There is no way the courts would strike this down.
You seem to be assuming the courts would rule based on what would make for a nice system, not based on what the constitution says. They may very well rule that the mandate is unconstitutional, at which point we would either need to amend the constitution, or change the mandate into a tax, or implement this on the state level.
The mandate is not a tax. A quick definition of tax from Google:
A compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions
The mandate to buy health insurance is not added to anything or levied on income. If they made it a tax than many of the dissenters would not have any ability to argue with it. Ironically, they probably made it not be a tax because taxes are politically bad. So they did this instead, and possibly made things worse.
This goes back to the "Do you let them die?" question. Should a hospital let someone bleeding to death die in their Emergency Room if they have no insurance? I think except for at republican debates the answer is "no".
Prior to the Obama healthcare plan, hospitals did not let people bleed to death in the Emergency Room. This law doesn't change that.
The problem isn't that we're mandated to buy it. The problem is that it's a mandatory service that *SHOULD BE PROVIDED BY THE GOVERNMENT*.
No, it really is that we are mandated to buy it. The law says that anyone who can afford health insurance must buy it, or you get thrown in jail. This is the first time the government has ever required someone to buy something outright.
I'm going to probably shock people with this but you're already required to buy all manner of things. Do you want airbags? Too bad, buy a car and you get them. Do you want a life raft space for you on all cruise trips? Too bad, you have to buy one.
It's not the same because the law does not require you to buy a car just because you can afford one. Nor do you have to buy cruises just because you can afford one. This law says if you make more than $____ per year, you must buy health insurance.
This is exactly why "disable the feature in the BIOS" is not a valid solution. But we lost the DRM battle - in 10 years "personal computer" will sound dated like "IBM XT" does. This is the last straw toward tying the hardware to the OS, just like iPhones are today. And it is a brilliant way to kill Linux: people will have to start buying special computers which allow this obtuse feature, in order to install it.
So what about dual-boot users? I bet if I disable secure boot, then I won't be allowed to play DRM'd content or my video driver will refuse to send 1080p video to my screen, or some other such nonsense. So they will be able to claim they they gave people an alternative by crippling it to the point where it is useless.
Some possibitilies: - A celebrity or politician who was gay, or holds an view unpopular in their party. - A whistleblower - Someone who lives in a country where certain speech is considered terrorism, or books are banned, or certain technology is prohibited. - A male who likes Justin Bieber music.
...privatized the whole system but without any protection to protect the consumer from price fixing or profit maximization.
Many states have privatized power-supply. But like most states, the infrastructure is maintained by an entirely different company than the ones that provide the electricity. In California, energy prices are partially set by the legislature. California is trying to be green and has very strict energy emissions standards which accounts for at least part of the cost. They also consume a *lot* more energy than other states, partially thanks to air conditioning.
Let me point out yet another round of pseudo-scientific articles with sensational headlines. This time it is the term "self-powered" which implies to the layman that it is "free energy" or "perpetual motion" when in reality it is "salt-powered" as it requires a constant supply of saltwater and freshwater.
I don't think that Intel will be worried that something moved from one non-Intel platform to another non-Intel platform, especially in a market segment that Intel does not compete in. Those Atmel/ARM chips run under $5 per chip, soemtimes under $1. Intel has the Atom chips around $50 at the low-end.
The problem is that DVDs via USPS is the present of content delivery. Much of what I want isn't available for streaming still. So now they make it twice as much effort. I have to look it up for streaming (which I do via Windows Media Center -- so I never even run a browser). Then I have to quit media center, grab a keyboard and mouse, run a browser, visit to a web site, possibly login, and run the same search. Then I add it to my queue and switch back to media center.
Wow - that kinda defeated the purpose of my media center box didn't it?
Now, there are a whole bunch of people that still want DVDs...and that's why they are still playing in that area at all.
Not entirely. I would prefer streaming-only, but they are offering DVDs because too much isn't available for streaming yet. I suspect with Starz leaving that will actually get worse, not better.
I subscribe to both the DVD and streaming services because 50% of what I want to watch isn't available on streaming. So I look it up, go "Oh darn, that one isn't available for streaming. Wanna watch it Wednesday night instead?" Then I click "Add to DVD Queue" and keep surfing.
