As a geek, I am in favor of change... for the better. Geek and pedantic troll are not synonymous. I do not care about grammar distinctions that do not add a useful and functional clarity just for their own sake. I do not support changes to existing well defined and well understood prefixes unless there is a purpose.
Satisfying the anal few by implementing technical correctness of a prefix is NOT a fair trade for breaking every spec of existing computer literature and the majority of software. It is not a valid justification for breaking the math used and making it more difficult. Your pedantic correctness will decrease the efficiency of IT as a whole.
Sorry if you want to pretend people are somehow clinging to old ways. I guess some of us fuddy duddies don't want to get behind the idea of breaking the existing functionality with zero functional gain.
"A better comparison would be using metric units in the US, because metrics are based on SI and imperial units are more like the weird way bits and bytes are counted into kilobytes, megabytes etc."
There is nothing weird about it. Computers work in binary, not decimal, they count by powers of 2. You have no business being in IT if you don't get that.
There is nothing correct about it. The SI standard redefines the existing prefixes instead of assigning new ones to all the base 10 marketing nonsense.
"No, it wasn't. It meant, variously: 1000 bytes, 1024 bytes, 1000 bits, 1024 bits, or "approximately 1000 bits/bytes""
Not so, kB or KB means kilobytes, kb means kilobits. kb refers to network transfer and is always in powers of 10.
The 1000 bytes nonsense has always been nothing more than a justification for false advertising on hard drive capacity and the use of kb has always been a scam to make network interfaces sound faster. KB has always been the appropriate metric for data and data transfer.
"and when you formatted your 10 GB hard drive, you ended up with only 9.3 "GB" of space"
That confusion is the fault of false advertising and it isn't a reason to change the rightful measurement of 1024 bytes to a different prefix. If anything, you change all the other crap variations to something else and leave KB as KB.
"1 kb on your disk is usually defined as 1024 bits"
That would be bytes.
"but 1 kb/s is usually defined as 1000 bits/second."
That would be bits as you have stated.
The only time decimal units have ever been used is for marketing purposes. Your network transfer example is perfect to illustrate this, network speeds were measured in bits and powers of ten to make interfaces sound faster.
There is nothing elegant about the solution and it doesn't maintain the letters. If they wanted to keep the correct letters they would make the new prefixes like KiB reference to base 10 and leave the current widely used prefixes at base 2. Then literature doesn't break, and nobody has to relearn, only learn some new prefixes.
"the U.S. military is far more efficient than almost any in history, and also the most 'well behaved'."
You are correct with the rest of your statement but this is a little far fetched.
Most efficiency metrics are highly debatable but in the one that isn't, cost, the US military is the LEAST efficient. As for 'well behaved' the answer to that would depend on who you ask. Are you gauging 'well behaved' by actual unreported and unpunished behavior or just the above board/official policy stuff?
Most of the new treatments don't come from the US anymore. All the US has produced for a couple decades are minor alterations to existing medications to make them patentable again.
Most modern medical advances are coming out of Europe... which doesn't have a medical market system. Of course they do have to pay more because they have to compete with the over-inflated prices of the US medical market system so maybe that counts.
Freedom of speech and resistance of government is not the only freedom.
In the united states you need permission from the government to do most anything. Drive, fish, and yes, even to protest against or sue the government. Everything is tightly regulated and tracked and more and more onerous laws are successfully enforced everyday.
In many ways, most third world nations enjoy more freedom than the people of the United States.
It isn't the providers but the partner insurance companies stealing from medicare. Most doctors, even among those who take medicare, refuse to take those plans they call them medicare advantage plans.
All of your examples have a common theme, in some fashion you've created a scenerio in which you blame the higher risk person for being higher risk. Lets revise it.
"For example, lets say two people apply for health insurance. One has had breast cancer that is in remission, and the other has had a clean bill of health their whole life.
In theory, under the previous rules, the insurance companies were able to either turn away the one with cancer, or charge her outrageous premiums to cover their risk."
