You could increase "safety" of food in other ways (I put safety in quotes because contamination from food isn't a statisticly significant source of death in the industrialized world)... The trouble is that it costs a lot of money.
I mean there is all kinds of stuff that you could do to make food safer, if you want to make food 5 or 10 times more expensive. All the issues you are talking about would significantly increase the cost of food to address (if it was cheap to fix the problem, the companies would have fixed the problem). When danger from food is essentially nill, most people aren't going to be willing to pay astronomical prices for extra food "safety".
However, a product that costs virtually nothing that could make food safer is welcome.
Instead of debating whether the viruses are potentially harmful or not, we should consider whether what's happening in the food industry is harmful or not.
Why debate what is happening in the food industry? What concern is it to you? Healthy food has never been cheaper or easier to get. Unprocessed foods like fruits and vegetables are universally available, and most supermarkets have an organic produce as well as organic packaged food. Specialty stores are opening up all over the place offering healthy foods (I have 5 "health food" stores in a 10 minute walk from my home... as well as a store that sells "humanely" raised and butchered meat fed organic feed). Food isn't some dismal one-sized-fits-all take-it-or-leave-it government run industry like education or health care (although I am sure Food Nazis like you would prefer it that way)... and the government isn't requiring that this product be used. So why would you be worried about it? Why do we need any debate whatsoever about this product? I am a vegetarian, and I never have any problem cooking meals without meat, so you shouldn't have any trouble whatsoever cooking meals without this additive.
It is authoritarian busy bodies like you who are the reason you can't get unpasturized cheese in the U.S.... and Amish people go to prison when they sell whole unpasterized milk for $2 to undercover agents (Yes, thanks to people like you there is absurd things like Miami Vice style undercover agents going after unpasterized milk!!!). Can't you start some voluntary food dictatorship organization... where the organization can tell you what to eat and if you disobey you can self-flagellate or something? The only debate you should be worried about is debating how you are going to mind your own buisness and stay the hell out of other people's eating habits!
If a big tech company is doing poorly, there is no reason for you to improve your product or service, or to cut costs, or to compete fairly. Simply put political pressure to "investigate" a succesful upstart competitor, and watch their stock prices sink!
The ones with the most capital to influence politicians will be able to dominate the economy, and the whole thing will be cheered on by the masses who think they are somehow "sticking it to the man". (Even though "the man" wrote the laws, approved the laws, and enforce the laws!).
Yeah, the U.S. government will start throwing tech CEOs in prison, and all the nation's worries are over with. It isn't like there are smart, well trained, buisness savy people OUTSIDE the bullying power of the U.S. government who would be happy to take over the tech industry.
This is a bit off topic... but I had to address some extreme stupidity:
topping Hitler from conquering the world was a good thing, just as stopping Bush from doing it today would be a good thing.
G. W. Bush is having a hard enough time holding on to two small countries, one of which had no organized military, the other which was essentially a third world country largly disarmed after a previous war and 10 years of sanctions (and in both cases Bush had significant help from allies). The thought that there is any danger, whatsoever, of G. W. Bush conquering the world, or even conquering another poorly armed isolated third world country, is laughable. G. W. Bush couldn't conquer New Orleans, let alone conquer the world.
In terms of the cost of the conflict, Bush's little "adventures" barely even measure up to the Second Chechen War happening roughly at the same time, or the Dafur Conflict happening at roughly the same time, let alone something like WWII.
I am no fan of the Dubya, but please try to keep some sort of sense of scale. In history, G. W. Bush will be remembered as a second-rate wannabe dictator... In the halls of infamy, maybe he will be in the running with a Pinochet or Papa Doc Duvalier, but certainly not at the level of an Idi Amin or Castro, let alone a Hitler or Stalin or such.
Finally, governments do not give one tenth of one fuck about what these guys' license says.
Ok, so on this point and most of the rest of the post, you 100% hit the nail on the head. Maybe I am being a bit of a jerk with the "extreme stupidity" comment... But please, remember Godwin - Hitler comments are the spark that ignites flamewars:)
How about instead of using a slow and inefficent policical process to mandate one single security model or technological system as the be-all end-all to all our security problems - we instead leave security entirely up to the people who have the most to lose from airplane destruction: airports, airlines, and passengers. Let each airport and airline decide on their own security policies, purchase their own security equipment, and handle everything in a way specialized for their own specific situation... and give customers the choice to decide what security system they feel is the safest (or the least hassle, depending on their own personal preference) by selecting an airline or airport that they fell comfortable with.
The problem with the Soviet-style centrally planned monopoly goverment security as provided by the TSA is:
1. If you know how to compromise security in one place in the U.S., you know how to compromise security everywhere in the U.S.... Where as if each airport and airline handled their own security, and were allowed to customize security policies based on a specific situation, there would be so many diverse security policies and techniques, and policies would be so dynamic and unpredictable, that there would be no sure fire way to get past any security.
2. In the U.S. Soviet system, there is no experimentation. The system is implemented, and there is no other system to compare it to. In a private and localized system, there would be experimentation and diversity and change... people would be able to compare the effectivness of different security models, and see what policies work, and there would be a constant evolution of security.
3. There is no incentive to invest in technology that speeds up security checks. Airlines would be more willing to invest in technology that improves the speed of security checks, as it would be a competitive advantage to the airline. Right now, if there is a $1,000,000 machine that could speed up check-in and security, it doesn't matter as security related delays effect all airlines equally. No airline loses buisness to another airline because of security delays... airlines just keep telling their passangers to be at the airport earlier and earlier and don't have to worry about doing anything to speed it up to stay competitive.
Basicly, no technology is going to improve anything so long as the U.S. continues to use the Soviet Socialist model for providing security. Making the TSA the sole provider of airport security makes about as much sense as would making Microsoft the sole provider of operating system security - Monoculture and lack of diversity is inherently insecure. The TSA is security theater, designed to show that politicians are "serious" about "doing something" about security.