The result is "web applications" that offer the worst of both worlds: the limitations of web applications, with the platform dependence and deployment complexities of desktop applications. Historically, they only run on one particular version of Internet Explorer (probably 2 or 3 releases old), require a particular version of Java, require administrator access, and need very specific security settings on your browser. These apps run in a browser but don't work with bookmarks, the back button, or right clicking. They are slow because every operation requires contacting a server AND running logic on the client. On top of it, these apps are tough to write: you have to know a server-side language, HTML + CSS + Javascript + Microsoft's DOM, and probably some other language to cover-over the limitations (hence the Java and/or C++/ActiveX part of things).
If Microsoft does this right this time, these apps will be purely HTML5 + Javascript. But then if that is the case... haven't they just invented the web browser? The apps should run on a Mac then too. So what's the point?
Microsoft has figured out correctly is that people like apps that look like appliances. No more having 10 toolbars so everything is one click. People are happy today to hide the powerful features if it makes things approachable and pretty. The ribbon in Microsoft Office is an attempt to compromise here. The Windows 7 UI buries and removes lots of features. This is akin to phones: even the most basic options on my Android phone require digging into menus to get there. They do it for screen real-estate. Apple's solution is simply to remove the advanced features. Microsoft is seeing the way the market is going and is trying to catch-up to it. They probably go that right, but they need to find a way to do it without alienating the power that we have today.
Son said the 2,000 kilometer (1,200 mile) nationwide power grid he proposed could eventually be expanded to all of Asia, in a massive grid that would run 36,000 kilometers and link Japan with countries including India, China, and Russia.
Also, I hope that if Japan does this, they don't become dependent on China for their power needs. They should always have enough to fill their own appetites, considering how easy it would be for a military power to cut them off.
Currently Gen IV plants are in the research stage. Since they take 20+ years to build, I don't think Japan can afford to risk building a theoretical device to meet today's demand. Since Japan is an island, offshore wind power is probably ideal.
We haven't seen the bill, so it is a bit early to tell. However, it sounds to me to be half-good and half-bad:
From the article:
The goal of the proposed law is essentially to hold accountable the companies and entities that store personal information and personal data and to deter data breaches
Punishing entities for crimes is good, and within the purview of government. But I am not sure the government can do a good job of telling them how to secure their data.
These rules would require companies to follow specific storage guidelines and ensure that personal information is stored and protected correctly
The real problem with telling them *how* to do it is that when they do those things, but still get hacked, they can that they followed the regulations so they are innocent. This happens in other highly-regulated fields, and it does make sense to some degree. But this is a field that changes rapidly and is very technical. They can say that the data must be "encrypted" but that is too vague. Or they can say "encrypted with 1024 bit encryption" which is still vague, and does no good in 2 years when every smart phone can break that encryption. On top of it all, you create yet another government regulatory agency.
Ultimately, I am excited about this bill since I have been clamoring for something like this for many years.
Ideas are not patentable! Patents cover IMPLEMENTATIONS!
According the article:
For example, one of the scenarios shown by Microsoft in the patent filing a belt with “electronic and electromagnetic tracking components” for sensing the movements of the user (although the patent doesn’t appear to be limited to that specific approach).
It sounds like they patented some vague idea of how something might be accomplished. That's not what patents are for.
this patent application was actually submitted way back in 2006 and only approved after years of back-and-forth with the patent office
I can see why... since it isn't a patent. Why was it granted at all? So in case I'm just overblowing this, lets look at the patent itself...
...Moreover, the presentation system 101 can employ a personal computer, a projection unit, a system including 3D goggles and headphones, or a simulator providing visual, audible, and physical stimulation, and the like, to present activities of the virtual guest to the user....
Aaand how would you do that? Elsewhere in the patent it talks about presenting virtual smells to the user. Right now, there is no technology to do that. This would be like me patenting teleportation by saying there is some sort of matter-to-energy and energy-to-matter device at either end, with some form of communication in the middle. That's the *idea* of teleportation, not a patentable implementation of it.
Almost every paragraph in the patent says something like this:
What has been described above includes examples of aspects of the claimed subject matter. It is, of course, not possible to describe every conceivable combination of components or methodologies for purposes of describing the claimed subject matter, but one of ordinary skill in the art may recognize that many further combinations and permutations of the disclosed subject matter are possible.
So it keeps admitting that they have no idea how to do this, or what combination of devices might achieve it, but they want to have all of them covered. Ordinarily, a patent author tries and make the patent broad enough to cover similar implementations - so that a trivial change can't be used to avoid paying the royalties. But this is ridiculous.
I think this is perhaps the second most quintissential example of the patent office gone wrong. The best example was when someone patented the tire swing. (Can someone find that? The closest I found was The patent on how to swing.
