The problem with embryonic stem cells is that for any treatment to really exist, the cells would have to be a genotype match with the person being treated. This brings into focus a small, tiny, little problem - if you can make embryonic stem cells to order that match a specific genotype, you have just solved the problem of human cloning.
Now you have a real choice indeed - do we treat the heart condition with stem cells, or do we simply replace the heart with a newly grown one? I suppose an argument could be made that as the cells more or less came from the person being treated the clone (that grew the heart) doesn't really have any right to exist apart from the original. I don't think I would like to review the court transcript that would be involved with this decision, as it might be really, really thick.
How about demonstrators chanting "Freedom for Clones!" This and many other things follow from embryonic stem cells. I don't really care when you kill off the bunch of cells - once you have the ability to on-demand make genotype specific cells, you have human cloning. If this provides meaningful treatments, there will be no stopping it - there will be cloning. And we better figure out how exactly to deal with that little problem. Burying your head in sand isn't a solution.
The Bush solution was simple - just say no for a variety of reasons without getting into the specifics. Obama may (or may not) understand the real ramifications of success here, but by repealing the ban we are clearly opening the door to a discovery that leads to human cloning. And it will be pretty much unsupressable once it is discovered.
Want Bill Gates to live forever through clones? How about Warren Buffet? John McCain is probably got enough money to go for it, if a solution gets found soon enough. So, no, it isn't just about killing babies. It is about human cloning and all that goes with it. Personally, I think the risks outweigh any possible benefits because the risks are so incredibly large.
Most users have no idea what they are using on a GB basis. They would likely underestimate by orders of magnitude, run up excess charges, complain and likely drop their service.
Moving from an unlimited flat-rate plan to any sort of metered usage plan would likely be devastating to any cable ISP in the US. With DSL providers offering absurdly priced plans (like $14.95 a month), moving to a metered plan would only work in most markets if the DSL providers did as well. Since they face utterly different market conditions, this is unlikely to happen.
So forget about metering, excess charges and the like. Never going to happen in the US. Could this be implemented with a new fiber provider? Maybe, if it was viewed as something completely different, like 10GB service and something that would need that kind of bandwidth.
The real issue isn't how much the customer is providing in revenue, but how \much they are costing. Could be that the budget plan has more profit in it than the fatter plan when it is actually being used.
Obviously, an unused fat plan is the most revenue with the fewest costs, as long as the customer never calls tech support.
But an underutilized budget plan may be more profitable than a maxed-out fat plan.
A dirty secret that most educators know is there are people that can manipulate abstract symbols and those that cannot. If you confront someone that cannot do this with a problem that requires it, no matter how hard they try to do it, they aren't going to be able to.
This does not appear to be learned skill but something the brain is either capable of or not.
This used to be pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things. It became more important around the beginning of the 20th century, but was a pretty simple division - if you didn't have the ability you got a job in a factory or became a plumber or something like that. If you could, you could be a mathemetician. Engineering disciplines were sort of on the line, but probably require the ability.
I don't think it has anywhere near as much to do with age or training. But if someone does not possess the ability, trying to "make them" is futile and frustrating.
This is an extremely common opinion outside of the US and almost unheard of in the US. Which is why medical care costs are so different in the US and why 90% of the spending is done in the last year of life.
Everyone wants that last change heroic rescue from dying and are willing to go to almost unbelievable lengths to get it.
So you believe that medical treatment is only for people that can pay? I think you will find yourself in a rather small minority in the world. Most people seem to believe that care should be available for all without considering ability to pay.
Obviously, we can't spend infinite amounts of money. So the end result is like Canada where everyone gets the same treatment and money can't be used to get more or better. This generally means that end-of-life sorts of stuff just doesn't happen. At all, for anyone.
What most people haven't figured out is if the US is going to go to a system where insurance is mandated and can't be managed - everyone gets the same coverage without regard to risk - we are going to have to have some strong limits on end-of-life care or the costs will be impossible. Since around 90% of all US medical costs come in the last year of life, this means a savings of around 80-90% immediately.
Of course, if you don't happen to agree that it is time for you to go it will kinda suck. But this too will be a decision that you will have help with. Modern living through chemistry - there are certainly drugs that will make the idea that it is your time a lot easier to take.
Ala carte cable will probably happen - and then be changed in a twisted way never to be seen again.
The problem is that nobody (and I mean NOBODY) will pay for EWTN. The majority will not pay for BET. A few people, but not enough will pay for the Golf Channel. I don't really see people paying for the Weather Channel either.
OK, so now Jesse Jackson gets in some Congresscritter's face and demands that the discrimination against BET cease. So now there is a BET tax. The Catholic Church sends a few letters and a priest or two about EWTN being discriminated against and how this lack of diversity is affecting people. So now BET and EWTN are somehow subsidized.
How many people will actually pay for Spike when they have to make an individual choice? Better put, how many married men will be able to convince their wives that Spike (with Manswers) is a good thing to spend money on? Not enough to keep Spike on the air, that's how many.
I suspect SyFry will go the same way - some people pay, just not enough. As will be the case with about 75% of the channel lineup. It isn't that anyone will make a decision to eliminate these, just that there isn't enough people paying to make it possible to continue to operate. What made the Golf Channel possible was selling it to the cable and satellite companies, not selling it to individual subscribers.
The end result is there are maybe 20 cable channels left. Oh, 22 - I forgot BET and EWTN. At that point the whole cable TV idea is pretty pointless and developing a new channel is next to impossible - you don't sell the cable management, you have to sell individual subscribers.