Should you really pay less because you've been lucky enough to enjoy good health? Should you get a double scoop of icecream and get to enjoy your good health and low premiums while the woman who fell ill to breast cancer gets a double scoop of shit?
What if it turns out that women who have had children are at higher risk for breast cancer. THEN should we gouge our mothers on their health insurance?
How about a man who hurts his back in a workplace accident. Workers comp covered his care for a few months but he'll have pain the rest of his life. Under your system (the current system) if his coverage should ever lapse or he switches employers he's fucked.
You don't punish people for having gotten sick not even if you think can identify some behavior that put them at higher risk.
Shouldn't dying of cancer be enough of a punishment for making a choice that leads to it?
Healthcare is a basic human need. Everyone should have that, no matter what their history. And like any public service, the cost should be footed by our public tax system not premiums.
Now it is mandatory to pay for this shit? We have a system for paying for federally provided services, it is called income tax. It is already designed to use a fair and progressive system to spread costs.
Grow a damn pair of balls and provide no premium insurance and fund it 100% via the existing tax system.
Gun laws are illegal for starters but hey, why let a little thing like that prevent the government from centralizing and wresting power from the hands of the people.
I for one find a nation where the government has no need to fear the people very scary indeed.
"Every major project always takes longer than expected because so many small details are exposed as you uproot any existing system or workflow process."
Yep, that and because if you don't underestimate cost and time to completion then nobody will ever agree to pay for it. For some reason people don't like to face real costs and time involved. They prefer fantasy unrealistic numbers.
Actually, there is no black and white law that will always be just when applied no matter how brilliantly written or revised.
That is why the final check against unjust law (short of revolution, but that is where the right to bear arms comes in) is a jury of peers. Also known as the people. The duty of the jury is to evaluate both the facts of a case and whether application of the law in a particular case would result in justice and render a verdict.
Unfortunately, history is written by the victors. The white south ultimately lost during the civil rights movement and juries which made decisions contrary to victorious view that blacks were equal to rights were used as an excuse by justices to first stop informing juries of their rights and obligations in this respect. Later this attitude by U.S. judges changed further until today where judges actually lie to juries and tell them they aren't permitted to consider the law itself at all. If a judge becomes aware that a juror knows his rights and duties they will actually declare a mistrial.
In this case the couple should be able to request a jury and the jury should toss this out on its ass because it is unjust. The people should have the final direct check against government and corrupt laws. The government (which includes the judicial) doesn't seem to agree.
What on earth makes you think it would be about YOU getting money from the oil? Are you in power? Do you have the authority to trump up excuses and start wars? Didn't think so.
The United States didn't go to war, people in the United States government sent the United States to war, those people profited to the tune of billions from the economic implications of the Iraq war.
You as a citizen of the United States didn't get any oil, you weren't supposed to. You were supposed to pay more for oil because of the instability in the large oil producing regions of the world. Of course the oil you paid a higher price for didn't come from said unstable regions so it simply garnered a higher profit.
People who benefited from the Iraq war include soldiers (lots of soldier/mercenary pay and spoils), U.S. contractors (we used Iraqi oil to pay U.S. contractors rather than Iraqi's to rebuild Iraq) and their employees, Defense contractors and their employees, and anybody who has a stake in oil produced anywhere other than Iraq.
Biggest losers? Iraq of course, european nations that had previously been purchasing oil from Iraq like France, and the people of the United States who aren't in one of the previously mentioned groups.
Isn't this man considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?
What right do they have to risk the life of a presumed innocent man with dangerous surgery? A surgery like this permanently disfigures, in our legal system you can't even sentence someone to disfigurement like this as punishment after they have been convicted of a crime!
If I were the man in question I would sue. If they try to press whatever charges are involved then I would claim double jeopardy, they have already exacted a cruel and unusual punishment.
"Alcoholism is the only example required, here is a non-addictive substance which in reasonable quantities has no significant negative long term effects."
