...George Washington... had only a minor role in the political establishment of the country...
If I'd used that as the main premise for my argument, I would have posted AC, too...
How can you expect someone reading what you write to take you seriously, if that's where you *start* disagreeing.
Using Washington as an example of political and religious belief at the end of the 18th century is like using Eisenhower as an encapsulation of American political and religious belief in the middle of the 20th century, yes. Time matters. Views and opinions are not static things, but history is (or should be, aside from the addition of missing detail).
The Texas controversy is not about Texas trying to nullify the establishment clause, it's about them getting tired of the second part of that famous sentence in the first amendment getting short shrift. Saying "don't talk about it" is so common in schools when religion and history cross paths, that Texas (which has a far more religious bent than California) is trying to un-PC their textbooks.
Is the pendulum swinging too far? Maybe. But it's a reaction to something, not action from nowhere.
I would argue that advantage number 2 is not a definite advantage, as such...at least not in evolutionary terms. Subjugation does not necessarily mean that the number of offspring that make it to maturity and reproduction is lessened. Modern humans play by the same evolutionary rules as everyone else. Grow, mature, mate, reproduce, repeat. Evolution dictates that traits within a larger population will favor success in that cycle for individuals that possess them. You put the cart before the horse with both of your points, actually (since you didn't add "before reproducing" in point 1). The OP's second point is debatable, but his first point is correct, in terms of evolutionary advantage.
Subvert your authority? The nutrition policy is there to simply ensure the HEALTH of your child. Even WITH these policies, a dozen kids a day are sent to school undernourished, WTF do you think would happen otherwise?
...exactly the same thing? Or are you saying that most parents are too stupid to realize they're not sending their kids to school with non-nutritious food and have to be slapped into awareness? Do YOU need the nutrition policy in place to make sure your kid is well fed? Your neighbors? Who are these unknown parents that you so thoroughly disdain?
no candy, no soda, is not strictly enforced, they just can't consume it on school premises unless they've been REWARDED to do so. This is a simple positive reinforcement system (instead of negative), that ACTUALLY WORKS, and is far and beyond proven, and is completely ineffective for the REST of the students if you allow yours to come to school and be able to ignore it.
Why is it ineffective for the rest of the students? Aside from having completely out-of-control learning situations where the students ignore the teachers, where is this a problem? I'm not talking about students eating their own candy in class, but at lunch (as in TFA). Sure, the school sets the policy. The fact that they felt the need to do so in this manner makes me sad for the students, especially as relates to what they learn about the law relating to common sense and responsibility.
"zero tolelrance" as I mentioned in several posts is more often than not uses to get EXACTLY THIS RESPONSE, because zero tolerance IS bad, we did claim otherwise here, just that we're claiming IN SUPPORT of strong nutritional programs, and PARENTAL enforcement (feed your kid or we'll send the law after you). We don;t dictate WHAT to feed your kid, only that it falls within a commonly accepted general nutrition program, or that YOUR CHOICE has been validated by a doctor and a nutrition plan submitted to the school.
You just contradicted yourself there. It's evident that you don't see it as a contradiction (or else you wouldn't be arguing the point so vociferously). Saying "we don't dictate what to feed your kid" is a statement. Saying "What you feed your kid must fall within a commonly accepted [and MANDATED] general nutrition program or we'll have you arrested or your kids taken away". Is another statement. They do not mean the same thing. That's a contradiction.
You must decide which one of those statements you support, but it can't be both, as they are mutually exclusive.
If your kid is disposing of food before he gets to school, when you get a bill or two, you'll figure that out and DEAL WITH YOUR KID (either by changing his food, or changing his behavior). The school STILL NEEDS TO FEED HIM regardless and can not legally allow him to go without lunch, his choice or yours, so that argument is moot.
If the argument was about payment, then, yes, it would be a moot argument. The point (IIRC), however, was about authority, responsibility, and the fact that the government is tending to assign much of one, while absconding with much of the latter. If I have no authority, but am held responsible, that's asinine. The OP didn't say they couldn't deal with their kid, they said that regardless of their actions, a kid ditching his or her lunch could raise just enough eyebrows to get the parents suspected of neglect and have their child taken away...even if they paid the lunch bill.
You said "...feed your kid or we'll send the law after you..." is the legal discussion at hand, but it's not. The discussion is "IT BETTER LOOK LIKE you're feeding your kids, or we'll send the law after you".