And before you reply telling me how "the government needs to be in charge of airline security because airports or airlines are evil capitalist corporations and have no incentive to provide good security", and "getting rid of the TSA would be the end of the world and cause terrorists to blow up all our planes" - Please note that the top 19 of the 20 largest airports in Europe all use private security contracted by the airport to do airline screening, and have a much better security screening than the U.S. (so much for the stereotype of the "Socialist Europe" and "Free Market U.S.A."). Even terrorist paranoid Israel uses private airline screeners!
1. It would not dump any excess radiation to the Earths surface. It would effect the ionosphere and possibly (speculative since the technology only exists in people's imagination), effecting how radio waves bounce off the ionosphere.
2. Even if it did, this is primarily proposed as a defense against nuclear detonations in the upper atmosphere... I think detonating nuclear weapons in the upper atmosphere is going to cause so many problems with radio that this plan would be the least of people's worries.
You throw the words "radiation" into an article, and throw in "U.S. Military" for good measure, and people start to lose basic common sense. You would have people demanding a global ban on lightbulbs if you told them that the "U.S. Military is widely deploying small radiation emmiting devices to facilitate night time observation."
True... I pay attention to gas mileage, price, and other things when buying a car... but then again, I don't buy high end cars. If I was buying a $100,000 sports car, looks would be far more important than with my $20,000 economy car. I actually chose a PC over a mac for a mid-range machine, even though the mac looked a lot nicer... but if I was paying more than $4,000 for a new computer, looks would most certainly start to take importants.
Windows machines just aren't sexy enought to inspire any sort of technology-lust, the way macs are. When people pay a lot of money for something, they want it to look cool. Look at the amazing looking designs on high-end audiophile hi-fi systems, and the rather generic designs on consumer electronics, and it is the same thing. Something that you spend a lot of money on, is obviously very important to you - and so should provide a sort of esthetic fulfillment beyond "it gets the job done".
I don't think Microsoft will be able to compete with Mac on looks, because they don't have control over the manufacturers (although I must say the xbox 360 looks nice). But it is a sensible thing to try to make sure that PCs aren't known for being big, ugly, boxes.
The primary reason that people are into macs (although they may deny it), is that macs look nice. Same as when they buy automobiles, or choose who to date, looks do matter. If I am going to spend $4,000+ on a new computer, I want a little effort put into appearance. Most PCs are just ugly... utilitarian at the very best. The "attractive" PCs are still souped up gaming machines that look pretty silly if you are doing anything other than gaming on them.
I might buy a cheap to mid range PC, but if I am going to spend a lot of money for the high end machine, it will be on a mac. Microsoft realizes this, and it is quite sensible that they would want to compete on looks. The difficulty they will have is that Microsoft has no real control over manufacturing like Apple does.
I don't think stem cell research should be singled out to lose funding. I think that if the government funds research, it should most certainly fund stem cell research (There is obviously a lot worse technology that it could, and probably is, funding).
However, the real issue is keeping stem cell research legal. Everyone knows that vetoing federal funding for stem cell research is a stop-gap measure until they can get the political support to ban all stem cell research (even private stem cell research).
And by keeping funding for research private instead of public, we eliminate these stupid politically motivated research bans.
What makes you think that companies think in short term profits? And what makes you think that government thinks in the long term? I have never seen a politician who thinks farther than the next election - hence the Bush decision on stem cells... Where as a 30 year old investor is likely to think about profits 20-30 years down the line... and even a 60 year old investor has incentive to maximize his wealth to pass it on to his kids. There is much more incentive for long term planning in the private sector than in government.
Also, what makes you think that stem cell research doesn't have immediate potential for profit? It is being used to produce working treatments RIGHT NOW. It is going to make a lot of money, very soon (provided it stays legal).
Your whole point is based on a set of confused assumptions.
There is no constitution authority to "promote the general welfare". Promoting the "general welfare" is so vauge that if we assume the government has that power there is virtually no constitutional limit on anything it can do.
What the preamble is saying, is that by following the constitution, we are "promoting the general welfare". The preamble is basicly saying "following the constitution will promote the general welfare". The constitution itself is not vauge at all - Government funding of research, without a constitutional amendment explicitly authorizing such research, is illegal according to the constitution. Period.
THE MAIN REASON we are not seeing enormous amounts of private money being thrown towards stell cell researchers is simple: we are still working on the BASIC SCIENCE.
No, the reason we aren't seeing enormous amounts of private money being thrown towards stem cell research is because companies don't want to be assed-out when private stem-cell research is banned in America. It is a little risky spending billions on a technology, when the technology could be declared illegal with the stroke of a pen. When G. W. Bush vetos public stem cell funding he is sending a message about where our country is going... today we get rid of government stem cell research, tommorow we get rid of all stem cell research.
Big Pharma doesn't want to invest in something that isn't going to pay off until decades down the road.
Are you kidding? You got to be joking, right? Big Pharma doesn't want to invest in something that won't make any money... but it will absolutly, without a doubt invest in something that won't pay off till decades down the road if the payoff is big! Buisness is more far sighted than governments, who think only as far ahead as the next election. Don't believe this central-planning propoganda that buisnesses are somehow more shortsighted than government. Government has a terrible, horrible, disasterous track record when it comes to being "forward thinking".
These organizations wait for the government to front for the basic science, then they jump on a few years down the road saving millions of dollars in R&D.
Here is where you are actually 100% correct. Big Pharma actually supports government funding of research and lobbies for government funding of research - I mean, why shouldn't they: the government spends the money, and they get the profit. Who wouldn't like to get free capital from the government? I mean, if McDonalds could figure out a way to get the government to subsidize beef patties, they would do that! If Ford could figure out a way to get the government to subsidize hub caps, they would do that. That is basic self-interest at work.
But why not make Big Pharma fund the research themselves? They reap the profits, they should accept the costs. That sounds much more fair to me than having me subsidize basic research so some CEO can see his stock prices go up.
