Surely they are only using spelling and stemming functions on plain words, whereas those with a '+' are intended to be searched for "as they are"? I'm not sure Google returns misspelled words (as well as proposing you to revise your search), but it does take stemming into account.
If that's the case, searching without a '+' would give you all pages containing variations of 'schematics,' such as misspelled ones, or the word 'schematic,' and possibly a lower-ranked 'schema' or 'scheme. Not so with a '+', which only gets you "schematics".
I think Google knows very well that their toolbar doesn't really do anything unheard of, and in fact it doesn't look like they're trying to patent it or anything.
I also think they know they can easily show unpatented prior art such as that you mentioned - if M$ sues for infringement.
Anyways, I totally agree with your point(s). Most people saying Macs are more expensive are not only ignoring the "cost-effectiveness" of the OS, but also the value of a silent, small and/or safe computer.
First off, the advantages here were not so evident. Fair and hard competition is hard to come by in Europe, and I'm beginning to think it's a cultural matter. Cell phone carriers prices are often worse than those in the US, although cell phone customer "density" is often higher than in the US, and there are often more than three providers in any EU country.
Secondly, and most importantly, you're talking about country-wide monopolies here, which is way different from a small municipality offering a service to its citizens.
In fact, many smallish towns here in Italy used to provide Internet connection at no or very small costs. That's back when you used dial-up and used to be charged by minutes on the phone. Now they have given up that, not being able to offer a valuable service when compared to large companies providing ADSL or better. However, they continue to provide you with civic services such as e-mail or fora.
Then think about universities. Most European universities are state-owned, yet they provide WiFi and other Internet services not only to their students, but pretty much anyone who has access to their libraries (that means almost anyone who wants to get in and behave, at least here...)
What's next, banning public universities from offering free WiFi access in their libraries? Forbidding bar owners from putting up a free hotspot unless they apply for a "telecommunications operator license" or the like? Access to bar customers, even though the bar's paying for the outgoing connection, would cut into WiFi ISPs' market! Or again, why not prevent public entities from providing free webmail, which might hurt Google's, M$'s or Yahoo!'s market?
You say competition and private companies are good, but it seems to me you're rooting for more lobbied government protectionism of the market.
I don't live in the States so I actually didn't bother reading all the fine print. I thought there might possibly be instances, or states, to which they might not sell.
I'd rather hear about grandparent's possible reasons for not subscribing, since I was considering signing up for a similar service where I live. In case s/he didn't know about it, I thought s/he might be interested.
Blockbuster is being sued for an allegedly fraudulent wording of their ads, in which they state that there will not be any late fees.
The NJ Attorney General believes that the 30-day full-price charge is a late fee, and that so is the "small processing fee" they charge you when you bring the DVD back in after 30 days.
No one's saying you should keep the DVD forever. The hypothesis is that they should not say "No more late fees" in their ads.
Mmmh... My post seems to have gone to/dev/whoknows, so here goes again (sorry for my n00bness if it turns out a dupe, but I have corrected it:):
I've seen similar experiments at Med School, and they involved "population vectors" too, back in 1998-99.
That's right, it's a pretty much painless procedure (according to our perception of the animal's reaction), and it's performed in a safe and sterile fashion.
The probes are really fine needles, much less than a millimeter in diameter. They don't cause particular brain trauma, and a variation of those probes is even used in surgical procedures and critical care monitoring in humans. The portions of skull removed to access the brain are put back in place and allowed to heal. Or, the probes can be left in place (as is the case here) using surgical material in a relatively safe manner.
Relatively safe here means that it's not like sticking a fork through the poor monkeys head: an increased risk of brain infection, trauma etc. is of course present.
However, by looking at the picture in TFA, it seems as though the monkey is only moving the robotic arm. If that's the case, to the best of my knowledge, there's no way they could have prevented the real arm from moving or sending feedback signals other than by damaging the descending and/or ascending pathways (outgoing connections) of the motor cortex being studied. Such damage would be pretty much permanent.
TFA says the monkey's arms were restrained, but that brings up one more question: how did they bypass automatic feedback signals coming from the restrained arm, telling the brain it wasn't actually moving, and thus to increase the strength and/or to try other movements/recruit different vector populations? I can't see how the movement might have resembled "natural" ("like your own arm," as TFA say) in the presence of contrasting feedback coming from the real arm.
