Does calling your operating system "Ice Cream Sandwich" sound really gay and unnecessary to anyone else? Like, say hypothetically. "Yeah man, I'm multi booting Linux, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Windows."
Is this what it has boiled down to? ChaCha? Twitter? Blogosphere? Web 2.0?
Couldn't we name use apt names for stuff, not drool spattered about by the UGA advertising major type?
Previous technology was engineered towards the goal of giving tools to businesses and professionals. Current devices are engineered as "entertainment devices". Microsoft never implied its potential users were retards at all. They just never considered the retard market being so large. They thought they would sell to businesses first and it would trickle outward. Like every other thing they have ever done.
Every other company gave up when they realized tablets were bad interfaces for productivity tasks. Only one company thought to turn it into an interactive idiot box, err.... television set.
"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public"
Oh, come on. The source code is not going to tell you a whole lot, it would be only comprehensible to experts and it says nothing about the little hardware bits. Does Mr. Lawyer want Medtronics to go over the schematics with him? Explain the physics?
Sometimes you just have to settle down and let things go. Yes, regulatory agencies should review operations of medical devices closely. No, they don't need to peek inside.
I don't even think the FAA looks at the code for the flight control computers on airliners. They test the planes (or actually they watch the manufacturer test the planes) but they don't get every part off the aircraft and look at it under a microsope.
I don't recall us closing any ozone holes... By contrast, according to the wikis, the ozone layer is thinning in the Arctic now as well. I'm not disagreeing with the majority of what you're stating, simply stating that I don't believe there have been any effective policies put in place to mitigate it.
From the "Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 2006, Executive Summary"
The previous Assessment presented evidence that the tropospheric abundances of most ozone-depleting substances, as well as of stratospheric chlorine, were stable or decreasing due to actions taken under the Montreal Protocol (see schematic Figure 1a, b), with the stratospheric abundances showing a time lag due to the time for surface emissions to reach the stratosphere. Based on these facts, it was stated that "The Montreal Protocol is working, and the ozone-layer depletion from the Protocol's controlled substances is expected to begin to ameliorate within the next decade or so."
I think the point being made is that if it happened without us being here at all, there must be causes that we have no control over. If there are causes that we cannot control, it would be folly to waste the time and money trying to control what we cannot.
It isn't clear that we don't have control over at least some of the major inputs. We could drop carbon emissions fairly rapidly which might mitigate some of the change. We most likely won't.
My point is that, given that the population of humans is either very close to or above the carrying capacity of the environment, then the only way to keep mass human die offs from occurring is to keep Business As Usual humming along. By doing that we have a small chance of dropping the human population over the next century or two to a more reasonable (for the earth) value. Any major change in the economic or resource environment is likely to change things rather quickly. Quickly is going to be unpleasant for a whole lotta folk. You might think it's a problem when you can't get an iPad, but just wait until someone wants to kill you because you have some canned vegetables.
Now, a couple of centuries from now, our progeny will look at the early 21st Century a bit differently but we're faced with a potential Big Mess within our lifetimes. Of course, since the dawn of the nuclear area, we've been at that point but climate change is going to be just another tool in our basket of tricks for messing up things.
Ice ages, hot periods, floods, land scape changes, saltier oceans. The climate and Earth is always changing. Always has been and always will be. With or without us.
And this is the real crux of the issue. The only way we're going to be able to support 9+ billion people on this planet is if we keep things running pretty much the way it is now. Even then, the odds aren't in favor of human beings maintaining Business As Usual given the typical political, economic and social miseries that we tend to inflict upon ourselves and each other.
Now, add some major shifts in food production, water availability and the ability of the coastal areas to support large populations then you make it even less likely that we'll see unicorns and ponies in our future.
Of course, the rest of the planet might consider this a major plus. Your kids, not so much.
We could do almost nothing against the return of the black death, though, if those deadly mutations re-arose because we don't know what they were. An extra-resistant form of the bacterium could be as deadly today as it was back then.
Except perhaps, wash our hands, stay away from rats and use antibiotics.
An extra-resistant form of the bacterium could be as deadly today as it was back then. It must eventually arise, so our best hope of stopping it from doing any harm is to understand why/how specific mutations allow pathogens to do harm at all.
By extra resistant, I presume you mean a multiple antibiotic resistant strain. It's possible but currently Y. pestis isn't being treated directly much and so antibiotic resistance would more likely come from horizontal gene transfer, like plasmids. It's possible but by saying 'it could be as deadly as it was back then' you're being a tad hyperbolic.
"It must eventually arise" isn't true at all. There is no reason that every potential mutation / rearrangement must occur, especially in the absence of specific selection pressures.
"So our best hope is to understand...."
