Your example would be much more effective if you chose an institution that was actually ran by the government. The U.S. Postal service is not a service provided by the government as it is a private entity that operates under special rules... kind of like the Federal Reserve.
(and I have experienced long lines at the post office)
Socialized medicine does not allocate resources with reality in mind.
For example, let's say I am born with some sort of genetic dysfunction. Over the course of my life, it will require 30 million dollars to keep the dysfunction from taking my life. Over the course of my life, I only produce 5 million dollars. Reality says that this imbalance will lead to my death. Socialized medicine says that you will pay, but you only make 10 million dollars over the course of your life. Which means I _still_ die. So, we take a large chunk of value earned by 100 people (they have to pay their bills and such too!) to keep me alive. Ok, socialized medicine has succeeded in keeping me alive... but wait, there are many more people like me.
How much are you willing to pay to keep other people alive? 1% of your income? 20%? 50%? 90%? How much? What if the funds you are willing to provide are less than what is required? How do the funds that are provided get allocated? Who gets to choose who lives and who dies? What criteria are used? If I can not afford to keep myself alive, what right do I have to force my burden on to others?
If my health care is limited to what I can pay, then such decisions about who lives and dies are no longer placed upon the public. If I have the means, and it is worthwhile to me, then I will pay, otherwise I will die. Everyone dies eventually. Life is not fair. Ignoring this can bankrupt a country.
At this point, the question is: What problems is socialized medicine supposed to solve? High prices? It won't solve that, just hide it from you. Poor medical care? Some of the best medical care in the world is to be found in America. I am curious what problem will be solved.
Do not misunderstand me, there is definitely a problem with health care in America, but socialized medicine is not the cure.
Pardon me, but are you seriously advocating that I just run? How about I stay and possibly die trying to clean up this mess. The principles that the United States of America were founded upon are the greatest that have ever been put to paper. I will fight for that. I have experienced freedom. I will never give it up, no matter the cost. I will not run and I will not surrender my freedom.
Well, let's say that I am in your neighborhood and I am the one downloading 6 gigabytes of data and you want to download 6 gigabytes of data as well. Screw it, let's just say that everyone in the neighborhood, except your mother, wants to download 6 gigabytes of data right now. We all know that the price of the connection is relatively low compared to a dedicated 6 mbps connection. So, should your mother have to suffer massive latency while checking her email? I think we can both agree that your mother, a low bandwidth user, should have priority in this situation.
For the record, if the email listed prior to this comment is accurate, I highly applaud comcast for what they are doing. The reason the parent poster was listed as flamebait is because it is. Comcast *has* to do something about the limited bandwidth and the path they have chosen is absolutely the correct one. No whining allowed.
Well, to be honest, the offline mode is not terribly reliable. I spent 2.5 years in Iraq and for most of that time, I could not play any steam games. It would work for maybe a month and then say it had to finish downloading an update. I am unsure how it could say that as it never could have even started downloading any updates... but whatever. I will not willingly choose to buy a game that uses any kind of "being-online" DRM. I made the mistake once and I have learned. Waiting 7 months for a trip home to have internet access so I can play Half Life 2 sucks.
"Laser weapons powerful enough to damage any target will permanently damage the eyesight of anyone who looks at as much as a non-specular reflection of the beam. So much for collateral damage."
Well, yeah, but you do not even have to look at a bomb/rocket/mortar round to have your eyes shredded... or your arms, or your intestines, or, well, I think you get the point. Anything that causes LESS collateral damage is good. No? Do not misunderstand, I do not believe that this is an ideal weapon. I do think it is friendlier to non-comatants than shrapnel, fire, and explosive pressure.
You are entirely missing what he/she was saying. For example, Gnome has been anti-poweruser for a couple years now. They want to market to the unwashed masses and they think that removing functionality as a way to reduce complexity is the path to doing so. Well, all I can say is, "Fuck that shit."
I like having control over my operating system. It was why I first started using linux back in the.9x days. If they remove my ability to control the software, then there is no attraction in it for me.