I assume you are referring to marijuana. Alcohol is highly addictive. It isn't as easy to become addicted in the first place but once addicted the link is likened to Heroin. You can die from alcohol withdrawal once addicted.
"Time spent chasing down every degenerate who smokes or sells pot is time and money wasted."
People who smoke pot are not degenerates. Many of them are designing rockets at NASA. Links between marijuana and laziness or permanent memory problems (there is a short term memory reduction but even with years of use it goes away after as little as a month of discontinuing use, and afterward there is actually a net increase in memory functions, people who use marijuana infrequently actually have increased memory function not decreased) have been completely debunked.
Lazy degenerates may sit around smoking pot all day but make no mistake, those degenerates would be sitting around doing nothing productive if you took the pot away.
'Politicians don't win elections by doing what's best for society... they win by doing what the majority of the people who vote want. Like it or not, the majority of the people who actually go out and vote do not approve of and will not support candidates who publicly embrace the view idea drugs aren't evil (which is why so very few ever get elected). '
I love this very naive view of our political system. The only relation the views of the voters have to political actions is what tone the senseless non-commital phrases take come election time and what tone the spin takes after a vote if someone notices.
Politicians do what they are told by the people who bought their office (the people are chattle, buy media attention, buy some good sounding spin and handlers and you get elected). They do this so that said sponsors will buy their office come re-election rather than buying it for someone else.
The problem with legalization of marijuana (which would be one of the most benign and harmless substances in the herbal supplement isle at walgreens if the FDA classified it according to their own rules), is that there is pretty much no reason for the people who buy politicians to support it and lots of reasons not to.
If you legalized marijuana, you'd also be inviting wholesale uncontrolled hemp production. The cotton and synthetic textiles industry doesn't want to see this. Marijuana is effective in treating countless diseases in a number of ways so that nixes the drug companies. Hemp fiber can reinforce vegetable based plastics to make them extremely strong, that nixes the oil industry. Marijuana is called weed for a reason, if grown in fields it would yield tons per square acre, without some form of excessive taxation legal marijuana would cost a couple dollars a pound where it now costs a couple thousand (or more). That nixs the black market drug interests. Marijuana has fewer negative side effects, is more enjoyable, and doesn't carry a hangover. That pisses off the liquor industry.
I could go one with this for quite awhile. But to name a few these industries are definitely opposed to marijuana, oil, textiles, pharma, addiction/medical, private prison, black market cartels, and alcohol. They have clear cut business interests opposed to marijuana.
If you are the conspiracy type you might suggest that anyone living off capital gains is opposed to marijuana as well. Marijuana helps people to feel happy. Happy people don't feel the need to be good consumers and buy stuff to make them happy. People who don't want 'stuff' spend more time thinking. The last thing you want if you live off the sweat of others is those others thinking.
A flat tax doesn't represent 'we the people'. Neither does the fair tax. For instance, it is common for CEO's to take a one dollar salary and the wealthier you are the lower the portion of your wealth you spend. In both cases the wealthy shirk their fair share of these taxes.
If you want a tax system that represents we the people then use a tiered system. Eliminate income tax on wages and tax only capital gains.
If you work for a living you don't pay taxes on what you earn from your productive work (only on any excess that you invest). If you make a living by investing in the work of others but not working yourself, you contribute tax dollars in lieu of the labor you aren't contributing.
Double taxation for small business owners would be gone. They would pay tax on capital gains but not any salary they draw off the business. They can game the system to some degree with this but ultimately that only helps to grow small businesses, that wouldn't work for large businesses.
I know, you think CEO's will just take their money in salary rather than stock to dodge their share. The difference is that CEO's generally must get approval from the company stockholders for their salary... annually. You can hide millions in CEO capital gains, a salary is a great big number that everyone with a share of common stock can vote against.
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As a geek, I am in favor of change... for the better. Geek and pedantic troll are not synonymous. I do not care about grammar distinctions that do not add a useful and functional clarity just for their own sake. I do not support changes to existing well defined and well understood prefixes unless there is a purpose.
