Suppose we developed a way to give people an extra 10 years of life, but it cost a million dollar per person. We simply couldn't afford to provide it for everyone. What do we do?
These sort of what-if scenarios don't really advance the debate :
It's never that simple;
There are real-life examples of broadly similar scenarios, like organ transplants, early access to CAT scanners or costly cancer treatments, so why not discuss them instead of your fictionnal scenario ?
In the real-life scenarios, in the US people with good insurance or wealth indeed were able to get the treatment earlier, but eventually the associated costs went down and more people were eventually able to avail themselves to the new treatment;
In other countries with a more egalitarian approach to health care, this problem was indeed solved with priority queues, and indeed some people did die before access to the treatment/diagnosis facility.
It's called progress. My impression is that if your fictionnal scenario came up, it would not necessarily take a long time for the cost to come down dramatically, and as evidence I offer pretty much every treatment or diagnostic method ever designed. Pretty much no matter where you stand in the wealth scale or where you live, access to health care has improved. Hopefully this trend will continue in the future.
Exactly, I'm with you here. My personal favourite is a 1950's mono recording of Beethoven's 7th symphony with the Berlin SO, with Furtwaengler as the conductor. The audio quality isn't great even though it's a Deutche Gramophon recording. However the music is *splendid*.
I sometime play this recording to friends, compared with a recent, all digital, noiseless recording of some professional orchestra, which shall remain nameless. Then I ask them which they prefer.
In the last Federal election, things were going very well with the Labor party, until John Howard made one little remark :
With the labor party, interest rates will go up.
This is it. No promises that with him rate wouldn't go up, just nice refreshers on how in the 80s when labour was in power interest rates were in the double-digit range (like everywhere else in the western world). Almost overnight labor's lead evaporated, and John Howard was elected again.
This does not compute. The notion of country doesn't have much to do with govermnent. I'm betting Spaniards were proud to be Spanish even under Franco, that Italians are proud of Italy even when they don't approve of Berlusconi, and that many Americans are proud to be Americans even if they don't approve of who's the President today or the majority of Congress or the Supreme Court appointees.
If I'm not mistaken, Steinbeck died in 1968. If my reading of the law is correct, all of his work is due to become public domain 70 years later in the US, i.e. in 2038. However it is expected to become PD in 2018 in Australia, for instance (where the famous 20-year extention of copyright was not retroactive, because, wait for it, it was deemed anticonstitutional). Only another 12 years to wait.
If this does not happen then, write to your congressman, you are pretty much being ripped off.
Now now, I'm not accusing anyone of lying. Lying is knowning fully that something is a certain way and pretending it is otherwise. At worse I'm accusing you of ignorance, which is not nearly as bad.
Now you are qualifying your statement by a "In the United State", however even there, copyrighted works enter the public domain regularly, if not every day. Read this very interesting page.
Now in Australia for instance, and in many other countries, copyright is 50 years after death for old work, and 70 for *new* work only, and there is no Sonny Bono retroactive act nonsense. Stuff that is more than 50 year old *today* enters the public domain *today*. In about 50 years (because the 70 year period) there will be a 20 year period where very little will enter the PD, however hopefully this will resume.
The old shuffle had its USB interface built in, and you could use it as a USB key to take some data with you. Now you have to carry along a dock. This is less geek-friendly.
A foreing policy can take a quite tangible meaning, including bombs fallings and troopers invading your country. In the case of the recent US foreing policy I believe this occurence has been witnessed rather often.
Correction: Initially Microsoft did get its first few billions from mere users like you and me, paying them hundreds of dollars each time they bought a new machine with a MS O/S on it.
Now thanks to Linux perhaps, an OEM MS O/S licence is not that much, especially the home version. Microsoft is getting its new billions from somewhere else, in particular *Office* licenses which are still selling like hot cakes, now one knows for how long though.
Wikipedia works on the principle that sociopaths are few.
