Better yet, why not use the money we spend on wars for all that good stuff, and maybe we'll have enough left to do some space exploration anyway Yes, because if we spent nothing on the military the world would be a happy place full of dancing elves, with no hunger, or wars, or traffic accidents.
Are you for some reason under the impression that the sole purpose of the Hubble is to be a large object orbiting Earth? As we all know that is only the first part of its mission, the second is to be a large object burning up in the Earth's atmosphere.
Call me pessemistic, but these carts will become almost entirely marketing tools. I can't see stores trying to help you purchase what's on your list, or getting you through the store more quickly. If I go to the store to get toothpaste and detertergent, invariablly I'll end up with a few T-bone steaks (50% off!), some ketchup (the 80 oz bottle at 16oz bottle price!), some cereal (darn I walked down wrong aisle), and candy and cola (just cuz I never have enough). It's in the stores best interest to make the items you want more difficult to find, while making items they want to get rid of easy to find with giant blinking lights and bright red "WOW" stickers. Once the novelty wears off, stores will either dump the carts because impulse sales are down, or turn the carts into non-stop advertisers.
Housing is one of the things SWG got right. It's a wonderful system, guilds have built wonderful cities that are neat to walk through. The only problem I have it that it was a little too easy to get a house, but it is nonetheless a great implementation of player housing.
I really miss the difficulty of EQ1. I enjoyed being placed in a world, and basically told "Good luck." No handholding with maps, teleportation books, or even descriptions of what things did. It was up to the players to discover things, to create the maps, to locate quests, to discover what exactly the FBSS was good for. Now to cater to casual players in MMOs everything is laid out in a neat little package. No real discoveries or insights from experience playing.
Goes with another popular american saying "Kill em all and let God sort them out" A significant number (IIRC 30%) of American casualties in the first Gulf War were friendly fire related.
If the computers didn't design the computer programs playing the games, then I'd say either way is a win for humans. I'd say its a victory of the wanna-be chess master computer geeks over the chess grandmasters.
And then promptly get sued for malpractice. No there is an MD who rubber stamps everything... err reviews. Sometimes it's decisions as to course of action other times it's decisions as to treat or don't treat, at least in the insurance company "doctor's" opinion. Believe it or not, the healthcare industry is not an oligarchy, ruled only by big business and profit. And to claim there is no profit motive is also ignorant. I'm talking about the industry as a whole, health insurance, hospitals, medical supplies, drug makers. At the individual physician level it's not so much profit driven, but everything else is, and can have great influence on their decisions/costs. There are literally thousands of pages of regulations on how to deal with patients. It's impossible to think that physicians know all of this information, plus the ungodly amount of knowledge required by the profession itself. That's what lawyers and insurance is for. Once again I'm talking about the industry as a whole, not the individual physicians. With health insurance, the hospital sets the price, the insurance company says "we pay x for y treatment," and the patient pays the rest. Not necessarily, depends on the insurance provider's contract with the physician. That's why some physicians refuse some insurance because of the "you'll accept x for y and like it" contracts. I've had instances where the price the hospital asked was several thousands of dollars higher than what the insurance company paid for, however, the way the contract was written up by the insurance company meant I didn't have to pay the difference, the hospital had to deal with getting just what the insurance company commands.
A/. analogy to this situation would be user access level. Should users have root access by default? People criticize windows because by default users have root access so they can do anything they want at any time, even if it is stupid (ie. click "Yes" for your daily weather). The preferred situation is limiting access by default, and somebody responsible like sysadmin increases the users rights. The stores are limiting by default the rights, but it is very little inconvenience for the parents to approve of the child getting access. The parent can go with the child to purchase or purchase the item themselves.
You're confusing socialism with regulation. The health care industry can do what ever they want, unless the goverment says otherwise. And they can get away with alot, like treatment refusals and having english majors decide the best treatment option. The healthcare industry is still beholdent to private stockholders, they just have to work within the confines of goverment regulation that tries to protect patients. What you may be referring to is Medicare where the goverment says "we pay x for y treatment" and the hospital has to accept that. This is no different from what health insurance companies do.
