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User: bluefoxlucid

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Comments · 13,737

  1. Re:Praise Legacy Data on How Outdated Data Distorts Doctors' Pay · · Score: 1

    Nice. That's about as much as it costs for scorpion sting medication that sells for $200 over the counter in Mexico.

  2. Re:They (probably) don't need to on Thailand Government Declares Bitcoin Illegal · · Score: 1

    For me it's just like the fraud protection Visa gives you for 3% (or 1% or 0.5%--they get negotiated down): I'm paying for someone else to prevent retarded bullshit from happening. Cheap insurance. I check my electricity usage and other such things when it fancies me; but I'll have a $600 surge protection scheme (50,000 amp surge at the breaker, power strips/UPS on equipment, single socket plug surge protectors on i.e. Refrigerator, oven, etc.) and a $300 TED-5000C to measure electricity use. Cheap insurance.

  3. Re:Praise Legacy Data on How Outdated Data Distorts Doctors' Pay · · Score: 1

    medicare rates are apparently the most reality-based, since the federal government gets to collect and analyze more of the pertinent data than anyone else.

    Translation: "Socialism works, you capitalist pigs! Ha-HA! *raises sickle*"

  4. Re:Praise Legacy Data on How Outdated Data Distorts Doctors' Pay · · Score: 1

    That's one takeaway.

    The other is that we've gone from a $2 lens and a 75 minute procedure to an overpriced $3,000,000 machine and a 15 minute procedure and said, "it takes you 1/5 as much time so why aren't you charging 1/5 as much?" Ignoring the cost of equipment, of maintenance of equipment, and of the office time required to file and analyze collected information is going to be the next problem--i.e. when they cut the payments to match the time of performing the procedure as if that's the only expense that's changed, or at least as if other expenses haven't experienced a net-increase. Then people will cry that medicare is paying even less and private individuals are paying even more.

  5. Re:They (probably) don't need to on Thailand Government Declares Bitcoin Illegal · · Score: 1

    My bank just dinged money out of my escrow to pay a tax bill I received. It came to my house, I didn't bother with it, and it was paid in 3 days by my bank. I never set this up. Mortgage does that.

    I would be willing to pay a percentage to have some company automatically cover my taxes, ground rent, municipal utilities (government supplied shit), and so on. My private industry utilities and even my mortgage broker automatically debit my account, but the government expects me to actually pay them. I want the service of someone else's responsibility, of knowing that someone will catch all things that will apply a lien on my property and damage to my credit, and will put their resources at no expense to myself into supplying lawyers to undo that damage and settle the debts, with the only costs to me being the original amount that was supposed to be paid in the first place that somehow was missed.

    I have that now, but I'll lose it once I pay off my mortgage. I would like to keep it.

  6. Re:Can any government really stop BitCoin? on Thailand Government Declares Bitcoin Illegal · · Score: 1

    Kids are always curious about things their parents forbid. Adults are always curious about things their government forbid.

    So that's why everyone wants to bone 12 year olds these days.

    That and all the HGH and BGH in milk and the huge push to drink cow milk has given 11 year old girls double-Ds.

  7. Re:Jurisdiction? on Judge Rules In Favor of Volkswagen and Silences Scientist · · Score: 1

    wtf "sex tourism"?

  8. Re:Solution timetable on Judge Rules In Favor of Volkswagen and Silences Scientist · · Score: 1

    That's because to make DRM work you have to give the attacker the encryption key. It's like if you're trying to keep a raccoon-faced thief from robbing your armored car, and you give him the keys to both the ignition and the big padlock on the back.

  9. Re:Solution timetable on Judge Rules In Favor of Volkswagen and Silences Scientist · · Score: 1

    Which is a hilariously naive stance anyway. I had a 47 post thread with another slashdotter explaining how "rights" don't exist and are easily taken away because the government says so, and that a people who won't fight back to force the government to afford said rights are going to lose them. He insisted that it's physically impossible to take them away.

  10. Re:That was part of the problem... on 'Space Vikings' Spark (Unfounded) NASA Waste Inquiry · · Score: 1

    If you think people don't need periodic training to maintain a professional atmosphere or move into a new professional atmosphere, you're an idiot. Are you the same kind of loser-generation retard that brags about having worked the same job for 37 years? "Oh I have so much experience Son, your mother and I have been on this planet far longer than you, she's been folding laundry since before you were born and I started out machining bolts for the auto plant but moved up to Foreman, so I know how the corporate life works!" No, no you don't you cock-choked moron. If you ever got another job you'd never survive.

  11. Re:Its the germs, not guns and steel on 'Space Vikings' Spark (Unfounded) NASA Waste Inquiry · · Score: 1

    Hunting with dogs, infecting with disease via blankets, and then a policy of the Federal Government awarding cash for killing injuns? Here's an actual letter from Col. Henrey Bouquet to Jeffrey Amherst:

    P.S. I will try to inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard's Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine.

