Yes, though the app is typically pre-installed if you have a carrier-locked phone.
So I assume that it uses your data allowance?
This is entirely dependent on your carrier. It uses data, but can have it's own APN - so some carriers handle it separately. It does not typically work over WiFi.
If the concern is that these bastards are costing you money, then how does that solve anything?
Can't help you there - if your carrier is charging you for visual voicemail, you have several options: find a new carrier, pay for the data, call the free voicemail number and use the voice prompts that you hate, or turn off voicemail entirely. I have a 5GB data plan, so I haven't bothered to check if visual voicemail is using my data as it would be trivial.
Because I have to actually call a service number to access voice mail messages and then work with an awkward interface; I may even have to pay call time to do so.
Visual voicemail solved this 10 years ago. I don't know what company you are with, but I almost never dial the voicemail number and instead just look at the list of messages in the app.
Home voicemail is similar - I've been using Google Voice for years and it is a great way to filter your calls.
I wasn't disagreeing that food supply is subsidized.
Drugs are also very heavily controlled by government. We could even wax philosophical about whether or not a "private" corporation, which receives its charter from a government, is regulated by the government, and depends on government-granted monopolies, is actually an extension of government.
But none of that matters because unlike food, drugs cannot be substituted. We can tolerate crop losses because they will be made up by other crops. This is not the case with all drugs. The model you are proposing as analogous is not really all that analogous at all.
Food is diverse, just like drugs. We do indeed have food shortages, but classes of foods are largely fungible - unlike drugs.
In other words, if we lose half of the wheat crop, people can still eat corn. There are alternatives to bicarb, but they aren't pushed as fast - which can really matter in emergent situations. And emergencies are the only likely time you'd be using bicarb.
Not at all - I provided some resources to help people get started answering that question. I'm not gunning for a PhD, so I'm not going to do the study myself:)
confirms that the shortage is due to a contractual dispute
My public school had a strike when the teachers walked out for a contractual dispute. Government is not immune from this.
The UK's NHS typically does quite well at ensuring supply,
We'll never know if that is true or not, since they deliberately stopped tracking shortages.
It is not necessarily magic, but the mechanisms are currently unknown to us (and thus appear supernatural to our perception and understanding).
Right, so science makes no claim to deal with that at all. It's impossible to use science to explore that realm.
Your above assertion is like saying that because cars are built in a factory, setting off a bomb in a junk yard can also create the same exact car...
At least I'm using a philosophy with a demonstrated record of success to try and understand how the car was actually built, whereas you are content knowing that it was conjured by an unobservable sky pixie.
There seems to be a similar site for the EU, though the page says most shortages are handled by the individual national governments. I'd check the French or German health websites, but I'm not good in those languages. The UK seems to have ceased tracking shortages.
I don't follow. If "what started the whole process" is natural, the philosophy with the best track record in understanding the natural world is the most likely way to find it. If it is not natural, it is outside of the domain of science and you can have it.
I think that many/most "anti-creationists" are guilty of what they accuse the creationists for: religious fundamentalism
Of course we are. Except that only our "religion" (we would call it a philosophy) can produce reliable predictions about the natural world. We make absolutely no attempt to describe the supernatural, and are very happy to leave that to religion.
the creationist argument that it is impossible will have to be thrown away forever.
That's very naive. They believe in magic, so they can change the argument in literally any way that they can imagine. If you demonstrated abiogenesis, they'd stop saying it's "impossible" and start saying, "See? You needed an intelligent being to set it all up!"
you have to become a city dweller on your little city island.
I don't understand the logic of your comment. First, in regards to commuting - for one thing, a car is not that large of a range extender. For day-to-day commutes, you are still on an island - just one that is defined by traffic congestion and proximity to highways rather than a public transit network. Perhaps it is different in Europe, but in many major US cities it is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to use your car to commute in to the city center from the suburbs.
If you aren't talking about commuting, then you would need to willfully ignore rental cars (including car sharing). I don't know if you have something like Zipcar, but you just use the app on your phone to find an available car and take it - I can't believe that is such a burdensome amount of planning. When we lived in NYC, we would "spontaneously" take the Zipcar to see friends in New Jersey, or to hit the Target, or whatever. In addition, it was parked in a garage a lot closer than where we would be able to afford to keep a car.