"regular" isn't the correct term "homogenous" is. Glass is basically all the same, no short range order (which makes it amorphous) or distinct boundaries, ceramics have short range order in the form of grains (so are not considered amorphous). Within the grains the structure is ordered, but the grain arrangement is not, it's the grain-to-grain interface which causes issues. Single crystals are "the best" since they are ordered and do not have grain boundaries.
I would think a ceramic would be optically worse due to the fact that the structure would be less regular.... Umm you're calling glass "regular", glass is amorphous, it doesn't get much more irregular. Ceramics have an ordered structure.
You can obtain a complete medical record even by traditional pen-and-paper methods... I have done this since at one point I had 4 different specialists and then moved. It is a simple request, the thing I noticed is a cover page on the photocopy of my medical files from 3rd party companies. Each one of my doctor's was using a different 3rd party company for making and sending copies of my records. So you're information is probably already in outside databases, there isn't any real control. There are laws protecting your medical records from the goverment, what I would be more worried about is insurance companies and other private interests.
How do you address the aspect of every player wanting to be a part of the action. Take the case of football again. Almost everyone, would like to be in control of the player who is dribbling the ball. Playing the game sort of loses it's excitement if one has to stand at the back of the defense. Look at EQ support classes like enchanters and clerics. People enjoy playing them, there is also a sense of pride when you do a good job. They aren't the center of the action, but when they do their job well they command respect of their fellow players. I still fondly remember all the compliments I got when I "saved the group" with skillful stuns and mezmerizes. I didn't damage any mobs, but I held things together long enough for the rest of my group to take care of business.
and to those who can't, they can copy and paste the text into a translator. With that who can't, they can reproduce and stick inside their language teacher.
Then again, nothing has changed; it has always been this way. Exactly! The country was founded by tea smugglers, politicians were in the pockets of the railroads, political leaders earned their fortunes in illegal rum-running, and politics catered to special interests such as prohibitionists. One of the downsides of having representative democracy is that those who whine the loudest get the attention. The thing to remember is politicians listen to one thing more than money, and that is votes.
Because the major record labels and the movie studios-- the same companies that opposed the Betamax ruling-- make huge donations to the re-election campaigns of the Senators who are sponsoring this legislation It will probably become a pissing contest between electronics companies and record labels. Electronics makers/distributors/retailers have alot more money, and more importantly employ alot more voters than the labels. What most likely will happen is some watered down bill that goes against P2P and/or other "outside the corporate structure" copying methods. So betamax will be protected as long as you are running a megacorp.
Lets see, you put wear on the car, used up gas, probabally messed up the couch cushions, and wore down the couch cushions slightly more. Compare that to wifi, um maybe the AP got 1/2 a degree hotter due to the extra use? So you base your arguement on impact? What if I just fell asleep in your car? I didn't really put alot of wear on it. What if I entered your house and just used a paperclip? The fact is there is still the break in, and there can still be prosecution.
I can not recover anything from you for such an act as I did not loose anything No but there can still be criminal prosecution. it is OUT OF MY POSSESSION It was out of your possession while you were on vacation, you couldn't use it. Again, if it was returned, my damages that I could collect for the theft would be limited to the gas used and any ACTUAL physical damage you did while you had the car There's something called punitive damages. You can sue above actual damages, to serve as penalty for somebody commiting an illegal act. If I setup a web server reachable from the internet, throw up some html files with absolutely no access controls at all, would the police be able to arrest every person that visits my web site When you set up the webserver reachable by the internet you have given up the expectation of privacy. If you just plug your computer on the internet and there is an HTML file on your computer, then you do expect privacy, and there are laws protecting you from people breaking in.
houses and cars are PHYSICAL property items that can be owned A router is PHYSICAL property. I said it's okay to war drive and find open connections. But once you start USING the connection you are using PHYSICAL property. But if I park my car in your driveway (and NOT communicated with you at all) with the keyes in it and unlocked,windows down, etc., should I be upset with you when I get home and find out that you had driven it? Would you be upset if I drove around with a garage door opener, and randomly found it opened your garage, then used your car? That would be true wardriving:)
if I use 10MB of your pipe, exactly what did I steal or take away from you that you no longer have for yourself? If I lounge in your house or borrow your car while you are on vacation what did I steal or take away from you? You can wardrive and find unsecured access points, once you start using the services, then you are doing something illegal.