To give them a subsidy distorts their economic relationships... because the true cost of drugs are hidden through taxation, consumers cannot make a reasonable cost/benfit analysis about the drugs they consume. You end up with weird distortions in the market, with drugs that give you a hard-on costing more than drugs that save your life... even though drugs that save people's lives are much more valuable and companies should be rewarded with larger profits for making those kinds of drugs over non life saving drugs.
Virtually all public works projects are required to use union labor, and contracts are doled out by political patronage. It is absolutly impposible to get polical support for a project without support from the big labor unions. Most of the construction workers working on bug public projects earn more than your typical Slashdot software developer. Illegal immigrants are just not an issue in this kind of situation.
While a normal company, operating in a free market, there might be strong pressures to use the cheapest labor possible - This is a total and complete non-issue with projects like the Big Dig. Big public works projects are a love affair between big government, big buisness, and big labor, and the labor part isn't going to let illegal immigrants mess with the gravy train. Normal economics do not apply.
That being said, even if your fantasy was true and the Big Dig was being entirely staffed by people gathered on the streets of mexico city and secretly shipped in via cargo container... that was not the problem. There are more than enough native born white skinned morons in America to fuck things up big time without having to blame things on illegal immigrants.
Hate to burst your bubble, but that's exactly what the FDA does with pharmaceuticals. Both government and business will go out of their way to ignore safety issues when there's money involved.
Shit... It costs over a billion dollars and and around a decade of effort to get drugs approved in the U.S... and at the same time people with terminal diseases can't get the drugs that might save them, because those drugs haven't been proven safe (If you have terminal cancer and know you are going to die, you are not allowed to take a drug that has fatal side effects for say 25% of patients, because that is too "risky"). Proper statistics aren't recorded on people who die waiting for drugs, but I have heard estimates as high as half a million Americans who might have died of diseases that could have been treated with unapproved medicines if given the choice.
I would hate to see how many innocent people would die and how many trillions would be wasted if the government were truly serious about "protecting" us from every unlikely problem related to medicines. Certainly asprin, morphine, most antibiotics, and most childhood vaccinations would not be approved if they were developed today (luckily, things like antibiotics and lots of vaccinations were developed before people like you lost your mind with safety hysterics, so they are kind of grandfathered into use. Our children won't be going cripple from Polio, or I won't die from an infection in my litte toe, because of risky and unsafe drugs like polio vaccine or penicillin)
Maybe the government should get out of the buisness of telling people what chemicals or plants they are or aren't allowed to put into their body, and let patients and their health care professionals have the final say on health. And safety nazis should listen to a little more common sense instead of trial lawyer propoganda and fear mongering!
There is nothing new about this. If you make a new law, or a new regulation, you need "proof" that said law or regulation is working. Since real terrorists are about as rare as multi-million dollar lottery winners, and since these techniques have a dubious ability to stop terrorists at best, how can you show that you are "succeeding" against terrorists? You have to invent them.
This same thing happens for just about any law they make, if it is gun laws, or drug laws (cause we have been winning the war on drugs these last 30 years according to the government!), or computer crime laws, or enviornmental laws, or whatever. You need to put a certain number of people away in order to look like you are "doing something" about the problem. People want "results", and people behind bars are "results".
Every law needs to be looked at with a cost benifit analysis. Is the cost in innocent people being punished worth the cost to society caused by the crime? Unfortunatly, people think that they can pass a law against something, and there is not going to be a social cost in enforcing it. Laws are a crude and clumsy way to stop something before it happens (laws are designed to punish a crime after a crime, or to deter a crime because people want to avoid punishment after the fact, but not to prevent a crime).
If you are completly against having a terrorist watchlist, then go ahead and complain. But all you people who support laws like these, and then complain when then turn out badly, shut the hell up! What the hell did you expect to happen when you put unconvicted people on a watchlist? What the hell do you think is going to happen when people are punished because of some risk analysis software decides it is OK?
The U.S. government was not supposed to "project the wishes of the American people". The U.S. government was supposed to keep agressive people from "projecting their wishes" on other unwilling innocent people. The U.S. government was supposed to be peacemaker and guardian of individual liberty, not dictator and grand potentiate.
The U.S. government was designed to be limited. It has fallen far short of that ideal and has become quite authoritarian... but making it even more top-down centralized is not going to suddenly give power to the people.
Democracy isn't popular dictatorship. The reason we have popular elections is not to selected "The Best Guy" to be president, but in order to make sure the president doesn't have almost unlimited power. The assumption is, by making the president have to compromise the ideals of a bunch of different factions, no single faction has absolute control. The hope was that there would be strong geographical divisions on what the president should do, and therefore the president couldn't do all that much harmful.
The president was supposed to be more of a ceremonial figurehead, or chief government secretary, or peacemaker and compromiser amoung political factions, than the god-king that people expect their president to be today.
People complain about Dubya destroying the economy, or destroying the enviornment, or whatever, but they totally ignore the deeper issue - That a single person should never have that much power in the first place. If a political system is so totally dependant on selecting the right all-powerful leader, then that is a fundamental flaw in the system and not really that much a problem with who is elected. In a real Democracy, the president should not be powerful enough to make big mistakes.
Bzzztttt. Wrong answer. The Civil War was largely an economic and social clash between the rising industrial capitalists, and the declining agrarian oligarchs. This manifested itself in disagreements about slavery (which promoted the southern agrarian economy, but hurt the northern industrial economy), and about tarifs on imported industrial goods (the north wanted tarifs on foriegn industrial goods in order to expand American industrialism, the south wanted free trade to trade cotton to England in exchange for cheap imported industrial goods).
This will have such little effect on politics, why bother? A candidate lost with the popular vote only twice, and winning on electorial votes is arguable a legit tactic (in order to keep candidates from ignoring every state but California, Texas, Florida, and New York).