Then can you update the Wikipedia entry? Because that isn't at all what it sounds like. They really really say it was an operating system. Even mentions that it has interrupt dispatch code written in x86.
This is very important research because test scores are the only measure of a child's success! Experience with real life tools are irrelevant. Keeping students engaged isn't important.
Putting my tongue-in-cheek assessment aside, not every investment immediately yields an increase in test scores: nor should we only invest in things that do. Test scores are important, but they are not the only measure of a student's success. In 10 years no one will look back and say that adding laptops to schools was a bad idea any more than they will tell us that adding light bulbs or bathrooms was a bad idea. Technology moves forward, and schools should keep up or risk their test scores going down. It won't be too long before every 4-year-old has a portable computer of some kind.
Read the article. It was just one member, and they were just testing their tools. The article summary is written almost as poorly as the original article so it really isn't clear.
Would you care to tell us what was wrong with the original numbers? I'm assuming you're not simply arrogant and you just misread the first post because the rest of your post was... oh, nevermind.
Having never heard of Guile, I think I can take a good guess as to why it has not been adopted:
Guile is an implementation and dialect of the Scheme programming language (Scheme is a dialect of LISP itself)
Oh my.
LISP found a niche as an AI research/programming language, and sometimes for symbolic math manipulation, but has never been used in the mainstream. Most programmers have never heard of it. Universities teach it in whatever token course covers 10 languages in one semester with no depth at all. Hardly anyone writes everyday software in LISP. It is not appropriate for general-purpose scripting.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no way the courts would strike this down.
You seem to be assuming the courts would rule based on what would make for a nice system, not based on what the constitution says. They may very well rule that the mandate is unconstitutional, at which point we would either need to amend the constitution, or change the mandate into a tax, or implement this on the state level.
The mandate is not a tax. A quick definition of tax from Google:
A compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions
The mandate to buy health insurance is not added to anything or levied on income. If they made it a tax than many of the dissenters would not have any ability to argue with it. Ironically, they probably made it not be a tax because taxes are politically bad. So they did this instead, and possibly made things worse.
Let me clarify a few misconceptions here:
This goes back to the "Do you let them die?" question. Should a hospital let someone bleeding to death die in their Emergency Room if they have no insurance? I think except for at republican debates the answer is "no".
Prior to the Obama healthcare plan, hospitals did not let people bleed to death in the Emergency Room. This law doesn't change that.
The problem isn't that we're mandated to buy it. The problem is that it's a mandatory service that *SHOULD BE PROVIDED BY THE GOVERNMENT*.
No, it really is that we are mandated to buy it. The law says that anyone who can afford health insurance must buy it, or you get thrown in jail. This is the first time the government has ever required someone to buy something outright.
I'm going to probably shock people with this but you're already required to buy all manner of things. Do you want airbags? Too bad, buy a car and you get them. Do you want a life raft space for you on all cruise trips? Too bad, you have to buy one.
It's not the same because the law does not require you to buy a car just because you can afford one. Nor do you have to buy cruises just because you can afford one. This law says if you make more than $____ per year, you must buy health insurance.
This is exactly why "disable the feature in the BIOS" is not a valid solution. But we lost the DRM battle - in 10 years "personal computer" will sound dated like "IBM XT" does. This is the last straw toward tying the hardware to the OS, just like iPhones are today. And it is a brilliant way to kill Linux: people will have to start buying special computers which allow this obtuse feature, in order to install it.
So what about dual-boot users? I bet if I disable secure boot, then I won't be allowed to play DRM'd content or my video driver will refuse to send 1080p video to my screen, or some other such nonsense. So they will be able to claim they they gave people an alternative by crippling it to the point where it is useless.
Some possibitilies:
- A celebrity or politician who was gay, or holds an view unpopular in their party.
- A whistleblower
- Someone who lives in a country where certain speech is considered terrorism, or books are banned, or certain technology is prohibited.
- A male who likes Justin Bieber music.
Everything in your post is heresay, and frankly, incorrect. Let me provide some real data.
The reason California has the highest electricity costs in the western world
Actually, California is #9 in the US in electricity costs. Their rates are comparable to east-coast rates. To name a few: New York, Vermont, Maine, and Hawaii are higher than California. As for the western world, Canada has very cheap energy (LOTS of hydroelectric there) but South American countries pay a lot more for electricity than the US.
...privatized the whole system but without any protection to protect the consumer from price fixing or profit maximization.
