If you're going to go around pissing off the government, maybe it's best to try to avoid putting yourself in what could be a compromising situation. Even if (and that's a big if) the government were in on this, they didn't force Wilson to solicit the services of a prostitute. Even that itself will get you scooped up if they want you badly enough.
If you're going strictly on reasoning abilities, people probably shouldn't be considered adults until they're around 25. There's some research to suggest that the brain doesn't fully stop developing until a person is in their 30's. Where do you draw the line? Also, we know that abstinence-only sex education is a miserable failure and that trying to outright forbid teenagers from having sex is probably more likely to encourage them just to spite you.
An older adult that's trying to hook up with 16 year olds is a sleaze-ball regardless of whether it's legal or not. However, there are a lot of problems if you try to base adulthood around reasoning abilities. It's as arbitrary as age and there's likely going to be some people who never make the cut. Who is responsible for those people who are stuck being "children' for the rest of their lives?
Personally I think if you want to have a fair and useful measure, don't grant someone legal adulthood status until they can show they can be self-sufficient. If a person can't handle that, they probably can't handle the legal or other responsibilities (selective service) that come along with it. Even then, I don't know if I would want to go around telling people who are biologically adults that they're not allowed to have sex because they can't reach some arbitrary threshold. Similarly, there are some kids who had to grow up fast and can support themselves at 17, and at that point I can't see why I should have any right to tell them (in a legal sense, not as a matter of opinion or general speech) what they can or can't do with their body.
It really comes down to how long that $200 phone will last you. If it never gets software updates, you probably need to replace it after a few years if you care about security at all. If you can keep a $1000 phone for five years instead of buying a $200 phone every year during that span, there's no difference in cost aside fluctuations in currency value over that time period.
I think the top end iPhone is probably worth closer to $600, but if Apple can get people to pay $1000 who am I to stop them. No one is going to tell their boss that they'd realistically be willing to work for less than their current salary. Charge what the market will bear and if the competition can't undercut you, that's their failing. However, the notion that you should always buy the absolute cheapest option is foolish in my opinion.
I've found that spending just a little bit more on appliances instead of buying the cheapest model tends to save money in the long run. Something sold at half the price is not going to have the same level of build quality. If I need to spend an extra $60 so that I won't need to replace the thing after a few years, sign me up. Even with online shopping, you still end up nickle and diming yourself over the long run.
Any driver that's actively stealing packages is probably going to be caught much sooner as their employer is going to get a lot of complaints of missing packages and it's not too hard to figure out what's going on if they're all from the same truck. Hell, if they're actively looking to steal that badly, they might just drive off with the truck itself.
It's the slightly more clever thieves who are opportunistic that are harder to catch and can probably get away with things for much longer. If a customer complains that they didn't get a package is is because the driver stole it, it got lost in shipping, or because the customer actually received it but claimed that they didn't?
Doing this for any or all drivers seems kind of pointless, but if there were reason to suspect a particular driver, it would be a good way to catch them.
Why not charge those who engage in less healthy life styles more? If you think it actually makes no difference you are free to offer policies to those who would pay more at a reduced price. If John Hancock is wrong, they're leaving all kinds of money on the table by overcharging some of their customers. You could easily undercut them and make a tidy profit while doing so. Of course if they're not wrong . . .
Insurance is really just legalized gambling. Much like the tracks, not all horses are a good return on investment. No one wants to bet on a loser and the only reason to do so is because the payout is so high. Even then it's probably green overriding sense, as the results seem to show that such betting doesn't pay.
It's a free country. You're free to drink, smoke, fornicate, fight, and generally do as you please. The flip side of that is that it's also your responsibility to take care of yourself, because if someone else has to do it for you, how free are they? You can't reward good behavior without punishing bad behavior, and as far as human health goes, there's a whole lot of bad behavior.
I think that the description is one of those things that's absurd in a way that makes people pause, but doesn't seem to trigger the thought that was intent to be conveyed. To most people, they're still imagining that there's a cat in the box, and being alive or dead doesn't matter because they imagine the cat about the same way. Maybe there's some other part of what does it mean to be both alive and dead at the same that makes their mind stray into philosophical territory that doesn't matter.
I think it was Einstein who used a similar metaphor only with a barrel of gunpowder that could either be set off or left alone. When people imagine an exploded barrel of gunpowder, the mental image is completely different than that of a barrel of gunpowder and it's easier to say that it doesn't make sense to say that a barrel of gunpowder is both states since they're so vastly different. With a cat, the cat is still there and its form hasn't really changed. It still looks the same and could be mistaken for sleeping perhaps.