Really, all of this is crap though. There is nothing that requires removing of functionality to reduce complexity. Better organization of controls will do that nicely. If a newb user finds themselves deep in the heart of the internals of the computer and are messing it up, so what? The computer is ultimately quite a complex device. Set it up so the user is not required to play with complexities in order to gain basic functionality and such things should happen only to the adventurous... and if they are adventurous, it is great for them to be playing around in there so they can learn.
To sum up what the OP was saying in a way we can all agree with: Stop removing functionality in the misguided attempt at catering to the lowest common denominator.
I think creationism should be taught in classrooms. It should go something like this:
Many religions around the world, some current, some that are long gone, teach that the world was created by a supernatural deity. For example, religions such as the pantheons of Greek Mythology or Sumerian Mythology claim that the world was created when the newer gods slew the elder gods and that the world is the body of the elder god that was slain. Newer religions/mythologies such as Christians and Flying Spaghetti Monsterism claim that the world was created in a very short time out of nothingness. There is no way to tell how the universe itself was started and it may have even been created, but that is beyond the scope of science. Today, we are here to learn about evolution. It does not claim to illuminate how life itself started, but it does show a mechanism of how life has increased in complexity over time. Class, please open your textbooks to page 42.
Am I missing something or did the spelling of "rogue" change recently? In the past two days, I have seen it spelled "rouge" numerous times by numerous people. Very very unusual. Of course, I expect the random typo and I also expect random stupidity (rediculous vs ridiculous, loose vs lose) but this mispelling of "rogue" is just plain weird. It fits no pattern.
Mods: Go ahead and waste a mod point on an unmoderated comment as offtopic.
You are of course, correct. I am the only person I know of who actually likes UAC. I am continuously finding myself denying programs the chance to run... and I LIKE it.
I remember back in the Windows 95 days seeing programs writing to the C:\Windows\ folder and scratching my head saying to myself, "why would a program need to write to any directory other than the one it is installing in?". I began to notice ALL programs did it. WTF? I wanted to stop them so bad but I was powerless... and now here is UAC. UAC allows me to stop the behaviour that I think is bad. Writing to anywhere in the C:\Windows directory is BAD.
Wow. Microsoft really has lowered our expectations. It is amazing that you tolerate that. It is even worse that it is an Apple product because they claim "it just works". Clearly it does NOT work. WTF?
Holy shit dude! That would have been a seriously AWESOME film. It would have catapulted Star Wars into the history records for centuries to come. Why oh why did they cut off their own testicles?:(
"You can get in to a tech 1 battleship in no time at all (something like 2 months?) and that's all that's needed to run level 4 missions."
Yeah, you might be able to get into a battleship in 2 months, but you can not do the damage necessary to kill the NPCs in level 4 missions. You also do not have the skills trained for repair and damage resistance. You might be able to do level 4 missions in 6 months if you have the exact training regimen targeting the correct ship/s. Really, you need a full year before you are relatively independent. Before, that, you need the generosity of your fellow players to help you buy the skills books and the ships needed to start making ISK(money) on your own.
For me Firefox is now bookmarking every site I visit
That's the problem. The awesome bar conflates two different and important functions, the address bar and bookmarks. If they had provided a smart bookmarks feature instead of ruining the address bar, no one would be complaining.
Kaching. We have a winner here folks. This is one of a very few comments that I would like to see modded more than +5.
I hope so, the Awesome bar was the only reason why I switched back to Firefox 2. I really don't understand how they could do something so wrong.
I thought the same thing, now I enjoy being able to access most of my sites with little more than a key press or two.
So what are bookmarks then? Honestly, if I am typing in the URL bar, I want to type a URL, not have the damned software try to guess what I want. Firefox 2 is good enough (with noscript and adblock).
I am sure you know, but for everyone else: bosun is a phonetic type spelling for Boatswains Mate and fo'c'sle is a phonetic type spelling for Forecastle. Those words are not pronounced according to the standard rules, which is why I am sure that you spelled them more phonetically for people.
Reposting your comment so folks who ignore anonymous cowards can see it.
"Legal Tender... While it's legal(in some places[in the U.S]) to not accept legal tender, it is required you accept any form of legal tender where debt exists."