I am sure I am not the only one with this vision. Just the threat of the discrimination lawsuits would be a serious obstacle. The market shrinkage is nearly provable and would easily make it next to impossible to get this done.
We've pretty much obsoleted that model with the new digital broadcast. Now, instead of coverage areas that extend far beyond cities, the coverage pretty much ends in the suburbs.
The benefit is of course that there are no more snowy pictures - everything is either crystal clear or blank. However, as someone with a home in a rural area we went from five stations that could be picked up and a sixth that was rather iffy we now get one digital station. This is with a 10-foot mast on top of the house with a rotator. Of course a big VHF/UHF antenna is pretty much a waste anyway with the new signal frequencies.
Cable was the obvious choice and allowed moving from fringe-area DSL (384K) to cable Internet.
If you live in a city or close-in suburb OTA is still a reality, at least for now.
The problem is with the level of intelligence on the Internet today you will find someone that posted some incredibly lame comment when they are 10 years old. Then, 20 years later a prospective employer finds this, ignores the context (and the age when it was posted) and drops the resume in the trash.
Some things are meaningful to archive. Others are, well, stupid. Today, we focus mostly on the stupid and ignore the things that would be good to archive.
The problem with Obamacare isn't so much the "government as a competitor" it is the idea of mandating what must be covered by insurance.
Today, some states mandate that mental health coverage be a part of every policy. Other mandate that prenatal care be included. Other mandates are for things like cosmetic surgery, transgender surgery, coverage for alternative therapies, like acupuncture and homeopathic medicines. Today the states with the most mandates are the ones where costs are highest and are having the most trouble. These mandates got in to law because of special interest groups garnering support from lawmakers. How does a State Senator get in good with the LGBT crowd? By adding a mandate for transgender surgery in every insurance policy in the state.
A Federal level set of policy mandates - as will be part of Obamacare - is going to pretty much have to cater every single special interest group there is. The end result is that all policies will have a huge number of such mandates. This affects everyone, since to be "qualified" all plans will have to meet the Federal mandates - that much has already been made clear.
So we are all going to be at the level of the states with the most mandates soon. I really don't expect the insurance industry to survive it in even the short term. The government is likely going to have to step in and take over.
There are no actual facts supporting any claim of superiority for the US private health care system: people in countries with public systems live longer and spend less than Americans do.
The one problem with this sort of assertion is that the people in other countries aren't Americans. They probably have more sensible diets. They live differently. So basically there is very little commonality to compare with it. I'd say the biggest difference overall is there are different attitudes towards life and death in general.
Should Americans live (and think) like people in Europe? I think that would be a tough sell. As is any sort of single-payer health care system going to be. The most likely outcome is that it turns into the Veterans Administration or something very close to it - continually cash-starved and looking for any way to cut costs in a never-ending death spiral.
The problem is that most of the world has a very simple disconnect between "stuff on computers" and "stuff that affects them". These folks did nothing to anyone that isn't using a computer. Therefore, for most of the population of the world there was zero impact. Nothing. No difference.
Now, for a very small minority of people (a few millions out of 6 billion) these people caused trouble. In no way does this justify in the minds of the rest of the population of the world that there should be any laws against what they did.
For example, if you go outside your house and step on some ants I am sure the ants being stepped on would like there to be a law against stepping on ants. The rest of the ant population wasn't affected and neither was the rest of the human population. So there are no laws against stepping on ants, even if to the ants being stepped on it is a huge life-ending tragedy.
So for these guys they affected some computer users in a mysterious place outside of the real world. Good luck with convincing anyone that this is all that important.
In the US you don't get any law enforcement attention until you cause provable damages in excess of $25,000. And if you participate in the "crime" by giving away your password through some trojan program the other person isn't going to be taking all the punishment for stealing from you.
Face it, you live in a different world than most people. They don't understand your world and you don't understand why yours isn't important to them.
If a lawyer representing a vehicle homicide client happens to also kill someone with his car while defending his client, this should not effect the outcome of the first trial.
Yes, but it doesn't look good. It doesn't have that gloss of "professional" and "court officer" that an attorney needs to be able to function. So, basically the attorney didn't do their job in this case and tried, without success, to divert attention from the matter at hand.
Of course, this is what the attorney said he was going to do from the beginning. There isn't any legal defense for his client and he knew it, along with everyone else on the planet. So the only hope was to distract everyone with some furious handwaving. It didn't work and pissed off the judge who saw through the tactic. That was always the risk with doing this.
Well, he gets to pay some fees.
The poster has missed the point entirely
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Window Pain
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Ads are being served to users that do not want them - but the advertisers are paying. Who exactly is the customer here? The end user viewing the ad or the advertiser? What the poster missed here is that there are four players here:
The advertiser with malicious or misleading content.
The ad purveyor who is collecting money from the advertiser for putting ads up on web sites.
The web site operator who is getting paid to have ads displayed to visitors.
Finally, the end user viewing the ad.
OK, so who is in control of what here? Well, the web site operator is selling "time" or "visitors" and might like to exhert some kind of control over the ads but isn't offered any such control. Try convincing Google that you do not want to see any ads for multi-level marketing scams on your web site. Go ahead, try. No good, huh? No, you don't have much control - maybe you can say no to "adult" ads.
The ad purveyor has complete control, but they are being paid plenty to post ads. All kinds of ads. They are heavily isolated from the end user, such that even if the end user finds out the CEOs phone number what exactly are they going to do? The end user is not paying the ad purveyor - the advertiser is.
