BASE is an acronym standing for Building, Ariel, Span, Earth, and is properly capitalized.
Re:OB In Soviet Russia
on
Flying Humans
·
· Score: 2, Funny
How long does it take to train a paratrooper?
Three weeks.
The first week they separate the men from the boys.
The second week they separate the men from the fools.
The third week they throw the fools out of a plane.
Oh yeah, everyone who is against steam cell research is perfectly rational. There isn't a single person* opposed to stem cell research but in favor of in vitro fertilization.
The only thing less rational would be if someone were pro-life, except of course for when it came to capital punishment.
* Bush even praised in vitro fertilization in his 2001 speech about the horrors of stem-cell research
My take is that a secular government is possible in a predominantly muslim country, but the American idealized seperation of church and state probably isn't. In fact, the first leaders of the muslim community following Muhammad's death didn't view themselves as secular leaders, and the secular leaders didn't view themselves as religious authorities. However, after a few successions, human nature being what it is, strong leaders in the Islamic world successfully combined secular and religions authority.
It should be possible to go back to a secular, tolerant government, but that change will have to come from within, and it probably won't happen without a lot of bloodshed. A lot of the violence stemming from the Islamic world isn't Islam versus the west, but rather an internal conflict regarding the authority of the clergy. If the clergy is the ultimate authority, then perhaps everyone will have to adopt sharia or perish. (Sharia, in my only moderately educated and non-muslim opinion, is a bastardized modern development not consistent with Islamic principles in general.) If, on the other hand the clergy is subordinate, or even coequal with the the secular authority we should expect to see peaceful and possibly democratic regimes flourish. We should not, assume that they will be modeled on principles of Liberté, Égalité, and Fraternité - or at least not as we understand them.
Does Islam really theology in general really say anything about YEC (young earth creationism)? I'm sure that there are some imams who subscribe to this theory, and I'm sure that there are some places where you could get killed for criticizing that position, but is it really a widely held belief. The Koran is not a narrative, and does not contain a creation myth, and as such I think the Muslims would be hard pressed to elevate a belief in YEC to canon.
It is also very, very important to point out, that there is no success gene, so there is no correlation between social status (or lack thereof) and evolutionary prowess.
That should work fine for your private email server, however, public businesses are subject to a whole host of records retention guidelines, for the specific purpose of feeding discovery if they're ever sued. Just as it is illegal to shred business records, it is also illegal to delete business related emails.
Also, passing a visual stimuli of bunnies, dancing animated popcorn, and a documentary on FDR's PWA each either suppressed or excited certain areas of the brain responsible for various emotional responses. Researches indicated that these changes could effect people in some way.
I have a netflix subscription, and it hasn't stopped me from going to the theater. What it has done is stop me from going to blockbuster (or jumping on thepiratebay). While this is certainly an anecdote, I wouldn't be surprised if it were the general trend.
If I were to guess why theater attendance is a bit down from a decade ago, I'd point to gas prices, and less spending money, but also to the fact that with videogames and the internet there is more competing for our entertainment dollar (or hour) than there was 10 years ago.
I disagree. I think movies have in general been pretty good (contrast with the music industry) and the prices are for the most part fair (although theater tickets could stand to be $2-3 cheeper).
The MPAA doesn't have a problem. It's making money hand over fist. I'm sure Dan Glickman wants more money, but don't we all. The MPAA's core business is selling seats in theaters, and they're doing fairly well, not as well as in the mid-90's but that's a measure of the overall health of the economy. The MPAA could sit back, not make any technological changes, and they'd still do well for probably about a decade (again, contrast with the music industry).
If I were pressed to name the MPAA's #1 issue, I'd probably say consumer ambivalence over HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. I wouldn't say piracy.
Everyone I've ever known who has worked as a professional in any field signed a confidentiality agreement as a condition of employment on or before their start date.
While I agree with your conclusion, your argument is less cogent or sensical than most of of the pro-life arguments.
Opinions, beliefs, and moral inclinations are not hereditary. They, along with social class/ social standing are more often similar to the parents than not, because of nurture, not nature.