Satisfying the anal few by implementing technical correctness of a prefix is NOT a fair trade for breaking every spec of existing computer literature and the majority of software. It is not a valid justification for breaking the math used and making it more difficult. Your pedantic correctness will decrease the efficiency of IT as a whole.
Sorry if you want to pretend people are somehow clinging to old ways. I guess some of us fuddy duddies don't want to get behind the idea of breaking the existing functionality with zero functional gain.
"A better comparison would be using metric units in the US, because metrics are based on SI and imperial units are more like the weird way bits and bytes are counted into kilobytes, megabytes etc."
There is nothing weird about it. Computers work in binary, not decimal, they count by powers of 2. You have no business being in IT if you don't get that.
There is nothing correct about it. The SI standard redefines the existing prefixes instead of assigning new ones to all the base 10 marketing nonsense.
First, you are arguing with somebody making the same point you are. You need to work on reading comprehension. Second... read my reply to him.
"No, it wasn't. It meant, variously: 1000 bytes, 1024 bytes, 1000 bits, 1024 bits, or "approximately 1000 bits/bytes""
Not so, kB or KB means kilobytes, kb means kilobits. kb refers to network transfer and is always in powers of 10.
The 1000 bytes nonsense has always been nothing more than a justification for false advertising on hard drive capacity and the use of kb has always been a scam to make network interfaces sound faster. KB has always been the appropriate metric for data and data transfer.
"and when you formatted your 10 GB hard drive, you ended up with only 9.3 "GB" of space"
That confusion is the fault of false advertising and it isn't a reason to change the rightful measurement of 1024 bytes to a different prefix. If anything, you change all the other crap variations to something else and leave KB as KB.
"1 kb on your disk is usually defined as 1024 bits"
That would be bytes.
"but 1 kb/s is usually defined as 1000 bits/second."
That would be bits as you have stated.
The only time decimal units have ever been used is for marketing purposes. Your network transfer example is perfect to illustrate this, network speeds were measured in bits and powers of ten to make interfaces sound faster.
There is nothing elegant about the solution and it doesn't maintain the letters. If they wanted to keep the correct letters they would make the new prefixes like KiB reference to base 10 and leave the current widely used prefixes at base 2. Then literature doesn't break, and nobody has to relearn, only learn some new prefixes.
Troll? If anything that is the GP not the parent post. Talk about censorship.
You're right. The difference is that you seem to think that doesn't mean the FBI should be disbanded.
It certainly does read the ninth and tenth amendments.
Additionally, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed which categorically includes healthcare.
"the U.S. military is far more efficient than almost any in history, and also the most 'well behaved'."
You are correct with the rest of your statement but this is a little far fetched.
Most efficiency metrics are highly debatable but in the one that isn't, cost, the US military is the LEAST efficient. As for 'well behaved' the answer to that would depend on who you ask. Are you gauging 'well behaved' by actual unreported and unpunished behavior or just the above board/official policy stuff?
Most of the new treatments don't come from the US anymore. All the US has produced for a couple decades are minor alterations to existing medications to make them patentable again.
Most modern medical advances are coming out of Europe... which doesn't have a medical market system. Of course they do have to pay more because they have to compete with the over-inflated prices of the US medical market system so maybe that counts.
Freedom of speech and resistance of government is not the only freedom.
In the united states you need permission from the government to do most anything. Drive, fish, and yes, even to protest against or sue the government. Everything is tightly regulated and tracked and more and more onerous laws are successfully enforced everyday.
In many ways, most third world nations enjoy more freedom than the people of the United States.
It isn't the providers but the partner insurance companies stealing from medicare. Most doctors, even among those who take medicare, refuse to take those plans they call them medicare advantage plans.
All of your examples have a common theme, in some fashion you've created a scenerio in which you blame the higher risk person for being higher risk. Lets revise it.
"For example, lets say two people apply for health insurance. One has had breast cancer that is in remission, and the other has had a clean bill of health their whole life.