You will never find the advertiser to complain, and even if you did it wouldn't matter. If you are going to advertise on the Internet you have to be immune to complaints. Someone is going to complain all the time. And it doesn't matter because the end user has no control whatsoever.
Sure, the end user can annoy the web site operator - who, by the way, is getting paid plenty to sit and take the complaints and do nothing. Even if the web site operator wanted to do something they have no control. They have two choices - stop advertising and stop the flow of money, or ignore the complaints. The "threat" of moving to a different advertising purveyor is hollow - there are no "different" or "better" purveyors - just those that pay less. The object here for the web site operator is to get as much for their "product" (visitors seeing ads) as possible. End user complaints have no meaning unless you have four visitors that just keep coming back.
Oh, and the advertiser just doesn't care what anyone thinks about this process. After all, they are the ones pushing misleading or harmful content, right?
It is all about control, power and relationships. If you don't understand that you need to sit down and think this stuff through. The Internet today is a fundamentally abusive relationship for the end user. They are the "bottom boys" being dominated and get to take whatever is coming their way. Don't like it? Try a different browser that (hopefully) blocks ads better. If you visit web sites where there are ads, you are going to be subjected to ads - abusive, misleading and harmful ads. Your ability to affect this is small indeed - you can try to block the stream of ads coming your way or you can avoid the more heavily ad-laden web sites.
The problem is there are at least three grades of data that you might have:
Trivial stuff not worth taking extraordinary means to protect.
Stuff that if found would be damaging.
Stuff that is worth your life and the lives of others to protect.
The problem with #2 is that in general law enforcement already knows what the material is and just requires it for "proof" at trial. So you encrypt it or destroy it - and the law enforcement folks can no longer use it at trial. However, they can use the fact it is encrypted and/or destroyed at trial. While not absolute proof, this can certainly be spun in a way that looks very, very bad. You are then faced with the plea bargain - 10 years if you admit to it or the possibility of 100 years if you don't. This sort of argument can be pretty persuasive.
For #3 it is a whole different ballgame. You are up against an adversary that needs the data and probably has no real idea. Say it is a list of Al Queda operatives within current law enforcement establishments in the UK. Every single one of them will likely be put to death should this list be discovered. What steps are you prepared to take to ensure this information doesn't fall into the wrong hands? Obviously, if you fall into law enforcement hands and they even suspect this information exists virtually nothing is going to stop them from gaining access to it. Suicide is probably required, but that still leaves the data hanging around.
So what do you do? Eating a USB drive probably isn't anywhere near good enough. I'd say holding the USB drive with a hand grenade (pin pulled, spoon flipped) in your armpit might be a good start.
The proper solution to Prop 65 warnings is to utterly refuse to enter any structure with such a warning. You have been warned, after all. Explain it to the business owner or manager that you would really like to come in and spend some money but the sign has you frightened - which is what its purpose is.
The folks behind Prop 65 thought this would cause businesses to eliminate the hazardous materials from their operation and thus provide a cleaner environment. Unfortunately, that isn't really possible. When the ink in the pen is classified as a hazardous substance or the chemicals in the battery for the clock on the wall you are well and truely screwed.
So the answer is very simple - if even 10% of the people in California simply said they would not enter a structure with such a warning these warnings would be removed. The law would be revoked within a week and that would be that.
By ignoring the signs you are contributing to the problem.
Most of the problem is that what you are calling "common sense" isn't all that common anymore. You have people in the US from a wide number of different cultures. Cultures with vastly different ideas about life, death and liability. The US currently offers people a government-supported lifestyle with vast wealth, at least compared to what they had where they were living before.
Now a rural Mexican farmer probably knows what a hammer is, and is probably familiar with most of the other devices they are likely to encounter in the US. But what about a person from rural Africa? You could print all the warnings you want and have a complete instruction book but if it isn't in the odd dialect of Swahili they understand you aren't going to get anywhere at all.
Not only that, but as coddled as many city-dwellers in the US are, they may actually think it is the government's responsibility to make sure they can't get hurt around their government-supplied housing with their government-supplied luxuries. So the idea that they can pick up a refrigerator and move it to a different apartment - with food in it - doesn't occur to them as being senselessly stupid as it might to someone else. And when the invitable happens - someone gets hurt - not only are there government workers there to assist but there are also government lawyers there to make sure they don't sue and are "properly" taken care of.
Most of the people living today in cities in the US would likely last about 30 minutes in 1850s era California. They would either eat something poisonous or be utterly unable to open a can of food without electricity. Or they would be rude and obnoxious to the wrong (armed) person thinking they were dissin' them.
We are likely only at the very beginning of seeing how far government-sponsored coddling can go.
Depends on your agreement with the photographer. Some photographers give you the rights and turn over all materials (digital source, negatives, etc.) while others retain the originals and reserve the right to sell you additional prints.
Most of the cut-rate wedding "service" photographers that do videos, provide disposible cameras for the guests, etc. will turn over everything to you and wash their hands of the whole thing. You have them for a day (or most of) and that is it. Other photographers consider their photo shoot to be a lot more of an artistic expression and retain the rights. Sometimes the rights are purchasable, sometimes not.
Basically, you can get whatever you want - you just have to get the right agreement in advance. Hiring a professional and bitching about them not doing things the way you want after the fact doesn't get you anywhere.
