All tech are tools - they can be used for good or for bad. I don't see how flying drones would hurt, if all flying safety protocols are in place and working. If there are technical issues - let's talk about them. Please leave 'omg there's drone out there to bomb me in my homeland' discussion out of this, because, well, it won't work.
Agreed, tech is just tools and toys. Problem is, this tech is going to be controlled by people raised on Nintendo warfare, supervised by people with no oversight and no possibility of dismissal by ballot box. It's not the tech we're worried about, it's the people behind the tech that we worry about. Even if they're a bunch of unicorn huggers when this gets deployed, who's to say the next bunch won't be unicorn barbequers? What guarantee do we have of that? Hell, we have problems making sure the Federal alphabet agencies get proper fucking search warrants these days, and those in and of themselves are not lethal, it's the agents behind the guns. And you want to hand those bozos toys that are potentially lethal to human beings? Without oversight???? Without the public having recourse and redress?
Dude, put down the pipe already and turn yourself in. You're insufficiently paranoid to survive in today's politico-economic climate.
A little too rich for my blood. Someone come up with a DIY version and put it on kickstarter. As long as you have put an Arduino in there it'll sell like hotcakes.
Weren't we giving these away not too long ago to certain people under the guise of helping them fight the Big Bad Bear? I doubt those people paid MSRP for them.
OK, so it was long ago.. man, time flies.
Didn't we get some of those back recently, pointy-end first?
The American taxpayer still had to buy the damned things. The whole Afghan-Soviet war cost us what, a couple billion when it was all in? And of course we never *admitted* to it, either.
Um, the US was not at war with Panama. Noriega ducked into an embassy in Panama until they got tired of listening to rock and roll music played so loud it rattled their fillings. Arguably an act of war, even though nothing 'physical' went off Panamanian soil. And Noriega was El Presidente in Panama at the time, which meant no way he was gonna be extradited in the traditional manner.
Not to mention the people who sell industrial strength laundry detergent and dry cleaning services. Do you know how hard it is to get parrot shit out of clothes????
Portuguese citizens need to be reminded that they're still under the jurisdiction of U.S. law, and WILL be extradited to the U.S. for breaking any IP laws!
there's no extradition agreement between the U.S. and Portugal
Didn't stop then from going after Noriega in Panama and it's not stopping them from going after Assange in Sweden and Dotcom in New Zealand. Does the term 'extraordinary rendition' ring a bell?
And drug abuse has not gone up as a result. Just think of the money the country saves on not prosecuting these cases. A small island of sanity.
Well, we can't have that. Cue 'discovery' of Al-Quaeda terrorist cells/terrorist training camps/oil/nuclear weapons programs/Julian Assange in Portugal in 5... 4... 3...
Thing that gets me is, they considered Palin to be the best choice for Veep. This after Romney and Ryan already had political carreers going.
It also gets me that some kid would put a Linux cd in, boot to it, and 'accidentaly' wipe a hard drive of a Congressman under investigation. If it was a CD, likely it was Ubuntu, which boots into 'test drive' mode by default. And aren't most computers set up to not boot from the cd drive as a default? What politigeek would have the brains and experience to change this?
I better shut up now, or they'll come arrest me for terrorrorrorrism because I run Linux here...
Because the ISS orbit is shit. They put it there so the Russians can land Soyuz capsules in Russia (or a semifriendly 'stan). It's way too inclined to be useful for much of anything else.
Yes, why not build spacecraft there? Because we don't have a trillion dollars to spare? That might be it.
Another good reason is because we don't have any metal or fuel or supplies or people or vendors or communication infrastructure or USPS addressing locations or anything other than moon dust and nothingness on the moon.
Yet.
How many times must it be pointed out that back before Columbus sailed to the Americas, there were no Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts or Apple stores in the area now known as the United States? Wasn't a lot of anything except a lot of forest.
Number of countries the US has military bases in: 60-130, depending on who you believe.
Total number of foreign US military bases: on the order of 650.
Number of foreign countries who have military bases in the US: None, although command of NORAD changes between an American general and a Canadian general every 2 years. And we train a lot of foreign military at our bases here in the States.
And people wonder why the US spends more on 'defense' than the next 26 countries combined when 25 of them are nominally allies.
NASA hasn't developed a successful new booster in 30 years, despite about three failed attempts.
NASA hasn't been allowed to develop a new booster in 30 years. Every time they get ready to come out of the design phase, Congress cuts the funding for the project which kills it.
Well, he at least believes in the benefits of the optics of giving 4 million to charity, whether he actually believes or not is impossible to discern.
Since when is giving 10% of your income to your church worthy of a tax deduction? Mitt Romney is a bishop in the Mormon Church, and he is required to hand over 10% off the top, just like every other Mormon is.
You can't build rockets on the moon. There are no sources of refined metals, or plastics, or electronics. There are no machine shops, nor tool and die fabricators. There are no people to operate anything either. There are no launch facilities, no way to fuel the rocket, even if you managed to get it built.
Yet.