Here are some things that would actually improve the political process:
1. Use a politically neutral algorithm to devise voting districts, to eliminate gerrymandering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymander 2. Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, and let state legislators vote for Senators (in order to eliminate centralization of power on the federal level). 3. Let state legislators vote for the president directly (something similiar to the Swiss Canton system), which once again would eliminate the centralization of power in the hands of the federal government. 4. Eliminate all regulation on political parties and elgibility requirments for elections, that essentially ban all parties but the Democrats and Republicans from elections. 5. Enforce strict term limits to keep career politicians out of government. 6. Eliminate all government funding to political parties. 7. A constitutional balanced budget amendment. An amendment to strictly limit federal taxes. etc.
Or in other words, why should I - already having a top-end gaming PC - buy one? Which games does it offer that I can't play otherwise, and that are worth the ridiculously high prices (70e+ in some parts of europe)
If you have a top-end gaming PC, you SHOULD NOT buy the Xbox 360.
However, here are some issues that make a console attractive:
1. Your high end gaming PC is most likely a Windows machine. If you switch to a console for your gaming, you can switch to Linux or a mac for your PC use. Most of the power-users I know who haven't switched to mac/Linux from Windows are people whos work requires windows (Windows developers for example), or people who are gamers.
2. By doing my gaming on a console, my laptop is a tax write off. (and a laptop would be out of the question as a gaming machine anyway)
3. If you do actual professional work on your PC, it can be compromised by the "copy protection" on certain gaming software.
4. Your PC can be optimized for whatever non-gaming you do on your computer.
5. For people who work professionally on computers, a console offers a clear mental seperation between work/play. If I am at my computer, I feel compelled to do work, check email, read the news, etc.
So, if you already forked out the money for your high-end PC, it is an absolute waste to buy a gaming console (unless you are rich). But as your gaming PC ages, you might want to consider getting a mac or installing linux on your gaming machine and play on a console.
As for Triple A titles for the Xbox 360, check out Dead Rising and Test Drive Unlimited. Both are coming out very soon as stick out in my mind as interesting high budget games. I doubt they will be exclusive to the 360 (I am not sure), but your arguement seems to be PC vs Console more than about the 360.
One of the easiest ways to protect yourself on Windows is to not run as Admin. Only log into admin when you want to install new software, or when you want to update Windows, etc. In my opinion this is way more effective than any AV software (although I would recommend AV anyway). I would say that 50% (at least) of the nasty things that happen to Windows machines are caused by the fact that people tend to run as Admin by default.
People would never dream of running as root all the time on their Linux machine, yet those same people often run as an admin in Windows XP.
Yay! Election '08 will include podcasts... of course the podcasts will be of politicians trying very hard not to take a firm stand on controversial issues, making vauge and completly meaningless promises ("I promise to help every American achieve the 'American Dream'"... "I promise to protect America"), and lots of issueless propoganda human interest videos designed to make a candidate more "human" and "likeable" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDhv15EKJNo&search= al%20gore%20unseen ).
So called "Democracy Activists" will hail it as a great victory for "people power"... meanwhile elections will take place in gerrymandered ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymander ) districts to keep incumbent politicians in power, "Campaign Finance Reform" laws like McCain-Feingold will be used to censor political speech ( http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory16.html ), and third parties will be banned from elections by catch-22 regulations ("Your party needed to have recieved 10% of the vote in the last election in order to be on the ballot this year"... Yeah, but if you are not on the ballot, how the hell do you ever get on the ballot? Essentially the law only allows Republicans or Democrats to run), or banned from gatherings or fundraising by legal harrasment ( http://thirdpartywatch.com/2006/07/10/nude-liberta rian-fundraiser-foiled/ ), etc. And the FBI will be used to spy on political adversaries (done by both Dubya and Clinton).
I expect podcasting to even further degrade journalism and become more sensationalized. Check out the lowering in the quality of debate in 24 years:
Here is an example of the difference in questions asked in 1980: "Mr. President, when you were elected in 1976, the Consumer Price Index stood at 4.8%. It now stands at more than 12%. Perhaps more significantly, the nation's broader, underlying inflation rate has gone up from 7% to 9%. Now, a part of that was due to external factors beyond U.S. control, notably the more than doubling. of oil prices by OPEC last year. Because the United States remains vulnerable to such external shocks, can inflation in fact be controlled? If so, what measures would you pursue in a second term?"
And the type of questions asked in 2004: "Mr. President, what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who's being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?"
I challenge anyone to tell me that the debates haven't turned into a completly idiotic parody of Democracy.
Sorry folks, Democracy was supposed to be about people governing themselves... and by governing themselves, I mean people making decisions for themselves. Having a popularity contest for 300 million people to elect a centralized executive branch and legislative branch with no limits on power whatsoever is not Democracy - It is popular authoritarianism. You doing whatever you want (so long as it doesn't directly harm someone else) is Democracy, electing a tiny oligarchy to have total power over your life, your education, transportation, health care, lifestyle choice, and economics is not democracy - It is popular totalitarianism! Giving the handful of eligble people in the elite political class better viral marketing is not going to do anything to make the country better. It is only going to create the presidential version of the Subserviant Chicken the norm.
Seriously, the crime statistics in England are a testimate to the civility and self-control and strong moral character of the British people.
Because you can basicly rob and violently assault anyone you want there, and the only one who faces any kind of real punishment is the victim if they defend themself.
As long as a violent criminal makes sure they don't say anything politically incorrect (in that case they can be charged with a hate crime, which really does seem to get punished), you don't have anything to worry about!
Sure, crime might be up in the U.K.... What is amazing is that it isn't even higher! Given that you get less time for violent crimes there than you would insulting a horse or given a traffic camera the middle finger.
Slashdot Mirror
Virtually all food has virus in it... so should all food carry a virus warning?
No, small quantities don't build up over time... this isn't a heavy metal like arsenic!