Excellent move on the part of the Supreme Court - this decision, moreso than a lot of recent ones, seems to reflect the wishes of the majority of the American people The Supreme court isn't supposed to reflect the wishes of the majority of the American people. That is what the legislative and executive branches are for. The Supreme court is charged with ensuring the other branches remain within the boundaries of the law. Historically, it has also served to resist "mobocracy" by protecting the minority from the wishes of the majority.
People need to think outside of the square, instead of flip-flopping between the two parties The reason people flip-flop between the two parties is that all the problems of the country are presented as perfect dichotomy. You're either pro-choice or pro-life, pro-welfare/anti-welfare, pro-war/anti-war. Most people just pick a side rather than thinking about alternatives or compromises. Perhaps a third or fourth option is needed The way goverment is constructed there will not be long-term powerful 3rd or 4th parties. The plurality of votes in the electoral system and the requirement of 50%+1 makes 3rd parties a strong threat to the main parties. The threat isn't that the 3rd party will win, but that the 3rd party will make one of the parties lose (see Nader in 2000, Perot in 1992). Typically strong alternative parties arise from a particular issue. Either the issue goes away or more likely because of the threat, the agenda gets absorbed by one of the two main parties. Political parties are dynamic. Republicans and democrats didn't even exist at the beginning of political parties, they evolved from other parties.
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Better yet, why not use the money we spend on wars for all that good stuff, and maybe we'll have enough left to do some space exploration anyway
Yes, because if we spent nothing on the military the world would be a happy place full of dancing elves, with no hunger, or wars, or traffic accidents.
Are you for some reason under the impression that the sole purpose of the Hubble is to be a large object orbiting Earth?
As we all know that is only the first part of its mission, the second is to be a large object burning up in the Earth's atmosphere.
Call me pessemistic, but these carts will become almost entirely marketing tools.
I can't see stores trying to help you purchase what's on your list, or getting you through the store more quickly.
If I go to the store to get toothpaste and detertergent, invariablly I'll end up with a few T-bone steaks (50% off!), some ketchup (the 80 oz bottle at 16oz bottle price!), some cereal (darn I walked down wrong aisle), and candy and cola (just cuz I never have enough).
It's in the stores best interest to make the items you want more difficult to find, while making items they want to get rid of easy to find with giant blinking lights and bright red "WOW" stickers.
Once the novelty wears off, stores will either dump the carts because impulse sales are down, or turn the carts into non-stop advertisers.
Housing is one of the things SWG got right. It's a wonderful system, guilds have built wonderful cities that are neat to walk through. The only problem I have it that it was a little too easy to get a house, but it is nonetheless a great implementation of player housing.
I really miss the difficulty of EQ1. I enjoyed being placed in a world, and basically told "Good luck."
No handholding with maps, teleportation books, or even descriptions of what things did. It was up to the players to discover things, to create the maps, to locate quests, to discover what exactly the FBSS was good for.
Now to cater to casual players in MMOs everything is laid out in a neat little package. No real discoveries or insights from experience playing.
Simpsons quote:
"Yeah boy, haven't I told you that vampires are make-believe just like elves, gremlins and Eskimos"
Goes with another popular american saying "Kill em all and let God sort them out"
A significant number (IIRC 30%) of American casualties in the first Gulf War were friendly fire related.
If the computers didn't design the computer programs playing the games, then I'd say either way is a win for humans.
I'd say its a victory of the wanna-be chess master computer geeks over the chess grandmasters.
And then promptly get sued for malpractice.