Why am I not? Er... I'm ashamed to admit I'd never read that term before, although I seem to grasp the concept.
Well, that wasn't really my point, I was just stressing the point that an extra arm attached in this fashion at the age of 20 wouldn't be easy to "manage."
As for the other point, you're partially correct. Sensory information is conducted, and elaborated, in the thalamus, but it reaches consciousness only at the last neuron in the pathway, which is located in an area of the cortex just behind the one controlling motion. Such area also has extensive connections with memory, associative and "biohumoral" areas. Damage to the thalamus may lead to absent or impaired sensation, whereas destruction of the sensory cortex leads to total absence of conscious sensation. Both structures are part of the sensory pathways, though, so they're both essential.
As for that recent case, I haven't read about it, but that would depend on the level of the lesion. For example, if only axons (the 'cables') conducting information from the inner ear to the brainstem were damaged, the injection of stem cells might have stimulated the repairs of those connections. A broken axon can nowadays be repaired, although it depends on the lesion. A dead neuron cannot.
Of course, this doesn't mean we couldn't be able one day to "start over" by injecting new, indifferentiated neuronal stem cells which could then differentiate into full-fledged neurons and get back to work. This is actually being researched in Parkinson's disease, where a particular kind of neurons in the basal ganglia die. There's hope that by injecting stem cells in the area might lead to re-population and renewed functionality. Such procedures might turn out to also work in brain injured patients, or in those who just had their third arm installed...
Neurons undergo something like a Darwinist evolution. At birth, you have more than you'll have at 20. Those which "survive" are those who have been used the most (or 'produce the fittest output'), presumably because they have established the most efficient connections with other neurons.
So if you get your new arm at 20, a substantial portion of this "evolution" will already have occurred, and since neurons may not multiply, the ones remaining will have to share the additional tasks. It's possible, but it's an excruciating, not always successful process which you can see in traumatic brain injury or stroke patients: neurological rehabilitation.
In those cases, existing connections need to be re-adapted, and this isn't possible for all of them. Additionally, you basically have an insufficient amount of individual neurons in the motor area of the brain cortex, so the actual spatial/dynamic resolution of movement control will be further reduced.
This is also valid at least for sensorial areas of the brain. Memory and associative areas are much less understood.
High-dose radiation exposure is treated with supportive care, i.e. fix what's wrong or try to make it a little better. There's no way to fix the actual cause of course, much less a Battlestar Galactica-like "anti-radiation shot" to prevent radiation-related damage.
As another poster pointed out, the peculiarity of the thyroid gland makes it possible to prevent the initial damage, by using iodine to "turn off" the gland and prevent the incorporation of radioactive iodine in it. The thyroid is only the second most radiation-sensitive organ in the body, though, and we have drugs to effectively replace its function -- so it's not nearly as "critical" as one's bone marrow, lungs or gut.
However, you're forgetting an important cause of disease and/or death, which is probably the most important one with dirty bombs: genetic damage.
Exposure to radiation, be it the "flash" from the explosion or continuous emission from absorbed fallout particles, will damage DNA and cause an increase in gene mutations.
Random mutations increase in frequency and the chances of developing cancer or fetus malformations get higher.
Most of the deaths from a dirty bomb would be from cancer and lethal malformations of the newborn, diluted over time from the actual explosion.
See, its not really me who pays the sales tax. It's the store that pays the sales tax.
Well, no. As stated elsewhere by a poster running a (sales-taxed) business, it's the buyer who pays the tax. It is then the store owner's duty to collect, calculate and turn in the correct amount to the state.
At least in that poster's state, the store owner is entitled a tiny fraction of total VAT revenue in exchange for his "service."
Not totally sure about the US, but usually a business is entitled additional deductions from the VAT revenue it has to turn in to the government. Those deductions are equivalent to all VAT that business has paid when buying from other businesses.
In other words, no business pays sales taxes, at least in the EU. Only the final, individual (consumer) customer does.
For example if you buy legos online or via catalog from the state of CT you have to pay tax. But if you buy them from anywhere else, it's tax free.