Finally, it sounds like you are a lot more encumbered than you seem to think. You feel stuck where you are because of your ties to friends and family. In contrast, a single city dweller in a rented apartment is pretty free to move wherever opportunity arises. Which one of you is stuck on an "island"? I'm not judging your choices - whatever makes you happy. Like I said, I'm now married, have kids, I'm suburban, and we have 2 cars. But you are writing off a whole idea based on your own narrow experience.
I'm pretty sure you are trying to be funny (no sweat, I try and fail at that all the time), but I'm also pretty sure that you are trying to make a broader point - and I'm not really catching it.
Most drones bought for 5-year-old Bobby are cheap, plastic pieces of shit that can barely work outside - let alone pose more of a hazard to aircraft than, say, a goose. This whole thing is solving an imaginary problem.
We have two cars for the time reason as well. But I can and have Uber/Lyfted myself to work and my wife can and has bused it. This scenario where if I worked in the city and wouldn't use Uber to go to a job interview is bizarre and contrived, and just because there are people like me and you doesn't mean that there aren't also a lot of people that this scheme works for.
I'm not too worried about the electric grid - it will need to keep up or people will drive the politicians out with pitchforks and torches. Americans don't handle things like rolling brownouts/blackouts with dignity.
Track cars will always need special gas, just like they do now. I think you are right that they aren't going electric.
My guess is that electric car adoption will initially be in multi-car households. At my house, an electric would be ideal for my wife's 5-mile commute into town or my 10 mile trip down the road while we hold on to the family truckster for long trips. Even if the electric goes out or some other calamity strikes, we'd still have the gasoline vehicle. Although honestly, the gas pumps all run on electric and the last time we had a major power outage (hurricane) there was a black market on gasoline as people were traveling to neighboring states to fill containers and sell them locally. The local stations either weren't getting deliveries or didn't have power.
Yeah, Uber doesn't always play by the rules and they will probably suffer in the long-term for that. But we do need to be thankful that they showed us how much better taxis could be. Sometimes regulations drift from protection of the populace to protection of the status quo - and if nothing else, Uber broke the status quo.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, right after we filter all the plastic out of the oceans.
You need to use an app for it?
Yes, though the app is typically pre-installed if you have a carrier-locked phone.
So I assume that it uses your data allowance?
This is entirely dependent on your carrier. It uses data, but can have it's own APN - so some carriers handle it separately. It does not typically work over WiFi.
If the concern is that these bastards are costing you money, then how does that solve anything?
Can't help you there - if your carrier is charging you for visual voicemail, you have several options: find a new carrier, pay for the data, call the free voicemail number and use the voice prompts that you hate, or turn off voicemail entirely. I have a 5GB data plan, so I haven't bothered to check if visual voicemail is using my data as it would be trivial.
Because I have to actually call a service number to access voice mail messages and then work with an awkward interface; I may even have to pay call time to do so.
Visual voicemail solved this 10 years ago. I don't know what company you are with, but I almost never dial the voicemail number and instead just look at the list of messages in the app.
Home voicemail is similar - I've been using Google Voice for years and it is a great way to filter your calls.
I wasn't disagreeing that food supply is subsidized.
Drugs are also very heavily controlled by government. We could even wax philosophical about whether or not a "private" corporation, which receives its charter from a government, is regulated by the government, and depends on government-granted monopolies, is actually an extension of government.
But none of that matters because unlike food, drugs cannot be substituted. We can tolerate crop losses because they will be made up by other crops. This is not the case with all drugs. The model you are proposing as analogous is not really all that analogous at all.
Food is diverse, just like drugs. We do indeed have food shortages, but classes of foods are largely fungible - unlike drugs.
In other words, if we lose half of the wheat crop, people can still eat corn. There are alternatives to bicarb, but they aren't pushed as fast - which can really matter in emergent situations. And emergencies are the only likely time you'd be using bicarb.
Right but that's dodging the question isn't it?
Not at all - I provided some resources to help people get started answering that question. I'm not gunning for a PhD, so I'm not going to do the study myself :)
confirms that the shortage is due to a contractual dispute
My public school had a strike when the teachers walked out for a contractual dispute. Government is not immune from this.
The UK's NHS typically does quite well at ensuring supply,
We'll never know if that is true or not, since they deliberately stopped tracking shortages.
It is not necessarily magic, but the mechanisms are currently unknown to us (and thus appear supernatural to our perception and understanding).
Right, so science makes no claim to deal with that at all. It's impossible to use science to explore that realm.
Your above assertion is like saying that because cars are built in a factory, setting off a bomb in a junk yard can also create the same exact car...