No there is an MD who rubber stamps everything... err reviews. Sometimes it's decisions as to course of action other times it's decisions as to treat or don't treat, at least in the insurance company "doctor's" opinion.
Believe it or not, the healthcare industry is not an oligarchy, ruled only by big business and profit.
And to claim there is no profit motive is also ignorant. I'm talking about the industry as a whole, health insurance, hospitals, medical supplies, drug makers. At the individual physician level it's not so much profit driven, but everything else is, and can have great influence on their decisions/costs.
There are literally thousands of pages of regulations on how to deal with patients. It's impossible to think that physicians know all of this information, plus the ungodly amount of knowledge required by the profession itself.
That's what lawyers and insurance is for. Once again I'm talking about the industry as a whole, not the individual physicians.
With health insurance, the hospital sets the price, the insurance company says "we pay x for y treatment," and the patient pays the rest.
Not necessarily, depends on the insurance provider's contract with the physician. That's why some physicians refuse some insurance because of the "you'll accept x for y and like it" contracts. I've had instances where the price the hospital asked was several thousands of dollars higher than what the insurance company paid for, however, the way the contract was written up by the insurance company meant I didn't have to pay the difference, the hospital had to deal with getting just what the insurance company commands.
A /. analogy to this situation would be user access level. Should users have root access by default?
People criticize windows because by default users have root access so they can do anything they want at any time, even if it is stupid (ie. click "Yes" for your daily weather).
The preferred situation is limiting access by default, and somebody responsible like sysadmin increases the users rights. The stores are limiting by default the rights, but it is very little inconvenience for the parents to approve of the child getting access. The parent can go with the child to purchase or purchase the item themselves.
You're confusing socialism with regulation. The health care industry can do what ever they want, unless the goverment says otherwise. And they can get away with alot, like treatment refusals and having english majors decide the best treatment option. The healthcare industry is still beholdent to private stockholders, they just have to work within the confines of goverment regulation that tries to protect patients.
What you may be referring to is Medicare where the goverment says "we pay x for y treatment" and the hospital has to accept that. This is no different from what health insurance companies do.
"regular" isn't the correct term "homogenous" is. Glass is basically all the same, no short range order (which makes it amorphous) or distinct boundaries, ceramics have short range order in the form of grains (so are not considered amorphous). Within the grains the structure is ordered, but the grain arrangement is not, it's the grain-to-grain interface which causes issues. Single crystals are "the best" since they are ordered and do not have grain boundaries.
Difference in microstructure. Ceramics have an ordered structure, while glasses are amorphous. Glasses is considered a sub-category of ceramics
I would think a ceramic would be optically worse due to the fact that the structure would be less regular....
Umm you're calling glass "regular", glass is amorphous, it doesn't get much more irregular. Ceramics have an ordered structure.
You can obtain a complete medical record even by traditional pen-and-paper methods...
I have done this since at one point I had 4 different specialists and then moved. It is a simple request, the thing I noticed is a cover page on the photocopy of my medical files from 3rd party companies. Each one of my doctor's was using a different 3rd party company for making and sending copies of my records.
So you're information is probably already in outside databases, there isn't any real control. There are laws protecting your medical records from the goverment, what I would be more worried about is insurance companies and other private interests.
How do you address the aspect of every player wanting to be a part of the action. Take the case of football again. Almost everyone, would like to be in control of the player who is dribbling the ball. Playing the game sort of loses it's excitement if one has to stand at the back of the defense.
Look at EQ support classes like enchanters and clerics. People enjoy playing them, there is also a sense of pride when you do a good job. They aren't the center of the action, but when they do their job well they command respect of their fellow players. I still fondly remember all the compliments I got when I "saved the group" with skillful stuns and mezmerizes. I didn't damage any mobs, but I held things together long enough for the rest of my group to take care of business.
and to those who can't, they can copy and paste the text into a translator.
With that who can't, they can reproduce and stick inside their language teacher.
Then again, nothing has changed; it has always been this way.