Evolution only deals with genetics. As the pro-choice gene has not been demonstrated to exist, I'm going to go ahead and conclude that evolution and abortion don't belong in the same argument. Grouping them together leads down a dangerous road.
Bull Shit. If she uploaded to two friends then she is guilty of 2 counts of copy-infringement, if those two friends uploaded to two more friends, then each of the friends is guilty of 2 counts of copy infringement.
But then of course first you'd have to actually demonstrate that someone downloaded her files, which the RIAA can't. The certainly can't demonstrate any sort of ripple effect.
I was at the library yesterday with a digital camera. I could have photographed every page of every book there. That doesn't mean I'm guilty of anything.
While inventors may be discouraged from doing their own prior art searches, that is only because in the next breath they are being encouraged to pay someone to do it for them. There actually is a valid reason for this, as the inventor likely knows so much about his invention that there is a fair chance that he either interprets everything remotely similar to be infringing, or he sees his device as being so specialized that nothing, in his mind, is similar.
Companies like apple, comcast, and ebay have people on staff whose sole responsibility is to search for prior art.
The Carnot efficiency == 1-Tc/Th (use Rankine or Kalvin, not Fahrenheit or Celsius)
That is to say that the closer in temperature your hot and cold reservoirs are, the less efficient your process. This is the reason that every power plant and jet engine in existence try to increase the temperature as much as possible. A turbine operating at 3600F - like in the F-22 (beyond the melting point of Ti), is always going to be more efficient than one operating at 2700F.
Now, while geothermal might (and that's a big might) be ok for residential heating/cooling, you are never going to be able to make any significant amount of power from it, unless you drive it from lava flows. There might be an infinitely large heat reservoir at 50F, but at best that's a delta T of 50 degrees in the dead of winter. The Carnot efficiency of using a sterling engine with a Th of 50F and a Tc of 0F is 10% (it's considerably worse running in reverse for the summer, and almost completely worthless in the spring/fall). That's just not good enough to justify capital for a power generating infrastructure.
Now if, your going to drill 2 miles down and vaporize water with hot bedrock, the numbers probably work out a tad better, but it should go without saying that drilling a loop miles deep isn't exactly cheep. Oh, and you might cause an earthquake like they did in Switzerland.
We are already extremely effective at killing people we know we want to kill. That is why Saddam's regime fell so fast. All the simulations (and wargames) that were ran were predicated on the notion that we would be fighting a centrally controlled enemy who wore uniforms and had tanks. It turns out that our enemy looks nothing like that.
The problem we have is finding out who the enemy is, and how do disrupt groups that operate without a central command. The solution to that problem (according to the author) is a social network, not a technological one.
Efficient killing machine == Good when you know who the bad guys trying to kill you are.
It's not garbage. The density of matter in space is important, and speed of sound is applicable.
Think of it this way, if your sitting in the next cubicle over and I whisper something and you are unable to hear it, does that mean that the speed of sound doesn't exist, or simply that the amplitude of the signal was too small? Similarly, in order to transmit sound in space I'd need some serious lungs. More to the point the speed of sound is a critical parameter when examining how two flows (such as the solar wind and the interstellar medium) interact. Simply put if the speed of sound in the interstellar medium were undefined it would not interact with the solar wind, and there wouldn't be a termination shock at all. Every particle of the solar wind would not interact with any particles of the interstellar medium.
It's been a while since I've done any fluid dynamics, so some of the details may not be precisely right, and I am not knowledgeable enough on rarefied systems to comment on why the speed of sound is so high in the interstellar medium, but suffice to say that many things behave in counter-intuitive ways for rarefied systems.
Its a shame that just because peeople value life, people think its ok to Overcharge, and rip people off when it comes to healthcare
It's not overcharging that's the problem, it is overpricing in the aggregate. The problem isn't that some evil big pharma says, "I noticed you have MS, that's a shame, for 20% of your yearly income we'll sell you the maintenance drugs you need to stay alive." In some ways that would be preferable to the current situation, where meds are sold at a fixed price. If I'm in upper management it might be a 5% ding in my income (which is covered by insurance), but if I'm working on the line, or unable to find employment because of my affliction, I flat out can't get the drugs I need.
