ironically, Wal-Mart has repeatedly refused to install security cameras and better lighting in their parking lots for the protection of their customers. this is despite the fact that Wal-Mart parking lots are notoriously dangerous places at night and have been the scenes of many crimes, including robberies, thefts, purse-snatchings, abductions & kidnappings, carjackings, armed assaults, stabbings, shootings/drive-bys, sexual assaults/molestations/rapes, as well as multiple murders.
though, reportedly, they have tons of cameras inside their stores to catch shoplifters. so you should be safe so long as you stay in the store and keep shopping.
well, he said the early evils. so nobody was being loaded into box cars yet, just being required to register with the government if they were Jewish. later on i think they Jews were kicked out of government offices and academic institutions. then they were moved into ghettos and forced to wear the Star of David, but they were still allowed to leave the ghettos during the day.
fascism/totalitarianism just doesn't pop up overnight. if you do it slowly enough, and start with just the "untrusted minorities," you can get most people to accept almost any kind oppression. that's why smart people will make a big fuss about even minor encroachments of personal liberties. because once you get into the habit of capitulating your rights even a little, it becomes just a matter of time before you've handed over all of your rights.
why should the majority of casual computer users need 2GB of RAM on their system? if a desktop is only being used for web browsing, word processing, e-mail, etc. there's no reason for it to require more than 1GB of RAM (if that) and a quad core CPU. have you become so accustomed to bloated, poorly designed software that you've lost all sense of perspective on what is reasonable resource usage?
netbooks and sublaptops are becoming increasingly popular these days because more and more so casual computer users are realizing that the average desktop system is overkill for surfing the internet, instant messaging, checking e-mail, and running office applications. spending an extra $2000 on hardware just so all your applications run just as slow as before is idiotic.
the average person would benefit much more from a low power system running a more efficient OS. not only would they save money on hardware, but the system would run cooler/quieter and use less energy.
but a boycott is a group tactic, not a personal tactic. boycotting is basically a form of economic coercion, but economics being a social science requires that you take group behaviors into account. so if it's too impractical to boycott a particular business, then it's basically impossible to boycott them since not enough people will engage in the boycott to really make it work.
broadband internet access is essentially a service with inelastic demand. to make things worse, communications networks (telecoms/cellphone carriers, ISPs, etc.) are natural monopolies. these two things combined make ISPs pretty much immune to consumer boycotts. in this situation, the only recourse that consumers have is to exercise their democratic prerogative and organize politically. government regulations are specifically designed for these situations where public interest cannot be protected by any other means.
of course most Americans have accepted their political disenfranchisement, and the idea that the government is actually an extension of citizenry there to carry out the will of the people has become too alien to most to even consider. this gives industry lobbies the power to advance their corporate interests unopposed and push for deregulation.
though it is a little promising that some communities are bucking this trend and taking things into their own hands. as more and more people start seeing wireless broadband as a basic public utility, they will start pushing their municipal governments to establish a public WiFi or WiMax network for their city independent of commercial ISPs. i mean, if ISPs can't be regulated and won't regulate themselves, then the only option left is to provide your own publicly-run alternative.
what does it matter so long as the question initiates an engaging discussion? this may come as a shock to you, but for a lot of geeks, their work and personal interests are not mutually exclusive. so a discussion topic that they are genuinely interested in may also help them do their job.
if you're so pettily concerned that your information might be helpful to others (or you might be doing someone else's work), then don't participate in a/. discussion. it seems like whenever there's any kind of discussion on practical matters there's always some loser complaining that useful information is being freely disseminated or looking for ulterior motives in the question submitter.
and it's much easier to do a quick google search if you're actually looking for a specific regexp rather than submitting such a broad ask/. question hoping that your question will be picked up, and that by chance someone will post the exact solution that you need. so i'd say your suspicions are more rooted in irrational paranoia than cynicism.
maybe you should call Guinness Book of World Records and tell them that all their records are incorrect. or you could, you know, stop being such a pedant.
well, Stirling engines seem to work well enough that they're used in a lot of CST (Concentrating Solar Thermal) plants. i think most parabolic trough and solar power tower installations use Stirling engines to generate electricity.
i'm with you on that one. i much prefer this kind hybrid electric than the drivetrain-based hybrids (whether full hybrid, mild hybrid, power assist hybrid, or mild hybrid).
a full hybrid is not bad, since it is capable of running on just the electric motor, but i think adding the gas engine as a secondary power source (charging the battery, heating, etc.) on a plug-in electric would move us away from a petroleum-economy faster.
this way, we can still free ourselves from our oil-dependency gradually, but we'd already have the transportation infrastructure in place for alternative fuels. that's because plug-in electrics are basically fuel source neutral. you can get your electricity from a coal-burning power plant (that's still exponentially more efficient that having millions of ICE vehicles on the road), or you could get it from solar power plants which are becoming increasingly popular, or you could get your power from nuclear power plants. heck, a plug-in electric is even future-proof since you can power your car from energy sources that have yet been invented. electric vehicles basically make the "which fuel is better" debate moot in terms of vehicle propulsion.