This shows you how sales taxes are paid by the buyer, not the business. A CT buyer pays VAT even for Internet sales, whereas another one would not. However, the business is the same, and it resides in the same state.
But in order for the store to do business in CT, it has to comply with CT law, which requires VAT collection even for Internet transactions. That's why the store will charge you the tax, then turn it over to the state.
Me buying goods online from any store that resides in a different state or country is absolutely a federal issue. There is no federal sales tax.
Yes there is, it's called customs duties, and it applies to sales outside the country. There's usually a certain amount of value below which there are no duties for individual citizens. But above that, both businesses and individuals are to pay for the import of goods, even when not destined to re-sale.
Besides, as many others have mentioned, this applies to "normal" goods, not controlled ones such as alcoholic beverages, drugs or tobacco products.
I agree. This has nothing to do with "typical" Internet sales so much as it is a crackdown on bootlegging.
Tobacco and alcohol are regulated with peculiar laws pretty much anywhere in the Western world. So are medical drugs, too, although regulation in those cases is even stricter.
Most European countries even claim an official monopoly over these goods, meaning that they decide who sells them, and taxes them indipendently of official VAT and/or "typical" customs duties. Many countries put official stamps on packs of cigarettes or alcohol containers to ensure that they've been through the official duties agency.
This happens in the US, too, although they may not have gone so far as to call it a monopoly. There's even a federal agency whose mission is to ensure that controlled substances and goods are properly taxed and sold according to law, and to assist individual states in doing so.
My Italian provider, Wind, explicitly forbids VoIP over their data connections in their "Terms & Conditions."
This is not the real problem, though. The fact is, I've never been able to test if they were blocking Skype connections, using the GPRS phone as a modem for my PowerBook, as the top download speed I ever reach with them is around 3.5 kB/s... They do have flat-rate plans, though.
However, this shouldn't be the issue with this phone(s), as it would switch to Skype when connected to WiFi networks, not necessarily GSM/GPRS ones.
You can't change the "official" e-mail address where you receive communications from the game company?
I mean, what if there's an important announcement like a EULA or price change... Who gets the e-mail? If you get it, and you can't change the e-mail in the account management area, then this system is ridiculous!
IANANE (Nuclear Engineer), but AFAIK you just need a couple meters of water to shield out radiation coming from spent nuclear rods.
Throw water in the ever-increasing (I hope) unused nuclear missiles silos in the US, dump the rods there and seal off the thing with cement.
I suppose your nuclear weapons are/used to be stored in seismically and meteorologically secure areas, so that makes them good candidates for storage.
Even if you don't like the idea of nuclear power plants, you'll always need a place to store radioactive wastes from scientific and medical applications...
This doesn't solve the problem of what happens if your data is stolen.
Small correction... This should read "this doesn't necessarily repay the individual for their damage." The company (actually, those responsible with data management) can be prosecuted if "privacy malpractice" is suspected.
I'm sorry I don't have time to check facts thoroughly, but here in Italy, personal information does belong to the individual. I think this legislation comes from EU directives.
In other words, any company requiring you to hand over personal data (even just name and DoB) must publish a notice in which it officially states it complies with current law, and a legally-binding policy of use of the data (this is similar to the US, AFAIK.) Such policy, here, must include a document which specifies the security measures the company has taken to protect the data, down to a description of their IT systems and "practices," and/or a list of people entitled to access and use these data.
However, the difference is you may officially ask for removal or change of the information from any form of database the company may have, at any time. They have a limited time to comply, and you only need to send snail mail to exercise your rights.
For credit information, AFAIK Italy has a centralized, governmental database for those with officially bad credit (sorry, don't know the legal English term.) Not sure if you have the same rights over it. However, if any bank or commercial institution keeps a copy of the database (possibly with additional information), it must ask for the individuals' permission, and its database must comply with the above legislation.
This doesn't solve the problem of what happens if your data is stolen. However, it gives you the right to withdraw any and all information from a company if it doesn't meet your requirements for trust. Or again, it allows you to erase any and all information from the databases when you're no longer interested in the company's services.
Of course, the fact it requires you to send official snail mail discourages most laypersons from a thorough "personal data management." However, the possibility is there.
