The power to simply inflict torture-level pain on people who have no broken any law without oversight or evidence is one of the most horrifying things I can thing of.
Yeah, and that is probably what is going to happen, since there is no oversight in the army, and because this device erases all memory and records of its use, and because the incoming Secretary of State is at this moment drawing up plans to use it against law-abiding people who are just minding their own business.
WHEN THE FUCK did it become okay to punish someone with gross levels physical pain BEFORE convicting them, just because they weren't immediately complying with your orders as quickly as you'd like!??!?? Just to save you four or five minutes of wrestling with an unarmed person? Yeah sure if you think you're in immediate danger, sure. But that's not what's happening!!!
Dude, you're hallucinating. We're just reading an article here. This thing isn't even being used yet.
Can anyone explain why weapons that would incense the human rights activists in the US or Canada are being deployed overseas? Aren't people overseas considered human by the administration(s)?
Because the administration doesn't care what incenses activists. I'm with the administration on that point. They also want to be able to defend our soldiers without causing unnecessarily loss of life. I again agree with the administration.
One persistant problem in Iraq is the recruitment of children to attack U.S. troops with rocks or incendiary devices (probably with an Al Qaeda operative nearby with a camcorder, hoping for a retaliation). This is the kind of thing this is needed for. Current strategies have included shutting down the streets completely until the villagers figure out who's children they are and do something about it. In one case, a soldier followed one of the children back to his home and told his mother about it, upon which the kid got a good smack.
If a protest is lawful and you have the permits,... Is it just me or is something horribly wrong with this sentence?
It's just you. Otherwise you are probably attempting to block traffic or otherwise prevent regular people from going about their business -- people who are perfectly capable of forming their own political opinions without having one screamed at them.
I say if someone is blocking a street in protest, even if they DO have a permit, they should be fair game to be microwaved!
That's just discrimination by skin color or personal background. Imagine the racism if you have humans who are born with an entirely different physiology than us. Never doubt the reaches of human racism.
Lousy moon people with their degenerated muscles! They come around here and take all our jobs and then say, "ooo, everything is SO HEAVY, help!" Friggin moon people. They're the scum of the er.. moon. (sorry, just practicing)
We do need a permanent presence on the moon, for many reasons, such as; separation of the human species in case of global tragedy,
Um, in any kind of global tragedy I can think of -- other than say, the earth being swallowed by a rogue black hole -- I think it would be a lot better to be stuck on earth than stuck on the moon.
But if you can find the United States on this ordered list of Current Account Balances [cia.gov], and compare its number to, say, Germany or Japan, you might begin to understand the U.S. economy's problem. I guess looking at that list, you would either have to assume that the U.S. has the worst economy in the world or the best economy in the world. The obvious truth is that it's the best. Just look at the trade deficit. All the other countries make a living selling stuff to us -- our economy drives the world economy. We're the only country with that much debt because we're the only country that could afford it. We should pay it down, however, and there's only one realistic way to go about it: (1) conclude the military actions we're involved in in Afghanistan and Iraq, (2) get back a Republican Congress so we can run budget surplusses again.
P.S. Be careful before accepting any raises or new jobs. If you ever end up in the top 15% "rich" bracket, you'll have to change all your conspiracy theories.
We know CO levels are too high and growing higher. Its pretty damn likely that we're doing it
Is this science? 'Cause my CO2 meter doesn't have a "too high" marker on it. Personally I think any realistic Ice Age scenario is far more disasterous for the human race than any warming scenario. So the real question is whether CO2 levels should be higher or lower, and science will not address it. The politicians say it should be lower, and the scientists do studies to show all the posible harmful effects of CO2 and global warming. For example, every scientist knows that increased CO2 levels means increased plant growth, which in turn means greater crop production. How much greater? I don't know. I can't find any studies. I HAVE however, found the study that showed the effect of increased CO2 on poison ivy. It makes it grow more. Who'd have thunk it? No, no bias here.
I think CO2 levels should be higher, because our top priority should be finding a way to prevent the cyclical Ice Age which should be coming anywhere between now and 3 or 4 thousand years. Compared with that, a complete melting of land ice is a quite managable change for the human race to deal with. The only climate that can support 6 billion people is a warm climate. With our current population, we're already pressing the limits of fresh water supply. That supply only increases if the climate warms. In an Ice Age there would be enough fresh liquid water on the globe to support only a miniscule fraction of our current population.