it's a lot easier to upgrade a single power plant than it is to replace thousands of private vehicles. and all the advances being made in alternative/clean energy right now--like solar thermal energy, tidal power, wind farms, etc.--can't be taken advantage of until we have plug-in electrics on the road.
i think one of the "protections" given to pharmacists by the conscience clause is that employees cannot be fired or otherwise punished for refusing to fill a prescription based on religious grounds. from Wikipedia:
Conscience clauses are clauses in laws in some parts of the United States which permit pharmacists, physicians, and other providers of health care not to provide certain medical services for reasons of religion or conscience. Those who choose not to provide services may not be disciplined or discriminated against. [...] Corporate Policy
Some pharmacies in U.S. jurisdictions with conscience clauses, including CVS and Target, allow pharmacists to choose, without penalty, not to dispense birth control pills. Target requires the objecting pharmacist to recommend another Target location that will dispense the medication.
if your religion prevents you from performing the responsibilities of a medical professional, then you probably shouldn't be a doctor/nurse/pharmacist/etc. and AFAIK, pharmacists can quit their jobs or switch to a different occupation any time they want. no one is forcing them to be a pharmacist.
if you think that your religious freedoms include the right to deny someone else the medication they've been prescribed by their physician, then you are part of the reason why the conscience clause exists. freedom/liberty doesn't mean you have the right to do whatever you want regardless of the consequences it has on others.
and by your definition of slavery, then anyone living in a society governed by the rule of law is a slave. drug/food manufacturers all have to obey by strict sanitation and food-safety regulations even though they may not want to, but that's what it takes to protect consumers and public health. occupations like law enforcement and medical professions have even greater social responsibilities due to the vital nature of their work. if an on duty police officer sees a crime in progress they have a legal responsibility to step in, otherwise it may be criminal negligence. likewise, medical professional have certain moral obligations when they are on duty.
in many states you still need a prescription to get "Plan B"/"morning after pill"-type emergency contraceptives. which is dumb because there's a limited window of effectiveness for those type of drugs.
though there is a growing movement in the U.S. to make these drugs available over the counter. according to Wikipedia a nonprescription behind-the-counter preparation of Plan B is available in California to women 18 years or older. this was supposed to have been put into effect in 2006, but i haven't heard much about it. i just know that about 2-3 years ago my gf at the time had to get her prescriptions from a rapid-approval website, and (i think) it took about 6 hours between filling out the online and actually getting the prescription filled at a local pharmacy.
and if you don't like the idea of the conscience clause you're not alone. unfortunately, freedom of religion in the U.S. has turned into freedom to subject others to your religion. that's what happens when separation of church and state is flouted by a society. it starts with relatively innocuous things like adding "in god we trust" to our currency and injecting theocratic sentiments into the pledge of allegiance, but then quickly spreads to more insidious things, like encroaching on the rights of patients.
it really depends on the application. for music, headphones are probably a much better value and give a better listening experience. but if you're building a home theater setup for watching movies, obviously speakers are the way to go. you just can't properly enjoy 5.1 surround sound with stereo headphones. but at the same time, most recording studios probably work with headphones far more than they work with speakers.
and in this day and age you shouldn't have to spend $200 to get a decent pair of headphones. likewise, quality speakers shouldn't cost tens of thousands of dollars, much less hundreds of thousands of dollars. i mean, how much did a top of the line sound system cost in the 70's? even by then most high end audio equipment probably exceeded normal human hearing ability. i would hope that today's mid-level consumer audio equipment would be able to at least match the state-of-the-art from over 3-and-a-half decades ago.
cherry pick all you want. AIDS/HIV sufferers being denied treatment because of societal prejudices is well-documented. whether it's drug users, prostitutes, rape victims, or just ordinary women with HIV, people are being denied AIDS/HIV treatment because of the social stigma around these populations and their perceived lifestyles.
it's ignorant attitudes like yours that cause these prejudices to dictate public policy at the expense of public health. even if you don't care whether IV drug users live or die, giving them access to medical treatment in the name of harm-reduction is the beneficial to society at large. any rational person can see that eliminating potential disease vectors is a good thing.
denying prostitutes & drug users adequate access to medical treatment in order to punish them for their lifestyles is just cutting off the nose to spite the face. that kind of attitude has prevented the adoption of needle exchange programs in many areas despite studies showing that such harm-reduction programs save cities tax-payers millions of dollars each year by preventing the spread of disease--which inevitably affects non-drug users as well.
in the U.S. there are also conscience clauses in several states that allow pharmacists to refuse to fill a patent's prescription based on religious grounds. this was primarily introduced to to deny women emergency contraceptive pills, but it also opens the door for denying patients other types of medical treatment based on religious prejudices.
