Yes, I know I am supposed to reply something like "human life should not be monetised" and so we both of us can congratulate ourselves for being so sensible.
Reality is, we (you and me) probably have lots of resources that we are spending in things that are non essential(*1) (the latest gadget we bought, this year holiday trip) and we are not going to divert them for more "human" finalities (a vaccination campaing in the third world, or even a donation to the NASA). At that point, we are doing an economical decission that our welfare is more worth that the lifes that donation it could save.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying you should be donating everything to charities(I don't, either). What I say is that at some point, all the people does a decision of what is someone else's life worth and act accordingly(*2). You do too, so stop trying to look like you don't.
(*1)The fact that you give X $ to charities is not relevant for my reasoning, as long you still get Y $ for those non-esential goods.
(*2)Of course, not everyone's else's life is rated the same. You'd rate your parents higher than what you'd rate mine, for example.
Besides moral options, providing some examples of uncontaminated (possible) alien life to our scientists could help to understand life here, in Mars and in other planets.
That after having studied it you want to destroy it / do not care about it? We will talk about it then
To put an analogy, you are like the Spanish religious who burned and destroyed the Mayan books because they were sacrilegous.
The reduced availability of drugs / increased fear of prison terms makes that the whole of the population uses less drugs, increasing overall life expectancy.
The lower quality of available drugs means that those who become addicted suffer more / live less. Unless they are a significant percentage, it does not compensate for the previous point, thought.
On a side note, I am a little sceptic of life expectancy being a good indicator of the effectivity of the prohibition. Mostly because it is affected by many variables, it might be that life expectancy is increased by medical science improvement / better ways of food production, and that the drug prohibition have no net effects by itself.
That said, I recall reading somewhere that during USA Prohibition, the incidence of illness related to alcoholic consumption did indeed lower significatively.
I mentioned feeding mechanisms. You are the one who is moving the point. Hell, you could have mentioned that you can build a flinklock quite easily, but we are not talking about that (yes, I know you miss them from your youth).
Claiming that you can build a gun because you can put a bullet in a pipe is like claiming that I cam make a car because I mounted a kart. What you can do is useless except for show (unless that, when you need it, you ask for a break time, and your intend targets waits while you get the pipe out, then the bullet, load the pipe - going with it loaded would be very dangerous for you - and then the action is resumed.
About my point, look at my original post and try to find it. If you can't, sorry, I can't help you anymore.
Customer pays X = A(hearing aid) + B(insurer profits).
Insurer will try to make B as big as easier. This means:
* Pushing X as high as they can without losing many customers.
* Making A as lower as possible.
Even if they have stock in the hearing aid company, pushing A up is not a good idea because A may not give these profits to shareholders (reinvestment, bad management). Even if A company does give the profits to shareholders, then B company will only receive a part of it.
I mean, I am not one to say that most execs would not sell their own mother for a couple of bucks. But I do not expect them to do shoddy bussiness just to get less money.
Are you telling seriously than more than 50% of the population can build a gun that won't explode in their hands / fail to shot / shot when not intended to do so? Not to mention the case expulsion / bullet replacement mechanism
Really? Have you talked to many people lately?
Maybe you live in geniusland, but many people that I see around everyday have trouble just using a computer. Except for some hobbist, I do not expect their mechanical engineering abilities to be great, either.
Are you saying that insurance companies are somewhat forgetting that they could increase their profit by both charging expensive premiums and presuring hearing aids sellers to provide a better price,
That makes very difficult for me to find humor at the "ha ha, you are different from me" jokes. Thankfully, there are still lots of things that I find funny.
You were just trying to make fun of them not being called "John Smith" or "Michael Adams". What makes you think that "Räikkönen" or "Sun Yat Sen" is more laughable than, say, "George Washington" or "Martin Luther, Jr."?
The answer: only that you are more used to the later.
Almost all of the governments that have exerted censorship have been open about it.
First, they tell the public it is for the public good (opinions in the contrary are usually censored) so it is a show of the protection their Government offers them.
Second, many of them have laws (yes, even dictatorships have laws *1). It is easier to tell the periodist "before publishing anything, send him to the censor and get it approved" than to sneak in his desk at dark every night and check what he might be working in.
*1: Of course, opposite to democracies, oten if you outsmarted the law then you would get "unofficial" punishment.
I would do, but that needs that you understand the difference between racist laws and institutions and racist people (including some of the elected officials).
Translation: "I do not speak Finnish and I am so proud of my ignorance that I have to show off".