Besides, have you ever seen government control benefit an industry?
Your kidding right? Government control almost always benefits an industry: defense contractors, ATT, commercial farmers, the list goes on, and on, and on. Government control always benefits somebody, unfortunately it is rarer that it benefits the public.
However, there are plenty of cases when the government does help the public: education, highways, police, disaster relief, and so on.
How would you categorize those that have not been buying CDs long before anyone even suggested boycotting music?
Old.
Hey I like the white album too, but I can only listen to it so many times before I crave something new. Oh, and art tends to evolve, and it is interesting to see how old bands influence new bands.
But I respect the onion on your belt, I'll be getting off your lawn now.
I'm going to start off saying that I think it is pretty clear that in general we agree that the current healthcare system in the US is pretty darn broken, because I'm going to spend the rest of this post talking about specifics upon which we disagree.
I don't think that medical training is only expensive because of the government, a MD is not subsidized in the same way that a law degree, a engineering degree, an MBA, or any other advanced degree is not subsidized. Medical training is also expensive because it's a lot of work, it takes a long time, and it involves a fair amount of time on very expensive equipment.
There is a lot wrong with the pharma industry, the emphasis on maintenance drugs rather than cures, and the obscene amount of money they spend on advertising not least of all. In general though, it is my opinion that in general the patent system actually functions pretty well for pharma. It costs a ton to develop a new drug, and dumping money into pharma R&D is really something we want to encourage. What we should be doing is severely limiting the amount of money that pharma can spend on advertising, which typically outstrips their R&D spending, and demand more complete disclosure so that things like fen-phen and vioxx are less likely to happen, and also so that when a drug does come off patent generics are actually able to produce it - although this is more of an issue with biologicals like factor VIII than drugs.
On law and medicine, I really don't see the high malpractice insurance costs as a problem with the healthcare system, but rather as a problem with the judicial system. With all the money being thrown around in these cases, how hard would it be to hire a judge who is actually either an expert, or at least extremely familiar with the medical field. Someone who actually understands what is involved in the practice of medicine could quickly and efficiently dismiss frivolous suits. I am of the opinion that tort reform capping damages is actually a bad idea. The problem isn't the guy who gets the wrong leg cut off and sues for $10 million, he probably actually deserves it, the problem is the people who are outraged when they have a known complication for a procedure and sue for $50000.
The solution is to get government out of health care, and let markets work.
First, there's no such thing as a free market, of course if you'd like to point me to a well functioning free market I'd love to be corrected.
Second, are you advocating the abandonment of government healthcare regulation? If so, we could go into business together and make a fortune selling morphine addled snake oil as a cure all. Also, I'd like to remind you that we don't currently have a national healthcare plan, and that isn't working out so well, the market's invisible hand strangely hasn't appeared to correct the situation.
Third, there are an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the US. That is >5% of the population. Do you believe that >5% of the population is the reason for high healthcare costs? Or do you believe that red herrings like immigration or Nazism will persuade others to come over to your way of thinking.
Umm, healthcare is expensive because (a) it requires doctors, who are highly trained professionals, (b) it is a matter of life and death, we place a very high value on life, (c) it uses state of the art technology, (d) somewhat parallel to c, it uses novel chemicals, which are expensive to develop, and (e) combining d and b, it requires human testing and as such is highly regulated, regulation adds cost, and (f) we live in a highly litigious society, and as such the cost of a mistake is enormous.
That's not to say it shouldn't be cheaper, or that there isn't plenty of waste, but I personally think that doctors and researchers should be paid well, I think that we should have very good (read: expensive) people managing all the systems involved, and I am willing to pay for the safety and the new technology.
Universal healthcare, or health insurance in general isn't about making healthcare cheaper, but rather about making the people with Jaguars subsidize the inherently high cost of healthcare for those with Kias.