Okay, but if the idea is "no LAN play", then data won't stay local. It *will* go through a blizzard server. Combine Blizzard's public statement about lack of LAN play with technical requirements for avoiding it, and you're left with servers in the middle that are not match-making servers.
I'm not saying it's a difficult problem to solve (as long as you have an internet connection). I'm saying that both for multi-site and single-location multiplayer, there will need to be a non-local server involved during gameplay. Either that, or there's no point in disabling LAN play.
Okay, so by that logic, either it will be impossible for 2 or more people behind the same router to play multiplayer, or all of that traffic will have to go out the router, off to Blizzard, and then back into the router (meaning that there will definitely be other non-match-making servers at blizzard involved with multiplayer game action).
I don't play multi-player on battle.net, I play via LAN with my 9-year-old son inside the same house (and have been doing so for the last 3 years or so...since he was old enough to learn to play).
You're talking apples-to-oranges here. Starcraft isn't an MMORPG, it's an RTS...the demographic tilts much more heavily to co-located opponents.
Does anyone know if the demo gameplay head-to-head stuff was played via a non-local battle.net server?
...but I'm not arguing that lay evaluation is desirable or even pertinent.
I made two statements. One was that publication in a public place allows more people to access the document. That stands on its own, and has nothing to do with who's reviews should be noted.
The second statement was about methodology and relevance. Namely that if the complaint was a lack of research, and the math was about a fairly straightforward reversal of existing theory, then experimentation that applies to existing theory ought to work well in proving or disproving the new theory.
I'm not saying "wow! It must be true, but people are dismissing it!". I'm saying that it is of interest to me (and probably other people) regardless of whether or not peer review has occurred, and that such review is likely to happen (even though not in a rigorously approved fashion), since everyone in the world can read the article...including mathematicians and physicists.
...but since the articles are publicly available, doesn't that mean that they can be more widely reviewed than traditional peer-reviewed papers?
It didn't sound like it was research, but rather mathematical theory based on looking at existing principles from a different direction. If there is enough underlying research in newtonian physics and general relativity, then wouldn't that same research also apply here?
Granted, I'm no mathematician, but it just seems a bit cliquish to say "don't pay attention to this" because of where the first publication is happening.
...If something came across that doubled my salary, I'd be off like a shot and do it. I mean, really...if anyone here was independently wealthy, who would ever work again? Certainly not I...I mean, even if you still like to do geek stuff..if you are wealthy enough live off the money you have, then anything you do is a hobby at that point, not work.
My viewpoint is different, I suppose. I'm not independently wealthy, but if I were, you'd still be hard-pressed to get me not to touch a computer for longer than about a week. I *do* like my job, and if something came around that doubled my salary, I probably wouldn't take it unless it was substantially similar to what I'm doing now (IT Consulting...mainly software these days).
I don't work for myself, but my job is more to me than just a means to an end. I like doing it. It not only provides me with money, but it is (mostly) enjoyable and challenging. What does it matter? A lot.
While interesting, it seemed to me that the question was more of "How do I avoid being forced to be a manager instead of a tech?"
While it's true that some people aren't cut out for management, that says nothing about what they want to do as a day-to-day job. Managing people is a lot different from onsite support for servers and network gear. If you prefer the latter to the former, a "promotion" to manager may seem like 7 kinds of hell.
I'd probably ask about what my new job duties would be, and see if they fit with my desires, otherwise, it's a shot in the dark as to whether to take the job, fight to keep your current position, or find a new employer.
...are we saying that Branson invented the spaceship?. The analogy seems apt to me. Virgin may well be the first company to make strides in mass-produced spacecraft. Only time will tell.
I'd rather say that on the one side you have a majority of scientists who *currently* hold a particular opinion (an opinion that until recently was the exact opposite of where it stands today...global cooling was a much discussed topic not long ago), and on the other side, you have people who are reluctant to say that the warming that's occurring is necessarily caused by man.
If you proceed from an assumption, and then try to find data to prove it, that's not science. Science is what you do when you test a hypothesis with data, not when you try to make the data make sense in light of what you think it should show. That's the problem that is in front of us.
You can find a majority of scholarly people who will tell you that global warming is caused in whole or in part by man, and that we have to reduce carbon emissions in order to stop it. That's not proven. It's an article of faith. More to the point, it was contraindicated until recently, and there's ample evidence of previous swings in temperature that do not correspond to industrial carbon emissions.