Nothing really wrong with the first part, learning anything new requires effort and you may find more useful other things (I have other things to do that are more useful that learning Finnish myself, too).
In change, the attitude of "if I don't know it it has no value" is a very sad one. Could be comprehensible if you were, say, king of the world, but you are not. You are only making your world smaller and more boring.
If I had one opportunity to make a constitutional amendment, it would be to limit politicians to no more than 20 years of elected office, all levels combined (local, county, state, national), for their entire life. Anyone that has 20 years (or more) of elected office, cannot run or hold any elected office, ever. By eliminating career politicians, perhaps we might start looking at statesmen for public elected office.
Taxes are regressive, and politicians use them to curry favor and pay out benefits to keep getting elected.
Then do us a favor and go live in Somalia, please.
That does not work this way. They will not move, they will create a subsidary in Ireland (a "ghost company").
The Finnish company will sell Angry Birds and whatever they produce to the Irish ghost company, to the point of getting no profits (or even getting loses, if that gives them any advantage). The Irish ghost will then resell to the real customers, getting a tax cut.
Meanwhile the management of the company keeps enjoying finish welfare, at the expenses of their compatriotes.
Later on, probably they will complain about their country public deficit and how "politicians have ruined it".
The ones who expelled the USA forces from their country?
They have killed a few USA troops and many of them (and iraqi civilians) have got killed. That's all that they have got against a foreign enemy and with suspected foreign help. Hardly impressive.
Slashdot Mirror
You are right. Last time I was offered millions of dollars, I asked them to pay me in camels. Way safer!
...that a human life can be so easily monetised.
Yes, I know I am supposed to reply something like "human life should not be monetised" and so we both of us can congratulate ourselves for being so sensible.
Reality is, we (you and me) probably have lots of resources that we are spending in things that are non essential(*1) (the latest gadget we bought, this year holiday trip) and we are not going to divert them for more "human" finalities (a vaccination campaing in the third world, or even a donation to the NASA). At that point, we are doing an economical decission that our welfare is more worth that the lifes that donation it could save.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying you should be donating everything to charities(I don't, either). What I say is that at some point, all the people does a decision of what is someone else's life worth and act accordingly(*2). You do too, so stop trying to look like you don't.
(*1)The fact that you give X $ to charities is not relevant for my reasoning, as long you still get Y $ for those non-esential goods.
(*2)Of course, not everyone's else's life is rated the same. You'd rate your parents higher than what you'd rate mine, for example.
First pillage, *then* burn.
Besides moral options, providing some examples of uncontaminated (possible) alien life to our scientists could help to understand life here, in Mars and in other planets.
That after having studied it you want to destroy it / do not care about it? We will talk about it then
To put an analogy, you are like the Spanish religious who burned and destroyed the Mayan books because they were sacrilegous.
My way is getting the info into an /. article.
After that, the editors will take care that it is periodically available again as if it was a new article.
Dark matter is expected to be non-barionic, that means, amongst other things, that it is not formed by atoms (so, no elements as we know them).
Not a contradiction
The reduced availability of drugs / increased fear of prison terms makes that the whole of the population uses less drugs, increasing overall life expectancy.
The lower quality of available drugs means that those who become addicted suffer more / live less. Unless they are a significant percentage, it does not compensate for the previous point, thought.
On a side note, I am a little sceptic of life expectancy being a good indicator of the effectivity of the prohibition. Mostly because it is affected by many variables, it might be that life expectancy is increased by medical science improvement / better ways of food production, and that the drug prohibition have no net effects by itself.
That said, I recall reading somewhere that during USA Prohibition, the incidence of illness related to alcoholic consumption did indeed lower significatively.
I mentioned feeding mechanisms. You are the one who is moving the point. Hell, you could have mentioned that you can build a flinklock quite easily, but we are not talking about that (yes, I know you miss them from your youth).
Claiming that you can build a gun because you can put a bullet in a pipe is like claiming that I cam make a car because I mounted a kart. What you can do is useless except for show (unless that, when you need it, you ask for a break time, and your intend targets waits while you get the pipe out, then the bullet, load the pipe - going with it loaded would be very dangerous for you - and then the action is resumed.
About my point, look at my original post and try to find it. If you can't, sorry, I can't help you anymore.
Yay... exactly the same than a Beretta or an Uzi.
Thanks for supporting my point.
Let's put it simply.
Customer pays X = A(hearing aid) + B(insurer profits).