You could increase "safety" of food in other ways (I put safety in quotes because contamination from food isn't a statisticly significant source of death in the industrialized world)... The trouble is that it costs a lot of money.
... and Amish people go to prison when they sell whole unpasterized milk for $2 to undercover agents (Yes, thanks to people like you there is absurd things like Miami Vice style undercover agents going after unpasterized milk!!!). Can't you start some voluntary food dictatorship organization... where the organization can tell you what to eat and if you disobey you can self-flagellate or something? The only debate you should be worried about is debating how you are going to mind your own buisness and stay the hell out of other people's eating habits!
I mean there is all kinds of stuff that you could do to make food safer, if you want to make food 5 or 10 times more expensive. All the issues you are talking about would significantly increase the cost of food to address (if it was cheap to fix the problem, the companies would have fixed the problem). When danger from food is essentially nill, most people aren't going to be willing to pay astronomical prices for extra food "safety".
However, a product that costs virtually nothing that could make food safer is welcome.
Instead of debating whether the viruses are potentially harmful or not, we should consider whether what's happening in the food industry is harmful or not.
Why debate what is happening in the food industry? What concern is it to you? Healthy food has never been cheaper or easier to get. Unprocessed foods like fruits and vegetables are universally available, and most supermarkets have an organic produce as well as organic packaged food. Specialty stores are opening up all over the place offering healthy foods (I have 5 "health food" stores in a 10 minute walk from my home... as well as a store that sells "humanely" raised and butchered meat fed organic feed). Food isn't some dismal one-sized-fits-all take-it-or-leave-it government run industry like education or health care (although I am sure Food Nazis like you would prefer it that way)... and the government isn't requiring that this product be used. So why would you be worried about it? Why do we need any debate whatsoever about this product? I am a vegetarian, and I never have any problem cooking meals without meat, so you shouldn't have any trouble whatsoever cooking meals without this additive.
It is authoritarian busy bodies like you who are the reason you can't get unpasturized cheese in the U.S.
I try to post a humorous message in all caps, and the Slashdot "Lameness Filter" doesn't let me!
If a big tech company is doing poorly, there is no reason for you to improve your product or service, or to cut costs, or to compete fairly. Simply put political pressure to "investigate" a succesful upstart competitor, and watch their stock prices sink!
The ones with the most capital to influence politicians will be able to dominate the economy, and the whole thing will be cheered on by the masses who think they are somehow "sticking it to the man". (Even though "the man" wrote the laws, approved the laws, and enforce the laws!).
Yeah, the U.S. government will start throwing tech CEOs in prison, and all the nation's worries are over with. It isn't like there are smart, well trained, buisness savy people OUTSIDE the bullying power of the U.S. government who would be happy to take over the tech industry.
This is a bit off topic... but I had to address some extreme stupidity:
:)
topping Hitler from conquering the world was a good thing, just as stopping Bush from doing it today would be a good thing.
G. W. Bush is having a hard enough time holding on to two small countries, one of which had no organized military, the other which was essentially a third world country largly disarmed after a previous war and 10 years of sanctions (and in both cases Bush had significant help from allies). The thought that there is any danger, whatsoever, of G. W. Bush conquering the world, or even conquering another poorly armed isolated third world country, is laughable. G. W. Bush couldn't conquer New Orleans, let alone conquer the world.
In terms of the cost of the conflict, Bush's little "adventures" barely even measure up to the Second Chechen War happening roughly at the same time, or the Dafur Conflict happening at roughly the same time, let alone something like WWII.
I am no fan of the Dubya, but please try to keep some sort of sense of scale. In history, G. W. Bush will be remembered as a second-rate wannabe dictator... In the halls of infamy, maybe he will be in the running with a Pinochet or Papa Doc Duvalier, but certainly not at the level of an Idi Amin or Castro, let alone a Hitler or Stalin or such.
Finally, governments do not give one tenth of one fuck about what these guys' license says.
Ok, so on this point and most of the rest of the post, you 100% hit the nail on the head. Maybe I am being a bit of a jerk with the "extreme stupidity" comment... But please, remember Godwin - Hitler comments are the spark that ignites flamewars
How about instead of using a slow and inefficent policical process to mandate one single security model or technological system as the be-all end-all to all our security problems - we instead leave security entirely up to the people who have the most to lose from airplane destruction: airports, airlines, and passengers. Let each airport and airline decide on their own security policies, purchase their own security equipment, and handle everything in a way specialized for their own specific situation... and give customers the choice to decide what security system they feel is the safest (or the least hassle, depending on their own personal preference) by selecting an airline or airport that they fell comfortable with.
... Where as if each airport and airline handled their own security, and were allowed to customize security policies based on a specific situation, there would be so many diverse security policies and techniques, and policies would be so dynamic and unpredictable, that there would be no sure fire way to get past any security.
The problem with the Soviet-style centrally planned monopoly goverment security as provided by the TSA is:
1. If you know how to compromise security in one place in the U.S., you know how to compromise security everywhere in the U.S.
2. In the U.S. Soviet system, there is no experimentation. The system is implemented, and there is no other system to compare it to. In a private and localized system, there would be experimentation and diversity and change... people would be able to compare the effectivness of different security models, and see what policies work, and there would be a constant evolution of security.
3. There is no incentive to invest in technology that speeds up security checks. Airlines would be more willing to invest in technology that improves the speed of security checks, as it would be a competitive advantage to the airline. Right now, if there is a $1,000,000 machine that could speed up check-in and security, it doesn't matter as security related delays effect all airlines equally. No airline loses buisness to another airline because of security delays... airlines just keep telling their passangers to be at the airport earlier and earlier and don't have to worry about doing anything to speed it up to stay competitive.
Basicly, no technology is going to improve anything so long as the U.S. continues to use the Soviet Socialist model for providing security. Making the TSA the sole provider of airport security makes about as much sense as would making Microsoft the sole provider of operating system security - Monoculture and lack of diversity is inherently insecure. The TSA is security theater, designed to show that politicians are "serious" about "doing something" about security.
