"it's a big assumption that people will (a) make informed decisions and (b) not get totally taken advantage of."
It's an even bigger assumption that the government can (a) make informed decisions on specific individual cases and (b) not be subject to biased, politically motivated influence.
"I work in the field, and pretty much nobody is talking about current safe therapies."
If you work in that field, then you must admit that you see potential benefits. Are you claiming that this specific treatment is unsafe, or you simply don't know? Why should patients, making a decision of their own free will, be denied a potential treatment by the government? If you're claiming that your knowledge puts you in a better position to make a decision, who decides who decides, if not the person who is directly affected? By what province does the government get to make decisions which affect only the individual?
Based on the same criteria as is used by the FDA (widespread, mainstream medical acceptance), the once accepted therapy for ill humors was bloodletting. If someone at the time wanted an "alternative" treatment, such as moldy bread on their sores, they would have been ridiculed.
It doesn't matter what I want. It's what the patient in question wants. Who is the government to tell them what's proper, or decide where the risk/benefit ratio should fall? Let people assume full responsibility for their own decisions and actions. If they die due to poor choices, so much better for the gene pool.
One can (legally) go and buy a $10 vial of worthless homeopathic "medicine," and some people get relief from that. In what way might this be different, except in scale? Does is actually cause harm, or is it merely a distraction from accepted treatments?
IMO, and that of many others, government is about protecting people from each other, not from their own freely made choices.
Why should the government be the gatekeeper for healthcare? As long as the patient is made aware of the risks, it's their life, their money, their risk to assume. Stop the nanny government.
Really? You can't click the obviously labeled "fast track FCC approval" link in the summary? Let me help:
Lightsquared filed the Application on Thursday, November, 18th [2010], and by the end of business on Friday November 19th, the FCC had "Accepted the Filing and issued a Public Notice". The Lightsquared request was Accepted for filing in ONE BUSINESS DAY, while it took the same FCC International Bureau 3 MONTHS to "accept" the Globalstar application for filing...The FCC has waived their "regulatory magic-wand" and now reduced the reply period to 10 days even though the rules require a 30 day reply period. Now the stench is really piling up. The fact that this comes just before the Thanksgiving Holiday which is the busiest travel Holiday of the year where many people leave on Wednesday and business as usual doesn't really get back on line until the following Tuesday.
"If political contributions are not intended to sway the people in charge, or to be in charge, what are they for?"
Are you serious? They're contributions made under the US Campaign Finance laws. The legal intent is that they are to be spent on political campaigns to sway voters to support the candidate/party to whom they're given, not to directly influence policy. The latter is bribery.
If a company has an interest in particular areas of government policy, they should be contributing to candidates who best support their position, not bribing the current officeholder in an attempt to directly influence policy.
"the intended effect (fast track approval) didn't happen."
Actually, it did, in a way. The fast track process was started, the filing was accepted in one day (a process which normally takes months). The normally required 30 day comment period was reduced by the FCC to an effective 5 1/2 days (it was 10 days, but across a long US holiday weekend). Granted, the actual approval didn't end up happening, but not because the FCC didn't try to help them out. It was an alert CTIA which filed an extension request, and alerted GPS users of the potential issues.
"c=3*10e8 m/s , so 1/1000 of that is 3*10e5 m/s , or 5 zeroes."
You might find it interesting to know that 1/1000 = 0.1%. See that "0.0001%" in your post's title? That's 1/1000000. And the "0.001%" you quoted in your post? That's 1/100000.
"Compared to the price of buying a dedicated media streaming device, there's not really much of a comparison."
A Wii costs 3x what a Roku does, has fewer media choices, draws 10x the power, doesn't support HD, has a worse UI for media, and requires technical knowledge and effort to allow use of non-Nintendo approved content. As a network media player, it does less and costs more.
Have you looked at who's in now (Legislative, Executive, and Judicial)?
Arguing about which party is more stupid is like arguing which is smarter, an idiot or an imbecile - you may win debating points, but still lose the argument.
BTW, an imbecile is smarter than an idiot, by the obsolete definitions. Finally, I think Obama is intellectually much smarter than Bush, but the roles are reversed in political terms.
Plus, P3P is faulty, it has a loophole which one can take advantage of. Much better to simply follow a properly designed spec for this sort of thing, like RFC 3514.