Insurer will try to make B as big as easier. This means:
* Pushing X as high as they can without losing many customers.
* Making A as lower as possible.
Even if they have stock in the hearing aid company, pushing A up is not a good idea because A may not give these profits to shareholders (reinvestment, bad management). Even if A company does give the profits to shareholders, then B company will only receive a part of it.
I mean, I am not one to say that most execs would not sell their own mother for a couple of bucks. But I do not expect them to do shoddy bussiness just to get less money.
Critical thinking is a great thing.
Are you telling seriously than more than 50% of the population can build a gun that won't explode in their hands / fail to shot / shot when not intended to do so? Not to mention the case expulsion / bullet replacement mechanism
Really? Have you talked to many people lately?
Maybe you live in geniusland, but many people that I see around everyday have trouble just using a computer. Except for some hobbist, I do not expect their mechanical engineering abilities to be great, either.
Are you saying that insurance companies are somewhat forgetting that they could increase their profit by both charging expensive premiums and presuring hearing aids sellers to provide a better price,
So much for conspiracy theories, thank you.
I try to use mine together with my brain.
That makes very difficult for me to find humor at the "ha ha, you are different from me" jokes. Thankfully, there are still lots of things that I find funny.
No woooooh
You were just trying to make fun of them not being called "John Smith" or "Michael Adams". What makes you think that "Räikkönen" or "Sun Yat Sen" is more laughable than, say, "George Washington" or "Martin Luther, Jr."?
The answer: only that you are more used to the later.
Don't expect to find function spy_on_user() when looking around.
Damn. Now I have to change all my codebase again!!! Thank you very much, SIR!!!!
Almost all of the governments that have exerted censorship have been open about it.
First, they tell the public it is for the public good (opinions in the contrary are usually censored) so it is a show of the protection their Government offers them.
Second, many of them have laws (yes, even dictatorships have laws *1). It is easier to tell the periodist "before publishing anything, send him to the censor and get it approved" than to sneak in his desk at dark every night and check what he might be working in.
*1: Of course, opposite to democracies, oten if you outsmarted the law then you would get "unofficial" punishment.
I would do, but that needs that you understand the difference between racist laws and institutions and racist people (including some of the elected officials).
My thought was: how realistic will it be if I do not have to worry about my adversaries really hitting me and killing me?
Also, I am not sure the public wants this degree of realism. A real sword fight (even in training) can be very tiring..
Yes, I bet Rovio would have had trouble finding suitable programmers, designers (or even electric power) had they been in Somalia. Don't you think?
And then that crappy government dares to ask something back! How can they!
Translation: "I do not speak Finnish and I am so proud of my ignorance that I have to show off".
Nothing really wrong with the first part, learning anything new requires effort and you may find more useful other things (I have other things to do that are more useful that learning Finnish myself, too).
In change, the attitude of "if I don't know it it has no value" is a very sad one. Could be comprehensible if you were, say, king of the world, but you are not. You are only making your world smaller and more boring.
If I had one opportunity to make a constitutional amendment, it would be to limit politicians to no more than 20 years of elected office, all levels combined (local, county, state, national), for their entire life. Anyone that has 20 years (or more) of elected office, cannot run or hold any elected office, ever. By eliminating career politicians, perhaps we might start looking at statesmen for public elected office.
Taxes are regressive, and politicians use them to curry favor and pay out benefits to keep getting elected.
Then do us a favor and go live in Somalia, please.
That does not work this way. They will not move, they will create a subsidary in Ireland (a "ghost company").
The Finnish company will sell Angry Birds and whatever they produce to the Irish ghost company, to the point of getting no profits (or even getting loses, if that gives them any advantage). The Irish ghost will then resell to the real customers, getting a tax cut.
Meanwhile the management of the company keeps enjoying finish welfare, at the expenses of their compatriotes.
Later on, probably they will complain about their country public deficit and how "politicians have ruined it".
To be fair, a malware writter could not care less if their software breaks 10-20% of the PCs it attempts to hijack.
Make MS brick 5% and the cost to them could be astronomical.
So, it is not simmetric warfare.
A saucepam
Ok, you won't see much, but it is better to fail into the safe side.
The ones who expelled the USA forces from their country?
They have killed a few USA troops and many of them (and iraqi civilians) have got killed. That's all that they have got against a foreign enemy and with suspected foreign help. Hardly impressive.
Do not worry about it. When they talk about tyrants they mean "not a guy we like".
Remember when the USA didn't bat an eye against Pinochet or the Argentina Junta?