for their physical/mental defects. Did you ever stop to think how much fuller their lives would be if they could function somewhere in the normal range? Or to think what *they* would say if offered the chance? Maybe you should read "The Reason I Jump" for some preliminary insight into just how difficult life actually is for the impaired.
Ex: fly to NY, INCLUDING arriving 1.5h before departure to allow for parking/TSA/etc. takes about 3.5 hrs from my town in S/W Virginia to NYC (6 if you have a connecting flight). The drive is 7 hours. The "direct" train is just shy of 9 hours if I count parking and arriving just 20 minutes before departure.
Just what train are you taking? I go from Rt128(MA) to DC in 6.5 hours on Amtrak. Not to mention that, for either DC or NYC, you get off the train and are right there, not a 45 minute cab ride from the airport if the traffic is light.
This is why sci-fi characters shouldn't (for example) convert their alien invasion fleet into energy and store it in a tiny cube and put it in their pocket; it still has all of its original mass-energy.
Oh you silly 3-dimensioner! The tiny cube is merely the 3D representation of a portal into 9-D space where the invasion fleet is stored. The mass of the cube itself is less than 50TeV (I made that number up)
That link to 'hackthedrought.org' is blocked because "Suspicious Content. Sites in this category may pose a security threat to network resources or private information, and are blocked by your organization."
Teach them to put the word " |-| @ C | " into their URL! Nasty terrorists!
Well, take it for the humor or the horror, but/. is OK per the local Corporate IT Overlords, but soylentnews.org gets "This Websense category is filtered: Suspicious Content. Sites in this category may pose a security threat to network resources or private information, and are blocked by your organization."
Websense: when it comes to the first syllable, it has none of the second.
isn't 'Para Bellum Labs' kind of pitiful-IT-violence-nerd at best and creepy at worst?
Well, it's slightly better than "AnteBellum Labs"//troll warning which would make all the Southern Repubs happy just thinking about the good ol' Dixie days//!warning
All of which is correct, and easily fixed by BART changing the fee from per-distance to per-number-of-stops. My personal guesstimate is that system operating costs are more closely related to the number of stations maintained than the distance trains travel. Anyway, my point was that you can always mod the system to kill off a fraud/arbitrage strategy.
Postscript: remember the good old airline days of buying "Fly Beyond" tickets because NYC-WestBumfuck-St.Louis was cheaper than NYC-WestBumfuck?
In my experience this is true of most ski areas in the US, too.
The "town" the ski area is located in is much lower than the ski area base. By the time you get to the top of the ski area you're 5000 or more feet above the town and the weather is much different.
I rather doubt that's true in more than a few special locations in the USA. First of all, there's nowhere in New England that is 5000 feet above anything in New England with the exception, more or less, of Tuckerman's Ravine. Next, since places like Aspen and Denver start out in the cities at 6 to 8 kft, if you went up 5 kft from there you'd be in darn near in oxygen tank altitudes.
But what is the point in a machine that simply replaces something a humans already do almost perfectly
You ever hear of a thing called an "assembly line" ? Rather a lot of people are in fact *happy* to retrain for a job which does NOT entail repeating a boring action 500 times a day, week upon week, year after year.
Or at the other extreme: people can fly a plane almost perfectly. Now explain why there shouldn't be autopilots.
Slashdot Mirror
And 4/3 of all people don't understand fractions.
That could actually be valid if we categorize some folks as "doubleplus un-understanding fractions"
Well if you were from Burma, you wouldn't have been confused
So, how many *shaves* per quart?
The drug lords will wise up and use burner phones, replacing them every X days. Gosh, don't they even watch The Wire down there in Mexico?
When I'm President, the VA rules will be simple: did you serve in the Armed Forces? If "yes," then you get full medical coverage at the doctor and hospital of your choice.
I personally oppose our military buildup and oppose war in general, but given that we have a military, and that every person in uniform is theoretically running the risk of being sent to a live-fire zone, I think lifetime medical coverage is the least we can do for them. I don't give a damn whether the illness is service-related or not.
Personally I view a significant cogitative or social defect that has a one-percent chance of ocurring to be unacceptably high. That's several kids in each class year in any medium-sized elementary school.
So, yes, I would consider an increase from 1% to 1.5% to be important. Granted, reducing the base probability would be far more useful than dealing with the age-related increase, but either way, these are large numbers compared with, say the usual "cancer risk increases by 5x" headlines which ignore the base risk being maybe 1E-6.
Next you'll tell me that my company's email administrator can see email I send at work, through the server they administer.
And the root problem here is that (thanks, FCC) email is *still* not considered a communication the way POTS or USmail is. If some company said "hey, you dropped your US mail envelopes in an Out box that we own, so we can open all your mail," they'd go to jail. Same goes for voice comms. But e-mail somehow magically belongs to the owners of the server? That's crap and the law should be changed. In the meantime, I'll just point out that the ethics (Hey, United Technologies Ethics Officer, I'm talking to YOU) of email spying is beneath despicable.