it all depends on the application i guess. i remember when i was in elementary school (in Taiwan) there were computer desks coming out that let you place the monitor (CRTs back then) inside the actual desk so that it sits under a pane of glass and is angled upward at the user. this provided a more ergonomic work environment that put minimal strain on the user's neck (it's sorta like reading a book).
as a graphic designer and having to focus on the screen for hours at a time when working on a composition, i'd definitely prefer that kind of setup to the conventional monitor orientation. it just seems more natural/comfortable. even if you're transcribing a document or something, you can just place the document next to the display area and shift your gaze between the monitor and the paper without having to tilt your head and strain your neck. those desks were quite expensive though as i recall. but i think a lot of movie theater box offices do use that kind of setup.
and using a Wacom Cintiq tablet-screen hybrid to do graphic design is much easier than using a mouse. in fact, you really can't use a mouse to do serious graphics. aside from gaming, i don't think high mouse-sensitivity is really that much of a benefit on an average-sized display.
i absolutely agree with you. what disturbs me even more is the growing trend of "supermax" prisons where most inmates are put into solitary confinement devoid of any social contact or other mental stimuli. sensory deprivation is beyond cruel; it's a form of torture that can leave permanent mental/psychological trauma. often inmates report hearing voices and other symptoms of psychological degeneration within a few weeks of being put into solitary confinement.
i can understand that with some trouble inmates, like gang members, they can pose a threat to the safety of prison staff and other inmates. therefore, because of the prison system's limited resources solitary confinement is the only practical option. but if we want to call ourselves a civilized society, we need to observe basic humanitarian standards.
with a simple thin client and internet access, inmates can be given free access to great quantities of information and also provided with a healthy level of mental stimuli. it'd be both cost effective/practical and humane. plus, giving inmates internet access would ensure that they had contact with the outside world (friends, family, legal counsel, etc.) without the risk of contraband being smuggled through.
this way we could ensure that the poor underprivileged minorities are subjected to a Kafkaesque nightmare where the prison system is just locking people up and throwing away the key, giving people no recourse for wrongful imprisonment or abuse by prison officials.
in a word, no. they're committing DNS hijacking on file sharing sites. instead of domain names resolving to the correct IP address, the DNS resolution is being hijacked to send users to a different host to whom the requested domain does not belong. that's why the articles call it "hijacking."
which is why i think an open standard would be preferable for something like this. without widespread adoption, p2p (portable to portable) features aren't going to be very useful.
if PMP manufacturers all adopted an open standard for wireless file sharing & user profiles (the last 10 tracks you listened to, the games you have on your system, etc.) then i imagine lots of people would be using those features. open standards are beneficial to consumers because they promote interoperability. you wouldn't have to find another Zune owner, or iPhone owner, or PSP owner to swap files with them.
with Apple there's less incentive to promote interoperability because they have market dominance with their near-monopoly on PMPs, but it would still be in the interest of their customers to make their devices as interoperable as possible. but somehow i doubt they'd put consumer interests above their own commercial interests.
Microsoft OTOH doesn't have Apple's market dominance in the PMP market, so it's actually quite stupid for them not to pursue interoperability with other devices. with the Zune + PSP + Archos + Zen + smartphones, they could have created a coalition of WiFi-supporting portables all supporting the "Zune social" features. that would have made them very useful.
yea, data redundancy and backups are useless if you don't use off-site data protection for disaster recovery. even small businesses can greatly benefit from geographical redundancy.
even though the label i work at is based in California, we still took a major hit from Hurricane Katrina because the masters for several albums in our back catalog were kept at a recording studio that got flooded. after that happened, my boss starting holding onto copies of the masters himself here at the office and also backing up all the digital data onto an external hard drive that he gave to his dad for safe keeping.
of course, for businesses with large volumes of data that are constantly updated, cloud storage is probably the best solution. through multitenancy small to medium-sized businesses can enjoy the same level of data protection as large enterprises like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc.
i actually think some of the Zune's WiFi features are pretty innovative. being able to share music/photos/images directly with other wireless devices is definitely a neat feature (though it'd be neater if more devices supported it). likewise with by able to broadcast a wireless profile to indicate what you're listening to.
frankly, i think the major PMP manufacturers should get together and create a standardized protocol for sharing files across portable media players. Microsoft kinda ruined a great concept by crippling it with DRM. they also missed a great opportunity by not publishing their protocol as an open standard. with the iPod still lacking WiFi capabilities, if Microsoft had made wireless file sharing a popular open standard by working with companies like Sony, Creative, Archos and even SmartPhone manufacturers, they could have made it a huge selling point over the iPod. but the Zune by itself isn't popular enough to make their file sharing feature anything more than a passing novelty. the whole "welcome to the social" campaign is kinda silly when you're the only one in the social.
however, i still look forward to the day when these features become standard on all portable media devices. it'd be cool to sit down on a train and see that there's a person across the room that likes the same music/movies/tv shows/games as you do and be able to swap music/videos/frags/etc. with them.