This is a very insightful rebuttal to dnadig's from-the-hip rant. This issue cuts to the core of economics, it is not just about one business. What if your grocery store decided to only accept the Discover Card? What if your bank would only pay out in coupons good at stores that they have a partnership with?
As someone pointed out higher up, there is no way EBay could think they could get away this. It must have been a red herring.
Ummm... they did open it all up. These chips are incredibly complex and it will take more than a year for the open source folks to write complete drivers utilizing all of the features the chips offer.
I had the same question as you at one point. The human body loses as much heat as it generates when the air temperature is 70F. This keeps your body from having to work (sweat, etc) to get rid of the extra heat it generates. This value is only true for the average body at rest. If you are exercising heavily, 50F feels just fine.:)
Maybe I am unloved but I only get 5 mod points. They do arrive at a greater frequency than before though... *shrug*
Also*, I almost never mod down (twice in four years maybe?) and I never listen to posts that say, "mod parent down" or, "this is a twitter sockppuppet", etc.
"If all "open source supporters" had your attitude, free software wouldnt have survived the 90s."
If all Open Source supporters had your attitude, Open Source would never have hit critical mass. Practicality trumps idealism every time in the marketplace. If your software won't work with my hardware, your software will not be used.
American auto manufacturers are not on life support because of cheap Japanese imports. They are on life support because of their astounding greed. They intentionally made their cars fall apart early so people would be forced to either repair their cars or buy new ones. Only a fool would buy an American car/throw their money down a hole. Supposedly, American cars are built better now, but I do not have the extra money to find out if American executives have found their ethics yet.
As an aside, maybe GM is on the ropes because they put tracking/bugging devices (OnStar) in all of their cars and people have no wish to be tracked/bugged. Do not try to tell me that it is not on unless you request and pay for it. It will be on if the government requests it go on.
Slashdot Mirror
Your example would be much more effective if you chose an institution that was actually ran by the government. The U.S. Postal service is not a service provided by the government as it is a private entity that operates under special rules... kind of like the Federal Reserve.
(and I have experienced long lines at the post office)
strike
Socialized medicine does not allocate resources with reality in mind.
For example, let's say I am born with some sort of genetic dysfunction. Over the course of my life, it will require 30 million dollars to keep the dysfunction from taking my life. Over the course of my life, I only produce 5 million dollars. Reality says that this imbalance will lead to my death. Socialized medicine says that you will pay, but you only make 10 million dollars over the course of your life. Which means I _still_ die. So, we take a large chunk of value earned by 100 people (they have to pay their bills and such too!) to keep me alive. Ok, socialized medicine has succeeded in keeping me alive... but wait, there are many more people like me.
How much are you willing to pay to keep other people alive? 1% of your income? 20%? 50%? 90%? How much? What if the funds you are willing to provide are less than what is required? How do the funds that are provided get allocated? Who gets to choose who lives and who dies? What criteria are used? If I can not afford to keep myself alive, what right do I have to force my burden on to others?
If my health care is limited to what I can pay, then such decisions about who lives and dies are no longer placed upon the public. If I have the means, and it is worthwhile to me, then I will pay, otherwise I will die. Everyone dies eventually. Life is not fair. Ignoring this can bankrupt a country.
At this point, the question is: What problems is socialized medicine supposed to solve? High prices? It won't solve that, just hide it from you. Poor medical care? Some of the best medical care in the world is to be found in America. I am curious what problem will be solved.
Do not misunderstand me, there is definitely a problem with health care in America, but socialized medicine is not the cure.
strike
Pardon me, but are you seriously advocating that I just run? How about I stay and possibly die trying to clean up this mess. The principles that the United States of America were founded upon are the greatest that have ever been put to paper. I will fight for that. I have experienced freedom. I will never give it up, no matter the cost. I will not run and I will not surrender my freedom.
strike
Well, let's say that I am in your neighborhood and I am the one downloading 6 gigabytes of data and you want to download 6 gigabytes of data as well. Screw it, let's just say that everyone in the neighborhood, except your mother, wants to download 6 gigabytes of data right now. We all know that the price of the connection is relatively low compared to a dedicated 6 mbps connection. So, should your mother have to suffer massive latency while checking her email? I think we can both agree that your mother, a low bandwidth user, should have priority in this situation.