I doubt the artist, sculptor or whatever was a "government employee" of any sort or that the memorial was designed as a work-for-hire. It was almost certainly designed independently and the design sold without including the rights. This is how nearly every memorial, sculpture or art piece on public land is done.
I seriously doubt there is anything "groundbreaking" about this. Try something, anything with an image of the Picasso sculpture in Chicago. If it comes to the attention of the rightsholders it will not be looked upon favorably.
No plan for waste? I'm sorry, there are two things that come out of a nuclear power plant: old fuel rods and other misc. waste. The fuel rods should be reprocessed - there is no reason not to and it is a horrible waste of materials not to do so. The other waste is currently shipped off to be buried and is relatively low-level. I believe old salt mines are pretty popular today for this stuff.
Additionally, there is a plan that has existed since the 1970s for dealing with high level nuclear waste - not fuel rods, but other stuff. That has been consistently kicked around and the State of Nevada has pretty much sat down and said they will not permit the facility to operate. So there is a plan, just nobody wants it in their State and the State that was selected has refused to allow it.
First thing that would make a positive impression on uninformed people would be to start reprocessing fuel rods. A fuel rod is no longer useful when around 3% of the uranium has been used and there are significant quantities of other isotopes present. Reprocessing would recover the 97% of the uranium and the other isotope materials leaving little or no "waste".
Now if you want to treat the used fuel rods as waste I recommend that we also consider automobiles to be waste after five full tanks of gasoline and force the owners to store them in their garage until they rust away into dust. This would make about as much sense as the current fuel rod policies and would put the problem into proper focus.
Well, considering the wonderful nature of how the US government is run and how they are currently running the VA medical establishment, do you really think that is a good idea?
I'd say the VA is the prime example of a US government-run healthcare system. They are starved for budget funds, so everything is on hold perpetually. Patients are sitting in hallways because there are no rooms, people wait hours for simple things and months for anything more advanced. Basically, the VA has been a disaster since a little while after WW II and has gotten much, much worse since the 1980s.
Today if you are a veteran and eligible for free medical care you have to be utterly broke to subject yourself to that system - so you are going to pay out of your own pocket for care. Today, that is still an option in the US. Should we get "the public option" paying for care would likely no longer be available and everything else would disappear - real simple math there. No insurance company is going to be able to compete against a non-profit government-run organization, no matter how awful things are. Besides, the content will be mandated so there are few, if any, differences between different plans.
Why do you need to register anonymously? The whois information is of course faked or just left at "fuckoff". Sure, you paid with some tracable payment method, but the registrar would have to be sued to turn over the information - it isn't like they are going to cooperate.
One of the huge problems is that the domain registrars have a very big incentive to not enforce whois requirements (and they don't) and they will absolutely protect their customers unless faced with serious legal action. The end result is that it just isn't worth it most of the time. Law enforcement doesn't care much until you can prove over $25,0000 in damages. Civil court will pretty much laugh at you unless you are the size of Microsoft or Google.
Also, domain registrars are absolutely complicit in the problems. Why would anyone be able to register the domain myebay.com? How about chasebanking.com? The fact that these domains are being registered with the specific intent to snare people and steal from them should be enough to prove that the domain registrars (just about all of them) are much more interested in their customers than being responsible.
Interesting. Nice, noble goal. Unfortunately not exactly compatible with today's world.
Today if you had a launch vehicle, you couldn't do anything with it. Why is there (almost) no private launch capability in the US? Simple, really. First you need a license from the FAA - if it goes up in the air, they have to license it. It would be really a shame if you hit a Airbus with your nice shiny rocket. The actual chances of that happening are probably about 1 in a million. Still, they want you to have a license. And meet all of their regulations. Have your radios been properly certified? What alternate fields can you land on? Stuff like that. And a lot of siller stuff that utterly has no impact on any sort of space launch.
Next, we have the EPA. Oooh, you're going to use highly dangerous and toxic rocket fuel? Well, you need to fill out an application for a license and we will get back to you in five years. After the community response meeting and the environmental impact study. Is it going to make noise? Well then, better put that on your application because we wouldn't want to disturb the birds and lizards or the old hermit that lives 100 miles away.
At the present time any sort of "private launch" capability is pretty much a pipedream. What someone needs to do is pay off the Mexican government - closer to the equator anyway - and set up shop there. I am sure it would be cheaper and more effective than trying to navigate your way through the maze of regulations, licensing and nonsense that the US is going to put you through.
It is pretty simple, really. Without a significant space presence, orbital junk is just going to stay there and be a hazard. Building up a significant space presence would involve subjecting humans and expensive equipment to risk of collision with orbital junk. Exposing people to risk is a no-no, so this problem is obviously insolvable.
Since we aren't going to eliminate orbital junk, we better plan on putting less stuff in orbit. Less stuff would mean that eventually even the smaller fragments will deobit. This means that we can leave low Earth orbit clean of junk in several thousand years.
Simple, risk-free solution: stop sending stuff up into orbit and wait for thousands of years.
Right now, there is probably enough junk there to make any commercial exploitation of space somewhat risky. That means it isn't going to happen - nobody is going to give out insurance against people getting killed by junk in orbit.
Let's see... the information that this guy is posting came from government tax documents. Meaning, pretty clearly that the government knew all about this and it is no surprise to anyone there.
Some bankers made promises that didn't come true. Boo-hoo. As far as I am aware, unless there is some sort of "contract" involved promises mean, well, nothing. No criminal act, no wrongdoing whatsoever. For example, Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay within one year. Where is his comeuppance? See, promises don't mean much.