Nobody is talking about "upsetting" people by spending trillions reducing carbon dioxide emissions. What people *are* talking about is the unprecedented global opportunity cost presented by such an expenditure. A great many people will suffer with that kind of diversion of resources in play.
The military is spending money to plan for potential missions, yes. Contingency planning is something the military is good at. They also plan for invasions by our border countries, full-scale nuclear war, major asteroid impacts, alien invasion, and a number of other scenarios of varying likelihood. It would be foolish to presume that they do so because they believe that all of these things are inevitable.
I hadn't heard of any campaign related to global warming other than the one designed to drum the message into everyone's skull that man is causing global warming and man has to quit it before something bad happens.
Well, I didn't agree on the nomination, but that he had done more than Bill G. and the Jobster. I've already spoken my piece on the low standards of the Peace Prize committee...you're right that if he stands a chance of winning one, it's gotta be that one.
...Whether he needed the award to lend his voice some backing is debateable, but don't cry foul because you think he hasn't earned it yet, because it's by no means the first time they've done it, and it's not going to be the last, either.
That is one of the saddest commentaries on the Nobel Peace Prize I've heard.
I have nothing against the guy...he seems nice enough. I *believe* that he *wants* world peace. So do I! Come to think of it, I'd be willing to bet that nearly every prior US president could honestly claim the same thing. So what?
The Nobel Prize, as far as I'm aware, rewards achievement or advancement in a specific area. Saying that not only have there been past Peace Prize awards given not only preemptively, but in an attempt to *create* the achievement itself makes me deeply sad. To say that it's a trend that will continue does not improve my outlook.
If you can't understand why I feel this way, then I don't think there's a point in what amounts to my monologue.
You know that old saw about "lies, damn lies, and statistics"?
Define "smoking-related". My guess is that *your* definition would be that of someone who dies due to an illness caused by smoking. I'm cool with that definition. It's not the one that was used to come up with that number for smoking-related deaths, though.
The only thing more contrived than *that* number is the one that attributes death and illness to second-hand smoke. It's honestly ridiculous...I can barely watch one of those "truth" ads without sneering anymore.
Obesity is a *major* factor in high blood pressure, cardiac problems, diabetes, and mobility problems (which, themselves cause cascade effects due to an inability to excercise). All of those things are indicators of poor health and possible sudden or early death.
Prior to the military's ban on smoking, roughly 20-25% of soldiers (mirroring the general population) were smokers. In *that* population of people (who routinely exercised and maintained good cardio-vascular health and diet), smoking was not the leading cause of death.
The simple fact is (disclaimer: I'm an ex-smoker) that smoking is seen as not only bad, but pointless and invasive. That makes it an easy target...not for banning, but for revenue generation.
And that's leaving aside the fact that the taxes on cigarrettes are almost entirely used for things *other* than smoking cessation and healthcare for smoking-related illness. The whole selling point of cigarrete taxes began as "money to pay those huge health bills for smokers when they finally get cancer or emphysema".
10 years ago, cigarettes in the US cost about 2 bucks a pack. Today (unless you live in New York, god forbid), they cost about 5 bucks a pack. 20 years ago, they cost around a dollar. Almost none of that cost increase has come from manufacturing costs.
Let's assume a smoking-age population of 150 million people. 20 percent of that is 30 million smokers. Assuming that (on average) they smoke a pack a day, that's just shy of 11 billion packs of cigarettes per year. Assuming it costs 1.50 to produce a pack of smokes, that's 3.50 a pack in taxes, or 38.5 billion dollars a year...770 million dollars per state, if you divide it evenly.
If we're going to talk about smoking and why it's bad, let's be honest and say that it's bad because it makes more money that way.
Nobel laureate would certainly be a good way to reward a man who has done something far more extraordinary than anything BillG or the Steve's ever did - without the benefit of a corporation (note MS needed IBM to be where it is) or a formal product (the Steve's SOLD hardware) and created a world-class operating system...
I was hoping somebody would point that out. I'd just say that, if you can get an award for things that you're *going* to do, Linus should start telling people that he's going to work hard for world peace in version 3.8 of the kernel. It'd be a no-brainer!
For that matter...I'm working on version 6.0 of the linux kernel, which will not only end hunger, but make fusion-based power a reality and cure cancer. Who's gonna nominate me?