it should be noted that a lot of high schools have mandatory civic service projects that students have to complete in order to graduate. at my high school we had to:
sit through one city council meeting to see first hand how civic government works (what kind of decisions the city council has power over, how to raise issues with the city's actions, how residents can voice their concerns, etc.).
sit in on a criminal trial for at least 1 hr. to see the justice system in action.
complete a teacher-approved community service project (volunteering at the library, food kitchen, animal shelter, etc.) with at least 40 hrs. of volunteer work signed off by an administrator.
was this voluntary? no. did most students bitch about having this assignment? yes. but was it a bad thing? i don't think so. i think it's important to foster a sense of civic duty, community spirit, and altruism. that's the basis of a cooperative society, and it's also a vital component of a democratic government.
true participatory democracy requires that regular citizens are actively involved in the government. otherwise it's not a government of the people, by the people, for the people. in a society where people have no sense of civic duty, there is likely to be political & social apathy. even if the constitution is democratic, if the people do not take advantage of the democratic machinery, political power will just be usurped by the wealthy elite and power-mongers.
and i think that's a major problem in the U.S. today. many people are so concerned with their own immediate self-interests that they can't see the shared interests of society/the community. because of that many voters allow themselves to be bought off by tax breaks while their public infrastructure is being stripped away and privatized, destroying the community in the process. ultimately, we're just screwing ourselves over by cutting things like educational funding.
so yes, promoting a sense of civic responsibility is a good thing. it's good to see beyond your own selfish interests and solipsistic world once in a while.
then perhaps the U.S. should shelf all fundamental research until we get our poverty level down to at least as low as Eastern Europe. it helps no one to point fingers at others whiles our own domestic problems continue to go ignored.
also, if we get rid of all fundamental research, where do you recommend scientists & researchers go for employment? are they all going to be re-trained in order to find a place in a society without fundamental scientific research? or should they start a mass exodus of intellectual/scientific talent out of the U.S.?
what effect do you think abolishing public research will have on a society? if people are discouraged from going into the sciences & exploratory research, what effect will that have on our national culture? we already live in society rife with anti-intellectualism and reactionary attitudes. do you really think cutting all funding for fundamental science & public research is going to have a positive social effect on either the U.S. or India?
we fund public research in fundamental science not because it strokes our national ego, or as part of some lofty abstract idealistic goal, but because public research is vital to societal progress. it not only drives a society forward technologically, but it also fosters an intellectual culture and encourages rational thought. when you do away with fundamental research, you're killing the pursuit of knowledge, and that will simply invite intellectual & cultural stagnation.
it has nothing to do with being too proud. a large portion of the homeless population in the U.S. are mentally ill. we just aren't willing to fund the social programs and mental health infrastructure to take care of these people, so they end up in the streets. and not all cities with a homeless population have shelters. in my area there are neither homeless shelters nor facilities for the mentally disabled. this has been known for quite some time but little has been done about it.
that's a good point. i'm guessing part of the reason why Gmail has such a good spam filter is because they implement collective filtering by allowing users to easily mark spam messages, and also because with such a large user-base they can implement statistical filtering techniques much more effectively.
what i don't get is why ISPs big and small don't just cooperate with each other and trade/pool information needed to fight spam. it would improve everyone's quality of service, so why not work together to achieve common ends. combating spam is one situation where different businesses don't need to compete with one another because they have shared interests.
even if you're just a small ISP with only a few thousand users, if you work with 10-20 different similar sized ISPs to collectively implement a shared spam-filter, you would achieve much better results than what each ISP could obtain on their own. not only are there more e-mails to perform statistical analysis and Bayesian filtering on, but there are also more users to identify/catch the spam messages that slip past the filters. that way the job of catching stray spam e-mails is distributed across a much wider user-base. instead of each user having to mark 10 spam messages a day, perhaps they only have to mark 10 messages a month.
AOL died when dial-up died. it's been long enough that most of those users have learned how to use the web (the real one, not that AOL playpen crap).
the whole point of the internet/web is that there's no strict division between content-producers and content-consumers. and unlike TV/radio, you don't have a consolidated corporate media acting as gatekeepers of information. web users are free to find (search for) content that suit their own interests, no matter how odd or obscure those interests are. there's no censorship, and no spoon-feeding of pre-approved corporate-sponsored content. that's why indie music is on the rise, and file sharing has also boosted viewership of indie films. a "web portal" runs completely counter to that media freedom and independence--at least conventional Yahoo!-type web portals; iGoogle is a different story since you can customize the modular layout, and anyone can create their own widget.
in any case, most ex-AOL users were pleasantly surprised by how much better the "real" internet/WWW was compared to their previously sheltered online existence using AOL. by the time broadband became standard in most households, the internet was already well established in mainstream culture, and the web had become a vital tool in the daily lives of ordinary people. so people no longer needed the digital training wheels that AOL provided. most people i know were quite glad to be rid of AOL's restrictive and overbearing services & interface.
the only people who still prefer the AOL "web experience" are the elderly who still haven't adapted to internet culture and the information age we live in. but even many 60-70 year-olds are taking to the web surprisingly well. and the rest are, well, going extinct. AOL died because they catered to a transitional market/demographic. the internet was still new and largely alien to most people, so their "well integrated," penned-in and sanitized online environment was in demand. but it's 2008 now, and if Yahoo! continues to chase a long gone 1990's market, then they'll become a technological anachronism just like AOL did.