There was no lying and no stealing from anyone. Get over it. People make lots of promises every day and they are effectively meaningless.
Hope this guy didn't leave any personally identifiable tracks.
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The problem with embryonic stem cells is that for any treatment to really exist, the cells would have to be a genotype match with the person being treated. This brings into focus a small, tiny, little problem - if you can make embryonic stem cells to order that match a specific genotype, you have just solved the problem of human cloning.
Now you have a real choice indeed - do we treat the heart condition with stem cells, or do we simply replace the heart with a newly grown one? I suppose an argument could be made that as the cells more or less came from the person being treated the clone (that grew the heart) doesn't really have any right to exist apart from the original. I don't think I would like to review the court transcript that would be involved with this decision, as it might be really, really thick.
How about demonstrators chanting "Freedom for Clones!" This and many other things follow from embryonic stem cells. I don't really care when you kill off the bunch of cells - once you have the ability to on-demand make genotype specific cells, you have human cloning. If this provides meaningful treatments, there will be no stopping it - there will be cloning. And we better figure out how exactly to deal with that little problem. Burying your head in sand isn't a solution.
The Bush solution was simple - just say no for a variety of reasons without getting into the specifics. Obama may (or may not) understand the real ramifications of success here, but by repealing the ban we are clearly opening the door to a discovery that leads to human cloning. And it will be pretty much unsupressable once it is discovered.
Want Bill Gates to live forever through clones? How about Warren Buffet? John McCain is probably got enough money to go for it, if a solution gets found soon enough. So, no, it isn't just about killing babies. It is about human cloning and all that goes with it. Personally, I think the risks outweigh any possible benefits because the risks are so incredibly large.
Most users have no idea what they are using on a GB basis. They would likely underestimate by orders of magnitude, run up excess charges, complain and likely drop their service.
Moving from an unlimited flat-rate plan to any sort of metered usage plan would likely be devastating to any cable ISP in the US. With DSL providers offering absurdly priced plans (like $14.95 a month), moving to a metered plan would only work in most markets if the DSL providers did as well. Since they face utterly different market conditions, this is unlikely to happen.
So forget about metering, excess charges and the like. Never going to happen in the US. Could this be implemented with a new fiber provider? Maybe, if it was viewed as something completely different, like 10GB service and something that would need that kind of bandwidth.
The real issue isn't how much the customer is providing in revenue, but how \much they are costing. Could be that the budget plan has more profit in it than the fatter plan when it is actually being used.
Obviously, an unused fat plan is the most revenue with the fewest costs, as long as the customer never calls tech support.
But an underutilized budget plan may be more profitable than a maxed-out fat plan.
A dirty secret that most educators know is there are people that can manipulate abstract symbols and those that cannot. If you confront someone that cannot do this with a problem that requires it, no matter how hard they try to do it, they aren't going to be able to.
This does not appear to be learned skill but something the brain is either capable of or not.
This used to be pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things. It became more important around the beginning of the 20th century, but was a pretty simple division - if you didn't have the ability you got a job in a factory or became a plumber or something like that. If you could, you could be a mathemetician. Engineering disciplines were sort of on the line, but probably require the ability.
I don't think it has anywhere near as much to do with age or training. But if someone does not possess the ability, trying to "make them" is futile and frustrating.
Bet you don't live in the US.
This is an extremely common opinion outside of the US and almost unheard of in the US. Which is why medical care costs are so different in the US and why 90% of the spending is done in the last year of life.
Everyone wants that last change heroic rescue from dying and are willing to go to almost unbelievable lengths to get it.
So you believe that medical treatment is only for people that can pay? I think you will find yourself in a rather small minority in the world. Most people seem to believe that care should be available for all without considering ability to pay.
Obviously, we can't spend infinite amounts of money. So the end result is like Canada where everyone gets the same treatment and money can't be used to get more or better. This generally means that end-of-life sorts of stuff just doesn't happen. At all, for anyone.
What most people haven't figured out is if the US is going to go to a system where insurance is mandated and can't be managed - everyone gets the same coverage without regard to risk - we are going to have to have some strong limits on end-of-life care or the costs will be impossible. Since around 90% of all US medical costs come in the last year of life, this means a savings of around 80-90% immediately.
Of course, if you don't happen to agree that it is time for you to go it will kinda suck. But this too will be a decision that you will have help with. Modern living through chemistry - there are certainly drugs that will make the idea that it is your time a lot easier to take.
Ala carte cable will probably happen - and then be changed in a twisted way never to be seen again.
The problem is that nobody (and I mean NOBODY) will pay for EWTN. The majority will not pay for BET. A few people, but not enough will pay for the Golf Channel. I don't really see people paying for the Weather Channel either.
OK, so now Jesse Jackson gets in some Congresscritter's face and demands that the discrimination against BET cease. So now there is a BET tax. The Catholic Church sends a few letters and a priest or two about EWTN being discriminated against and how this lack of diversity is affecting people. So now BET and EWTN are somehow subsidized.
How many people will actually pay for Spike when they have to make an individual choice? Better put, how many married men will be able to convince their wives that Spike (with Manswers) is a good thing to spend money on? Not enough to keep Spike on the air, that's how many.
I suspect SyFry will go the same way - some people pay, just not enough. As will be the case with about 75% of the channel lineup. It isn't that anyone will make a decision to eliminate these, just that there isn't enough people paying to make it possible to continue to operate. What made the Golf Channel possible was selling it to the cable and satellite companies, not selling it to individual subscribers.