In theory, under the previous rules, the insurance companies were able to either turn away the one with cancer, or charge her outrageous premiums to cover their risk."
Should you really pay less because you've been lucky enough to enjoy good health? Should you get a double scoop of icecream and get to enjoy your good health and low premiums while the woman who fell ill to breast cancer gets a double scoop of shit?
What if it turns out that women who have had children are at higher risk for breast cancer. THEN should we gouge our mothers on their health insurance?
How about a man who hurts his back in a workplace accident. Workers comp covered his care for a few months but he'll have pain the rest of his life. Under your system (the current system) if his coverage should ever lapse or he switches employers he's fucked.
You don't punish people for having gotten sick not even if you think can identify some behavior that put them at higher risk.
Shouldn't dying of cancer be enough of a punishment for making a choice that leads to it?
Healthcare is a basic human need. Everyone should have that, no matter what their history. And like any public service, the cost should be footed by our public tax system not premiums.
Now it is mandatory to pay for this shit? We have a system for paying for federally provided services, it is called income tax. It is already designed to use a fair and progressive system to spread costs.
Grow a damn pair of balls and provide no premium insurance and fund it 100% via the existing tax system.
Gun laws are illegal for starters but hey, why let a little thing like that prevent the government from centralizing and wresting power from the hands of the people.
I for one find a nation where the government has no need to fear the people very scary indeed.
"Every major project always takes longer than expected because so many small details are exposed as you uproot any existing system or workflow process."
Yep, that and because if you don't underestimate cost and time to completion then nobody will ever agree to pay for it. For some reason people don't like to face real costs and time involved. They prefer fantasy unrealistic numbers.
Actually, there is no black and white law that will always be just when applied no matter how brilliantly written or revised.
That is why the final check against unjust law (short of revolution, but that is where the right to bear arms comes in) is a jury of peers. Also known as the people. The duty of the jury is to evaluate both the facts of a case and whether application of the law in a particular case would result in justice and render a verdict.
Unfortunately, history is written by the victors. The white south ultimately lost during the civil rights movement and juries which made decisions contrary to victorious view that blacks were equal to rights were used as an excuse by justices to first stop informing juries of their rights and obligations in this respect. Later this attitude by U.S. judges changed further until today where judges actually lie to juries and tell them they aren't permitted to consider the law itself at all. If a judge becomes aware that a juror knows his rights and duties they will actually declare a mistrial.
In this case the couple should be able to request a jury and the jury should toss this out on its ass because it is unjust. The people should have the final direct check against government and corrupt laws. The government (which includes the judicial) doesn't seem to agree.
What on earth makes you think it would be about YOU getting money from the oil? Are you in power? Do you have the authority to trump up excuses and start wars? Didn't think so.
The United States didn't go to war, people in the United States government sent the United States to war, those people profited to the tune of billions from the economic implications of the Iraq war.
You as a citizen of the United States didn't get any oil, you weren't supposed to. You were supposed to pay more for oil because of the instability in the large oil producing regions of the world. Of course the oil you paid a higher price for didn't come from said unstable regions so it simply garnered a higher profit.
People who benefited from the Iraq war include soldiers (lots of soldier/mercenary pay and spoils), U.S. contractors (we used Iraqi oil to pay U.S. contractors rather than Iraqi's to rebuild Iraq) and their employees, Defense contractors and their employees, and anybody who has a stake in oil produced anywhere other than Iraq.
Biggest losers? Iraq of course, european nations that had previously been purchasing oil from Iraq like France, and the people of the United States who aren't in one of the previously mentioned groups.
Isn't this man considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?
What right do they have to risk the life of a presumed innocent man with dangerous surgery? A surgery like this permanently disfigures, in our legal system you can't even sentence someone to disfigurement like this as punishment after they have been convicted of a crime!
If I were the man in question I would sue. If they try to press whatever charges are involved then I would claim double jeopardy, they have already exacted a cruel and unusual punishment.
"Alcoholism is the only example required, here is a non-addictive substance which in reasonable quantities has no significant negative long term effects."