...Now, on the flipside, if Apple can implement such an action (although I don't see how seeing as how the first FF plugin I install is adblock) in a way that is non-intrusive and doesn't disrupt the joy in using a device then, who cares...
I think you need to re-read the summary, at least. This is implemented in hardware, and is *meant* to be [in|ob]trusive. They want the ability to preempt anything you happen to be doing with an advertising message that you *must* interact with before you can continue doing what you were doing.
...On Sept. 25, 2007, the United States Patent and Trademark Office concluded its reexamination of the '596 patent and issued a certificate [sic]cancelling all claims...
...To construct this computer is just a series of instructions in how to order these subatomic particles...
No...that's exactly the point I'm trying to make. The instructions themselves are different from the particles. Whether undiscovered, residing in a human brain, written on paper, or stored in a disk or similar medium, the instructions themselves have zero effect. How do you write down the instructions to create a strange quark? What machine do you give these instructions to?
A machine or machines that has/have been fashioned to manipulate plastic, silicon, aluminum, steel, etc to produce a working computer is/are the thing(s) that has/have the effect.
I understand your line of argument, and I need to point out that at its logical conclusion, one would have to say that nothing is patentable because previous motions of particles would be prior art, or that understanding and observing some elemental or subatomic interaction would make subsequent interactions obvious.
If we're talking about the current state of knowledge and manufacturing capability, we must acknowledge differences between subatomic and organic human scale organizations of particles, as well as differentiating between thought and action.
Actually, no. A drug is a physical substance that can be identified by a certain chemical formula. The formula describes what's *in* the drug...not how you create it.
So, basically, you're saying "welcome to the era of patented recipes"? I'm going to start patenting any unusual combination of ingredients that I haven't already seen on iron chef and just wait...
There's a reason that there are separate laws covering copyrights, patents, trade secrets and trademarks. It's because the "milieu" *does* matter.
I'm uncertain as to why it's worthy of bold italics that the EULA and TOS (as suggested thus far by the company creating them) are going into effect in the future...
I should give them time? Perhaps wait until they codify the proposed language and begin shipping product before letting them know that I won't buy it under those terms? It ain't a high horse I'm on, I'm just trying to be one of many squeaky wheels.
I'd like to think that writing letters to Blizzard, signing the petition, and making my position clear here means, if nothing else, that I spoke up.
I'm fine with Blizzard coming up with a solution. I just want to make clear whenever I'm able that certain solutions (no LAN play, requiring Battle.NET login, etc) preclude me from parting with my cash (especially in the case of buying more than one copy of the game this time around).
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If I'd used that as the main premise for my argument, I would have posted AC, too...
How can you expect someone reading what you write to take you seriously, if that's where you *start* disagreeing.
Using Washington as an example of political and religious belief at the end of the 18th century is like using Eisenhower as an encapsulation of American political and religious belief in the middle of the 20th century, yes. Time matters. Views and opinions are not static things, but history is (or should be, aside from the addition of missing detail).
The Texas controversy is not about Texas trying to nullify the establishment clause, it's about them getting tired of the second part of that famous sentence in the first amendment getting short shrift. Saying "don't talk about it" is so common in schools when religion and history cross paths, that Texas (which has a far more religious bent than California) is trying to un-PC their textbooks.
Is the pendulum swinging too far? Maybe. But it's a reaction to something, not action from nowhere.
I would argue that advantage number 2 is not a definite advantage, as such...at least not in evolutionary terms. Subjugation does not necessarily mean that the number of offspring that make it to maturity and reproduction is lessened. Modern humans play by the same evolutionary rules as everyone else. Grow, mature, mate, reproduce, repeat. Evolution dictates that traits within a larger population will favor success in that cycle for individuals that possess them. You put the cart before the horse with both of your points, actually (since you didn't add "before reproducing" in point 1). The OP's second point is debatable, but his first point is correct, in terms of evolutionary advantage.
Subvert your authority? The nutrition policy is there to simply ensure the HEALTH of your child. Even WITH these policies, a dozen kids a day are sent to school undernourished, WTF do you think would happen otherwise?