And before you reply telling me how "the government needs to be in charge of airline security because airports or airlines are evil capitalist corporations and have no incentive to provide good security", and "getting rid of the TSA would be the end of the world and cause terrorists to blow up all our planes" - Please note that the top 19 of the 20 largest airports in Europe all use private security contracted by the airport to do airline screening, and have a much better security screening than the U.S. (so much for the stereotype of the "Socialist Europe" and "Free Market U.S.A."). Even terrorist paranoid Israel uses private airline screeners!
1. It would not dump any excess radiation to the Earths surface. It would effect the ionosphere and possibly (speculative since the technology only exists in people's imagination), effecting how radio waves bounce off the ionosphere.
2. Even if it did, this is primarily proposed as a defense against nuclear detonations in the upper atmosphere... I think detonating nuclear weapons in the upper atmosphere is going to cause so many problems with radio that this plan would be the least of people's worries.
You throw the words "radiation" into an article, and throw in "U.S. Military" for good measure, and people start to lose basic common sense. You would have people demanding a global ban on lightbulbs if you told them that the "U.S. Military is widely deploying small radiation emmiting devices to facilitate night time observation."
True... I pay attention to gas mileage, price, and other things when buying a car... but then again, I don't buy high end cars. If I was buying a $100,000 sports car, looks would be far more important than with my $20,000 economy car. I actually chose a PC over a mac for a mid-range machine, even though the mac looked a lot nicer... but if I was paying more than $4,000 for a new computer, looks would most certainly start to take importants.
Windows machines just aren't sexy enought to inspire any sort of technology-lust, the way macs are. When people pay a lot of money for something, they want it to look cool. Look at the amazing looking designs on high-end audiophile hi-fi systems, and the rather generic designs on consumer electronics, and it is the same thing. Something that you spend a lot of money on, is obviously very important to you - and so should provide a sort of esthetic fulfillment beyond "it gets the job done".
I don't think Microsoft will be able to compete with Mac on looks, because they don't have control over the manufacturers (although I must say the xbox 360 looks nice). But it is a sensible thing to try to make sure that PCs aren't known for being big, ugly, boxes.
The primary reason that people are into macs (although they may deny it), is that macs look nice. Same as when they buy automobiles, or choose who to date, looks do matter. If I am going to spend $4,000+ on a new computer, I want a little effort put into appearance. Most PCs are just ugly... utilitarian at the very best. The "attractive" PCs are still souped up gaming machines that look pretty silly if you are doing anything other than gaming on them.
I might buy a cheap to mid range PC, but if I am going to spend a lot of money for the high end machine, it will be on a mac. Microsoft realizes this, and it is quite sensible that they would want to compete on looks. The difficulty they will have is that Microsoft has no real control over manufacturing like Apple does.
I don't think stem cell research should be singled out to lose funding. I think that if the government funds research, it should most certainly fund stem cell research (There is obviously a lot worse technology that it could, and probably is, funding).
However, the real issue is keeping stem cell research legal. Everyone knows that vetoing federal funding for stem cell research is a stop-gap measure until they can get the political support to ban all stem cell research (even private stem cell research).
And by keeping funding for research private instead of public, we eliminate these stupid politically motivated research bans.
What makes you think that companies think in short term profits? And what makes you think that government thinks in the long term? I have never seen a politician who thinks farther than the next election - hence the Bush decision on stem cells... Where as a 30 year old investor is likely to think about profits 20-30 years down the line... and even a 60 year old investor has incentive to maximize his wealth to pass it on to his kids. There is much more incentive for long term planning in the private sector than in government.
Also, what makes you think that stem cell research doesn't have immediate potential for profit? It is being used to produce working treatments RIGHT NOW. It is going to make a lot of money, very soon (provided it stays legal).
Your whole point is based on a set of confused assumptions.
There is no constitution authority to "promote the general welfare". Promoting the "general welfare" is so vauge that if we assume the government has that power there is virtually no constitutional limit on anything it can do.
What the preamble is saying, is that by following the constitution, we are "promoting the general welfare". The preamble is basicly saying "following the constitution will promote the general welfare". The constitution itself is not vauge at all - Government funding of research, without a constitutional amendment explicitly authorizing such research, is illegal according to the constitution. Period.
THE MAIN REASON we are not seeing enormous amounts of private money being thrown towards stell cell researchers is simple: we are still working on the BASIC SCIENCE.
No, the reason we aren't seeing enormous amounts of private money being thrown towards stem cell research is because companies don't want to be assed-out when private stem-cell research is banned in America. It is a little risky spending billions on a technology, when the technology could be declared illegal with the stroke of a pen. When G. W. Bush vetos public stem cell funding he is sending a message about where our country is going... today we get rid of government stem cell research, tommorow we get rid of all stem cell research.
Big Pharma doesn't want to invest in something that isn't going to pay off until decades down the road.
Are you kidding? You got to be joking, right? Big Pharma doesn't want to invest in something that won't make any money... but it will absolutly, without a doubt invest in something that won't pay off till decades down the road if the payoff is big! Buisness is more far sighted than governments, who think only as far ahead as the next election. Don't believe this central-planning propoganda that buisnesses are somehow more shortsighted than government. Government has a terrible, horrible, disasterous track record when it comes to being "forward thinking".
These organizations wait for the government to front for the basic science, then they jump on a few years down the road saving millions of dollars in R&D.
Here is where you are actually 100% correct. Big Pharma actually supports government funding of research and lobbies for government funding of research - I mean, why shouldn't they: the government spends the money, and they get the profit. Who wouldn't like to get free capital from the government? I mean, if McDonalds could figure out a way to get the government to subsidize beef patties, they would do that! If Ford could figure out a way to get the government to subsidize hub caps, they would do that. That is basic self-interest at work.