BTW, this is also why I am against using (earth-based) solar and wind-derived energy sources on a large scale, as doing so would remove energy from the climate system.
why are we not taking every reasonable step to solve this problem (even if it's not really a problem)?
Few things are as important to humanity as the global climate and the global economy. If you are going to take steps which adversely affect the global economy for the sake of the global climate, you had better know that it's necessary, and you had better understand the effect it's going to have on both systems. Otherwise you're going to cause a lot of global suffering for no reason.
Why is it everytime there's a consensus about something we don't like to accept, there are the usual gang of usual suspects out there catering to our fears? Afraid of a 6 billon year old world? Creationists. Afraid of space miliarization/the future? Moon landing deniers. Afraid of the free market? Communists. Afraid of disease? Homeopathy. Afraid of secular education? Home Schoolers.
Painting these chracters as a dismissed victims by the big consensus is bordering on silliness. Sometimes an authority has to say "You know, this is bullshit."
Afraid of slavery? Abolishionists. Yeah, the consensus is always right and we need an authority figure to force us to live by it....that is a seriously messed up opinion.
the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real
That is an immensely silly thing to say at best. Of course climate change is real. New York City used to be under a mile of ice, and a hundred miles from the coast. A bit before that the atmosphere had no oxygen in it. Yes, climate change is real. That has nothing to do with whether or not there is bias in the scientific community against science that does not accept the current political mandates!
The relationship that ought to exist between a free man or woman and their federal republican government is the one that is described by the Bill of Rights. Anyone who thinks that that relationship is, or ought to be, the same as the relationship between a high school (be it public or private) and its students, is insane, or is at least advocating an insane form of education. A high school should control where the students are at any particular time, should enforce discipline so that they are, for the most part, keeping their mouths shut and learning, and so on. Of course a republican government should not enforce any of these things upon its citizens. The practice of applying Constitutional Amendments to the administration of public high schools, as if a high school is an extention of the federal government, is UTTERLY INSANE AND MUST BE STOPPED. If anything, elementary schools and high schools, whether public or private, are, or certainly should be, extensions of the parents.
Audiophiles have consistently been failing double blind tests when it comes to lossy vs lossless audio compression.
I'm sure it's easy to design a test that would fool an audiophile, as there are so many variables that contribute to the quality of the sound reproduction, starting with the microphones in the studio. With many older recordings, e.g. on the audiophile staple Dark Side of the Moon, the quality of the analogue master tapes is already noticeably below what is now capable of being reproduced digitally.
Most of my favorite music, including classical, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, I have in FLAC or APE (lossless formats), and the rest I have in MP3. However, using a lossless format to encode some classical piece recorded in the 60s or earlier, is just completely stupid. There's no point, unless you want to perform a detailed analysis of the artifacts of the analogue master tape.
If you however want to bring better music quality to the general population - make them get better headphones.
That may be true, and it also ties in to your original assertion. If you have crappy headphones or speakers, you will obviously not be able to tell lossy from lossless. I didn't start using lossless formats until I got a decent pair of speakers and started noticing the artifacts.
There's a difference between medical research and medical innovation. It is the production of innovative medical products and devices which require a free market. Including new drugs. Without the U.S. as a free market engine to drive the development of new drugs, the entire world would be worse off because of their absence.
Wow, having worked in medical research for the last decade I have to admit I'm surprised to find out that private insurance companies are spending so much more on research than the government. It will be news to most of my colleagues, as well.
There's a difference between medical research and medical innovation. It is the production of innovative medical products and devices which require a free market.
That's my take on socialized medicine: my tax rate could go up quite a bit before I'd end up paying as much more in taxes as my health insurance costs. Heck, it could probably double. I'd probably be actually financially better off with socialized medicine, and we wouldn't have these worries.