The end result is there are maybe 20 cable channels left. Oh, 22 - I forgot BET and EWTN. At that point the whole cable TV idea is pretty pointless and developing a new channel is next to impossible - you don't sell the cable management, you have to sell individual subscribers.
I am sure I am not the only one with this vision. Just the threat of the discrimination lawsuits would be a serious obstacle. The market shrinkage is nearly provable and would easily make it next to impossible to get this done.
We've pretty much obsoleted that model with the new digital broadcast. Now, instead of coverage areas that extend far beyond cities, the coverage pretty much ends in the suburbs.
The benefit is of course that there are no more snowy pictures - everything is either crystal clear or blank. However, as someone with a home in a rural area we went from five stations that could be picked up and a sixth that was rather iffy we now get one digital station. This is with a 10-foot mast on top of the house with a rotator. Of course a big VHF/UHF antenna is pretty much a waste anyway with the new signal frequencies.
Cable was the obvious choice and allowed moving from fringe-area DSL (384K) to cable Internet.
If you live in a city or close-in suburb OTA is still a reality, at least for now.
The problem is with the level of intelligence on the Internet today you will find someone that posted some incredibly lame comment when they are 10 years old. Then, 20 years later a prospective employer finds this, ignores the context (and the age when it was posted) and drops the resume in the trash.
Some things are meaningful to archive. Others are, well, stupid. Today, we focus mostly on the stupid and ignore the things that would be good to archive.
The problem with Obamacare isn't so much the "government as a competitor" it is the idea of mandating what must be covered by insurance.
Today, some states mandate that mental health coverage be a part of every policy. Other mandate that prenatal care be included. Other mandates are for things like cosmetic surgery, transgender surgery, coverage for alternative therapies, like acupuncture and homeopathic medicines. Today the states with the most mandates are the ones where costs are highest and are having the most trouble. These mandates got in to law because of special interest groups garnering support from lawmakers. How does a State Senator get in good with the LGBT crowd? By adding a mandate for transgender surgery in every insurance policy in the state.
A Federal level set of policy mandates - as will be part of Obamacare - is going to pretty much have to cater every single special interest group there is. The end result is that all policies will have a huge number of such mandates. This affects everyone, since to be "qualified" all plans will have to meet the Federal mandates - that much has already been made clear.
So we are all going to be at the level of the states with the most mandates soon. I really don't expect the insurance industry to survive it in even the short term. The government is likely going to have to step in and take over.
There are no actual facts supporting any claim of superiority for the US private health care system: people in countries with public systems live longer and spend less than Americans do.
The one problem with this sort of assertion is that the people in other countries aren't Americans. They probably have more sensible diets. They live differently. So basically there is very little commonality to compare with it. I'd say the biggest difference overall is there are different attitudes towards life and death in general.
Should Americans live (and think) like people in Europe? I think that would be a tough sell. As is any sort of single-payer health care system going to be. The most likely outcome is that it turns into the Veterans Administration or something very close to it - continually cash-starved and looking for any way to cut costs in a never-ending death spiral.
The problem is that most of the world has a very simple disconnect between "stuff on computers" and "stuff that affects them". These folks did nothing to anyone that isn't using a computer. Therefore, for most of the population of the world there was zero impact. Nothing. No difference.
Now, for a very small minority of people (a few millions out of 6 billion) these people caused trouble. In no way does this justify in the minds of the rest of the population of the world that there should be any laws against what they did.
For example, if you go outside your house and step on some ants I am sure the ants being stepped on would like there to be a law against stepping on ants. The rest of the ant population wasn't affected and neither was the rest of the human population. So there are no laws against stepping on ants, even if to the ants being stepped on it is a huge life-ending tragedy.
So for these guys they affected some computer users in a mysterious place outside of the real world. Good luck with convincing anyone that this is all that important.
In the US you don't get any law enforcement attention until you cause provable damages in excess of $25,000. And if you participate in the "crime" by giving away your password through some trojan program the other person isn't going to be taking all the punishment for stealing from you.
Face it, you live in a different world than most people. They don't understand your world and you don't understand why yours isn't important to them.
If a lawyer representing a vehicle homicide client happens to also kill someone with his car while defending his client, this should not effect the outcome of the first trial.
Yes, but it doesn't look good. It doesn't have that gloss of "professional" and "court officer" that an attorney needs to be able to function. So, basically the attorney didn't do their job in this case and tried, without success, to divert attention from the matter at hand.
Of course, this is what the attorney said he was going to do from the beginning. There isn't any legal defense for his client and he knew it, along with everyone else on the planet. So the only hope was to distract everyone with some furious handwaving. It didn't work and pissed off the judge who saw through the tactic. That was always the risk with doing this.
Well, he gets to pay some fees.
Ads are being served to users that do not want them - but the advertisers are paying. Who exactly is the customer here? The end user viewing the ad or the advertiser? What the poster missed here is that there are four players here:
OK, so who is in control of what here? Well, the web site operator is selling "time" or "visitors" and might like to exhert some kind of control over the ads but isn't offered any such control. Try convincing Google that you do not want to see any ads for multi-level marketing scams on your web site. Go ahead, try. No good, huh? No, you don't have much control - maybe you can say no to "adult" ads.
The ad purveyor has complete control, but they are being paid plenty to post ads. All kinds of ads. They are heavily isolated from the end user, such that even if the end user finds out the CEOs phone number what exactly are they going to do? The end user is not paying the ad purveyor - the advertiser is.