...exactly the same thing? Or are you saying that most parents are too stupid to realize they're not sending their kids to school with non-nutritious food and have to be slapped into awareness? Do YOU need the nutrition policy in place to make sure your kid is well fed? Your neighbors? Who are these unknown parents that you so thoroughly disdain?
no candy, no soda, is not strictly enforced, they just can't consume it on school premises unless they've been REWARDED to do so. This is a simple positive reinforcement system (instead of negative), that ACTUALLY WORKS, and is far and beyond proven, and is completely ineffective for the REST of the students if you allow yours to come to school and be able to ignore it.
Why is it ineffective for the rest of the students? Aside from having completely out-of-control learning situations where the students ignore the teachers, where is this a problem? I'm not talking about students eating their own candy in class, but at lunch (as in TFA). Sure, the school sets the policy. The fact that they felt the need to do so in this manner makes me sad for the students, especially as relates to what they learn about the law relating to common sense and responsibility.
"zero tolelrance" as I mentioned in several posts is more often than not uses to get EXACTLY THIS RESPONSE, because zero tolerance IS bad, we did claim otherwise here, just that we're claiming IN SUPPORT of strong nutritional programs, and PARENTAL enforcement (feed your kid or we'll send the law after you). We don;t dictate WHAT to feed your kid, only that it falls within a commonly accepted general nutrition program, or that YOUR CHOICE has been validated by a doctor and a nutrition plan submitted to the school.
You just contradicted yourself there. It's evident that you don't see it as a contradiction (or else you wouldn't be arguing the point so vociferously). Saying "we don't dictate what to feed your kid" is a statement. Saying "What you feed your kid must fall within a commonly accepted [and MANDATED] general nutrition program or we'll have you arrested or your kids taken away". Is another statement. They do not mean the same thing. That's a contradiction.
You must decide which one of those statements you support, but it can't be both, as they are mutually exclusive.
If your kid is disposing of food before he gets to school, when you get a bill or two, you'll figure that out and DEAL WITH YOUR KID (either by changing his food, or changing his behavior). The school STILL NEEDS TO FEED HIM regardless and can not legally allow him to go without lunch, his choice or yours, so that argument is moot.
If the argument was about payment, then, yes, it would be a moot argument. The point (IIRC), however, was about authority, responsibility, and the fact that the government is tending to assign much of one, while absconding with much of the latter. If I have no authority, but am held responsible, that's asinine. The OP didn't say they couldn't deal with their kid, they said that regardless of their actions, a kid ditching his or her lunch could raise just enough eyebrows to get the parents suspected of neglect and have their child taken away...even if they paid the lunch bill.
You said "...feed your kid or we'll send the law after you..." is the legal discussion at hand, but it's not. The discussion is "IT BETTER LOOK LIKE you're feeding your kids, or we'll send the law after you".
Okay, but if the idea is "no LAN play", then data won't stay local. It *will* go through a blizzard server. Combine Blizzard's public statement about lack of LAN play with technical requirements for avoiding it, and you're left with servers in the middle that are not match-making servers.
I'm not saying it's a difficult problem to solve (as long as you have an internet connection). I'm saying that both for multi-site and single-location multiplayer, there will need to be a non-local server involved during gameplay. Either that, or there's no point in disabling LAN play.
Okay, so by that logic, either it will be impossible for 2 or more people behind the same router to play multiplayer, or all of that traffic will have to go out the router, off to Blizzard, and then back into the router (meaning that there will definitely be other non-match-making servers at blizzard involved with multiplayer game action).
I don't play multi-player on battle.net, I play via LAN with my 9-year-old son inside the same house (and have been doing so for the last 3 years or so...since he was old enough to learn to play).
You're talking apples-to-oranges here. Starcraft isn't an MMORPG, it's an RTS...the demographic tilts much more heavily to co-located opponents.
Does anyone know if the demo gameplay head-to-head stuff was played via a non-local battle.net server?
I made two statements. One was that publication in a public place allows more people to access the document. That stands on its own, and has nothing to do with who's reviews should be noted.
The second statement was about methodology and relevance. Namely that if the complaint was a lack of research, and the math was about a fairly straightforward reversal of existing theory, then experimentation that applies to existing theory ought to work well in proving or disproving the new theory.
I'm not saying "wow! It must be true, but people are dismissing it!". I'm saying that it is of interest to me (and probably other people) regardless of whether or not peer review has occurred, and that such review is likely to happen (even though not in a rigorously approved fashion), since everyone in the world can read the article...including mathematicians and physicists.