    Accidentally. Like how belladonna berries are poisonous, and eating them accidentally will kill you, so of course if I put them in your food that's not murder.

  12. Re:Depressing on 'Space Vikings' Spark (Unfounded) NASA Waste Inquiry · · Score: 1

    My answer to that is to tell my superiors, "Too bad. Don't tell me what I can't do; tell me what the impedances are and I'll figure out how we're going to deal with them." If I have to spend a session putting boots in peoples' asses, I'll stomp all over someone's face no problem.

    Sometimes shit is rough, and doing things right is uncomfortable. But I like the heat and I have two functional middle fingers to use in battle.

  13. Re:*Grassley* is complaining about waste? on 'Space Vikings' Spark (Unfounded) NASA Waste Inquiry · · Score: 1

    Congress doesn't do anything important. If we got rid of them, we'd have 50 stable countries (plus or minus--I'm sure Rhode Island would be annexed) instead of the United Soviet States of America. We have stymied government competition by building giant republics like the EU and USA (Megacorporation monopolies, standard oil, carnegie steel) and cartel-like trusts like the UN (RIAA, MPAA, etc.). That's why we have goofy shit like human rights that amount to "hey! He gets a toy firetruck?! I want a toy firetruck too!" instead of "You shouldn't be allowed to throw people in jail for having a differing political opinion than the current regime."

  14. Re:Three Cheers for Amash on Congress Voting On Amendment to Defund NSA Domestic Spying Tomorrow · · Score: 1

    IN THE US! Do you not understand how the US school system works?! They tried to teach us that rape is okay. In middle school. In seventh grade they tried to show us how, in Saudi, when a woman was gang raped because her husband was late on his debts, this is okay because it's just their culture and things are different there. I don't think our teacher could have been more relieved in her life than when a class of 13 year olds stood up and said, "I'm sorry, but no, that's bullshit."

  15. Re:Three Cheers for Amash on Congress Voting On Amendment to Defund NSA Domestic Spying Tomorrow · · Score: 2

    Basically you nailed it. The powers established were not as clear as some people like to believe--not just things like the second amendment argument over the use of a comma where a semicolon belongs or the definition of 'people', but the general duties of government itself. Somehow the Constitution lays out that judges can be legally obligated to prevent jury nullification, that prosecution (state lawyers!) can create a jury of your peers by throwing out anyone that seems capable of critical thought, and that laws can be convoluted bullshit.

    Every law should have a scope statement. Treat laws like projects, handled just like projects. Start by defining the scope, explain what the law intends to accomplish. If you have a law that opens with a scope statement: "To encourage economic growth by legal facilitation of the development of clean energy technologies by regulatory measures and tax incentives," and you haul someone into court for having a 9 year old suck his dick with the only criminal offense being a clause IN THAT BILL PASSED INTO LAW that outlines sexual offenses relating to children, the courts should throw that out because no law has been broken, citing that the scope of the law does not support those clauses and that is invalid. You must write a DIFFERENT LAW that starts with the scope: "To protect children from sexual predators by instating criminal punishment for sexual contact and interaction between adults and minors."

    If we did this, every law would have a clear statement of purpose right up front. Earmarks and other bullshit added to laws for irrelevant bullshit would not be a thing. A valid legal defense to anything would be, "The law isn't supposed to be for that." It says at the top that the law is to accomplish a certain goal, and you're on trial for something that doesn't offend that goal? Well shit, that's invalid, instant acquittal.

    It could even be legally argued that, having violating a valid law, you have committed no crime because your violation does not act in opposition to the purpose outlined in the scope of the law--that you committed per-se criminal acts, but that those acts did not have an effect such as the law was instated to protect against. Copyright is a good one for this--a law to protect against the distribution of a work without the authorization of its copyright holder, so thus to protect their channel of monetary gain. As soon as some RIAA lawyer brings bullshit about copying a CD to your iPod being supposedly illegal, we raise question: Does this count as distribution? Certainly it affects their monetary gain, as they want you to buy a new copy from the Apple store; but is it DISTRIBUTION? No, of course not, fuck off.

    Distributing a file to someone who "wouldn't have bought it anyway?" That's a fine or jail time or whatever, because that's bullshit, because you're creating a good excuse that helps convince other people to "not buy music anymore anyway if I can't get it for free"--creating a detrimental mentality. As this starts to become common, people start getting it in their head that they don't have to pay for music, and then that they shouldn't, and it becomes a sort of social movement. What you're doing is detrimental.