Exactly! The country was founded by tea smugglers, politicians were in the pockets of the railroads, political leaders earned their fortunes in illegal rum-running, and politics catered to special interests such as prohibitionists.
One of the downsides of having representative democracy is that those who whine the loudest get the attention. The thing to remember is politicians listen to one thing more than money, and that is votes.
Because the major record labels and the movie studios-- the same companies that opposed the Betamax ruling-- make huge donations to the re-election campaigns of the Senators who are sponsoring this legislation
It will probably become a pissing contest between electronics companies and record labels. Electronics makers/distributors/retailers have alot more money, and more importantly employ alot more voters than the labels. What most likely will happen is some watered down bill that goes against P2P and/or other "outside the corporate structure" copying methods. So betamax will be protected as long as you are running a megacorp.
Lets see, you put wear on the car, used up gas, probabally messed up the couch cushions, and wore down the couch cushions slightly more. Compare that to wifi, um maybe the AP got 1/2 a degree hotter due to the extra use?
So you base your arguement on impact? What if I just fell asleep in your car? I didn't really put alot of wear on it. What if I entered your house and just used a paperclip? The fact is there is still the break in, and there can still be prosecution.
I can not recover anything from you for such an act as I did not loose anything
No but there can still be criminal prosecution.
it is OUT OF MY POSSESSION
It was out of your possession while you were on vacation, you couldn't use it.
Again, if it was returned, my damages that I could collect for the theft would be limited to the gas used and any ACTUAL physical damage you did while you had the car
There's something called punitive damages. You can sue above actual damages, to serve as penalty for somebody commiting an illegal act.
If I setup a web server reachable from the internet, throw up some html files with absolutely no access controls at all, would the police be able to arrest every person that visits my web site
When you set up the webserver reachable by the internet you have given up the expectation of privacy. If you just plug your computer on the internet and there is an HTML file on your computer, then you do expect privacy, and there are laws protecting you from people breaking in.
houses and cars are PHYSICAL property items that can be owned :)
A router is PHYSICAL property. I said it's okay to war drive and find open connections. But once you start USING the connection you are using PHYSICAL property.
But if I park my car in your driveway (and NOT communicated with you at all) with the keyes in it and unlocked,windows down, etc., should I be upset with you when I get home and find out that you had driven it?
Would you be upset if I drove around with a garage door opener, and randomly found it opened your garage, then used your car? That would be true wardriving
if I use 10MB of your pipe, exactly what did I steal or take away from you that you no longer have for yourself?
If I lounge in your house or borrow your car while you are on vacation what did I steal or take away from you?
You can wardrive and find unsecured access points, once you start using the services, then you are doing something illegal.
Excellent move on the part of the Supreme Court - this decision, moreso than a lot of recent ones, seems to reflect the wishes of the majority of the American people
The Supreme court isn't supposed to reflect the wishes of the majority of the American people. That is what the legislative and executive branches are for. The Supreme court is charged with ensuring the other branches remain within the boundaries of the law. Historically, it has also served to resist "mobocracy" by protecting the minority from the wishes of the majority.
People need to think outside of the square, instead of flip-flopping between the two parties
The reason people flip-flop between the two parties is that all the problems of the country are presented as perfect dichotomy. You're either pro-choice or pro-life, pro-welfare/anti-welfare, pro-war/anti-war. Most people just pick a side rather than thinking about alternatives or compromises.
Perhaps a third or fourth option is needed
The way goverment is constructed there will not be long-term powerful 3rd or 4th parties. The plurality of votes in the electoral system and the requirement of 50%+1 makes 3rd parties a strong threat to the main parties. The threat isn't that the 3rd party will win, but that the 3rd party will make one of the parties lose (see Nader in 2000, Perot in 1992).
Typically strong alternative parties arise from a particular issue. Either the issue goes away or more likely because of the threat, the agenda gets absorbed by one of the two main parties. Political parties are dynamic. Republicans and democrats didn't even exist at the beginning of political parties, they evolved from other parties.