For the record, if the email listed prior to this comment is accurate, I highly applaud comcast for what they are doing. The reason the parent poster was listed as flamebait is because it is. Comcast *has* to do something about the limited bandwidth and the path they have chosen is absolutely the correct one. No whining allowed.
strike
Well, to be honest, the offline mode is not terribly reliable. I spent 2.5 years in Iraq and for most of that time, I could not play any steam games. It would work for maybe a month and then say it had to finish downloading an update. I am unsure how it could say that as it never could have even started downloading any updates... but whatever. I will not willingly choose to buy a game that uses any kind of "being-online" DRM. I made the mistake once and I have learned. Waiting 7 months for a trip home to have internet access so I can play Half Life 2 sucks.
strike
"Laser weapons powerful enough to damage any target will permanently damage the eyesight of anyone who looks at as much as a non-specular reflection of the beam. So much for collateral damage."
Well, yeah, but you do not even have to look at a bomb/rocket/mortar round to have your eyes shredded... or your arms, or your intestines, or, well, I think you get the point. Anything that causes LESS collateral damage is good. No? Do not misunderstand, I do not believe that this is an ideal weapon. I do think it is friendlier to non-comatants than shrapnel, fire, and explosive pressure.
strike
You are entirely missing what he/she was saying. For example, Gnome has been anti-poweruser for a couple years now. They want to market to the unwashed masses and they think that removing functionality as a way to reduce complexity is the path to doing so. Well, all I can say is, "Fuck that shit."
I like having control over my operating system. It was why I first started using linux back in the .9x days. If they remove my ability to control the software, then there is no attraction in it for me.
Really, all of this is crap though. There is nothing that requires removing of functionality to reduce complexity. Better organization of controls will do that nicely. If a newb user finds themselves deep in the heart of the internals of the computer and are messing it up, so what? The computer is ultimately quite a complex device. Set it up so the user is not required to play with complexities in order to gain basic functionality and such things should happen only to the adventurous... and if they are adventurous, it is great for them to be playing around in there so they can learn.
To sum up what the OP was saying in a way we can all agree with: Stop removing functionality in the misguided attempt at catering to the lowest common denominator.
That is all.
strike
I think creationism should be taught in classrooms. It should go something like this:
Many religions around the world, some current, some that are long gone, teach that the world was created by a supernatural deity. For example, religions such as the pantheons of Greek Mythology or Sumerian Mythology claim that the world was created when the newer gods slew the elder gods and that the world is the body of the elder god that was slain. Newer religions/mythologies such as Christians and Flying Spaghetti Monsterism claim that the world was created in a very short time out of nothingness. There is no way to tell how the universe itself was started and it may have even been created, but that is beyond the scope of science. Today, we are here to learn about evolution. It does not claim to illuminate how life itself started, but it does show a mechanism of how life has increased in complexity over time. Class, please open your textbooks to page 42.
strike
Am I missing something or did the spelling of "rogue" change recently? In the past two days, I have seen it spelled "rouge" numerous times by numerous people. Very very unusual. Of course, I expect the random typo and I also expect random stupidity (rediculous vs ridiculous, loose vs lose) but this mispelling of "rogue" is just plain weird. It fits no pattern.
Mods: Go ahead and waste a mod point on an unmoderated comment as offtopic.
strike
You are of course, correct. I am the only person I know of who actually likes UAC. I am continuously finding myself denying programs the chance to run... and I LIKE it.
I remember back in the Windows 95 days seeing programs writing to the C:\Windows\ folder and scratching my head saying to myself, "why would a program need to write to any directory other than the one it is installing in?". I began to notice ALL programs did it. WTF? I wanted to stop them so bad but I was powerless... and now here is UAC. UAC allows me to stop the behaviour that I think is bad. Writing to anywhere in the C:\Windows directory is BAD.
strike
"A few applications crash on startup"
Wow. Microsoft really has lowered our expectations. It is amazing that you tolerate that. It is even worse that it is an Apple product because they claim "it just works". Clearly it does NOT work. WTF?
strike
Holy shit dude! That would have been a seriously AWESOME film. It would have catapulted Star Wars into the history records for centuries to come. Why oh why did they cut off their own testicles? :(
"You can get in to a tech 1 battleship in no time at all (something like 2 months?) and that's all that's needed to run level 4 missions."