Except that part of the freedom that comes with free software is the freedom to sell that software.
...and if you're selling it, what's wrong with paying some royalties? There's free, as in libre, which is what you're talking about, and having associated costs doesn't affect that. Then there's free, as in beer, and having a royalty of x% of revenue doesn't affect that. It's only when you want to have your cake, and eat it, too, that there's a problem.
get "fair and reasonable" licensing terms to be defined as the lower of $x per unit or y% of product revenue. With no revenue, FOSS could freely use and distribute such patented software. It would even be advantageous, since software which would otherwise be locked behind a paywall could be made freely available.
You haven't been following the story very closely, since you obviously don't know that Lightsquared got their original approval on a fast track basis, with very little review time, and across a holiday weekend. They knew full-well that their intended use couldn't stand up to any serious scrutiny. If you think that just happened, without their pushing very hard through back channels, you really don't know how the FCC works. Lightsquared have only themselves to blame for trying to short-cut the process, and expecting political pressure to win out over technical facts (although that last one is often a good bet to make).
"I don't think science means what you think it means.
You're saying that data, models, and research don't qualify as science?"
I know that science is something other that what you think it is. Those things can certainly be part of science, but in themselves they are not. If a religion has data, models, and research, are you willing to say it's science?
At a minimum, science requires testability (see the "scientific method"). You can theorize all you want, but unless your theories can be tested (are falsifiable), you're not doing science. AGW proponents aren't doing science.
So, it's been said that the dot patterns in question link to a printer's serial number. Do your printers include their serial number in their emails? And don't the secret police think that the printer which talks through the VPN exists in the location of the remote VPN endpoint?
"she was given extra food because they were worried she might not have enough."
So, they had her eat the processed chicken turds, but she went home with her bag lunch uneaten. How did that ensure "she had enough?" Really, if people are hungry, and have food available, they'll eat it. The school had no reason to get involved unless the girl ate all that was packed in her lunch, and then complained of still being hungry.
In what way, exactly? The girl's mother says she received a note from the school regarding the incident. Are you claiming the 4 year old kid faked the note?
Slashdot Mirror
"it's a big assumption that people will (a) make informed decisions and (b) not get totally taken advantage of."
It's an even bigger assumption that the government can (a) make informed decisions on specific individual cases and (b) not be subject to biased, politically motivated influence.
"I work in the field, and pretty much nobody is talking about current safe therapies."
If you work in that field, then you must admit that you see potential benefits. Are you claiming that this specific treatment is unsafe, or you simply don't know? Why should patients, making a decision of their own free will, be denied a potential treatment by the government? If you're claiming that your knowledge puts you in a better position to make a decision, who decides who decides, if not the person who is directly affected? By what province does the government get to make decisions which affect only the individual?
Based on the same criteria as is used by the FDA (widespread, mainstream medical acceptance), the once accepted therapy for ill humors was bloodletting. If someone at the time wanted an "alternative" treatment, such as moldy bread on their sores, they would have been ridiculed.
It doesn't matter what I want. It's what the patient in question wants. Who is the government to tell them what's proper, or decide where the risk/benefit ratio should fall? Let people assume full responsibility for their own decisions and actions. If they die due to poor choices, so much better for the gene pool.
One can (legally) go and buy a $10 vial of worthless homeopathic "medicine," and some people get relief from that. In what way might this be different, except in scale? Does is actually cause harm, or is it merely a distraction from accepted treatments?
IMO, and that of many others, government is about protecting people from each other, not from their own freely made choices.
Why should the government be the gatekeeper for healthcare? As long as the patient is made aware of the risks, it's their life, their money, their risk to assume. Stop the nanny government.
"If political contributions are not intended to sway the people in charge, or to be in charge, what are they for?"
Are you serious? They're contributions made under the US Campaign Finance laws. The legal intent is that they are to be spent on political campaigns to sway voters to support the candidate/party to whom they're given, not to directly influence policy. The latter is bribery.
If a company has an interest in particular areas of government policy, they should be contributing to candidates who best support their position, not bribing the current officeholder in an attempt to directly influence policy.
"the intended effect (fast track approval) didn't happen."