A great universal healthcare system would reward hospitals who successfully improve efficiency without impacting quality, but and acceptable universal healthcare system will not worsen efficiency and provide affordable healthcare to poorer americans, because we find value in our working class not dieing of cholera.
Slashdot Mirror
BASE is an acronym standing for Building, Ariel, Span, Earth, and is properly capitalized.
How long does it take to train a paratrooper?
Three weeks.
The first week they separate the men from the boys.
The second week they separate the men from the fools.
The third week they throw the fools out of a plane.
Oh yeah, everyone who is against steam cell research is perfectly rational. There isn't a single person* opposed to stem cell research but in favor of in vitro fertilization.
The only thing less rational would be if someone were pro-life, except of course for when it came to capital punishment.
* Bush even praised in vitro fertilization in his 2001 speech about the horrors of stem-cell research
My take is that a secular government is possible in a predominantly muslim country, but the American idealized seperation of church and state probably isn't. In fact, the first leaders of the muslim community following Muhammad's death didn't view themselves as secular leaders, and the secular leaders didn't view themselves as religious authorities. However, after a few successions, human nature being what it is, strong leaders in the Islamic world successfully combined secular and religions authority.
It should be possible to go back to a secular, tolerant government, but that change will have to come from within, and it probably won't happen without a lot of bloodshed. A lot of the violence stemming from the Islamic world isn't Islam versus the west, but rather an internal conflict regarding the authority of the clergy. If the clergy is the ultimate authority, then perhaps everyone will have to adopt sharia or perish. (Sharia, in my only moderately educated and non-muslim opinion, is a bastardized modern development not consistent with Islamic principles in general.) If, on the other hand the clergy is subordinate, or even coequal with the the secular authority we should expect to see peaceful and possibly democratic regimes flourish. We should not, assume that they will be modeled on principles of Liberté, Égalité, and Fraternité - or at least not as we understand them.
Does Islam really theology in general really say anything about YEC (young earth creationism)? I'm sure that there are some imams who subscribe to this theory, and I'm sure that there are some places where you could get killed for criticizing that position, but is it really a widely held belief. The Koran is not a narrative, and does not contain a creation myth, and as such I think the Muslims would be hard pressed to elevate a belief in YEC to canon.
It is also very, very important to point out, that there is no success gene, so there is no correlation between social status (or lack thereof) and evolutionary prowess.
That should work fine for your private email server, however, public businesses are subject to a whole host of records retention guidelines, for the specific purpose of feeding discovery if they're ever sued. Just as it is illegal to shred business records, it is also illegal to delete business related emails.
Also, passing a visual stimuli of bunnies, dancing animated popcorn, and a documentary on FDR's PWA each either suppressed or excited certain areas of the brain responsible for various emotional responses. Researches indicated that these changes could effect people in some way.
I have a netflix subscription, and it hasn't stopped me from going to the theater. What it has done is stop me from going to blockbuster (or jumping on thepiratebay). While this is certainly an anecdote, I wouldn't be surprised if it were the general trend.
If I were to guess why theater attendance is a bit down from a decade ago, I'd point to gas prices, and less spending money, but also to the fact that with videogames and the internet there is more competing for our entertainment dollar (or hour) than there was 10 years ago.
Good God, how many more years will the myth that ISPs are common carriers persist?
They're not, and they don't want to be.
I disagree. I think movies have in general been pretty good (contrast with the music industry) and the prices are for the most part fair (although theater tickets could stand to be $2-3 cheeper).
The MPAA doesn't have a problem. It's making money hand over fist. I'm sure Dan Glickman wants more money, but don't we all. The MPAA's core business is selling seats in theaters, and they're doing fairly well, not as well as in the mid-90's but that's a measure of the overall health of the economy. The MPAA could sit back, not make any technological changes, and they'd still do well for probably about a decade (again, contrast with the music industry).
If I were pressed to name the MPAA's #1 issue, I'd probably say consumer ambivalence over HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. I wouldn't say piracy.