You will never find the advertiser to complain, and even if you did it wouldn't matter. If you are going to advertise on the Internet you have to be immune to complaints. Someone is going to complain all the time. And it doesn't matter because the end user has no control whatsoever.
Sure, the end user can annoy the web site operator - who, by the way, is getting paid plenty to sit and take the complaints and do nothing. Even if the web site operator wanted to do something they have no control. They have two choices - stop advertising and stop the flow of money, or ignore the complaints. The "threat" of moving to a different advertising purveyor is hollow - there are no "different" or "better" purveyors - just those that pay less. The object here for the web site operator is to get as much for their "product" (visitors seeing ads) as possible. End user complaints have no meaning unless you have four visitors that just keep coming back.
Oh, and the advertiser just doesn't care what anyone thinks about this process. After all, they are the ones pushing misleading or harmful content, right?
It is all about control, power and relationships. If you don't understand that you need to sit down and think this stuff through. The Internet today is a fundamentally abusive relationship for the end user. They are the "bottom boys" being dominated and get to take whatever is coming their way. Don't like it? Try a different browser that (hopefully) blocks ads better. If you visit web sites where there are ads, you are going to be subjected to ads - abusive, misleading and harmful ads. Your ability to affect this is small indeed - you can try to block the stream of ads coming your way or you can avoid the more heavily ad-laden web sites.
The problem is there are at least three grades of data that you might have:
The problem with #2 is that in general law enforcement already knows what the material is and just requires it for "proof" at trial. So you encrypt it or destroy it - and the law enforcement folks can no longer use it at trial. However, they can use the fact it is encrypted and/or destroyed at trial. While not absolute proof, this can certainly be spun in a way that looks very, very bad. You are then faced with the plea bargain - 10 years if you admit to it or the possibility of 100 years if you don't. This sort of argument can be pretty persuasive.
For #3 it is a whole different ballgame. You are up against an adversary that needs the data and probably has no real idea. Say it is a list of Al Queda operatives within current law enforcement establishments in the UK. Every single one of them will likely be put to death should this list be discovered. What steps are you prepared to take to ensure this information doesn't fall into the wrong hands? Obviously, if you fall into law enforcement hands and they even suspect this information exists virtually nothing is going to stop them from gaining access to it. Suicide is probably required, but that still leaves the data hanging around.
So what do you do? Eating a USB drive probably isn't anywhere near good enough. I'd say holding the USB drive with a hand grenade (pin pulled, spoon flipped) in your armpit might be a good start.
The proper solution to Prop 65 warnings is to utterly refuse to enter any structure with such a warning. You have been warned, after all. Explain it to the business owner or manager that you would really like to come in and spend some money but the sign has you frightened - which is what its purpose is.
The folks behind Prop 65 thought this would cause businesses to eliminate the hazardous materials from their operation and thus provide a cleaner environment. Unfortunately, that isn't really possible. When the ink in the pen is classified as a hazardous substance or the chemicals in the battery for the clock on the wall you are well and truely screwed.
So the answer is very simple - if even 10% of the people in California simply said they would not enter a structure with such a warning these warnings would be removed. The law would be revoked within a week and that would be that.
By ignoring the signs you are contributing to the problem.
Most of the problem is that what you are calling "common sense" isn't all that common anymore. You have people in the US from a wide number of different cultures. Cultures with vastly different ideas about life, death and liability. The US currently offers people a government-supported lifestyle with vast wealth, at least compared to what they had where they were living before.
Now a rural Mexican farmer probably knows what a hammer is, and is probably familiar with most of the other devices they are likely to encounter in the US. But what about a person from rural Africa? You could print all the warnings you want and have a complete instruction book but if it isn't in the odd dialect of Swahili they understand you aren't going to get anywhere at all.
Not only that, but as coddled as many city-dwellers in the US are, they may actually think it is the government's responsibility to make sure they can't get hurt around their government-supplied housing with their government-supplied luxuries. So the idea that they can pick up a refrigerator and move it to a different apartment - with food in it - doesn't occur to them as being senselessly stupid as it might to someone else. And when the invitable happens - someone gets hurt - not only are there government workers there to assist but there are also government lawyers there to make sure they don't sue and are "properly" taken care of.
Most of the people living today in cities in the US would likely last about 30 minutes in 1850s era California. They would either eat something poisonous or be utterly unable to open a can of food without electricity. Or they would be rude and obnoxious to the wrong (armed) person thinking they were dissin' them.
We are likely only at the very beginning of seeing how far government-sponsored coddling can go.
Depends on your agreement with the photographer. Some photographers give you the rights and turn over all materials (digital source, negatives, etc.) while others retain the originals and reserve the right to sell you additional prints.
Most of the cut-rate wedding "service" photographers that do videos, provide disposible cameras for the guests, etc. will turn over everything to you and wash their hands of the whole thing. You have them for a day (or most of) and that is it. Other photographers consider their photo shoot to be a lot more of an artistic expression and retain the rights. Sometimes the rights are purchasable, sometimes not.
Basically, you can get whatever you want - you just have to get the right agreement in advance. Hiring a professional and bitching about them not doing things the way you want after the fact doesn't get you anywhere.
I doubt the artist, sculptor or whatever was a "government employee" of any sort or that the memorial was designed as a work-for-hire. It was almost certainly designed independently and the design sold without including the rights. This is how nearly every memorial, sculpture or art piece on public land is done.