Botox® is the commercial name for Clostridium Botulinum toxin -- a very possibly lethal one, too, if taken in appropriate doses.
Just in case the layperson didn't know what the active ingredient is, it's got a self-explaining "*TOX" in its name. Now, that doesn't sound very reassuring, right?
However, its name hasn't prevented it from becoming one of the most popular drugs in the US at the moment, with people paying outrageous money for a very simple injection - of a poison. There are even (mentally ill|desperate) people resorting to homemade products and ending up in intensive care units, if not dead. All this to be given poison and iron out a few wrinkles?
I guess this shows that when there's both a scientific (and marketing?) interest, doctors and media are more than able to convince their patients that a "poison" or dangerous substance is for their good (looks.)
Funny thing you should use that term, "bitch about."
However, in a modern perspective, it does look like one of those cases where the guy who gets the patent first wins the day. I wonder if Meucci actually ever got around to "bitch about" prior art with the USPTO.
Actually I don't think it's a case that the phone was first patented in the US. Italy, at the time, wouldn't have had an economy (= a market) and/or a government strong enough to promote the technology.
The fact that Meucci didn't have the financial support to patent his invention (in the US), and that he died in poverty, tells a lot about my country at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. My next option is:
Surely they are only using spelling and stemming functions on plain words, whereas those with a '+' are intended to be searched for "as they are"? I'm not sure Google returns misspelled words (as well as proposing you to revise your search), but it does take stemming into account.
If that's the case, searching without a '+' would give you all pages containing variations of 'schematics,' such as misspelled ones, or the word 'schematic,' and possibly a lower-ranked 'schema' or 'scheme. Not so with a '+', which only gets you "schematics".
Holmes,
I thought AND was the default operator on Google, so what's that (misplaced) plus sign for?
Surely I am missing something?
Yours,
Watson
I think Google knows very well that their toolbar doesn't really do anything unheard of, and in fact it doesn't look like they're trying to patent it or anything.
I also think they know they can easily show unpatented prior art such as that you mentioned - if M$ sues for infringement.
... and the G4 which is so much cheaper than equivalent PCs that they built a cluster supercomputer out of them...
You sure you're not talking about VirginiaTech's G5 12.25 Tflops cluster?
Anyways, I totally agree with your point(s). Most people saying Macs are more expensive are not only ignoring the "cost-effectiveness" of the OS, but also the value of a silent, small and/or safe computer.
First off, the advantages here were not so evident. Fair and hard competition is hard to come by in Europe, and I'm beginning to think it's a cultural matter. Cell phone carriers prices are often worse than those in the US, although cell phone customer "density" is often higher than in the US, and there are often more than three providers in any EU country.
Secondly, and most importantly, you're talking about country-wide monopolies here, which is way different from a small municipality offering a service to its citizens.
In fact, many smallish towns here in Italy used to provide Internet connection at no or very small costs. That's back when you used dial-up and used to be charged by minutes on the phone. Now they have given up that, not being able to offer a valuable service when compared to large companies providing ADSL or better. However, they continue to provide you with civic services such as e-mail or fora.
Then think about universities. Most European universities are state-owned, yet they provide WiFi and other Internet services not only to their students, but pretty much anyone who has access to their libraries (that means almost anyone who wants to get in and behave, at least here...)
What's next, banning public universities from offering free WiFi access in their libraries? Forbidding bar owners from putting up a free hotspot unless they apply for a "telecommunications operator license" or the like? Access to bar customers, even though the bar's paying for the outgoing connection, would cut into WiFi ISPs' market! Or again, why not prevent public entities from providing free webmail, which might hurt Google's, M$'s or Yahoo!'s market?
You say competition and private companies are good, but it seems to me you're rooting for more lobbied government protectionism of the market.
I can get a free cell phone almost anywhere. 3 years and $2000 later it's paid for.*
I can buy a car at 0% interest**
* 2-year agreement required. Offer valid 2/16/05-2/20/05. Learn more
** Subject to credit approval. Introductory APR 0.0%. Low fixed rate of 2.9% after the first 12 mo.
Asterisks matter. Blockbuster didn't even put the fine print there where you can (hardly) read it.