That's naive. Take your current health insurance cost, increase it by 50% to 100%, and that's what you'd be paying for insurance (as an extra "tax" or "contribution" or whatever they would call it) after in nationalized health care. Added to that, there would nowhere left in the world for medical innovation to take place. Added to that, with all the money getting sucked out of the economy, we'd end up with European-style unemployment rates. Added to that, if you need an xray, you'll be able to jump right on the 12-month waiting list. Can we nationalize food-production next? It would be really cool to wait in line all day for bread!
The proper role of government is to maintain the market conditions. That means breaking up any insurance monopolies and health provider monopolies and preventing mergers, so that there is good competition -- and innovation -- amongst insurers and providers. Plus, they need to break up the monopoly which pays for over a third of all health care in the U.S., i.e. Medicare. (That means privatize it, so that there are individual insurers who can shop for price, instead of a monolithic beaurocracy that doesn't care what they are charged, and doesn't care about customer satisfaction.)
Health care is a mess because of the economic disconnect between the buyers (the patients) and the sellers (the doctors). Insurance and medicare has together become a beurocratic curtain between the two that prevents market forces from keeping prices down. That's why medical savings accounts are at least the right kind of idea -- it makes the buyer the buyer again.
The best thing that could happen is to make medical insurance INSURANCE again, and not a general payer for all health care. That is, it should be insurance against major hospitalization, and people should pay for their own doctor visits and prescriptions. If that happened, the cost of both would plummet! The typical medical care required for a normal pregnancy and childbirth in a hospital is around $3,000. That should be paid by the parents not indirectly through an insurance company. Insurance should be for if something goes wrong, and expensive surgery is needed. Everything would change dramatically if people started asking "how much will that cost" for things they're not even sure they need. The fact is that nobody is giving these things away for free, and you should ask how much something costs before you agree to buy it. But as long as the insurance is paying for something, the patient doesn't cares how much it costs.
That in my book at least outshines anything the USA has to offer. Canada on the other hand, I would actually consider moving there instead of dismissing it out of hand like the USA. No insult meant, but I find living in the USA something I hope I never have to put up with. IMO I think the place would drive me nuts wondering where the hell these supposed "freedoms" are. The USA that the family Bush is trying to create seems like NAZI wonderland to me, that I hope I never have to experience firsthand.
You can't be free if you are being taken care of by the government. It sounds like you lack the courage to truely live in freedom. There is no enjoyment of freedom for those who lack courage. That's why our national anthem calls it "the land of the free and the home of the brave." Not that we're the only brave people in the world -- the world is full of them -- they line up at our borders just to get a chance to forge a life for themselves in freedom.
IMHO, healthcare is not, and has never been something companies should be in charge of. A companies purpose is to make money. The state however, if it's run by others then the idiots running the American state, should be more interested in keeping it's taxpayers ALIVE and healthy so they can work and pay taxes next year.
Right, the idiots running the European state are less idiotic than those running the American state. Sure. And less corrupt. And they want us all to live. Ok. I'll trust a private company, thanks. Oh, and I'll welcome you to our beautiful and free country if you ever need major surgery.
If MS doesn't innovate how come Windows is the only major OS I can use if I want decent multi-monitor support?
An innovation isn't necessarily a radical new idea, BTW..Net is a significant innovation, even though it's largely modelled after an existing technology (java).
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An "angry mob" doesn't develop out of some rational justification that can simply be remembered later and reconstituted.
The opposite is true. Letting violent action go unchecked and unpunished leads to greater violent action.
Yeah, and that is probably what is going to happen, since there is no oversight in the army, and because this device erases all memory and records of its use, and because the incoming Secretary of State is at this moment drawing up plans to use it against law-abiding people who are just minding their own business.
Dude, you're hallucinating. We're just reading an article here. This thing isn't even being used yet.
Yes, but whatver the cost, if the end result is that we microwave our nation's professional protesters, it's a freakin bargain!
Really? When was the last domestic protest by Iraqis against the occupation?
While Iraqis may very well hate they occupation, they also know that their lives currently depend upon it.
Because the administration doesn't care what incenses activists. I'm with the administration on that point. They also want to be able to defend our soldiers without causing unnecessarily loss of life. I again agree with the administration.