Keep in mind there was fuck-all in southern California until the Spanish showed up. Or anywhere else in what came to be the US when the first ships landed. There was no McDonalds next to a Starbucks next to a Dunkin Donuts to greet the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. Somebody had to go there, pave the way, and build them. Just beccause we cannot at this very moment build a spacecraft on the Moon does not mean we'll never be able to, despite what the JOEs ('Just One Earthers') want you to think. Are you a JOE or a GOE ('Get Off Earth!!)?
One would give states jurisdiction over a woman's uterus, and the other favors a profit motive for imprisoning people. That's no choice I want to have to make. The Libertarian party is as much of a sham as the two leading parties.
You could just imprison people IN a woman's uterus. It's a win-win.
Depends on the uterus. Do we get a choice? And if so, can we choose a non-American?
What gets me is everybody throwing the 'M-word' around who obviously have never read Marx. Socialism and Communism have as much in common with classical Marxism as my Cocker spaniel has with Congress. But, in the US, at least, if you wanna shut somebody up because their opinion isn't your opinion, point at him, scream 'MARXIST!!!' and it's job done.
The most important problem is people are living longer, get sick more, and die less. It is much cheaper to take care of dead people. Hard to fix that problem too.
Older people don't get as sick if they have access to preventative medicine. They tend to catch the lifethreatening shit long before it can become a bigassed bankrupting-expensive 'fix'. And no matter how you slice it, you don't get more than a cursory 'annual physical' where all they do is check your pulse ('Yup, he still got one'), blood pressure, and simple in-house 'lab tests' like, put a drop of blood on a blood sugar meter test strip, all disguised as 'preventative medicine' that your insurance carrier 'provides'.
optimize billing codes to ensure maximum revenue per procedure by basically scanning a billing batch and re-coding it using more lucrative codes for the same procedures.
Sounds to me like the coding system need to be revamped to remove the duplications if possible.
Problem is, there's usually 2-5 different ways to code in any given procedure, and the codes can change at any time. That's how insurance companies delay payment to make their bottom lines look better to their shareholders, they'll kick the form back to the doctor's office/medical billing office with a note saying 'You coded this wrong. Recode and resubmit please' and push payment to a later date. Of course, it's a house of cards that should have come down ages ago, but computerised systems allow them to keep juggling paperwork and numbers in even larger volumes than they used to be able to.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, tech is just tools and toys. Problem is, this tech is going to be controlled by people raised on Nintendo warfare, supervised by people with no oversight and no possibility of dismissal by ballot box. It's not the tech we're worried about, it's the people behind the tech that we worry about. Even if they're a bunch of unicorn huggers when this gets deployed, who's to say the next bunch won't be unicorn barbequers? What guarantee do we have of that? Hell, we have problems making sure the Federal alphabet agencies get proper fucking search warrants these days, and those in and of themselves are not lethal, it's the agents behind the guns. And you want to hand those bozos toys that are potentially lethal to human beings? Without oversight???? Without the public having recourse and redress?
Dude, put down the pipe already and turn yourself in. You're insufficiently paranoid to survive in today's politico-economic climate.
Weren't we giving these away not too long ago to certain people under the guise of helping them fight the Big Bad Bear? I doubt those people paid MSRP for them.
OK, so it was long ago.. man, time flies.
Didn't we get some of those back recently, pointy-end first?
The American taxpayer still had to buy the damned things. The whole Afghan-Soviet war cost us what, a couple billion when it was all in? And of course we never *admitted* to it, either.
Um, the US was not at war with Panama. Noriega ducked into an embassy in Panama until they got tired of listening to rock and roll music played so loud it rattled their fillings. Arguably an act of war, even though nothing 'physical' went off Panamanian soil. And Noriega was El Presidente in Panama at the time, which meant no way he was gonna be extradited in the traditional manner.
Not to mention the people who sell industrial strength laundry detergent and dry cleaning services. Do you know how hard it is to get parrot shit out of clothes????
Portuguese citizens need to be reminded that they're still under the jurisdiction of U.S. law, and WILL be extradited to the U.S. for breaking any IP laws!
there's no extradition agreement between the U.S. and Portugal
Didn't stop then from going after Noriega in Panama and it's not stopping them from going after Assange in Sweden and Dotcom in New Zealand. Does the term 'extraordinary rendition' ring a bell?
And drug abuse has not gone up as a result. Just think of the money the country saves on not prosecuting these cases. A small island of sanity.
Well, we can't have that. Cue 'discovery' of Al-Quaeda terrorist cells/terrorist training camps/oil/nuclear weapons programs/Julian Assange in Portugal in 5... 4... 3...
Seriously, look at a map
I did, there's only two places on it: The US, and US Drone Territory.
Guess that rules out that trip I had in mind to Toronto, eh?
Hell, CONGRESS isn't ready for the congressional desktop.
Except this Darwin Award winner is a Republican under investigation for campaign finance no-nos. Of course he'll claim terrorrorrorrorrism.