But why not make Big Pharma fund the research themselves? They reap the profits, they should accept the costs. That sounds much more fair to me than having me subsidize basic research so some CEO can see his stock prices go up.
To give them a subsidy distorts their economic relationships... because the true cost of drugs are hidden through taxation, consumers cannot make a reasonable cost/benfit analysis about the drugs they consume. You end up with weird distortions in the market, with drugs that give you a hard-on costing more than drugs that save your life... even though drugs that save people's lives are much more valuable and companies should be rewarded with larger profits for making those kinds of drugs over non life saving drugs.
Virtually all public works projects are required to use union labor, and contracts are doled out by political patronage. It is absolutly impposible to get polical support for a project without support from the big labor unions. Most of the construction workers working on bug public projects earn more than your typical Slashdot software developer. Illegal immigrants are just not an issue in this kind of situation.
While a normal company, operating in a free market, there might be strong pressures to use the cheapest labor possible - This is a total and complete non-issue with projects like the Big Dig. Big public works projects are a love affair between big government, big buisness, and big labor, and the labor part isn't going to let illegal immigrants mess with the gravy train. Normal economics do not apply.
That being said, even if your fantasy was true and the Big Dig was being entirely staffed by people gathered on the streets of mexico city and secretly shipped in via cargo container... that was not the problem. There are more than enough native born white skinned morons in America to fuck things up big time without having to blame things on illegal immigrants.
Hate to burst your bubble, but that's exactly what the FDA does with pharmaceuticals. Both government and business will go out of their way to ignore safety issues when there's money involved.
Shit... It costs over a billion dollars and and around a decade of effort to get drugs approved in the U.S... and at the same time people with terminal diseases can't get the drugs that might save them, because those drugs haven't been proven safe (If you have terminal cancer and know you are going to die, you are not allowed to take a drug that has fatal side effects for say 25% of patients, because that is too "risky"). Proper statistics aren't recorded on people who die waiting for drugs, but I have heard estimates as high as half a million Americans who might have died of diseases that could have been treated with unapproved medicines if given the choice.
I would hate to see how many innocent people would die and how many trillions would be wasted if the government were truly serious about "protecting" us from every unlikely problem related to medicines. Certainly asprin, morphine, most antibiotics, and most childhood vaccinations would not be approved if they were developed today (luckily, things like antibiotics and lots of vaccinations were developed before people like you lost your mind with safety hysterics, so they are kind of grandfathered into use. Our children won't be going cripple from Polio, or I won't die from an infection in my litte toe, because of risky and unsafe drugs like polio vaccine or penicillin)
Maybe the government should get out of the buisness of telling people what chemicals or plants they are or aren't allowed to put into their body, and let patients and their health care professionals have the final say on health. And safety nazis should listen to a little more common sense instead of trial lawyer propoganda and fear mongering!
There is nothing new about this. If you make a new law, or a new regulation, you need "proof" that said law or regulation is working. Since real terrorists are about as rare as multi-million dollar lottery winners, and since these techniques have a dubious ability to stop terrorists at best, how can you show that you are "succeeding" against terrorists? You have to invent them.
This same thing happens for just about any law they make, if it is gun laws, or drug laws (cause we have been winning the war on drugs these last 30 years according to the government!), or computer crime laws, or enviornmental laws, or whatever. You need to put a certain number of people away in order to look like you are "doing something" about the problem. People want "results", and people behind bars are "results".
Every law needs to be looked at with a cost benifit analysis. Is the cost in innocent people being punished worth the cost to society caused by the crime? Unfortunatly, people think that they can pass a law against something, and there is not going to be a social cost in enforcing it. Laws are a crude and clumsy way to stop something before it happens (laws are designed to punish a crime after a crime, or to deter a crime because people want to avoid punishment after the fact, but not to prevent a crime).
If you are completly against having a terrorist watchlist, then go ahead and complain. But all you people who support laws like these, and then complain when then turn out badly, shut the hell up! What the hell did you expect to happen when you put unconvicted people on a watchlist? What the hell do you think is going to happen when people are punished because of some risk analysis software decides it is OK?
The U.S. government was not supposed to "project the wishes of the American people". The U.S. government was supposed to keep agressive people from "projecting their wishes" on other unwilling innocent people. The U.S. government was supposed to be peacemaker and guardian of individual liberty, not dictator and grand potentiate.
The U.S. government was designed to be limited. It has fallen far short of that ideal and has become quite authoritarian... but making it even more top-down centralized is not going to suddenly give power to the people.
Democracy isn't popular dictatorship. The reason we have popular elections is not to selected "The Best Guy" to be president, but in order to make sure the president doesn't have almost unlimited power. The assumption is, by making the president have to compromise the ideals of a bunch of different factions, no single faction has absolute control. The hope was that there would be strong geographical divisions on what the president should do, and therefore the president couldn't do all that much harmful.
The president was supposed to be more of a ceremonial figurehead, or chief government secretary, or peacemaker and compromiser amoung political factions, than the god-king that people expect their president to be today.
People complain about Dubya destroying the economy, or destroying the enviornment, or whatever, but they totally ignore the deeper issue - That a single person should never have that much power in the first place. If a political system is so totally dependant on selecting the right all-powerful leader, then that is a fundamental flaw in the system and not really that much a problem with who is elected. In a real Democracy, the president should not be powerful enough to make big mistakes.
Bzzztttt. Wrong answer. The Civil War was largely an economic and social clash between the rising industrial capitalists, and the declining agrarian oligarchs. This manifested itself in disagreements about slavery (which promoted the southern agrarian economy, but hurt the northern industrial economy), and about tarifs on imported industrial goods (the north wanted tarifs on foriegn industrial goods in order to expand American industrialism, the south wanted free trade to trade cotton to England in exchange for cheap imported industrial goods).
This will have such little effect on politics, why bother? A candidate lost with the popular vote only twice, and winning on electorial votes is arguable a legit tactic (in order to keep candidates from ignoring every state but California, Texas, Florida, and New York).