I think that's a reasonable approach. I'd feel better if they were doing in a P4 containment facility as opposed to a P3 (if that indeed is happening, someone above mentioned it).
who had they been around in the time of the caveman would have taken away Ugh's flint for fear he'd burn down the forest were he to succeed in starting a fire.
i'm sure the rest of the biosphere thinks that would have been a good move.
"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
Which is not say there are not lots and lots of people who go without coverage; but you make your choices and you take your lumps. That is how its supposed to work.
Ah, but it's not how it really does work. I would agree with you that many people look at the risk / benefit equation of medical insurance, decide against it and cross their fingers. Most people will actually do OK with that decision. The ones that don't get the good dice roll often cost a bunch of money - that they don't have. A couple of things happen. The get poorer treatment (OK, their decision) but the treatment the do get (say through the ER or after they get admitted to the hospital but don't pay) gets expensive.
At my small, rural hospital we are about one million dollars in the red this year. That's just about the money we spent on 'uncompensated care'. That gets payed out by 1) the town - which can ill afford it as we're looking to quit paving roads because we don't have the money and 2) hospital reserves which we can also ill afford because we need to replace the roof and a couple of other important things.
So, the 'bad' decision by a few people ends up costing the rest of the local society some real cash.
If you think that we should simply not elect to treat people without insurance, then you need to convince the Feds to drop a whole bunch of rules, regulations and laws. Good luck with that.
And your cost estimates for a high deductible insurance package are rather low. Double it and pray you don't have any pre existing conditions.
Slashdot Mirror
It'd be the equivalent of someone assassinating the vice-president of the US today -- not just some random bozo getting killed.
If headlines read "Joe Biden" assassinated! about 90% of the US population would have shrugged their shoulders and said 'who'?
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
Heinlein
This is what you get for living in a primitive third-world country.
It happened in Indonesia, not the United States.
You realize, of course, that important backups never work when you need them.
We're doomed.
Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
Oh, wait.
Maybe it's strictly a geek thing, but I'm not using any computer with a processor named "Allwinner".
Sorry, it ain't happening.
Does calling your operating system "Ice Cream Sandwich" sound really gay and unnecessary to anyone else? Like, say hypothetically. "Yeah man, I'm multi booting Linux, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Windows."
Is this what it has boiled down to? ChaCha? Twitter? Blogosphere? Web 2.0?
Couldn't we name use apt names for stuff, not drool spattered about by the UGA advertising major type?
Just call it "ICE" and then chill out.
Previous technology was engineered towards the goal of giving tools to businesses and professionals. Current devices are engineered as "entertainment devices". Microsoft never implied its potential users were retards at all. They just never considered the retard market being so large. They thought they would sell to businesses first and it would trickle outward. Like every other thing they have ever done.
Every other company gave up when they realized tablets were bad interfaces for productivity tasks. Only one company thought to turn it into an interactive idiot box, err.... television set.
"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public"
H.L. Mencken as channeled by Steve Jobs
It wasn't called WinCE for nothing. And you guys think that Open Source folks can't name products....
... in producing fire-breathing sea monsters.
Very drunk fire-breathing sea monsters with bad diarrhea perhaps...
I'm not all that worried about Cecil the Inebriated Sea Serpent.
OK guy, enough! Take a happy pill or log off. Take a walk. Listen to your iPod or something.
These folks aren't making $100,000 USD / year. They are making something like a tenth of that.
Now, go back to the oil fields and work for 10-20K / year? A good deal?
Or perhaps you have a better idea? What would you be doing differently at this stage?
Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
Why you empty headed animal food trough wiper, I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
No, that was an insult.
You moron, of course it's an insult.
Oh, come on. The source code is not going to tell you a whole lot, it would be only comprehensible to experts and it says nothing about the little hardware bits. Does Mr. Lawyer want Medtronics to go over the schematics with him? Explain the physics?
Sometimes you just have to settle down and let things go. Yes, regulatory agencies should review operations of medical devices closely. No, they don't need to peek inside.
I don't even think the FAA looks at the code for the flight control computers on airliners. They test the planes (or actually they watch the manufacturer test the planes) but they don't get every part off the aircraft and look at it under a microsope.
As a taxpayer, it leaves me as cold as intersteller space.
It leaves me with a warmer feeling than most of the things we spend our money on. Er, excuse me, we spend our kid's and grand kid's money on.
Your cold hearted appraisal of the issues certainly has validity, but stuff like that hasn't stopped us in the past.
Life thrives in a warm climate, bring it on.
Billions and Billions of plankton would like to disagree with you.
That sound rattling around in your brain is your sarcasm and humor detector. It's apparently broken loose from it's moorings.
I don't recall us closing any ozone holes... By contrast, according to the wikis, the ozone layer is thinning in the Arctic now as well. I'm not disagreeing with the majority of what you're stating, simply stating that I don't believe there have been any effective policies put in place to mitigate it.