    Distributing a copyright work that the copyright holder is no longer producing or distributing, and thus is not currently monetizing? No, you're not affecting their monetary stream. That's their fault for not meeting demand. Placeholdering it by putting the price at a ridiculous level--$200 for a DVD of The Little Mermaid or something stupid--is iffy, but would be arguable in court. Like, honestly, do you think people will buy that for $200? The courts may interpret $200 as a barrier to purchase--they may interpret that a reasonable person would be unlikely to purchase a DVD for $200 in the same way as they would be unlikely to enter into a multi-million-dollar contract with Disney to continue the manufacture and distribution of a DVD no longer in print so that they can obtain it legally.

  16. Re:Jesus. Get a grip. on Global Warming 5 Million Years Ago In Antarctic Drastically Raised Sea Levels · · Score: 1

    I used to go to Home Depot and Safeway on my bicycle. I also went to the Wegmans 15 miles away by taking the light rail. It took me 10 minutes to get to Safeway, and about the same in the car. I mean let's face it, 2 miles isn't far.

  17. Re:If you are 100% you have everything off of it. on Ask Slashdot: Keeping Digital Media After Imaging? · · Score: 1

    He thinks in 10 years he'll have a Hoarder's Crisis.

  18. Re:Three Cheers for Amash on Congress Voting On Amendment to Defund NSA Domestic Spying Tomorrow · · Score: 1

    I don't much care about the Constitution. Much of it provides too much freedom to the government. Much of it doesn't guarantee the freedoms people need, and provides them freedoms that are actively harmful. Much of it provides freedoms in the wrong way (patent and copyright law--no bounds, no rules, you have the freedom to lobby for eternal copyright and sue the shit out of old ladies). Much of it proscribes mechanisms that have already been subverted, such that the voice and the will and the freedom of the people is easily trampled on because all those rights don't apply if you word them in the terminology of the modern age. It's a pile of misguided trash.

    What people don't understand is that the United States was an experiment, a brand new form of government based on the ideals of great philosophers like John Locke or Voltaire. Jefferson and Franklin are often cited, but they proposed their ideals as studious scholars of Voltaire and Locke and other who preceded them. The whole thing, the US Constitution, the Federal government, the concept of a Republic, of Representative Democracy, everything, it's all a huge pre-beta alpha test. It's a first attempt. It's gone through revisions and changes, and the change control process and organizational hierarchy and everything were so wrong that it's now a steaming pile and needs to be burned down and rewritten from the ground up.

  19. Re:Jesus. Get a grip. on Global Warming 5 Million Years Ago In Antarctic Drastically Raised Sea Levels · · Score: 1

    Deleware and Pennsylvania are terrible for that. Any place that's not city is "drive forever to get anywhere." In Deleware, my parents have a second house that is like a 30 minute drive down a long highway to get to Home Depot, and an hour's drive to the nearest K-Mart. There's nothing but fields and occasional scattered houses along the way, and once in a while a small restaurant run out of someone's shed.

  20. Re:Three Cheers for Amash on Congress Voting On Amendment to Defund NSA Domestic Spying Tomorrow · · Score: 1

    The LEGALITY of proposed legislation?! Are you retarded? Legislation IS legality! That's what it is! It's LAWS!

  21. Re:More to the point... on Global Warming 5 Million Years Ago In Antarctic Drastically Raised Sea Levels · · Score: 1

    That would be physically impossible. The mantle of the earth is extremely hot, and is very far down. It would be floating on steam and would melt. Due to the pressure release, part of the mantle could become molten (sudden low pressure, it's very hot) and then the area would become volcanic. More likely, high-viscosity rock sludge would raise to a point where it could cool, becoming part of the earth's crust and supporting the ice.

  22. Re:Why? ~nt~ on Canonical Seeks $32 Million To Make Ubuntu Smartphone · · Score: 1

    You make a good point, but obviously the market in Mexico is saturated. If I can purchase work for pennies per tonne and it's worth more in the US for a worker to work, then obviously the Mexican cartels aren't motivated by the lack of labor destroying their businesses. They must be able to find labor for pennies per tonne. If all the Mexicans came to the US to work, the agricultural cartels in Mexico wouldn't be able to make any profit--they'd have to provide incentive for Mexicans to work at their labor camps. That could include beheading a few peoples' 11 year old daughters, or offering higher wages.

    But you also make my point for me: If we paid a better wage, shit would be too expensive for poor people. Some people must be at the bottom. If we found a way around that, we'd have a destructive spiral that would come back to bite us later. Part of that is, in fact, the destruction of valuable goods; and we need poor people as a sink to absorb our valuable goods and keep the wealth in our society. It is our first obligation to ourselves as a whole, but the primary beneficiaries are the least fortunate.

  23. Re:More to the point... on Global Warming 5 Million Years Ago In Antarctic Drastically Raised Sea Levels · · Score: 1

    What you just said is "it wouldn't raise sea levels", which is only accurate if the bottom of the ice doesn't sit on the sea floor or a land mass.