I don't live in the States so I actually didn't bother reading all the fine print. I thought there might possibly be instances, or states, to which they might not sell.
I'd rather hear about grandparent's possible reasons for not subscribing, since I was considering signing up for a similar service where I live. In case s/he didn't know about it, I thought s/he might be interested.
What does this have to do with the alleged fraud?
Blockbuster is being sued for an allegedly fraudulent wording of their ads, in which they state that there will not be any late fees.
The NJ Attorney General believes that the 30-day full-price charge is a late fee, and that so is the "small processing fee" they charge you when you bring the DVD back in after 30 days.
No one's saying you should keep the DVD forever. The hypothesis is that they should not say "No more late fees" in their ads.
Just out of curiosity... Wouldn't NetFlix be a better option than driving that long? Or are you not covered by their service?
Mmmh... My post seems to have gone to /dev/whoknows, so here goes again (sorry for my n00bness if it turns out a dupe, but I have corrected it :):
I've seen similar experiments at Med School, and they involved "population vectors" too, back in 1998-99.
That's right, it's a pretty much painless procedure (according to our perception of the animal's reaction), and it's performed in a safe and sterile fashion.
The probes are really fine needles, much less than a millimeter in diameter. They don't cause particular brain trauma, and a variation of those probes is even used in surgical procedures and critical care monitoring in humans. The portions of skull removed to access the brain are put back in place and allowed to heal. Or, the probes can be left in place (as is the case here) using surgical material in a relatively safe manner.
Relatively safe here means that it's not like sticking a fork through the poor monkeys head: an increased risk of brain infection, trauma etc. is of course present.
However, by looking at the picture in TFA, it seems as though the monkey is only moving the robotic arm. If that's the case, to the best of my knowledge, there's no way they could have prevented the real arm from moving or sending feedback signals other than by damaging the descending and/or ascending pathways (outgoing connections) of the motor cortex being studied. Such damage would be pretty much permanent.
TFA says the monkey's arms were restrained, but that brings up one more question: how did they bypass automatic feedback signals coming from the restrained arm, telling the brain it wasn't actually moving, and thus to increase the strength and/or to try other movements/recruit different vector populations? I can't see how the movement might have resembled "natural" ("like your own arm," as TFA say) in the presence of contrasting feedback coming from the real arm.
Why am I not? Er... I'm ashamed to admit I'd never read that term before, although I seem to grasp the concept.
Well, that wasn't really my point, I was just stressing the point that an extra arm attached in this fashion at the age of 20 wouldn't be easy to "manage."
As for the other point, you're partially correct. Sensory information is conducted, and elaborated, in the thalamus, but it reaches consciousness only at the last neuron in the pathway, which is located in an area of the cortex just behind the one controlling motion. Such area also has extensive connections with memory, associative and "biohumoral" areas. Damage to the thalamus may lead to absent or impaired sensation, whereas destruction of the sensory cortex leads to total absence of conscious sensation. Both structures are part of the sensory pathways, though, so they're both essential.
As for that recent case, I haven't read about it, but that would depend on the level of the lesion. For example, if only axons (the 'cables') conducting information from the inner ear to the brainstem were damaged, the injection of stem cells might have stimulated the repairs of those connections. A broken axon can nowadays be repaired, although it depends on the lesion. A dead neuron cannot.
Of course, this doesn't mean we couldn't be able one day to "start over" by injecting new, indifferentiated neuronal stem cells which could then differentiate into full-fledged neurons and get back to work. This is actually being researched in Parkinson's disease, where a particular kind of neurons in the basal ganglia die. There's hope that by injecting stem cells in the area might lead to re-population and renewed functionality. Such procedures might turn out to also work in brain injured patients, or in those who just had their third arm installed...
That's right...
Neurons undergo something like a Darwinist evolution. At birth, you have more than you'll have at 20. Those which "survive" are those who have been used the most (or 'produce the fittest output'), presumably because they have established the most efficient connections with other neurons.
So if you get your new arm at 20, a substantial portion of this "evolution" will already have occurred, and since neurons may not multiply, the ones remaining will have to share the additional tasks. It's possible, but it's an excruciating, not always successful process which you can see in traumatic brain injury or stroke patients: neurological rehabilitation.