Actually, it did, in a way. The fast track process was started, the filing was accepted in one day (a process which normally takes months). The normally required 30 day comment period was reduced by the FCC to an effective 5 1/2 days (it was 10 days, but across a long US holiday weekend). Granted, the actual approval didn't end up happening, but not because the FCC didn't try to help them out. It was an alert CTIA which filed an extension request, and alerted GPS users of the potential issues.
"If you wear Wellington boots, a jock strap, and a huge sombrero, people generally don't mess with you."
Especially if that's all you wear. Except in NYC, where you may get mistaken for the nekkid cowboy.
"c=3*10e8 m/s , so 1/1000 of that is 3*10e5 m/s , or 5 zeroes."
You might find it interesting to know that 1/1000 = 0.1%. See that "0.0001%" in your post's title? That's 1/1000000. And the "0.001%" you quoted in your post? That's 1/100000.
"Compared to the price of buying a dedicated media streaming device, there's not really much of a comparison."
A Wii costs 3x what a Roku does, has fewer media choices, draws 10x the power, doesn't support HD, has a worse UI for media, and requires technical knowledge and effort to allow use of non-Nintendo approved content. As a network media player, it does less and costs more.
You're right. They really don't compare.
Have you looked at who's in now (Legislative, Executive, and Judicial)?
Arguing about which party is more stupid is like arguing which is smarter, an idiot or an imbecile - you may win debating points, but still lose the argument.
BTW, an imbecile is smarter than an idiot, by the obsolete definitions. Finally, I think Obama is intellectually much smarter than Bush, but the roles are reversed in political terms.
Plus, P3P is faulty, it has a loophole which one can take advantage of. Much better to simply follow a properly designed spec for this sort of thing, like RFC 3514.
" Google is exploiting a loophole in the spec."
Which is another way of saying: Google is also following the spec. The problem is, the spec is faulty, and doesn't provide what it's intended to.
Yes. Your example doesn't refer to FRAND.
...and if you're selling it, what's wrong with paying some royalties? There's free, as in libre, which is what you're talking about, and having associated costs doesn't affect that. Then there's free, as in beer, and having a royalty of x% of revenue doesn't affect that. It's only when you want to have your cake, and eat it, too, that there's a problem.
get "fair and reasonable" licensing terms to be defined as the lower of $x per unit or y% of product revenue. With no revenue, FOSS could freely use and distribute such patented software. It would even be advantageous, since software which would otherwise be locked behind a paywall could be made freely available.
You haven't been following the story very closely, since you obviously don't know that Lightsquared got their original approval on a fast track basis, with very little review time, and across a holiday weekend. They knew full-well that their intended use couldn't stand up to any serious scrutiny. If you think that just happened, without their pushing very hard through back channels, you really don't know how the FCC works. Lightsquared have only themselves to blame for trying to short-cut the process, and expecting political pressure to win out over technical facts (although that last one is often a good bet to make).
"I don't think science means what you think it means. You're saying that data, models, and research don't qualify as science?"
I know that science is something other that what you think it is. Those things can certainly be part of science, but in themselves they are not. If a religion has data, models, and research, are you willing to say it's science?
At a minimum, science requires testability (see the "scientific method"). You can theorize all you want, but unless your theories can be tested (are falsifiable), you're not doing science. AGW proponents aren't doing science.
So, it's been said that the dot patterns in question link to a printer's serial number. Do your printers include their serial number in their emails? And don't the secret police think that the printer which talks through the VPN exists in the location of the remote VPN endpoint?
"We have nice printers at work that send email when they have problems or need supplies. They are also NAT'd out"
You're doing it wrong. They should be talking to an internal SMTP server.
"It's trivial to geolocate with IP"
Really? My printer has IP address 192.168.1.201. Where is it located?
"Fracking is Safe In Theory But Often Not In Practice"
The solution is obvious. Only do theoretical fracking.
"she was given extra food because they were worried she might not have enough."
So, they had her eat the processed chicken turds, but she went home with her bag lunch uneaten. How did that ensure "she had enough?" Really, if people are hungry, and have food available, they'll eat it. The school had no reason to get involved unless the girl ate all that was packed in her lunch, and then complained of still being hungry.
"taking the word of a four year old kid"
In what way, exactly? The girl's mother says she received a note from the school regarding the incident. Are you claiming the 4 year old kid faked the note?
They didn't force anyone to buy anything. What happened, whether a mistake or not, was perfectly legal, although perhaps in bad taste.