Anyone can edit the marine biology to put random stuff in it, but chances are the main author(s) will notice and rectify it quickly. This gets old quickly for would-be defacers. At the same time quite a few people working in marine biology might contribute to the page and correct errors.
In the textbook industry, there is some kind of quality control but it's done by a tiny panel of about one or two people. Usually textbooks are written by between 1 and 4 authors. This is not very many. If a reader notices an error it's unlikely to be corrected quickly.
So yeah, you can compare textbooks and wikis, and it's not all in the favour of textbooks.
This is patently false. New stuff comes out of copyright every day. However, coming out of copyright is not the same thing as becoming available to the public. Clearly this is where Projet Gutenberg comes in.
One enormous area I'm personnally interested in is sheet music. Some of the music I'm interested in playing has come out of copyright decades or even centuries ago. No one is going to reclaim copyright on Mozart's requiem for instance. Yet it is by and large not available to the public because translating original manuscript sheet music into something that modern musicians can play without too much trouble is a huge undertaking.
Yet I have no doubt that this will eventually happen. PG already has a section devoted to sheet music. The tools are beginning to appear : lilypond is a superb Free music engraving software package. I'm personnally working on music OCR software, and others are as well I'm sure. Eventually this will work out well I think.
The public is in the process of reclaiming what is theirs, this is pretty much unstoppable right now.
My laptop has a built-in mic and no mic-in or line in plug, only a line-out. This is a very common occurence. No hardware way of switching off the mic.
Although such zones existed earlier, instituted by the Clinton administration, they gained more attention after the WTO Meeting of 1999 and have been used vigorously by the George W. Bush administration.
No it doesn't make it good now. We are not in a race over who's going to trample constitutional amendments to the fullest. These things are a disgrace, especially the wilfull way people are getting prosecuted because of the sign they bear.
This may be true, but the Apple server range is tiny. The Linux server range starts with $50 routers and ends with multi million-dollars supercomputers.
I like Apple's desktops, but it's servers are unimpressive.
If Carter would've had the gonads to do whatever it took to keep the Shah and his successors in power (irregardless of whether that would've been right or wrong), and quash the Iran revolution in a huge and terrible unforgettable way, then the world today would be a very different place.
I agree: very different ! If he had done that, I believe the world would be now in a much much worse state than it is now. The US would have had the equivalent of 9/11 not in 2001 but in 1980 or so. It would have had the equivalent of the current Iraq war a few years afterwards (with Iran instead), at a time when the country was still in a cold war with the USSR, was still reeling from the aftermath of the Vietnam war, was short of oil (remember the second oil shock in 1979 ? People were queuing for days to put petrol in their cars, ask your dad if you were too young).
Do you know that Iran is the ONLY major oil producer that did not follow the OPEC embargo against the US and Israel in 1979 ? A US-led war with Iran would have meant extremely dire consequences at home.
The USSR would have profited from the situation, it would have been able to maintain itself longer, it probably would still be alive and kicking, along with all the easter block. The US would not have been able to use massive force in the middle East, as the USSR would have been more than happy to arm any and all US opponent.
The US had already done a great deal to bring back and maintain the Shah in power, who BTW was a right bastard. Before the Shah, Iran was a secular democracy. Beyond a certain state, it is impossible to maintain bastards in power, and it is impossible to interfere for too long in a foreign country against the will of the people without suffering consequences, what the CIA calls blowback.
In other word what you suggest would have been an unmitigated disaster. It's not a question of gonad, it's a question of brains.
And he did it simply by wagging his finger, too. Most amazing.
Perhaps the USSR was also rotting from within and a few reasonable people like Gorbatchev stepped in before the country descended into civil war.
I'd agree to say that the whole West, first and foremost the US, defeated the USSR in the cold war. Saying it was simply Reagan is simplifying things a bit.
Interesting you should bring that first. If you were in Ohio for the last presidential election, and in the/wrong/ precinct, apparently not.