Here are some things that would actually improve the political process:
1. Use a politically neutral algorithm to devise voting districts, to eliminate gerrymandering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymander
2. Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, and let state legislators vote for Senators (in order to eliminate centralization of power on the federal level).
3. Let state legislators vote for the president directly (something similiar to the Swiss Canton system), which once again would eliminate the centralization of power in the hands of the federal government.
4. Eliminate all regulation on political parties and elgibility requirments for elections, that essentially ban all parties but the Democrats and Republicans from elections.
5. Enforce strict term limits to keep career politicians out of government.
6. Eliminate all government funding to political parties.
7. A constitutional balanced budget amendment. An amendment to strictly limit federal taxes. etc.
Or in other words, why should I - already having a top-end gaming PC - buy one? Which games does it offer that I can't play otherwise, and that are worth the ridiculously high prices (70e+ in some parts of europe)
If you have a top-end gaming PC, you SHOULD NOT buy the Xbox 360.
However, here are some issues that make a console attractive:
1. Your high end gaming PC is most likely a Windows machine. If you switch to a console for your gaming, you can switch to Linux or a mac for your PC use. Most of the power-users I know who haven't switched to mac/Linux from Windows are people whos work requires windows (Windows developers for example), or people who are gamers.
2. By doing my gaming on a console, my laptop is a tax write off. (and a laptop would be out of the question as a gaming machine anyway)
3. If you do actual professional work on your PC, it can be compromised by the "copy protection" on certain gaming software.
4. Your PC can be optimized for whatever non-gaming you do on your computer.
5. For people who work professionally on computers, a console offers a clear mental seperation between work/play. If I am at my computer, I feel compelled to do work, check email, read the news, etc.
So, if you already forked out the money for your high-end PC, it is an absolute waste to buy a gaming console (unless you are rich). But as your gaming PC ages, you might want to consider getting a mac or installing linux on your gaming machine and play on a console.
As for Triple A titles for the Xbox 360, check out Dead Rising and Test Drive Unlimited. Both are coming out very soon as stick out in my mind as interesting high budget games. I doubt they will be exclusive to the 360 (I am not sure), but your arguement seems to be PC vs Console more than about the 360.
One of the easiest ways to protect yourself on Windows is to not run as Admin. Only log into admin when you want to install new software, or when you want to update Windows, etc. In my opinion this is way more effective than any AV software (although I would recommend AV anyway). I would say that 50% (at least) of the nasty things that happen to Windows machines are caused by the fact that people tend to run as Admin by default.
People would never dream of running as root all the time on their Linux machine, yet those same people often run as an admin in Windows XP.
Yay! Election '08 will include podcasts... of course the podcasts will be of politicians trying very hard not to take a firm stand on controversial issues, making vauge and completly meaningless promises ("I promise to help every American achieve the 'American Dream'"... "I promise to protect America"), and lots of issueless propoganda human interest videos designed to make a candidate more "human" and "likeable" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDhv15EKJNo&search= al%20gore%20unseen ).
a rian-fundraiser-foiled/ ), etc. And the FBI will be used to spy on political adversaries (done by both Dubya and Clinton).
So called "Democracy Activists" will hail it as a great victory for "people power"... meanwhile elections will take place in gerrymandered ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymander ) districts to keep incumbent politicians in power, "Campaign Finance Reform" laws like McCain-Feingold will be used to censor political speech ( http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory16.html ), and third parties will be banned from elections by catch-22 regulations ("Your party needed to have recieved 10% of the vote in the last election in order to be on the ballot this year"... Yeah, but if you are not on the ballot, how the hell do you ever get on the ballot? Essentially the law only allows Republicans or Democrats to run), or banned from gatherings or fundraising by legal harrasment ( http://thirdpartywatch.com/2006/07/10/nude-libert
I expect podcasting to even further degrade journalism and become more sensationalized. Check out the lowering in the quality of debate in 24 years:
1980 Carter Reagan Debate: http://www.debates.org/pages/trans80b.html
2004 Kerry Bush Debate: http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004c.html
Here is an example of the difference in questions asked in 1980:
"Mr. President, when you were elected in 1976, the Consumer Price Index stood at 4.8%. It now stands at more than 12%. Perhaps more significantly, the nation's broader, underlying inflation rate has gone up from 7% to 9%. Now, a part of that was due to external factors beyond U.S. control, notably the more than doubling. of oil prices by OPEC last year. Because the United States remains vulnerable to such external shocks, can inflation in fact be controlled? If so, what measures would you pursue in a second term?"
And the type of questions asked in 2004:
"Mr. President, what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who's being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?"
I challenge anyone to tell me that the debates haven't turned into a completly idiotic parody of Democracy.
Sorry folks, Democracy was supposed to be about people governing themselves... and by governing themselves, I mean people making decisions for themselves. Having a popularity contest for 300 million people to elect a centralized executive branch and legislative branch with no limits on power whatsoever is not Democracy - It is popular authoritarianism. You doing whatever you want (so long as it doesn't directly harm someone else) is Democracy, electing a tiny oligarchy to have total power over your life, your education, transportation, health care, lifestyle choice, and economics is not democracy - It is popular totalitarianism! Giving the handful of eligble people in the elite political class better viral marketing is not going to do anything to make the country better. It is only going to create the presidential version of the Subserviant Chicken the norm.
Seriously, the crime statistics in England are a testimate to the civility and self-control and strong moral character of the British people.
... What is amazing is that it isn't even higher! Given that you get less time for violent crimes there than you would insulting a horse or given a traffic camera the middle finger.
Because you can basicly rob and violently assault anyone you want there, and the only one who faces any kind of real punishment is the victim if they defend themself.
As long as a violent criminal makes sure they don't say anything politically incorrect (in that case they can be charged with a hate crime, which really does seem to get punished), you don't have anything to worry about!
Sure, crime might be up in the U.K.