Everyone I've ever known who has worked as a professional in any field signed a confidentiality agreement as a condition of employment on or before their start date.
While I agree with your conclusion, your argument is less cogent or sensical than most of of the pro-life arguments.
Opinions, beliefs, and moral inclinations are not hereditary. They, along with social class/ social standing are more often similar to the parents than not, because of nurture, not nature.
Evolution only deals with genetics. As the pro-choice gene has not been demonstrated to exist, I'm going to go ahead and conclude that evolution and abortion don't belong in the same argument. Grouping them together leads down a dangerous road.
So was Warren G. Harding, but he was only bad for 2.5 years as opposed tot he current presidents 8.
Bull Shit. If she uploaded to two friends then she is guilty of 2 counts of copy-infringement, if those two friends uploaded to two more friends, then each of the friends is guilty of 2 counts of copy infringement.
But then of course first you'd have to actually demonstrate that someone downloaded her files, which the RIAA can't. The certainly can't demonstrate any sort of ripple effect.
I was at the library yesterday with a digital camera. I could have photographed every page of every book there. That doesn't mean I'm guilty of anything.
Whoa there, were do you work?
While inventors may be discouraged from doing their own prior art searches, that is only because in the next breath they are being encouraged to pay someone to do it for them. There actually is a valid reason for this, as the inventor likely knows so much about his invention that there is a fair chance that he either interprets everything remotely similar to be infringing, or he sees his device as being so specialized that nothing, in his mind, is similar.
Companies like apple, comcast, and ebay have people on staff whose sole responsibility is to search for prior art.
Geothermal won't work. Anyone who says differently doesn't understand basic thermodynamics.
The Carnot efficiency == 1-Tc/Th (use Rankine or Kalvin, not Fahrenheit or Celsius)
That is to say that the closer in temperature your hot and cold reservoirs are, the less efficient your process. This is the reason that every power plant and jet engine in existence try to increase the temperature as much as possible. A turbine operating at 3600F - like in the F-22 (beyond the melting point of Ti), is always going to be more efficient than one operating at 2700F.
Now, while geothermal might (and that's a big might) be ok for residential heating/cooling, you are never going to be able to make any significant amount of power from it, unless you drive it from lava flows. There might be an infinitely large heat reservoir at 50F, but at best that's a delta T of 50 degrees in the dead of winter. The Carnot efficiency of using a sterling engine with a Th of 50F and a Tc of 0F is 10% (it's considerably worse running in reverse for the summer, and almost completely worthless in the spring/fall). That's just not good enough to justify capital for a power generating infrastructure.
Now if, your going to drill 2 miles down and vaporize water with hot bedrock, the numbers probably work out a tad better, but it should go without saying that drilling a loop miles deep isn't exactly cheep. Oh, and you might cause an earthquake like they did in Switzerland.
(re)Read the article.
We are already extremely effective at killing people we know we want to kill. That is why Saddam's regime fell so fast. All the simulations (and wargames) that were ran were predicated on the notion that we would be fighting a centrally controlled enemy who wore uniforms and had tanks. It turns out that our enemy looks nothing like that.
The problem we have is finding out who the enemy is, and how do disrupt groups that operate without a central command. The solution to that problem (according to the author) is a social network, not a technological one.
Efficient killing machine == Good when you know who the bad guys trying to kill you are.
It's not garbage. The density of matter in space is important, and speed of sound is applicable.
Think of it this way, if your sitting in the next cubicle over and I whisper something and you are unable to hear it, does that mean that the speed of sound doesn't exist, or simply that the amplitude of the signal was too small? Similarly, in order to transmit sound in space I'd need some serious lungs. More to the point the speed of sound is a critical parameter when examining how two flows (such as the solar wind and the interstellar medium) interact. Simply put if the speed of sound in the interstellar medium were undefined it would not interact with the solar wind, and there wouldn't be a termination shock at all. Every particle of the solar wind would not interact with any particles of the interstellar medium.