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ironically, Wal-Mart has repeatedly refused to install security cameras and better lighting in their parking lots for the protection of their customers. this is despite the fact that Wal-Mart parking lots are notoriously dangerous places at night and have been the scenes of many crimes, including robberies, thefts, purse-snatchings, abductions & kidnappings, carjackings, armed assaults, stabbings, shootings/drive-bys, sexual assaults/molestations/rapes, as well as multiple murders.
though, reportedly, they have tons of cameras inside their stores to catch shoplifters. so you should be safe so long as you stay in the store and keep shopping.
well, he said the early evils. so nobody was being loaded into box cars yet, just being required to register with the government if they were Jewish. later on i think they Jews were kicked out of government offices and academic institutions. then they were moved into ghettos and forced to wear the Star of David, but they were still allowed to leave the ghettos during the day.
fascism/totalitarianism just doesn't pop up overnight. if you do it slowly enough, and start with just the "untrusted minorities," you can get most people to accept almost any kind oppression. that's why smart people will make a big fuss about even minor encroachments of personal liberties. because once you get into the habit of capitulating your rights even a little, it becomes just a matter of time before you've handed over all of your rights.
crap systems with less than 2GB of RAM?
why should the majority of casual computer users need 2GB of RAM on their system? if a desktop is only being used for web browsing, word processing, e-mail, etc. there's no reason for it to require more than 1GB of RAM (if that) and a quad core CPU. have you become so accustomed to bloated, poorly designed software that you've lost all sense of perspective on what is reasonable resource usage?
netbooks and sublaptops are becoming increasingly popular these days because more and more so casual computer users are realizing that the average desktop system is overkill for surfing the internet, instant messaging, checking e-mail, and running office applications. spending an extra $2000 on hardware just so all your applications run just as slow as before is idiotic.
the average person would benefit much more from a low power system running a more efficient OS. not only would they save money on hardware, but the system would run cooler/quieter and use less energy.
but a boycott is a group tactic, not a personal tactic. boycotting is basically a form of economic coercion, but economics being a social science requires that you take group behaviors into account. so if it's too impractical to boycott a particular business, then it's basically impossible to boycott them since not enough people will engage in the boycott to really make it work.
broadband internet access is essentially a service with inelastic demand. to make things worse, communications networks (telecoms/cellphone carriers, ISPs, etc.) are natural monopolies. these two things combined make ISPs pretty much immune to consumer boycotts. in this situation, the only recourse that consumers have is to exercise their democratic prerogative and organize politically. government regulations are specifically designed for these situations where public interest cannot be protected by any other means.
of course most Americans have accepted their political disenfranchisement, and the idea that the government is actually an extension of citizenry there to carry out the will of the people has become too alien to most to even consider. this gives industry lobbies the power to advance their corporate interests unopposed and push for deregulation.
though it is a little promising that some communities are bucking this trend and taking things into their own hands. as more and more people start seeing wireless broadband as a basic public utility, they will start pushing their municipal governments to establish a public WiFi or WiMax network for their city independent of commercial ISPs. i mean, if ISPs can't be regulated and won't regulate themselves, then the only option left is to provide your own publicly-run alternative.
what does it matter so long as the question initiates an engaging discussion? this may come as a shock to you, but for a lot of geeks, their work and personal interests are not mutually exclusive. so a discussion topic that they are genuinely interested in may also help them do their job.
if you're so pettily concerned that your information might be helpful to others (or you might be doing someone else's work), then don't participate in a /. discussion. it seems like whenever there's any kind of discussion on practical matters there's always some loser complaining that useful information is being freely disseminated or looking for ulterior motives in the question submitter.
and it's much easier to do a quick google search if you're actually looking for a specific regexp rather than submitting such a broad ask /. question hoping that your question will be picked up, and that by chance someone will post the exact solution that you need. so i'd say your suspicions are more rooted in irrational paranoia than cynicism.
maybe you should call Guinness Book of World Records and tell them that all their records are incorrect. or you could, you know, stop being such a pedant.
well, Stirling engines seem to work well enough that they're used in a lot of CST (Concentrating Solar Thermal) plants. i think most parabolic trough and solar power tower installations use Stirling engines to generate electricity.
i'm with you on that one. i much prefer this kind hybrid electric than the drivetrain-based hybrids (whether full hybrid, mild hybrid, power assist hybrid, or mild hybrid).
a full hybrid is not bad, since it is capable of running on just the electric motor, but i think adding the gas engine as a secondary power source (charging the battery, heating, etc.) on a plug-in electric would move us away from a petroleum-economy faster.