In those cases, existing connections need to be re-adapted, and this isn't possible for all of them. Additionally, you basically have an insufficient amount of individual neurons in the motor area of the brain cortex, so the actual spatial/dynamic resolution of movement control will be further reduced.
This is also valid at least for sensorial areas of the brain. Memory and associative areas are much less understood.
High-dose radiation exposure is treated with supportive care, i.e. fix what's wrong or try to make it a little better. There's no way to fix the actual cause of course, much less a Battlestar Galactica-like "anti-radiation shot" to prevent radiation-related damage.
As another poster pointed out, the peculiarity of the thyroid gland makes it possible to prevent the initial damage, by using iodine to "turn off" the gland and prevent the incorporation of radioactive iodine in it. The thyroid is only the second most radiation-sensitive organ in the body, though, and we have drugs to effectively replace its function -- so it's not nearly as "critical" as one's bone marrow, lungs or gut.
However, you're forgetting an important cause of disease and/or death, which is probably the most important one with dirty bombs: genetic damage.
Exposure to radiation, be it the "flash" from the explosion or continuous emission from absorbed fallout particles, will damage DNA and cause an increase in gene mutations.
Random mutations increase in frequency and the chances of developing cancer or fetus malformations get higher.
Most of the deaths from a dirty bomb would be from cancer and lethal malformations of the newborn, diluted over time from the actual explosion.
See, its not really me who pays the sales tax. It's the store that pays the sales tax.
Well, no. As stated elsewhere by a poster running a (sales-taxed) business, it's the buyer who pays the tax. It is then the store owner's duty to collect, calculate and turn in the correct amount to the state.
At least in that poster's state, the store owner is entitled a tiny fraction of total VAT revenue in exchange for his "service."
Not totally sure about the US, but usually a business is entitled additional deductions from the VAT revenue it has to turn in to the government. Those deductions are equivalent to all VAT that business has paid when buying from other businesses.
In other words, no business pays sales taxes, at least in the EU. Only the final, individual (consumer) customer does.
For example if you buy legos online or via catalog from the state of CT you have to pay tax. But if you buy them from anywhere else, it's tax free.
This shows you how sales taxes are paid by the buyer, not the business. A CT buyer pays VAT even for Internet sales, whereas another one would not. However, the business is the same, and it resides in the same state.
But in order for the store to do business in CT, it has to comply with CT law, which requires VAT collection even for Internet transactions. That's why the store will charge you the tax, then turn it over to the state.
Me buying goods online from any store that resides in a different state or country is absolutely a federal issue. There is no federal sales tax.
Yes there is, it's called customs duties, and it applies to sales outside the country. There's usually a certain amount of value below which there are no duties for individual citizens. But above that, both businesses and individuals are to pay for the import of goods, even when not destined to re-sale.
Besides, as many others have mentioned, this applies to "normal" goods, not controlled ones such as alcoholic beverages, drugs or tobacco products.
I agree. This has nothing to do with "typical" Internet sales so much as it is a crackdown on bootlegging.
Tobacco and alcohol are regulated with peculiar laws pretty much anywhere in the Western world. So are medical drugs, too, although regulation in those cases is even stricter.
Most European countries even claim an official monopoly over these goods, meaning that they decide who sells them, and taxes them indipendently of official VAT and/or "typical" customs duties. Many countries put official stamps on packs of cigarettes or alcohol containers to ensure that they've been through the official duties agency.
This happens in the US, too, although they may not have gone so far as to call it a monopoly. There's even a federal agency whose mission is to ensure that controlled substances and goods are properly taxed and sold according to law, and to assist individual states in doing so.
Still, the cost of GPRS traffic from some operators particularly in the EU is very high and may limit benefits Skype provides in terms of cost.
Flat-rate plans for GPRS do exist here in Italy, but (as the author of TFA might have expected) operators explicitly ban VoIP in their contracts.
In addition, actual connection speed are ridiculously low here, I guess even the 5 kB/s up and down the line are prohibitive in most areas.
My Italian provider, Wind, explicitly forbids VoIP over their data connections in their "Terms & Conditions."