Your diatribe about what happened during WW-II is almost laughable. At least there was a real war on, not one that no one has declared and will never end.
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Well, if these harmonics result in sound that can be heard, they can also be recorded.
These sort of what-if scenarios don't really advance the debate :
It's called progress. My impression is that if your fictionnal scenario came up, it would not necessarily take a long time for the cost to come down dramatically, and as evidence I offer pretty much every treatment or diagnostic method ever designed. Pretty much no matter where you stand in the wealth scale or where you live, access to health care has improved. Hopefully this trend will continue in the future.
Exactly, I'm with you here. My personal favourite is a 1950's mono recording of Beethoven's 7th symphony with the Berlin SO, with Furtwaengler as the conductor. The audio quality isn't great even though it's a Deutche Gramophon recording. However the music is *splendid*.
I sometime play this recording to friends, compared with a recent, all digital, noiseless recording of some professional orchestra, which shall remain nameless. Then I ask them which they prefer.
I'm not sure that a bridge counts as a household, probably not. In any one counts as unemployed only if one is actively looking for work.
This is it. No promises that with him rate wouldn't go up, just nice refreshers on how in the 80s when labour was in power interest rates were in the double-digit range (like everywhere else in the western world). Almost overnight labor's lead evaporated, and John Howard was elected again.
Hello, the straight-type, no fun answer is that red-shifted doesn't mean red. Extremely red-shifted gamma rays might be X-rays for instance.
This does not compute. The notion of country doesn't have much to do with govermnent. I'm betting Spaniards were proud to be Spanish even under Franco, that Italians are proud of Italy even when they don't approve of Berlusconi, and that many Americans are proud to be Americans even if they don't approve of who's the President today or the majority of Congress or the Supreme Court appointees.
If I'm not mistaken, Steinbeck died in 1968. If my reading of the law is correct, all of his work is due to become public domain 70 years later in the US, i.e. in 2038. However it is expected to become PD in 2018 in Australia, for instance (where the famous 20-year extention of copyright was not retroactive, because, wait for it, it was deemed anticonstitutional). Only another 12 years to wait.
If this does not happen then, write to your congressman, you are pretty much being ripped off.
Now now, I'm not accusing anyone of lying. Lying is knowning fully that something is a certain way and pretending it is otherwise. At worse I'm accusing you of ignorance, which is not nearly as bad.
Now you are qualifying your statement by a "In the United State", however even there, copyrighted works enter the public domain regularly, if not every day. Read this very interesting page.
Now in Australia for instance, and in many other countries, copyright is 50 years after death for old work, and 70 for *new* work only, and there is no Sonny Bono retroactive act nonsense. Stuff that is more than 50 year old *today* enters the public domain *today*. In about 50 years (because the 70 year period) there will be a 20 year period where very little will enter the PD, however hopefully this will resume.
> Few, yes, but very, very dedicated...
A big deal is made of this but so far wikipedia has massive amounts of useful information and only a little deliberately misleading junk.
I'd say the evidence is on the side of the good guys, by a long shot.
From very far away they are not so easy to tell apart. Essentially these are two objects that emit extremely red-shifted light.
The old shuffle had its USB interface built in, and you could use it as a USB key to take some data with you. Now you have to carry along a dock. This is less geek-friendly.
A foreing policy can take a quite tangible meaning, including bombs fallings and troopers invading your country. In the case of the recent US foreing policy I believe this occurence has been witnessed rather often.
Correction: Initially Microsoft did get its first few billions from mere users like you and me, paying them hundreds of dollars each time they bought a new machine with a MS O/S on it.
Now thanks to Linux perhaps, an OEM MS O/S licence is not that much, especially the home version. Microsoft is getting its new billions from somewhere else, in particular *Office* licenses which are still selling like hot cakes, now one knows for how long though.
Wikipedia works on the principle that sociopaths are few.
Anyone can edit the marine biology to put random stuff in it, but chances are the main author(s) will notice and rectify it quickly. This gets old quickly for would-be defacers. At the same time quite a few people working in marine biology might contribute to the page and correct errors.