this way, we can still free ourselves from our oil-dependency gradually, but we'd already have the transportation infrastructure in place for alternative fuels. that's because plug-in electrics are basically fuel source neutral. you can get your electricity from a coal-burning power plant (that's still exponentially more efficient that having millions of ICE vehicles on the road), or you could get it from solar power plants which are becoming increasingly popular, or you could get your power from nuclear power plants. heck, a plug-in electric is even future-proof since you can power your car from energy sources that have yet been invented. electric vehicles basically make the "which fuel is better" debate moot in terms of vehicle propulsion.
it's a lot easier to upgrade a single power plant than it is to replace thousands of private vehicles. and all the advances being made in alternative/clean energy right now--like solar thermal energy, tidal power, wind farms, etc.--can't be taken advantage of until we have plug-in electrics on the road.
i think one of the "protections" given to pharmacists by the conscience clause is that employees cannot be fired or otherwise punished for refusing to fill a prescription based on religious grounds. from Wikipedia:
if your religion prevents you from performing the responsibilities of a medical professional, then you probably shouldn't be a doctor/nurse/pharmacist/etc. and AFAIK, pharmacists can quit their jobs or switch to a different occupation any time they want. no one is forcing them to be a pharmacist.
if you think that your religious freedoms include the right to deny someone else the medication they've been prescribed by their physician, then you are part of the reason why the conscience clause exists. freedom/liberty doesn't mean you have the right to do whatever you want regardless of the consequences it has on others.
and by your definition of slavery, then anyone living in a society governed by the rule of law is a slave. drug/food manufacturers all have to obey by strict sanitation and food-safety regulations even though they may not want to, but that's what it takes to protect consumers and public health. occupations like law enforcement and medical professions have even greater social responsibilities due to the vital nature of their work. if an on duty police officer sees a crime in progress they have a legal responsibility to step in, otherwise it may be criminal negligence. likewise, medical professional have certain moral obligations when they are on duty.
in many states you still need a prescription to get "Plan B"/"morning after pill"-type emergency contraceptives. which is dumb because there's a limited window of effectiveness for those type of drugs.
though there is a growing movement in the U.S. to make these drugs available over the counter. according to Wikipedia a nonprescription behind-the-counter preparation of Plan B is available in California to women 18 years or older. this was supposed to have been put into effect in 2006, but i haven't heard much about it. i just know that about 2-3 years ago my gf at the time had to get her prescriptions from a rapid-approval website, and (i think) it took about 6 hours between filling out the online and actually getting the prescription filled at a local pharmacy.
and if you don't like the idea of the conscience clause you're not alone. unfortunately, freedom of religion in the U.S. has turned into freedom to subject others to your religion. that's what happens when separation of church and state is flouted by a society. it starts with relatively innocuous things like adding "in god we trust" to our currency and injecting theocratic sentiments into the pledge of allegiance, but then quickly spreads to more insidious things, like encroaching on the rights of patients.
it really depends on the application. for music, headphones are probably a much better value and give a better listening experience. but if you're building a home theater setup for watching movies, obviously speakers are the way to go. you just can't properly enjoy 5.1 surround sound with stereo headphones. but at the same time, most recording studios probably work with headphones far more than they work with speakers.
and in this day and age you shouldn't have to spend $200 to get a decent pair of headphones. likewise, quality speakers shouldn't cost tens of thousands of dollars, much less hundreds of thousands of dollars. i mean, how much did a top of the line sound system cost in the 70's? even by then most high end audio equipment probably exceeded normal human hearing ability. i would hope that today's mid-level consumer audio equipment would be able to at least match the state-of-the-art from over 3-and-a-half decades ago.
cherry pick all you want. AIDS/HIV sufferers being denied treatment because of societal prejudices is well-documented. whether it's drug users, prostitutes, rape victims, or just ordinary women with HIV, people are being denied AIDS/HIV treatment because of the social stigma around these populations and their perceived lifestyles.
it's ignorant attitudes like yours that cause these prejudices to dictate public policy at the expense of public health. even if you don't care whether IV drug users live or die, giving them access to medical treatment in the name of harm-reduction is the beneficial to society at large. any rational person can see that eliminating potential disease vectors is a good thing.
denying prostitutes & drug users adequate access to medical treatment in order to punish them for their lifestyles is just cutting off the nose to spite the face. that kind of attitude has prevented the adoption of needle exchange programs in many areas despite studies showing that such harm-reduction programs save cities tax-payers millions of dollars each year by preventing the spread of disease--which inevitably affects non-drug users as well.
or you could do a little research yourself before running your mouth off.
in the U.S. there are also conscience clauses in several states that allow pharmacists to refuse to fill a patent's prescription based on religious grounds. this was primarily introduced to to deny women emergency contraceptive pills, but it also opens the door for denying patients other types of medical treatment based on religious prejudices.