This is not the real problem, though. The fact is, I've never been able to test if they were blocking Skype connections, using the GPRS phone as a modem for my PowerBook, as the top download speed I ever reach with them is around 3.5 kB/s... They do have flat-rate plans, though.
However, this shouldn't be the issue with this phone(s), as it would switch to Skype when connected to WiFi networks, not necessarily GSM/GPRS ones.
I'm with Italian carrier Wind.
They have a good GPRS plan, 19/month for unlimited data exchange. However, my top download speed is usually around 3.5 kilobyte/s.
Never trust the theoretical advertised speed.*
* Actual speed may vary according to the server you're connecting to and according to network congestion.
You can't change the "official" e-mail address where you receive communications from the game company?
I mean, what if there's an important announcement like a EULA or price change... Who gets the e-mail? If you get it, and you can't change the e-mail in the account management area, then this system is ridiculous!
Actually, it's taken from M-W's definition of " lobby," the verb, but it fits eerily in...
IANANE (Nuclear Engineer), but AFAIK you just need a couple meters of water to shield out radiation coming from spent nuclear rods.
Throw water in the ever-increasing (I hope) unused nuclear missiles silos in the US, dump the rods there and seal off the thing with cement.
I suppose your nuclear weapons are/used to be stored in seismically and meteorologically secure areas, so that makes them good candidates for storage.
Even if you don't like the idea of nuclear power plants, you'll always need a place to store radioactive wastes from scientific and medical applications...
This doesn't solve the problem of what happens if your data is stolen.
Small correction... This should read "this doesn't necessarily repay the individual for their damage." The company (actually, those responsible with data management) can be prosecuted if "privacy malpractice" is suspected.
I'm sorry I don't have time to check facts thoroughly, but here in Italy, personal information does belong to the individual. I think this legislation comes from EU directives.
Basically, you don't own the actual © to the information being stored, but you own all rights to it, except what I'll call "commercial exploitation."
In other words, any company requiring you to hand over personal data (even just name and DoB) must publish a notice in which it officially states it complies with current law, and a legally-binding policy of use of the data (this is similar to the US, AFAIK.) Such policy, here, must include a document which specifies the security measures the company has taken to protect the data, down to a description of their IT systems and "practices," and/or a list of people entitled to access and use these data.
However, the difference is you may officially ask for removal or change of the information from any form of database the company may have, at any time. They have a limited time to comply, and you only need to send snail mail to exercise your rights.
For credit information, AFAIK Italy has a centralized, governmental database for those with officially bad credit (sorry, don't know the legal English term.) Not sure if you have the same rights over it. However, if any bank or commercial institution keeps a copy of the database (possibly with additional information), it must ask for the individuals' permission, and its database must comply with the above legislation.
This doesn't solve the problem of what happens if your data is stolen. However, it gives you the right to withdraw any and all information from a company if it doesn't meet your requirements for trust. Or again, it allows you to erase any and all information from the databases when you're no longer interested in the company's services.
Of course, the fact it requires you to send official snail mail discourages most laypersons from a thorough "personal data management." However, the possibility is there.
Botox® is the commercial name for Clostridium Botulinum toxin -- a very possibly lethal one, too, if taken in appropriate doses.
Just in case the layperson didn't know what the active ingredient is, it's got a self-explaining "*TOX" in its name. Now, that doesn't sound very reassuring, right?
However, its name hasn't prevented it from becoming one of the most popular drugs in the US at the moment, with people paying outrageous money for a very simple injection - of a poison. There are even (mentally ill|desperate) people resorting to homemade products and ending up in intensive care units, if not dead. All this to be given poison and iron out a few wrinkles?
I guess this shows that when there's both a scientific (and marketing?) interest, doctors and media are more than able to convince their patients that a "poison" or dangerous substance is for their good (looks.)
Funny thing you should use that term, "bitch about."
However, in a modern perspective, it does look like one of those cases where the guy who gets the patent first wins the day. I wonder if Meucci actually ever got around to "bitch about" prior art with the USPTO.
Actually I don't think it's a case that the phone was first patented in the US. Italy, at the time, wouldn't have had an economy (= a market) and/or a government strong enough to promote the technology.
The fact that Meucci didn't have the financial support to patent his invention (in the US), and that he died in poverty, tells a lot about my country at the time.