At least I'm using a philosophy with a demonstrated record of success to try and understand how the car was actually built, whereas you are content knowing that it was conjured by an unobservable sky pixie.
There are always shortages - it's just not apparent to the average Slashdotter. This page lists current and past drug shortages going back to 2010.
Here's the Canadian version.
There seems to be a similar site for the EU, though the page says most shortages are handled by the individual national governments. I'd check the French or German health websites, but I'm not good in those languages. The UK seems to have ceased tracking shortages.
I don't follow. If "what started the whole process" is natural, the philosophy with the best track record in understanding the natural world is the most likely way to find it. If it is not natural, it is outside of the domain of science and you can have it.
I think that many/most "anti-creationists" are guilty of what they accuse the creationists for: religious fundamentalism
Of course we are. Except that only our "religion" (we would call it a philosophy) can produce reliable predictions about the natural world. We make absolutely no attempt to describe the supernatural, and are very happy to leave that to religion.
Right, and the author of the headline was completely unaware that this might cause confusion.
the creationist argument that it is impossible will have to be thrown away forever.
That's very naive. They believe in magic, so they can change the argument in literally any way that they can imagine. If you demonstrated abiogenesis, they'd stop saying it's "impossible" and start saying, "See? You needed an intelligent being to set it all up!"
you have to become a city dweller on your little city island.
I don't understand the logic of your comment. First, in regards to commuting - for one thing, a car is not that large of a range extender. For day-to-day commutes, you are still on an island - just one that is defined by traffic congestion and proximity to highways rather than a public transit network. Perhaps it is different in Europe, but in many major US cities it is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to use your car to commute in to the city center from the suburbs.
If you aren't talking about commuting, then you would need to willfully ignore rental cars (including car sharing). I don't know if you have something like Zipcar, but you just use the app on your phone to find an available car and take it - I can't believe that is such a burdensome amount of planning. When we lived in NYC, we would "spontaneously" take the Zipcar to see friends in New Jersey, or to hit the Target, or whatever. In addition, it was parked in a garage a lot closer than where we would be able to afford to keep a car.
Finally, it sounds like you are a lot more encumbered than you seem to think. You feel stuck where you are because of your ties to friends and family. In contrast, a single city dweller in a rented apartment is pretty free to move wherever opportunity arises. Which one of you is stuck on an "island"? I'm not judging your choices - whatever makes you happy. Like I said, I'm now married, have kids, I'm suburban, and we have 2 cars. But you are writing off a whole idea based on your own narrow experience.
What the heck are they?
I'm pretty sure you are trying to be funny (no sweat, I try and fail at that all the time), but I'm also pretty sure that you are trying to make a broader point - and I'm not really catching it.
Most drones bought for 5-year-old Bobby are cheap, plastic pieces of shit that can barely work outside - let alone pose more of a hazard to aircraft than, say, a goose. This whole thing is solving an imaginary problem.
Ironically, Tamagotshi "pets" were not furry.
To be fair, doing that several times per second would still be something I'd describe as "fun".
A plaid shield!
But it would still be very low frequency as far as high frequency goes.
How do you know the US postal code for Pennsylvania but not West Virginia?
We have two cars for the time reason as well. But I can and have Uber/Lyfted myself to work and my wife can and has bused it. This scenario where if I worked in the city and wouldn't use Uber to go to a job interview is bizarre and contrived, and just because there are people like me and you doesn't mean that there aren't also a lot of people that this scheme works for.
We still have them in neighboring PA, so they aren't completely gone.
I'm not too worried about the electric grid - it will need to keep up or people will drive the politicians out with pitchforks and torches. Americans don't handle things like rolling brownouts/blackouts with dignity.
Track cars will always need special gas, just like they do now. I think you are right that they aren't going electric.
My guess is that electric car adoption will initially be in multi-car households. At my house, an electric would be ideal for my wife's 5-mile commute into town or my 10 mile trip down the road while we hold on to the family truckster for long trips. Even if the electric goes out or some other calamity strikes, we'd still have the gasoline vehicle. Although honestly, the gas pumps all run on electric and the last time we had a major power outage (hurricane) there was a black market on gasoline as people were traveling to neighboring states to fill containers and sell them locally. The local stations either weren't getting deliveries or didn't have power.
Yeah, Uber doesn't always play by the rules and they will probably suffer in the long-term for that. But we do need to be thankful that they showed us how much better taxis could be. Sometimes regulations drift from protection of the populace to protection of the status quo - and if nothing else, Uber broke the status quo.