It's been a while since I've done any fluid dynamics, so some of the details may not be precisely right, and I am not knowledgeable enough on rarefied systems to comment on why the speed of sound is so high in the interstellar medium, but suffice to say that many things behave in counter-intuitive ways for rarefied systems.
Your kidding right? Government control almost always benefits an industry: defense contractors, ATT, commercial farmers, the list goes on, and on, and on. Government control always benefits somebody, unfortunately it is rarer that it benefits the public.
However, there are plenty of cases when the government does help the public: education, highways, police, disaster relief, and so on.
Old.
Hey I like the white album too, but I can only listen to it so many times before I crave something new. Oh, and art tends to evolve, and it is interesting to see how old bands influence new bands.
But I respect the onion on your belt, I'll be getting off your lawn now.
I'm going to start off saying that I think it is pretty clear that in general we agree that the current healthcare system in the US is pretty darn broken, because I'm going to spend the rest of this post talking about specifics upon which we disagree.
I don't think that medical training is only expensive because of the government, a MD is not subsidized in the same way that a law degree, a engineering degree, an MBA, or any other advanced degree is not subsidized. Medical training is also expensive because it's a lot of work, it takes a long time, and it involves a fair amount of time on very expensive equipment.
There is a lot wrong with the pharma industry, the emphasis on maintenance drugs rather than cures, and the obscene amount of money they spend on advertising not least of all. In general though, it is my opinion that in general the patent system actually functions pretty well for pharma. It costs a ton to develop a new drug, and dumping money into pharma R&D is really something we want to encourage. What we should be doing is severely limiting the amount of money that pharma can spend on advertising, which typically outstrips their R&D spending, and demand more complete disclosure so that things like fen-phen and vioxx are less likely to happen, and also so that when a drug does come off patent generics are actually able to produce it - although this is more of an issue with biologicals like factor VIII than drugs.
On law and medicine, I really don't see the high malpractice insurance costs as a problem with the healthcare system, but rather as a problem with the judicial system. With all the money being thrown around in these cases, how hard would it be to hire a judge who is actually either an expert, or at least extremely familiar with the medical field. Someone who actually understands what is involved in the practice of medicine could quickly and efficiently dismiss frivolous suits. I am of the opinion that tort reform capping damages is actually a bad idea. The problem isn't the guy who gets the wrong leg cut off and sues for $10 million, he probably actually deserves it, the problem is the people who are outraged when they have a known complication for a procedure and sue for $50000.
First, there's no such thing as a free market, of course if you'd like to point me to a well functioning free market I'd love to be corrected.
Second, are you advocating the abandonment of government healthcare regulation? If so, we could go into business together and make a fortune selling morphine addled snake oil as a cure all. Also, I'd like to remind you that we don't currently have a national healthcare plan, and that isn't working out so well, the market's invisible hand strangely hasn't appeared to correct the situation.
Third, there are an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the US. That is >5% of the population. Do you believe that >5% of the population is the reason for high healthcare costs? Or do you believe that red herrings like immigration or Nazism will persuade others to come over to your way of thinking.
Umm, healthcare is expensive because (a) it requires doctors, who are highly trained professionals, (b) it is a matter of life and death, we place a very high value on life, (c) it uses state of the art technology, (d) somewhat parallel to c, it uses novel chemicals, which are expensive to develop, and (e) combining d and b, it requires human testing and as such is highly regulated, regulation adds cost, and (f) we live in a highly litigious society, and as such the cost of a mistake is enormous.
That's not to say it shouldn't be cheaper, or that there isn't plenty of waste, but I personally think that doctors and researchers should be paid well, I think that we should have very good (read: expensive) people managing all the systems involved, and I am willing to pay for the safety and the new technology.
Universal healthcare, or health insurance in general isn't about making healthcare cheaper, but rather about making the people with Jaguars subsidize the inherently high cost of healthcare for those with Kias.
A great universal healthcare system would reward hospitals who successfully improve efficiency without impacting quality, but and acceptable universal healthcare system will not worsen efficiency and provide affordable healthcare to poorer americans, because we find value in our working class not dieing of cholera.