It didn't sound like it was research, but rather mathematical theory based on looking at existing principles from a different direction. If there is enough underlying research in newtonian physics and general relativity, then wouldn't that same research also apply here?
Granted, I'm no mathematician, but it just seems a bit cliquish to say "don't pay attention to this" because of where the first publication is happening.
My viewpoint is different, I suppose. I'm not independently wealthy, but if I were, you'd still be hard-pressed to get me not to touch a computer for longer than about a week. I *do* like my job, and if something came around that doubled my salary, I probably wouldn't take it unless it was substantially similar to what I'm doing now (IT Consulting...mainly software these days).
I don't work for myself, but my job is more to me than just a means to an end. I like doing it. It not only provides me with money, but it is (mostly) enjoyable and challenging. What does it matter? A lot.
While interesting, it seemed to me that the question was more of "How do I avoid being forced to be a manager instead of a tech?"
While it's true that some people aren't cut out for management, that says nothing about what they want to do as a day-to-day job. Managing people is a lot different from onsite support for servers and network gear. If you prefer the latter to the former, a "promotion" to manager may seem like 7 kinds of hell.
I'd probably ask about what my new job duties would be, and see if they fit with my desires, otherwise, it's a shot in the dark as to whether to take the job, fight to keep your current position, or find a new employer.
...are we saying that Branson invented the spaceship?. The analogy seems apt to me. Virgin may well be the first company to make strides in mass-produced spacecraft. Only time will tell.
I'd rather say that on the one side you have a majority of scientists who *currently* hold a particular opinion (an opinion that until recently was the exact opposite of where it stands today...global cooling was a much discussed topic not long ago), and on the other side, you have people who are reluctant to say that the warming that's occurring is necessarily caused by man.
If you proceed from an assumption, and then try to find data to prove it, that's not science. Science is what you do when you test a hypothesis with data, not when you try to make the data make sense in light of what you think it should show. That's the problem that is in front of us.
You can find a majority of scholarly people who will tell you that global warming is caused in whole or in part by man, and that we have to reduce carbon emissions in order to stop it. That's not proven. It's an article of faith. More to the point, it was contraindicated until recently, and there's ample evidence of previous swings in temperature that do not correspond to industrial carbon emissions.
Nobody is talking about "upsetting" people by spending trillions reducing carbon dioxide emissions. What people *are* talking about is the unprecedented global opportunity cost presented by such an expenditure. A great many people will suffer with that kind of diversion of resources in play.
The military is spending money to plan for potential missions, yes. Contingency planning is something the military is good at. They also plan for invasions by our border countries, full-scale nuclear war, major asteroid impacts, alien invasion, and a number of other scenarios of varying likelihood. It would be foolish to presume that they do so because they believe that all of these things are inevitable.
I hadn't heard of any campaign related to global warming other than the one designed to drum the message into everyone's skull that man is causing global warming and man has to quit it before something bad happens.
Well, I didn't agree on the nomination, but that he had done more than Bill G. and the Jobster. I've already spoken my piece on the low standards of the Peace Prize committee...you're right that if he stands a chance of winning one, it's gotta be that one.
That is one of the saddest commentaries on the Nobel Peace Prize I've heard.
I have nothing against the guy...he seems nice enough. I *believe* that he *wants* world peace. So do I! Come to think of it, I'd be willing to bet that nearly every prior US president could honestly claim the same thing. So what?
The Nobel Prize, as far as I'm aware, rewards achievement or advancement in a specific area. Saying that not only have there been past Peace Prize awards given not only preemptively, but in an attempt to *create* the achievement itself makes me deeply sad. To say that it's a trend that will continue does not improve my outlook.
If you can't understand why I feel this way, then I don't think there's a point in what amounts to my monologue.
You know that old saw about "lies, damn lies, and statistics"?
Define "smoking-related". My guess is that *your* definition would be that of someone who dies due to an illness caused by smoking. I'm cool with that definition. It's not the one that was used to come up with that number for smoking-related deaths, though.
The only thing more contrived than *that* number is the one that attributes death and illness to second-hand smoke. It's honestly ridiculous...I can barely watch one of those "truth" ads without sneering anymore.
Obesity is a *major* factor in high blood pressure, cardiac problems, diabetes, and mobility problems (which, themselves cause cascade effects due to an inability to excercise). All of those things are indicators of poor health and possible sudden or early death.