I assume you are referring to marijuana. Alcohol is highly addictive. It isn't as easy to become addicted in the first place but once addicted the link is likened to Heroin. You can die from alcohol withdrawal once addicted.
"Time spent chasing down every degenerate who smokes or sells pot is time and money wasted."
People who smoke pot are not degenerates. Many of them are designing rockets at NASA. Links between marijuana and laziness or permanent memory problems (there is a short term memory reduction but even with years of use it goes away after as little as a month of discontinuing use, and afterward there is actually a net increase in memory functions, people who use marijuana infrequently actually have increased memory function not decreased) have been completely debunked.
Lazy degenerates may sit around smoking pot all day but make no mistake, those degenerates would be sitting around doing nothing productive if you took the pot away.
'Politicians don't win elections by doing what's best for society... they win by doing what the majority of the people who vote want. Like it or not, the majority of the people who actually go out and vote do not approve of and will not support candidates who publicly embrace the view idea drugs aren't evil (which is why so very few ever get elected). '
I love this very naive view of our political system. The only relation the views of the voters have to political actions is what tone the senseless non-commital phrases take come election time and what tone the spin takes after a vote if someone notices.
Politicians do what they are told by the people who bought their office (the people are chattle, buy media attention, buy some good sounding spin and handlers and you get elected). They do this so that said sponsors will buy their office come re-election rather than buying it for someone else.
The problem with legalization of marijuana (which would be one of the most benign and harmless substances in the herbal supplement isle at walgreens if the FDA classified it according to their own rules), is that there is pretty much no reason for the people who buy politicians to support it and lots of reasons not to.
If you legalized marijuana, you'd also be inviting wholesale uncontrolled hemp production. The cotton and synthetic textiles industry doesn't want to see this. Marijuana is effective in treating countless diseases in a number of ways so that nixes the drug companies. Hemp fiber can reinforce vegetable based plastics to make them extremely strong, that nixes the oil industry. Marijuana is called weed for a reason, if grown in fields it would yield tons per square acre, without some form of excessive taxation legal marijuana would cost a couple dollars a pound where it now costs a couple thousand (or more). That nixs the black market drug interests. Marijuana has fewer negative side effects, is more enjoyable, and doesn't carry a hangover. That pisses off the liquor industry.
I could go one with this for quite awhile. But to name a few these industries are definitely opposed to marijuana, oil, textiles, pharma, addiction/medical, private prison, black market cartels, and alcohol. They have clear cut business interests opposed to marijuana.
If you are the conspiracy type you might suggest that anyone living off capital gains is opposed to marijuana as well. Marijuana helps people to feel happy. Happy people don't feel the need to be good consumers and buy stuff to make them happy. People who don't want 'stuff' spend more time thinking. The last thing you want if you live off the sweat of others is those others thinking.
A flat tax doesn't represent 'we the people'. Neither does the fair tax. For instance, it is common for CEO's to take a one dollar salary and the wealthier you are the lower the portion of your wealth you spend. In both cases the wealthy shirk their fair share of these taxes.
If you want a tax system that represents we the people then use a tiered system. Eliminate income tax on wages and tax only capital gains.
If you work for a living you don't pay taxes on what you earn from your productive work (only on any excess that you invest). If you make a living by investing in the work of others but not working yourself, you contribute tax dollars in lieu of the labor you aren't contributing.
Double taxation for small business owners would be gone. They would pay tax on capital gains but not any salary they draw off the business. They can game the system to some degree with this but ultimately that only helps to grow small businesses, that wouldn't work for large businesses.
I know, you think CEO's will just take their money in salary rather than stock to dodge their share. The difference is that CEO's generally must get approval from the company stockholders for their salary... annually. You can hide millions in CEO capital gains, a salary is a great big number that everyone with a share of common stock can vote against.
I'm pretty sure I grew up in that very apartment and I came out just fine!
*puts custom tard helmet complete with propeller back on and proceeds to charge the concrete wall headfirst repeatedly*