One persistant problem in Iraq is the recruitment of children to attack U.S. troops with rocks or incendiary devices (probably with an Al Qaeda operative nearby with a camcorder, hoping for a retaliation). This is the kind of thing this is needed for. Current strategies have included shutting down the streets completely until the villagers figure out who's children they are and do something about it. In one case, a soldier followed one of the children back to his home and told his mother about it, upon which the kid got a good smack.
It's just you. Otherwise you are probably attempting to block traffic or otherwise prevent regular people from going about their business -- people who are perfectly capable of forming their own political opinions without having one screamed at them.
I say if someone is blocking a street in protest, even if they DO have a permit, they should be fair game to be microwaved!
Lousy moon people with their degenerated muscles! They come around here and take all our jobs and then say, "ooo, everything is SO HEAVY, help!" Friggin moon people. They're the scum of the er.. moon. (sorry, just practicing)
Um, in any kind of global tragedy I can think of -- other than say, the earth being swallowed by a rogue black hole -- I think it would be a lot better to be stuck on earth than stuck on the moon.
But if you can find the United States on this ordered list of Current Account Balances [cia.gov], and compare its number to, say, Germany or Japan, you might begin to understand the U.S. economy's problem.
I guess looking at that list, you would either have to assume that the U.S. has the worst economy in the world or the best economy in the world. The obvious truth is that it's the best. Just look at the trade deficit. All the other countries make a living selling stuff to us -- our economy drives the world economy. We're the only country with that much debt because we're the only country that could afford it. We should pay it down, however, and there's only one realistic way to go about it: (1) conclude the military actions we're involved in in Afghanistan and Iraq, (2) get back a Republican Congress so we can run budget surplusses again.
P.S. Be careful before accepting any raises or new jobs. If you ever end up in the top 15% "rich" bracket, you'll have to change all your conspiracy theories.
Is this science? 'Cause my CO2 meter doesn't have a "too high" marker on it. Personally I think any realistic Ice Age scenario is far more disasterous for the human race than any warming scenario. So the real question is whether CO2 levels should be higher or lower, and science will not address it. The politicians say it should be lower, and the scientists do studies to show all the posible harmful effects of CO2 and global warming. For example, every scientist knows that increased CO2 levels means increased plant growth, which in turn means greater crop production. How much greater? I don't know. I can't find any studies. I HAVE however, found the study that showed the effect of increased CO2 on poison ivy. It makes it grow more. Who'd have thunk it? No, no bias here.
I think CO2 levels should be higher, because our top priority should be finding a way to prevent the cyclical Ice Age which should be coming anywhere between now and 3 or 4 thousand years. Compared with that, a complete melting of land ice is a quite managable change for the human race to deal with. The only climate that can support 6 billion people is a warm climate. With our current population, we're already pressing the limits of fresh water supply. That supply only increases if the climate warms. In an Ice Age there would be enough fresh liquid water on the globe to support only a miniscule fraction of our current population.
BTW, this is also why I am against using (earth-based) solar and wind-derived energy sources on a large scale, as doing so would remove energy from the climate system.
Few things are as important to humanity as the global climate and the global economy. If you are going to take steps which adversely affect the global economy for the sake of the global climate, you had better know that it's necessary, and you had better understand the effect it's going to have on both systems. Otherwise you're going to cause a lot of global suffering for no reason.
Afraid of slavery? Abolishionists. Yeah, the consensus is always right and we need an authority figure to force us to live by it.
That is an immensely silly thing to say at best. Of course climate change is real. New York City used to be under a mile of ice, and a hundred miles from the coast. A bit before that the atmosphere had no oxygen in it. Yes, climate change is real. That has nothing to do with whether or not there is bias in the scientific community against science that does not accept the current political mandates!
The relationship that ought to exist between a free man or woman and their federal republican government is the one that is described by the Bill of Rights. Anyone who thinks that that relationship is, or ought to be, the same as the relationship between a high school (be it public or private) and its students, is insane, or is at least advocating an insane form of education. A high school should control where the students are at any particular time, should enforce discipline so that they are, for the most part, keeping their mouths shut and learning, and so on. Of course a republican government should not enforce any of these things upon its citizens. The practice of applying Constitutional Amendments to the administration of public high schools, as if a high school is an extention of the federal government, is UTTERLY INSANE AND MUST BE STOPPED. If anything, elementary schools and high schools, whether public or private, are, or certainly should be, extensions of the parents.