  24. Re:Why? ~nt~ on Canonical Seeks $32 Million To Make Ubuntu Smartphone · · Score: 1

    It's bad because people would throw away everything perfectly useful. Think about if, at the end of the year, people threw all the money they still had in the trash to avoid paying taxes. How would the economy react? Now think about that, but with things that are useful.

    The only solution is to force people to work. Somehow. Make them dig holes and fill them back in again, essentially. Produce new shoes--and because people want more new shoes when theirs start to wear down, they'll throw out perfectly serviceable shoes... so we'll just force more people to make more shoes.

    In Capitalism, this is called a "bubble", and it ends up with a run-up of costs and a slowing of consumption. A bust follows this, and then consumption drops off. With the reduced demand and reduced profits, labor is no longer needed or is too expensive, and thus wages are cut and layoffs are made.

    In Keynesian economics (Krugman, Obama, Romney), we fix this by encouraging the bubble, trying to tweak the knobs to keep it growing and growing without busting. It never works.

    In Austrian economics (Ron Paul's school), we fix this by discouraging the bubble, applying taxes and other disincentives to prevent massive supply growth and price inflation. It often works.

    In Communism, we fix this by enforcing restrictions on production and on prices. No bubble, no bust. It has a high societal cost, but generally works for the immediate purpose.

    In Marxism, we reach a utopian society where people see that there is a need for a thing and so work to fill that need out of the goodness and love in their hearts.

    There's like 4000 layers of abstraction here. The path to "throwing away good clothes" and "society collapses economically" is not exactly a straight one, but it's a very well-known concept. The concept is called "wealth".

  25. Re:Why? ~nt~ on Canonical Seeks $32 Million To Make Ubuntu Smartphone · · Score: 1

    It's true that someone must be rich for another to be poor. They are relative terms. However, for our discussion, we consider the poor as the destitute, the suffering, those who by an absolute standard are below a comfortable living. The middle class are comfortable and just want more--it would be more accurate to say that for there to be a middle class there must be the rich, because if we eliminate the rich then those of us with our own houses, two cars, and fresh pressed clothes would be the Rockerfellers of the world and we would REVEL at being the top of society even without actually elevating ourselves from what we are now. The middle class contempt for the rich is entirely a matter of envy; not having the emotion in any meaningful way (I'm a sociopath, I don't connect to people in such a way as to want to be more like them or to empathize with and feel hollow about not sharing in their good fortune), I don't have it, and thus see myself as a very rich man.

    My standards of living are unaffected by the standards of living of others; however, the destruction of wealth in society will eventually come to affect me as well as everyone else. When everyone can have anything they wish, they will become wasteful. They will no longer concern themselves with the costs of things, and the destruction of the wealth of society will come in force. The system then collapses.

    Marxism idealizes that we can bring everyone to the same level by enforced sharing and waste minimization, or at least by the application of force of labor. That is: if there is waste, we will use it as effectively as possible simply by dictating that people will take the waste and do something useful with it. While this is effective, it's not very fun. It also applies a cost to everyone for the good of society.

    What I have discovered instead is that the destruction of things of value has a broad-reaching societal cost, but a null immediate cost to the prior owner. That is, it costs you nothing to throw your useful clothes and tools into the trash; it also costs you nothing to surrender them to collection for charitable organizations. Surrendering them for use by others who can derive remaining value from them will improve the wealth of society, while destroying them harms the wealth of society. I do not see a problem with society providing incentive for this: as your actions at no cost to you may have helped others but you have chosen not to, so then are you relieved of an equivalent amount of wealth as what you have destroyed; and as your actions may, at times, incur a small inconvenience of sorting trash from recyclables or reusables, so then are you supplied relief for such a burden as gratitude for applying the two seconds thought to select which of two bins to place an object into.

    Mind you I am slightly simplifying things. There's a Goodwill near me that will give me a receipt, needed for me to claim tax deductions for donations. Easier, there is a PlanetAid clothing bin near the liquor store behind my house, near the church down the street, and generally around gas stations every mile or two, but no receipt means no paper trail to make claims on taxes. Most any church will also take donated goods, and they may give you a receipt or may not; they're everywhere. In any case, there's no burden on me to sort out my reusables--if I'm cleaning out my house, I'm sorting things out anyway and will be yanking out old clothes and other goods, so I'm already pulling stuff out of the closets and stuffing them in trash bags--but there is a few seconds involvement in sticking the bag in the back of my car on the way to a gas station, or several minutes in diverting to Good Will. Simply putting the bag outside for trash pick-up saves me a few minutes of my life, but costs disposal charges AND deprives society of the value of the goods taken as trash.

    I'm sure the concept of return-on-investment isn't so foreign to you. It's why I switched to 100% clean energy--solar, wind, geothermal. It costs me $3-$5