Thing that gets me is, they considered Palin to be the best choice for Veep. This after Romney and Ryan already had political carreers going.
It also gets me that some kid would put a Linux cd in, boot to it, and 'accidentaly' wipe a hard drive of a Congressman under investigation. If it was a CD, likely it was Ubuntu, which boots into 'test drive' mode by default. And aren't most computers set up to not boot from the cd drive as a default? What politigeek would have the brains and experience to change this?
I better shut up now, or they'll come arrest me for terrorrorrorrism because I run Linux here...
The bases in Germany, Italy, and Japan were installed after WW2 for the occupation. Last I heard, the occupation is long over, but the bases remain.
And what's this about building bases in Iraq? I thought we were leaving, regime changed, economy destroyed, puppets in place, job done...
Because the ISS orbit is shit. They put it there so the Russians can land Soyuz capsules in Russia (or a semifriendly 'stan). It's way too inclined to be useful for much of anything else.
Yes, why not build spacecraft there? Because we don't have a trillion dollars to spare? That might be it.
Another good reason is because we don't have any metal or fuel or supplies or people or vendors or communication infrastructure or USPS addressing locations or anything other than moon dust and nothingness on the moon.
Yet.
How many times must it be pointed out that back before Columbus sailed to the Americas, there were no Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts or Apple stores in the area now known as the United States? Wasn't a lot of anything except a lot of forest.
So they should all move to the US?
Number of countries the US has military bases in: 60-130, depending on who you believe.
Total number of foreign US military bases: on the order of 650.
Number of foreign countries who have military bases in the US: None, although command of NORAD changes between an American general and a Canadian general every 2 years. And we train a lot of foreign military at our bases here in the States.
And people wonder why the US spends more on 'defense' than the next 26 countries combined when 25 of them are nominally allies.
NASA hasn't been allowed to develop a new booster in 30 years. Every time they get ready to come out of the design phase, Congress cuts the funding for the project which kills it.
Since when is giving 10% of your income to your church worthy of a tax deduction? Mitt Romney is a bishop in the Mormon Church, and he is required to hand over 10% off the top, just like every other Mormon is.
You can't build rockets on the moon. There are no sources of refined metals, or plastics, or electronics. There are no machine shops, nor tool and die fabricators. There are no people to operate anything either. There are no launch facilities, no way to fuel the rocket, even if you managed to get it built.
Yet.
Keep in mind there was fuck-all in southern California until the Spanish showed up. Or anywhere else in what came to be the US when the first ships landed. There was no McDonalds next to a Starbucks next to a Dunkin Donuts to greet the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. Somebody had to go there, pave the way, and build them. Just beccause we cannot at this very moment build a spacecraft on the Moon does not mean we'll never be able to, despite what the JOEs ('Just One Earthers') want you to think. Are you a JOE or a GOE ('Get Off Earth!!)?
One would give states jurisdiction over a woman's uterus, and the other favors a profit motive for imprisoning people. That's no choice I want to have to make. The Libertarian party is as much of a sham as the two leading parties.
You could just imprison people IN a woman's uterus. It's a win-win.
Depends on the uterus. Do we get a choice? And if so, can we choose a non-American?
If the law was "Live and let live" and people lived by it, it might work. But that'd be utopia, and we can't have that.
Worse, we haven't figured out a way to make money off it...
Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure they will.
There's even a pony in there.
What gets me is everybody throwing the 'M-word' around who obviously have never read Marx. Socialism and Communism have as much in common with classical Marxism as my Cocker spaniel has with Congress. But, in the US, at least, if you wanna shut somebody up because their opinion isn't your opinion, point at him, scream 'MARXIST!!!' and it's job done.
Uh, the Post Office was privatised years ago. The Feds just pay for mail contracts and into the postal workers' retirement/medical funds.
The most important problem is people are living longer, get sick more, and die less. It is much cheaper to take care of dead people. Hard to fix that problem too.
Older people don't get as sick if they have access to preventative medicine. They tend to catch the lifethreatening shit long before it can become a bigassed bankrupting-expensive 'fix'. And no matter how you slice it, you don't get more than a cursory 'annual physical' where all they do is check your pulse ('Yup, he still got one'), blood pressure, and simple in-house 'lab tests' like, put a drop of blood on a blood sugar meter test strip, all disguised as 'preventative medicine' that your insurance carrier 'provides'.
optimize billing codes to ensure maximum revenue per procedure by basically scanning a billing batch and re-coding it using more lucrative codes for the same procedures.
Sounds to me like the coding system need to be revamped to remove the duplications if possible.
Problem is, there's usually 2-5 different ways to code in any given procedure, and the codes can change at any time. That's how insurance companies delay payment to make their bottom lines look better to their shareholders, they'll kick the form back to the doctor's office/medical billing office with a note saying 'You coded this wrong. Recode and resubmit please' and push payment to a later date. Of course, it's a house of cards that should have come down ages ago, but computerised systems allow them to keep juggling paperwork and numbers in even larger volumes than they used to be able to.