At the law firm I work for, one of the larger ones in the country, all attorneys are required to do a certain minimum amount of pro bono work.
I'm sure it's easy to design a test that would fool an audiophile, as there are so many variables that contribute to the quality of the sound reproduction, starting with the microphones in the studio. With many older recordings, e.g. on the audiophile staple Dark Side of the Moon, the quality of the analogue master tapes is already noticeably below what is now capable of being reproduced digitally.
Most of my favorite music, including classical, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, I have in FLAC or APE (lossless formats), and the rest I have in MP3. However, using a lossless format to encode some classical piece recorded in the 60s or earlier, is just completely stupid. There's no point, unless you want to perform a detailed analysis of the artifacts of the analogue master tape.
That may be true, and it also ties in to your original assertion. If you have crappy headphones or speakers, you will obviously not be able to tell lossy from lossless. I didn't start using lossless formats until I got a decent pair of speakers and started noticing the artifacts.
There's a difference between medical research and medical innovation. It is the production of innovative medical products and devices which require a free market.
Including new drugs. Without the U.S. as a free market engine to drive the development of new drugs, the entire world would be worse off because of their absence.
There's a difference between medical research and medical innovation. It is the production of innovative medical products and devices which require a free market.
Right, it's the prooving that's the hard part. That and the spelling.
That's naive. Take your current health insurance cost, increase it by 50% to 100%, and that's what you'd be paying for insurance (as an extra "tax" or "contribution" or whatever they would call it) after in nationalized health care. Added to that, there would nowhere left in the world for medical innovation to take place. Added to that, with all the money getting sucked out of the economy, we'd end up with European-style unemployment rates. Added to that, if you need an xray, you'll be able to jump right on the 12-month waiting list. Can we nationalize food-production next? It would be really cool to wait in line all day for bread!
The proper role of government is to maintain the market conditions. That means breaking up any insurance monopolies and health provider monopolies and preventing mergers, so that there is good competition -- and innovation -- amongst insurers and providers. Plus, they need to break up the monopoly which pays for over a third of all health care in the U.S., i.e. Medicare. (That means privatize it, so that there are individual insurers who can shop for price, instead of a monolithic beaurocracy that doesn't care what they are charged, and doesn't care about customer satisfaction.)
Health care is a mess because of the economic disconnect between the buyers (the patients) and the sellers (the doctors). Insurance and medicare has together become a beurocratic curtain between the two that prevents market forces from keeping prices down. That's why medical savings accounts are at least the right kind of idea -- it makes the buyer the buyer again.
The best thing that could happen is to make medical insurance INSURANCE again, and not a general payer for all health care. That is, it should be insurance against major hospitalization, and people should pay for their own doctor visits and prescriptions. If that happened, the cost of both would plummet! The typical medical care required for a normal pregnancy and childbirth in a hospital is around $3,000. That should be paid by the parents not indirectly through an insurance company. Insurance should be for if something goes wrong, and expensive surgery is needed. Everything would change dramatically if people started asking "how much will that cost" for things they're not even sure they need. The fact is that nobody is giving these things away for free, and you should ask how much something costs before you agree to buy it. But as long as the insurance is paying for something, the patient doesn't cares how much it costs.
You can't be free if you are being taken care of by the government. It sounds like you lack the courage to truely live in freedom. There is no enjoyment of freedom for those who lack courage. That's why our national anthem calls it "the land of the free and the home of the brave." Not that we're the only brave people in the world -- the world is full of them -- they line up at our borders just to get a chance to forge a life for themselves in freedom.
Right, the idiots running the European state are less idiotic than those running the American state. Sure. And less corrupt. And they want us all to live. Ok. I'll trust a private company, thanks. Oh, and I'll welcome you to our beautiful and free country if you ever need major surgery.
I got the impression that he wanted both health insurance AND a job.
If MS doesn't innovate how come Windows is the only major OS I can use if I want decent multi-monitor support?
.Net is a significant innovation, even though it's largely modelled after an existing technology (java).
An innovation isn't necessarily a radical new idea, BTW.