Many states have privatized power-supply. But like most states, the infrastructure is maintained by an entirely different company than the ones that provide the electricity. In California, energy prices are partially set by the legislature. California is trying to be green and has very strict energy emissions standards which accounts for at least part of the cost. They also consume a *lot* more energy than other states, partially thanks to air conditioning.
Let me point out yet another round of pseudo-scientific articles with sensational headlines. This time it is the term "self-powered" which implies to the layman that it is "free energy" or "perpetual motion" when in reality it is "salt-powered" as it requires a constant supply of saltwater and freshwater.
I don't think that Intel will be worried that something moved from one non-Intel platform to another non-Intel platform, especially in a market segment that Intel does not compete in. Those Atmel/ARM chips run under $5 per chip, soemtimes under $1. Intel has the Atom chips around $50 at the low-end.
The problem is that DVDs via USPS is the present of content delivery. Much of what I want isn't available for streaming still. So now they make it twice as much effort. I have to look it up for streaming (which I do via Windows Media Center -- so I never even run a browser). Then I have to quit media center, grab a keyboard and mouse, run a browser, visit to a web site, possibly login, and run the same search. Then I add it to my queue and switch back to media center.
Wow - that kinda defeated the purpose of my media center box didn't it?
Now, there are a whole bunch of people that still want DVDs...and that's why they are still playing in that area at all.
Not entirely. I would prefer streaming-only, but they are offering DVDs because too much isn't available for streaming yet. I suspect with Starz leaving that will actually get worse, not better.
I subscribe to both the DVD and streaming services because 50% of what I want to watch isn't available on streaming. So I look it up, go "Oh darn, that one isn't available for streaming. Wanna watch it Wednesday night instead?" Then I click "Add to DVD Queue" and keep surfing.
Microsoft has spent more than a decade offering, then deprecating, various incarnations of pseudo-desktop web applications:
- Windows DNA
- ActiveX
- VBScript applications running in Internet Explorer
- No-touch deployment
- Clickonce applications
The result is "web applications" that offer the worst of both worlds: the limitations of web applications, with the platform dependence and deployment complexities of desktop applications. Historically, they only run on one particular version of Internet Explorer (probably 2 or 3 releases old), require a particular version of Java, require administrator access, and need very specific security settings on your browser. These apps run in a browser but don't work with bookmarks, the back button, or right clicking. They are slow because every operation requires contacting a server AND running logic on the client. On top of it, these apps are tough to write: you have to know a server-side language, HTML + CSS + Javascript + Microsoft's DOM, and probably some other language to cover-over the limitations (hence the Java and/or C++/ActiveX part of things).
If Microsoft does this right this time, these apps will be purely HTML5 + Javascript. But then if that is the case... haven't they just invented the web browser? The apps should run on a Mac then too. So what's the point?
Microsoft has figured out correctly is that people like apps that look like appliances. No more having 10 toolbars so everything is one click. People are happy today to hide the powerful features if it makes things approachable and pretty. The ribbon in Microsoft Office is an attempt to compromise here. The Windows 7 UI buries and removes lots of features. This is akin to phones: even the most basic options on my Android phone require digging into menus to get there. They do it for screen real-estate. Apple's solution is simply to remove the advanced features. Microsoft is seeing the way the market is going and is trying to catch-up to it. They probably go that right, but they need to find a way to do it without alienating the power that we have today.
Son said the 2,000 kilometer (1,200 mile) nationwide power grid he proposed could eventually be expanded to all of Asia, in a massive grid that would run 36,000 kilometers and link Japan with countries including India, China, and Russia.
I have never heard of the idea of running power-lines on the ocean floor. For anyone interested, this idea has come-up before.
The benefits of an intercontinental energy grid
Solar Energy as a Major Replacement for Fossil Fuel
Also, I hope that if Japan does this, they don't become dependent on China for their power needs. They should always have enough to fill their own appetites, considering how easy it would be for a military power to cut them off.
Currently Gen IV plants are in the research stage. Since they take 20+ years to build, I don't think Japan can afford to risk building a theoretical device to meet today's demand. Since Japan is an island, offshore wind power is probably ideal.
We haven't seen the bill, so it is a bit early to tell. However, it sounds to me to be half-good and half-bad:
From the article:
The goal of the proposed law is essentially to hold accountable the companies and entities that store personal information and personal data and to deter data breaches
Punishing entities for crimes is good, and within the purview of government. But I am not sure the government can do a good job of telling them how to secure their data.