Yeah, you might be able to get into a battleship in 2 months, but you can not do the damage necessary to kill the NPCs in level 4 missions. You also do not have the skills trained for repair and damage resistance. You might be able to do level 4 missions in 6 months if you have the exact training regimen targeting the correct ship/s. Really, you need a full year before you are relatively independent. Before, that, you need the generosity of your fellow players to help you buy the skills books and the ships needed to start making ISK(money) on your own.
strike
For me Firefox is now bookmarking every site I visit
That's the problem. The awesome bar conflates two different and important functions, the address bar and bookmarks. If they had provided a smart bookmarks feature instead of ruining the address bar, no one would be complaining.
Kaching. We have a winner here folks. This is one of a very few comments that I would like to see modded more than +5.
strike
I hope so, the Awesome bar was the only reason why I switched back to Firefox 2. I really don't understand how they could do something so wrong.
I thought the same thing, now I enjoy being able to access most of my sites with little more than a key press or two.
So what are bookmarks then? Honestly, if I am typing in the URL bar, I want to type a URL, not have the damned software try to guess what I want. Firefox 2 is good enough (with noscript and adblock).
strike
I am sure you know, but for everyone else: bosun is a phonetic type spelling for Boatswains Mate and fo'c'sle is a phonetic type spelling for Forecastle. Those words are not pronounced according to the standard rules, which is why I am sure that you spelled them more phonetically for people.
strike
Reposting your comment so folks who ignore anonymous cowards can see it.
"Legal Tender...
While it's legal(in some places[in the U.S]) to not accept legal tender, it is required you accept any form of legal tender where debt exists."
This is a very insightful rebuttal to dnadig's from-the-hip rant. This issue cuts to the core of economics, it is not just about one business. What if your grocery store decided to only accept the Discover Card? What if your bank would only pay out in coupons good at stores that they have a partnership with?
As someone pointed out higher up, there is no way EBay could think they could get away this. It must have been a red herring.
strike
Ummm... they did open it all up. These chips are incredibly complex and it will take more than a year for the open source folks to write complete drivers utilizing all of the features the chips offer.
I had the same question as you at one point. The human body loses as much heat as it generates when the air temperature is 70F. This keeps your body from having to work (sweat, etc) to get rid of the extra heat it generates. This value is only true for the average body at rest. If you are exercising heavily, 50F feels just fine. :)
strike
Maybe I am unloved but I only get 5 mod points. They do arrive at a greater frequency than before though... *shrug*
Also*, I almost never mod down (twice in four years maybe?) and I never listen to posts that say, "mod parent down" or, "this is a twitter sockppuppet", etc.
*grammer nazis(sic) pay attention here
strike
"by entering "defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1" in a console."
Pfft. And they say that Linux isn't ready for the masses yet.
strike
"A record of an event is not the illegal event -- why don't you ban the fucking news while you're at it?"
Erm, so child pornography is not illegal?
strike
"If all "open source supporters" had your attitude, free software wouldnt have survived the 90s."
If all Open Source supporters had your attitude, Open Source would never have hit critical mass. Practicality trumps idealism every time in the marketplace. If your software won't work with my hardware, your software will not be used.
strike
There is a world of difference between not fully implementing a standard and doing something against the standard.
strike
American auto manufacturers are not on life support because of cheap Japanese imports. They are on life support because of their astounding greed. They intentionally made their cars fall apart early so people would be forced to either repair their cars or buy new ones. Only a fool would buy an American car/throw their money down a hole. Supposedly, American cars are built better now, but I do not have the extra money to find out if American executives have found their ethics yet.
As an aside, maybe GM is on the ropes because they put tracking/bugging devices (OnStar) in all of their cars and people have no wish to be tracked/bugged. Do not try to tell me that it is not on unless you request and pay for it. It will be on if the government requests it go on.
strike