I didn't say "normal behavior." I said normal cognitive / physical ability. There's rather a world of difference (you insensitive clod).
Yeah, well, misusing the word "exceptional" doesn't change the facts of your children's medical condition(s).
And you should take a step back and consider just how incredibly selfish you sound when you claim you wouldn't give them a cure for their physical/mental defects. Did you ever stop to think how much fuller their lives would be if they could function somewhere in the normal range? Or to think what *they* would say if offered the chance?
Maybe you should read "The Reason I Jump" for some preliminary insight into just how difficult life actually is for the impaired.
Ex: fly to NY, INCLUDING arriving 1.5h before departure to allow for parking/TSA/etc. takes about 3.5 hrs from my town in S/W Virginia to NYC (6 if you have a connecting flight). The drive is 7 hours. The "direct" train is just shy of 9 hours if I count parking and arriving just 20 minutes before departure.
Just what train are you taking? I go from Rt128(MA) to DC in 6.5 hours on Amtrak. Not to mention that, for either DC or NYC, you get off the train and are right there, not a 45 minute cab ride from the airport if the traffic is light.
But even [Seldon] was unable to forsee the Mule.
Dunno -- my vote is still that the Mule was another leftover positronic-brain-based robot with a (bad pun alert!) chip on his shoulder.
Seldon probably correctly assumed that all such robots had been lost or destroyed millennia earlier.
This is why sci-fi characters shouldn't (for example) convert their alien invasion fleet into energy and store it in a tiny cube and put it in their pocket; it still has all of its original mass-energy.
Oh you silly 3-dimensioner! The tiny cube is merely the 3D representation of a portal into 9-D space where the invasion fleet is stored. The mass of the cube itself is less than 50TeV (I made that number up)
We also send far fewer people to prison than the USA so the ones that are in there are almost certainly toerags.
Well, there is that. However, there are still enough laws on the books that are flat-out immoral and wrong.
Wait, you still have criminals in the UK? Wasn't that what Australia was for?
That link to 'hackthedrought.org' is blocked because "Suspicious Content. Sites in this category may pose a security threat to network resources or private information, and are blocked by your organization."
Teach them to put the word " |-| @ C | " into their URL! Nasty terrorists!
They wouldn't complain anyway, corpses don't care what you do to them.
Unless, of course, you re-animate them. Then things tend to get dicey (sort of like Dice Holdings...)
Well, take it for the humor or the horror, but /. is OK per the local Corporate IT Overlords, but soylentnews.org gets "This Websense category is filtered: Suspicious Content. Sites in this category may pose a security threat to network resources or private information, and are blocked by your organization."
Websense: when it comes to the first syllable, it has none of the second.
There are several kinds of polymorphism.
So what you're saying is, "polymorphism" is polymorphic?
a majority of young American adults get their news from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report
If only. John S. is not only bitingly funny, he actually presents data to back up his position. Good luck getting that from Hannity&Company.
Sharks with laserbeams on a plane?
Sharks driving BMWs with Lasers
Umm, no, BMWs are driven by porcupines. (yes, I know that's not how the joke goes)
The actual story is "Person loses wallet, nice person gives it back PLUS ON THE INTERNETZ LOL"
Why is this a story anywhere, let alone on /fb. ?
isn't 'Para Bellum Labs' kind of pitiful-IT-violence-nerd at best and creepy at worst?
Well, it's slightly better than "AnteBellum Labs" //troll warning which would make all the Southern Repubs happy just thinking about the good ol' Dixie days //!warning
All of which is correct, and easily fixed by BART changing the fee from per-distance to per-number-of-stops. My personal guesstimate is that system operating costs are more closely related to the number of stations maintained than the distance trains travel.
Anyway, my point was that you can always mod the system to kill off a fraud/arbitrage strategy.
Postscript: remember the good old airline days of buying "Fly Beyond" tickets because NYC-WestBumfuck-St.Louis was cheaper than NYC-WestBumfuck?
In my experience this is true of most ski areas in the US, too.
The "town" the ski area is located in is much lower than the ski area base. By the time you get to the top of the ski area you're 5000 or more feet above the town and the weather is much different.
I rather doubt that's true in more than a few special locations in the USA. First of all, there's nowhere in New England that is 5000 feet above anything in New England with the exception, more or less, of Tuckerman's Ravine. Next, since places like Aspen and Denver start out in the cities at 6 to 8 kft, if you went up 5 kft from there you'd be in darn near in oxygen tank altitudes.
Talk about being "whooshed" ...
But what is the point in a machine that simply replaces something a humans already do almost perfectly
You ever hear of a thing called an "assembly line" ? Rather a lot of people are in fact *happy* to retrain for a job which does NOT entail repeating a boring action 500 times a day, week upon week, year after year.
Or at the other extreme: people can fly a plane almost perfectly. Now explain why there shouldn't be autopilots.
But apparently you still failed to learn that "the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data.'"
Privately funded school systems will always be subject not only to the financial whims of the benefactor but to the political whims as well.