These rules would require companies to follow specific storage guidelines and ensure that personal information is stored and protected correctly
The real problem with telling them *how* to do it is that when they do those things, but still get hacked, they can that they followed the regulations so they are innocent. This happens in other highly-regulated fields, and it does make sense to some degree. But this is a field that changes rapidly and is very technical. They can say that the data must be "encrypted" but that is too vague. Or they can say "encrypted with 1024 bit encryption" which is still vague, and does no good in 2 years when every smart phone can break that encryption. On top of it all, you create yet another government regulatory agency.
Ultimately, I am excited about this bill since I have been clamoring for something like this for many years.
Try one of the ASRock barebones PCs. I bought one to replace my last home-built silent PC.
understood.
Ideas are not patentable! Patents cover IMPLEMENTATIONS!
According the article:
For example, one of the scenarios shown by Microsoft in the patent filing a belt with “electronic and electromagnetic tracking components” for sensing the movements of the user (although the patent doesn’t appear to be limited to that specific approach).
It sounds like they patented some vague idea of how something might be accomplished. That's not what patents are for.
this patent application was actually submitted way back in 2006 and only approved after years of back-and-forth with the patent office
I can see why... since it isn't a patent. Why was it granted at all? So in case I'm just overblowing this, lets look at the patent itself...
...Moreover, the presentation system 101 can employ a personal computer, a projection unit, a system including 3D goggles and headphones, or a simulator providing visual, audible, and physical stimulation, and the like, to present activities of the virtual guest to the user....
Aaand how would you do that? Elsewhere in the patent it talks about presenting virtual smells to the user. Right now, there is no technology to do that. This would be like me patenting teleportation by saying there is some sort of matter-to-energy and energy-to-matter device at either end, with some form of communication in the middle. That's the *idea* of teleportation, not a patentable implementation of it.
Almost every paragraph in the patent says something like this:
What has been described above includes examples of aspects of the claimed subject matter. It is, of course, not possible to describe every conceivable combination of components or methodologies for purposes of describing the claimed subject matter, but one of ordinary skill in the art may recognize that many further combinations and permutations of the disclosed subject matter are possible.
So it keeps admitting that they have no idea how to do this, or what combination of devices might achieve it, but they want to have all of them covered. Ordinarily, a patent author tries and make the patent broad enough to cover similar implementations - so that a trivial change can't be used to avoid paying the royalties. But this is ridiculous.
I think this is perhaps the second most quintissential example of the patent office gone wrong. The best example was when someone patented the tire swing. (Can someone find that? The closest I found was The patent on how to swing.
Then can you update the Wikipedia entry? Because that isn't at all what it sounds like. They really really say it was an operating system. Even mentions that it has interrupt dispatch code written in x86.
This is very important research because test scores are the only measure of a child's success! Experience with real life tools are irrelevant. Keeping students engaged isn't important.
Putting my tongue-in-cheek assessment aside, not every investment immediately yields an increase in test scores: nor should we only invest in things that do. Test scores are important, but they are not the only measure of a student's success. In 10 years no one will look back and say that adding laptops to schools was a bad idea any more than they will tell us that adding light bulbs or bathrooms was a bad idea. Technology moves forward, and schools should keep up or risk their test scores going down. It won't be too long before every 4-year-old has a portable computer of some kind.
fair enough. :-)
Read the article. It was just one member, and they were just testing their tools. The article summary is written almost as poorly as the original article so it really isn't clear.
Thanks for correcting someone without telling us what the right numbers are. So I have to Google it myself. Let's see...
Current levels:
Google search for co2 ppm: 380ppm, 390ppm, 350ppm, 380ppm, 385ppm. Fairly consistent.
Pre-industrial:
Google search for pre-industrial co2 levels: 280ppm, 280ppm, 275ppm - 284ppm, 280ppm. Looks good.
Would you care to tell us what was wrong with the original numbers? I'm assuming you're not simply arrogant and you just misread the first post because the rest of your post was... oh, nevermind.
This makes Slashdot sounds like a sportscaster:
"With his 63rd consecutive summary, CowboyNeal writes..."
"With a record breaking 3 spelling errors in one summary, Rob Malda writes..."
Having never heard of Guile, I think I can take a good guess as to why it has not been adopted:
Guile is an implementation and dialect of the Scheme programming language (Scheme is a dialect of LISP itself)
Oh my.
LISP found a niche as an AI research/programming language, and sometimes for symbolic math manipulation, but has never been used in the mainstream. Most programmers have never heard of it. Universities teach it in whatever token course covers 10 languages in one semester with no depth at all. Hardly anyone writes everyday software in LISP. It is not appropriate for general-purpose scripting.
I am prepared to be flamed...