it all depends on the application i guess. i remember when i was in elementary school (in Taiwan) there were computer desks coming out that let you place the monitor (CRTs back then) inside the actual desk so that it sits under a pane of glass and is angled upward at the user. this provided a more ergonomic work environment that put minimal strain on the user's neck (it's sorta like reading a book).
as a graphic designer and having to focus on the screen for hours at a time when working on a composition, i'd definitely prefer that kind of setup to the conventional monitor orientation. it just seems more natural/comfortable. even if you're transcribing a document or something, you can just place the document next to the display area and shift your gaze between the monitor and the paper without having to tilt your head and strain your neck. those desks were quite expensive though as i recall. but i think a lot of movie theater box offices do use that kind of setup.
and using a Wacom Cintiq tablet-screen hybrid to do graphic design is much easier than using a mouse. in fact, you really can't use a mouse to do serious graphics. aside from gaming, i don't think high mouse-sensitivity is really that much of a benefit on an average-sized display.
i absolutely agree with you. what disturbs me even more is the growing trend of "supermax" prisons where most inmates are put into solitary confinement devoid of any social contact or other mental stimuli. sensory deprivation is beyond cruel; it's a form of torture that can leave permanent mental/psychological trauma. often inmates report hearing voices and other symptoms of psychological degeneration within a few weeks of being put into solitary confinement.
i can understand that with some trouble inmates, like gang members, they can pose a threat to the safety of prison staff and other inmates. therefore, because of the prison system's limited resources solitary confinement is the only practical option. but if we want to call ourselves a civilized society, we need to observe basic humanitarian standards.
with a simple thin client and internet access, inmates can be given free access to great quantities of information and also provided with a healthy level of mental stimuli. it'd be both cost effective/practical and humane. plus, giving inmates internet access would ensure that they had contact with the outside world (friends, family, legal counsel, etc.) without the risk of contraband being smuggled through.
this way we could ensure that the poor underprivileged minorities are subjected to a Kafkaesque nightmare where the prison system is just locking people up and throwing away the key, giving people no recourse for wrongful imprisonment or abuse by prison officials.
in a word, no. they're committing DNS hijacking on file sharing sites. instead of domain names resolving to the correct IP address, the DNS resolution is being hijacked to send users to a different host to whom the requested domain does not belong. that's why the articles call it "hijacking."
which is why i think an open standard would be preferable for something like this. without widespread adoption, p2p (portable to portable) features aren't going to be very useful.
if PMP manufacturers all adopted an open standard for wireless file sharing & user profiles (the last 10 tracks you listened to, the games you have on your system, etc.) then i imagine lots of people would be using those features. open standards are beneficial to consumers because they promote interoperability. you wouldn't have to find another Zune owner, or iPhone owner, or PSP owner to swap files with them.
with Apple there's less incentive to promote interoperability because they have market dominance with their near-monopoly on PMPs, but it would still be in the interest of their customers to make their devices as interoperable as possible. but somehow i doubt they'd put consumer interests above their own commercial interests.
Microsoft OTOH doesn't have Apple's market dominance in the PMP market, so it's actually quite stupid for them not to pursue interoperability with other devices. with the Zune + PSP + Archos + Zen + smartphones, they could have created a coalition of WiFi-supporting portables all supporting the "Zune social" features. that would have made them very useful.
yea, data redundancy and backups are useless if you don't use off-site data protection for disaster recovery. even small businesses can greatly benefit from geographical redundancy.
even though the label i work at is based in California, we still took a major hit from Hurricane Katrina because the masters for several albums in our back catalog were kept at a recording studio that got flooded. after that happened, my boss starting holding onto copies of the masters himself here at the office and also backing up all the digital data onto an external hard drive that he gave to his dad for safe keeping.
of course, for businesses with large volumes of data that are constantly updated, cloud storage is probably the best solution. through multitenancy small to medium-sized businesses can enjoy the same level of data protection as large enterprises like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc.
i actually think some of the Zune's WiFi features are pretty innovative. being able to share music/photos/images directly with other wireless devices is definitely a neat feature (though it'd be neater if more devices supported it). likewise with by able to broadcast a wireless profile to indicate what you're listening to.
frankly, i think the major PMP manufacturers should get together and create a standardized protocol for sharing files across portable media players. Microsoft kinda ruined a great concept by crippling it with DRM. they also missed a great opportunity by not publishing their protocol as an open standard. with the iPod still lacking WiFi capabilities, if Microsoft had made wireless file sharing a popular open standard by working with companies like Sony, Creative, Archos and even SmartPhone manufacturers, they could have made it a huge selling point over the iPod. but the Zune by itself isn't popular enough to make their file sharing feature anything more than a passing novelty. the whole "welcome to the social" campaign is kinda silly when you're the only one in the social.
however, i still look forward to the day when these features become standard on all portable media devices. it'd be cool to sit down on a train and see that there's a person across the room that likes the same music/movies/tv shows/games as you do and be able to swap music/videos/frags/etc. with them.
eh, might as well get in on this OT action...