In the textbook industry, there is some kind of quality control but it's done by a tiny panel of about one or two people. Usually textbooks are written by between 1 and 4 authors. This is not very many. If a reader notices an error it's unlikely to be corrected quickly.
So yeah, you can compare textbooks and wikis, and it's not all in the favour of textbooks.
This is patently false. New stuff comes out of copyright every day. However, coming out of copyright is not the same thing as becoming available to the public. Clearly this is where Projet Gutenberg comes in.
One enormous area I'm personnally interested in is sheet music. Some of the music I'm interested in playing has come out of copyright decades or even centuries ago. No one is going to reclaim copyright on Mozart's requiem for instance. Yet it is by and large not available to the public because translating original manuscript sheet music into something that modern musicians can play without too much trouble is a huge undertaking.
Yet I have no doubt that this will eventually happen. PG already has a section devoted to sheet music. The tools are beginning to appear : lilypond is a superb Free music engraving software package. I'm personnally working on music OCR software, and others are as well I'm sure. Eventually this will work out well I think.
The public is in the process of reclaiming what is theirs, this is pretty much unstoppable right now.
My laptop has a built-in mic and no mic-in or line in plug, only a line-out. This is a very common occurence. No hardware way of switching off the mic.
No it doesn't make it good now. We are not in a race over who's going to trample constitutional amendments to the fullest. These things are a disgrace, especially the wilfull way people are getting prosecuted because of the sign they bear.
All the linux distributions have the same kernel and the same toolchain. The rest is just package management and application choices.
In contrasts all the BSDs have significant different kernels.
This may be true, but the Apple server range is tiny. The Linux server range starts with $50 routers and ends with multi million-dollars supercomputers.
I like Apple's desktops, but it's servers are unimpressive.
This is the most insightful thing I've read today.
Well clearly on the US media you will hear this opinion.
Why don't you educate yourself and see what the other side has to say ? would it be too uncomfortable ?
I agree: very different ! If he had done that, I believe the world would be now in a much much worse state than it is now. The US would have had the equivalent of 9/11 not in 2001 but in 1980 or so. It would have had the equivalent of the current Iraq war a few years afterwards (with Iran instead), at a time when the country was still in a cold war with the USSR, was still reeling from the aftermath of the Vietnam war, was short of oil (remember the second oil shock in 1979 ? People were queuing for days to put petrol in their cars, ask your dad if you were too young).
Do you know that Iran is the ONLY major oil producer that did not follow the OPEC embargo against the US and Israel in 1979 ? A US-led war with Iran would have meant extremely dire consequences at home.
The USSR would have profited from the situation, it would have been able to maintain itself longer, it probably would still be alive and kicking, along with all the easter block. The US would not have been able to use massive force in the middle East, as the USSR would have been more than happy to arm any and all US opponent.
The US had already done a great deal to bring back and maintain the Shah in power, who BTW was a right bastard. Before the Shah, Iran was a secular democracy. Beyond a certain state, it is impossible to maintain bastards in power, and it is impossible to interfere for too long in a foreign country against the will of the people without suffering consequences, what the CIA calls blowback.
In other word what you suggest would have been an unmitigated disaster. It's not a question of gonad, it's a question of brains.
And he did it simply by wagging his finger, too. Most amazing.
Perhaps the USSR was also rotting from within and a few reasonable people like Gorbatchev stepped in before the country descended into civil war.
I'd agree to say that the whole West, first and foremost the US, defeated the USSR in the cold war. Saying it was simply Reagan is simplifying things a bit.
> Can you still vote?
/wrong/ precinct, apparently not.
Interesting you should bring that first. If you were in Ohio for the last presidential election, and in the
Your diatribe about what happened during WW-II is almost laughable. At least there was a real war on, not one that no one has declared and will never end.
I'm glad you think everything is A-OK.