Prior to the military's ban on smoking, roughly 20-25% of soldiers (mirroring the general population) were smokers. In *that* population of people (who routinely exercised and maintained good cardio-vascular health and diet), smoking was not the leading cause of death.
The simple fact is (disclaimer: I'm an ex-smoker) that smoking is seen as not only bad, but pointless and invasive. That makes it an easy target...not for banning, but for revenue generation.
And that's leaving aside the fact that the taxes on cigarrettes are almost entirely used for things *other* than smoking cessation and healthcare for smoking-related illness. The whole selling point of cigarrete taxes began as "money to pay those huge health bills for smokers when they finally get cancer or emphysema".
10 years ago, cigarettes in the US cost about 2 bucks a pack. Today (unless you live in New York, god forbid), they cost about 5 bucks a pack. 20 years ago, they cost around a dollar. Almost none of that cost increase has come from manufacturing costs.
Let's assume a smoking-age population of 150 million people. 20 percent of that is 30 million smokers. Assuming that (on average) they smoke a pack a day, that's just shy of 11 billion packs of cigarettes per year. Assuming it costs 1.50 to produce a pack of smokes, that's 3.50 a pack in taxes, or 38.5 billion dollars a year...770 million dollars per state, if you divide it evenly.
If we're going to talk about smoking and why it's bad, let's be honest and say that it's bad because it makes more money that way.
Agreed, but not a Nobel *Peace* Prize...
I was hoping somebody would point that out. I'd just say that, if you can get an award for things that you're *going* to do, Linus should start telling people that he's going to work hard for world peace in version 3.8 of the kernel. It'd be a no-brainer!
For that matter...I'm working on version 6.0 of the linux kernel, which will not only end hunger, but make fusion-based power a reality and cure cancer. Who's gonna nominate me?
I think you need to re-read the summary, at least. This is implemented in hardware, and is *meant* to be [in|ob]trusive. They want the ability to preempt anything you happen to be doing with an advertising message that you *must* interact with before you can continue doing what you were doing.
You owe me a keyboard...and two hours that I'll be spending tonight looking through the quote db.
Fortunately, obviousness won:
You've never watched Iron Chef, have you?
No...that's exactly the point I'm trying to make. The instructions themselves are different from the particles. Whether undiscovered, residing in a human brain, written on paper, or stored in a disk or similar medium, the instructions themselves have zero effect. How do you write down the instructions to create a strange quark? What machine do you give these instructions to?
A machine or machines that has/have been fashioned to manipulate plastic, silicon, aluminum, steel, etc to produce a working computer is/are the thing(s) that has/have the effect.
I understand your line of argument, and I need to point out that at its logical conclusion, one would have to say that nothing is patentable because previous motions of particles would be prior art, or that understanding and observing some elemental or subatomic interaction would make subsequent interactions obvious.
If we're talking about the current state of knowledge and manufacturing capability, we must acknowledge differences between subatomic and organic human scale organizations of particles, as well as differentiating between thought and action.
Actually, no. A drug is a physical substance that can be identified by a certain chemical formula. The formula describes what's *in* the drug...not how you create it.
...but we *already* have the technology to manipulate particles (electrons) as bits. The devices that do that are called "computers".
The computers themselves? The things that manipulate the bits directly? Patentable, to be sure...at least parts of them.
The instructions fed to the computers? No. Copyrightable? Yes.
We *are* being consistent.
So, basically, you're saying "welcome to the era of patented recipes"? I'm going to start patenting any unusual combination of ingredients that I haven't already seen on iron chef and just wait...
There's a reason that there are separate laws covering copyrights, patents, trade secrets and trademarks. It's because the "milieu" *does* matter.
You do correctly understand some of my statement.
I'm uncertain as to why it's worthy of bold italics that the EULA and TOS (as suggested thus far by the company creating them) are going into effect in the future...
I should give them time? Perhaps wait until they codify the proposed language and begin shipping product before letting them know that I won't buy it under those terms? It ain't a high horse I'm on, I'm just trying to be one of many squeaky wheels.
I'd like to think that writing letters to Blizzard, signing the petition, and making my position clear here means, if nothing else, that I spoke up.
I'm fine with Blizzard coming up with a solution. I just want to make clear whenever I'm able that certain solutions (no LAN play, requiring Battle.NET login, etc) preclude me from parting with my cash (especially in the case of buying more than one copy of the game this time around).