From the "Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 2006, Executive Summary"
The previous Assessment presented evidence that the tropospheric abundances of most ozone-depleting substances, as well as of stratospheric chlorine, were stable or decreasing due to actions taken under the Montreal Protocol (see schematic Figure 1a, b), with the stratospheric abundances showing a time lag due to the time for surface emissions to reach the stratosphere. Based on these facts, it was stated that "The Montreal Protocol is working, and the ozone-layer depletion from the Protocol's controlled substances is expected to begin to ameliorate within the next decade or so ."
(My emphasis)
Patience, grasshopper.
I think the point being made is that if it happened without us being here at all, there must be causes that we have no control over. If there are causes that we cannot control, it would be folly to waste the time and money trying to control what we cannot.
It isn't clear that we don't have control over at least some of the major inputs. We could drop carbon emissions fairly rapidly which might mitigate some of the change. We most likely won't.
My point is that, given that the population of humans is either very close to or above the carrying capacity of the environment, then the only way to keep mass human die offs from occurring is to keep Business As Usual humming along. By doing that we have a small chance of dropping the human population over the next century or two to a more reasonable (for the earth) value. Any major change in the economic or resource environment is likely to change things rather quickly. Quickly is going to be unpleasant for a whole lotta folk. You might think it's a problem when you can't get an iPad, but just wait until someone wants to kill you because you have some canned vegetables.
Now, a couple of centuries from now, our progeny will look at the early 21st Century a bit differently but we're faced with a potential Big Mess within our lifetimes. Of course, since the dawn of the nuclear area, we've been at that point but climate change is going to be just another tool in our basket of tricks for messing up things.
Ice ages, hot periods, floods, land scape changes, saltier oceans. The climate and Earth is always changing. Always has been and always will be. With or without us.
And this is the real crux of the issue. The only way we're going to be able to support 9+ billion people on this planet is if we keep things running pretty much the way it is now. Even then, the odds aren't in favor of human beings maintaining Business As Usual given the typical political, economic and social miseries that we tend to inflict upon ourselves and each other.
Now, add some major shifts in food production, water availability and the ability of the coastal areas to support large populations then you make it even less likely that we'll see unicorns and ponies in our future.
Of course, the rest of the planet might consider this a major plus. Your kids, not so much.
Should have given them some more money to research the problem. Obviously if they're still on dial up, they're hurting for funding.
We could do almost nothing against the return of the black death, though, if those deadly mutations re-arose because we don't know what they were. An extra-resistant form of the bacterium could be as deadly today as it was back then.
Except perhaps, wash our hands, stay away from rats and use antibiotics.
An extra-resistant form of the bacterium could be as deadly today as it was back then. It must eventually arise, so our best hope of stopping it from doing any harm is to understand why/how specific mutations allow pathogens to do harm at all.
By extra resistant, I presume you mean a multiple antibiotic resistant strain. It's possible but currently Y. pestis isn't being treated directly much and so antibiotic resistance would more likely come from horizontal gene transfer, like plasmids. It's possible but by saying 'it could be as deadly as it was back then' you're being a tad hyperbolic.
"It must eventually arise" isn't true at all. There is no reason that every potential mutation / rearrangement must occur, especially in the absence of specific selection pressures.
"So our best hope is to understand ...."
I think that's a reasonable approach. I'd feel better if they were doing in a P4 containment facility as opposed to a P3 (if that indeed is happening, someone above mentioned it).
who had they been around in the time of the caveman would have taken away Ugh's flint for fear he'd burn down the forest were he to succeed in starting a fire.
i'm sure the rest of the biosphere thinks that would have been a good move.
"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
Douglas Adams
Which is not say there are not lots and lots of people who go without coverage; but you make your choices and you take your lumps. That is how its supposed to work.
Ah, but it's not how it really does work. I would agree with you that many people look at the risk / benefit equation of medical insurance, decide against it and cross their fingers. Most people will actually do OK with that decision. The ones that don't get the good dice roll often cost a bunch of money - that they don't have. A couple of things happen. The get poorer treatment (OK, their decision) but the treatment the do get (say through the ER or after they get admitted to the hospital but don't pay) gets expensive.
At my small, rural hospital we are about one million dollars in the red this year. That's just about the money we spent on 'uncompensated care'. That gets payed out by 1) the town - which can ill afford it as we're looking to quit paving roads because we don't have the money and 2) hospital reserves which we can also ill afford because we need to replace the roof and a couple of other important things.
So, the 'bad' decision by a few people ends up costing the rest of the local society some real cash.
If you think that we should simply not elect to treat people without insurance, then you need to convince the Feds to drop a whole bunch of rules, regulations and laws. Good luck with that.
And your cost estimates for a high deductible insurance package are rather low. Double it and pray you don't have any pre existing conditions.