I seriously doubt there is anything "groundbreaking" about this. Try something, anything with an image of the Picasso sculpture in Chicago. If it comes to the attention of the rightsholders it will not be looked upon favorably.
No plan for waste? I'm sorry, there are two things that come out of a nuclear power plant: old fuel rods and other misc. waste. The fuel rods should be reprocessed - there is no reason not to and it is a horrible waste of materials not to do so. The other waste is currently shipped off to be buried and is relatively low-level. I believe old salt mines are pretty popular today for this stuff.
Additionally, there is a plan that has existed since the 1970s for dealing with high level nuclear waste - not fuel rods, but other stuff. That has been consistently kicked around and the State of Nevada has pretty much sat down and said they will not permit the facility to operate. So there is a plan, just nobody wants it in their State and the State that was selected has refused to allow it.
First thing that would make a positive impression on uninformed people would be to start reprocessing fuel rods. A fuel rod is no longer useful when around 3% of the uranium has been used and there are significant quantities of other isotopes present. Reprocessing would recover the 97% of the uranium and the other isotope materials leaving little or no "waste".
Now if you want to treat the used fuel rods as waste I recommend that we also consider automobiles to be waste after five full tanks of gasoline and force the owners to store them in their garage until they rust away into dust. This would make about as much sense as the current fuel rod policies and would put the problem into proper focus.
Well, considering the wonderful nature of how the US government is run and how they are currently running the VA medical establishment, do you really think that is a good idea?
I'd say the VA is the prime example of a US government-run healthcare system. They are starved for budget funds, so everything is on hold perpetually. Patients are sitting in hallways because there are no rooms, people wait hours for simple things and months for anything more advanced. Basically, the VA has been a disaster since a little while after WW II and has gotten much, much worse since the 1980s.
Today if you are a veteran and eligible for free medical care you have to be utterly broke to subject yourself to that system - so you are going to pay out of your own pocket for care. Today, that is still an option in the US. Should we get "the public option" paying for care would likely no longer be available and everything else would disappear - real simple math there. No insurance company is going to be able to compete against a non-profit government-run organization, no matter how awful things are. Besides, the content will be mandated so there are few, if any, differences between different plans.
Why do you need to register anonymously? The whois information is of course faked or just left at "fuckoff". Sure, you paid with some tracable payment method, but the registrar would have to be sued to turn over the information - it isn't like they are going to cooperate.
One of the huge problems is that the domain registrars have a very big incentive to not enforce whois requirements (and they don't) and they will absolutely protect their customers unless faced with serious legal action. The end result is that it just isn't worth it most of the time. Law enforcement doesn't care much until you can prove over $25,0000 in damages. Civil court will pretty much laugh at you unless you are the size of Microsoft or Google.
Also, domain registrars are absolutely complicit in the problems. Why would anyone be able to register the domain myebay.com? How about chasebanking.com? The fact that these domains are being registered with the specific intent to snare people and steal from them should be enough to prove that the domain registrars (just about all of them) are much more interested in their customers than being responsible.
Interesting. Nice, noble goal. Unfortunately not exactly compatible with today's world.
Today if you had a launch vehicle, you couldn't do anything with it. Why is there (almost) no private launch capability in the US? Simple, really. First you need a license from the FAA - if it goes up in the air, they have to license it. It would be really a shame if you hit a Airbus with your nice shiny rocket. The actual chances of that happening are probably about 1 in a million. Still, they want you to have a license. And meet all of their regulations. Have your radios been properly certified? What alternate fields can you land on? Stuff like that. And a lot of siller stuff that utterly has no impact on any sort of space launch.
Next, we have the EPA. Oooh, you're going to use highly dangerous and toxic rocket fuel? Well, you need to fill out an application for a license and we will get back to you in five years. After the community response meeting and the environmental impact study. Is it going to make noise? Well then, better put that on your application because we wouldn't want to disturb the birds and lizards or the old hermit that lives 100 miles away.
At the present time any sort of "private launch" capability is pretty much a pipedream. What someone needs to do is pay off the Mexican government - closer to the equator anyway - and set up shop there. I am sure it would be cheaper and more effective than trying to navigate your way through the maze of regulations, licensing and nonsense that the US is going to put you through.
US based operations are pretty much doomed.
It is pretty simple, really. Without a significant space presence, orbital junk is just going to stay there and be a hazard. Building up a significant space presence would involve subjecting humans and expensive equipment to risk of collision with orbital junk. Exposing people to risk is a no-no, so this problem is obviously insolvable.
Since we aren't going to eliminate orbital junk, we better plan on putting less stuff in orbit. Less stuff would mean that eventually even the smaller fragments will deobit. This means that we can leave low Earth orbit clean of junk in several thousand years.
Simple, risk-free solution: stop sending stuff up into orbit and wait for thousands of years.
Right now, there is probably enough junk there to make any commercial exploitation of space somewhat risky. That means it isn't going to happen - nobody is going to give out insurance against people getting killed by junk in orbit.
Let's see... the information that this guy is posting came from government tax documents. Meaning, pretty clearly that the government knew all about this and it is no surprise to anyone there.
Some bankers made promises that didn't come true. Boo-hoo. As far as I am aware, unless there is some sort of "contract" involved promises mean, well, nothing. No criminal act, no wrongdoing whatsoever. For example, Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay within one year. Where is his comeuppance? See, promises don't mean much.
There was no lying and no stealing from anyone. Get over it. People make lots of promises every day and they are effectively meaningless.
Hope this guy didn't leave any personally identifiable tracks.