it should be noted that a lot of high schools have mandatory civic service projects that students have to complete in order to graduate. at my high school we had to:
was this voluntary? no. did most students bitch about having this assignment? yes. but was it a bad thing? i don't think so. i think it's important to foster a sense of civic duty, community spirit, and altruism. that's the basis of a cooperative society, and it's also a vital component of a democratic government.
true participatory democracy requires that regular citizens are actively involved in the government. otherwise it's not a government of the people, by the people, for the people. in a society where people have no sense of civic duty, there is likely to be political & social apathy. even if the constitution is democratic, if the people do not take advantage of the democratic machinery, political power will just be usurped by the wealthy elite and power-mongers.
and i think that's a major problem in the U.S. today. many people are so concerned with their own immediate self-interests that they can't see the shared interests of society/the community. because of that many voters allow themselves to be bought off by tax breaks while their public infrastructure is being stripped away and privatized, destroying the community in the process. ultimately, we're just screwing ourselves over by cutting things like educational funding.
so yes, promoting a sense of civic responsibility is a good thing. it's good to see beyond your own selfish interests and solipsistic world once in a while.
then perhaps the U.S. should shelf all fundamental research until we get our poverty level down to at least as low as Eastern Europe. it helps no one to point fingers at others whiles our own domestic problems continue to go ignored.
also, if we get rid of all fundamental research, where do you recommend scientists & researchers go for employment? are they all going to be re-trained in order to find a place in a society without fundamental scientific research? or should they start a mass exodus of intellectual/scientific talent out of the U.S.?
what effect do you think abolishing public research will have on a society? if people are discouraged from going into the sciences & exploratory research, what effect will that have on our national culture? we already live in society rife with anti-intellectualism and reactionary attitudes. do you really think cutting all funding for fundamental science & public research is going to have a positive social effect on either the U.S. or India?
we fund public research in fundamental science not because it strokes our national ego, or as part of some lofty abstract idealistic goal, but because public research is vital to societal progress. it not only drives a society forward technologically, but it also fosters an intellectual culture and encourages rational thought. when you do away with fundamental research, you're killing the pursuit of knowledge, and that will simply invite intellectual & cultural stagnation.
it has nothing to do with being too proud. a large portion of the homeless population in the U.S. are mentally ill. we just aren't willing to fund the social programs and mental health infrastructure to take care of these people, so they end up in the streets. and not all cities with a homeless population have shelters. in my area there are neither homeless shelters nor facilities for the mentally disabled. this has been known for quite some time but little has been done about it.
that's a good point. i'm guessing part of the reason why Gmail has such a good spam filter is because they implement collective filtering by allowing users to easily mark spam messages, and also because with such a large user-base they can implement statistical filtering techniques much more effectively.
what i don't get is why ISPs big and small don't just cooperate with each other and trade/pool information needed to fight spam. it would improve everyone's quality of service, so why not work together to achieve common ends. combating spam is one situation where different businesses don't need to compete with one another because they have shared interests.
even if you're just a small ISP with only a few thousand users, if you work with 10-20 different similar sized ISPs to collectively implement a shared spam-filter, you would achieve much better results than what each ISP could obtain on their own. not only are there more e-mails to perform statistical analysis and Bayesian filtering on, but there are also more users to identify/catch the spam messages that slip past the filters. that way the job of catching stray spam e-mails is distributed across a much wider user-base. instead of each user having to mark 10 spam messages a day, perhaps they only have to mark 10 messages a month.
AOL died when dial-up died. it's been long enough that most of those users have learned how to use the web (the real one, not that AOL playpen crap).
the whole point of the internet/web is that there's no strict division between content-producers and content-consumers. and unlike TV/radio, you don't have a consolidated corporate media acting as gatekeepers of information. web users are free to find (search for) content that suit their own interests, no matter how odd or obscure those interests are. there's no censorship, and no spoon-feeding of pre-approved corporate-sponsored content. that's why indie music is on the rise, and file sharing has also boosted viewership of indie films. a "web portal" runs completely counter to that media freedom and independence--at least conventional Yahoo!-type web portals; iGoogle is a different story since you can customize the modular layout, and anyone can create their own widget.
in any case, most ex-AOL users were pleasantly surprised by how much better the "real" internet/WWW was compared to their previously sheltered online existence using AOL. by the time broadband became standard in most households, the internet was already well established in mainstream culture, and the web had become a vital tool in the daily lives of ordinary people. so people no longer needed the digital training wheels that AOL provided. most people i know were quite glad to be rid of AOL's restrictive and overbearing services & interface.
the only people who still prefer the AOL "web experience" are the elderly who still haven't adapted to internet culture and the information age we live in. but even many 60-70 year-olds are taking to the web surprisingly well. and the rest are, well, going extinct. AOL died because they catered to a transitional market/demographic. the internet was still new and largely alien to most people, so their "well integrated," penned-in and sanitized online environment was in demand. but it's 2008 now, and if Yahoo! continues to chase a long gone 1990's market, then they'll become a technological anachronism just like AOL did.