Are you certain you won't just wind up with an algorithm that is good at lying to you, shifting blame for its mistakes, or other acts of subterfuge? The algorithm doesn't even need to be conscious of its actions to do those things. If you're using genetic algorithms you might want to be careful of what kind of engineering you're really doing.
Is anyone forcing you to work as much as you do? You can take as much additional free time as you would like to have. Maybe an extra two or three hours won't hurt you, but there are plenty of people who don't have jobs that pay as well or who made a lot of poor financial decisions or life choices which have left them with little or no capital.
Not everyone would starve, but you're going to begger some people. The only way this doesn't happen is if there is no loss in production as a result of less work (which could be viewed as an increase in productivity) because when you reduce the available resources, the effects are always going to be felt first by those who are the worst off.
There are better controlled studies that look at productivity based on how long a person has been working. Like anything, there are people who can go all day, but most people are going to start to taper off after around six hours, and few could do that without breaks.
However, the charts aren't particularly useful. You could also conclude that people who are less productive need to work more hours in order to have a similar standard of living. You see this is cities where prices rise and the people at the bottom of the economic ladder have to pick up extra jobs to make rent or afford groceries in the face of those increasing costs.
I recently went shopping at national chain clothing store to purchase a few things before going on a trip. Normally I'd just order most of this online, but it was short notice. The store had all kinds of discounts, including a special discount for that day. I think was was getting something like 25% off on top of a usual 50% discount that they offered. Of course when it came time to pay, I found out that I was paying about the same (if not a little bit more) as what I would expect to if I had ordered everything from Amazon.
The store advertised all of these wonderful discounts, but they just jacked up the price to offset any of these discounts. Apparently this is a common trend and has been for a while. If someone tells you that you're going to give you a discount in this day and age, they're really just pissing in your face while they're telling you it's raining. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out the discount wasn't even close to the best deal available in terms of final cost. It's just a good way to draw in some suckers who think they're savvy for getting such a good deal.
I don't personally mind Linus being a bit abrasive (and let's be honest, it's lead to some pretty funny quotes over the years), but I think the overall approach is a good one and that Linux would not be as good as it is today if he let substandard code into the system. Hopefully he's able to keep the same tough stance on quality while being able to communicate it more effectively.
However, there are still some people that should just be told to straight up piss off however since dealing with their crap just isn't worth your time. They can always fork the project if they really want to do things their own way.
I think it's also coinciding with more public consciousness regarding health. I started eating out a lot less after learning that carbs weren't as good for you as the FDA had been suggesting. Most restaurants are still offering low fat dishes that are loaded with carbs because that's what everyone thought they needed. That it's probably cheaper to make high carbohydrate dishes likely factors into it as well. Since I started cooking more at home and adjusted my diet, I lost about 30 lbs. and that was without having to be a gym rat or super active.
I would add that video cooking tutorials on various sites make it even easier, especially for novices. I've used some a few times when making foreign dishes when I'm not familiar with the cooking style or if the preparation seems a bit more complicated. Cooking can be quite enjoyable, especially if you have someone who's willing (or in the case of your offspring has no real choice in the matter) to do the dishes for you afterwards.
I'm not even sure there's a problem. If you were to look back 10 years ago, I would imagine that the gap was even worse. There used to be a a big concern over the digital divide and that certain groups of people would be cut out of the digital economy because they lacked access to computers. Since then it seems to have been reframed (it's in the title of the URL that I can't get to load) to mean that not everyone has the same amount of resources.
I suspect that this a problem that's already being solved. Not because anyone went out of their way to fix it, but because computers (in some form or another) kept getting cheaper and more accessible. There are certainly some aspects of computing that aren't as easy to accomplish without a PC, but most people won't benefit more from a PC than having a phone with internet connection. This just comes across as a solution in search of a good problem.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. Wall Street is rife with insider information sharing and they make some exceptionally high salaries. I suspect that it probably has to do more with relative salary and that even if you make good money, if someone else at the company is making a lot more than you, you're going to feel as though you're being shorted and might look for other ways to supplement your income. Individual personality probably factors in heavily as well. There are some people (see Wall Street) who are so immoral that it doesn't matter how much they make when there's an opportunity to make just a little bit more. Culture could play some role as well.
If you want to stop problems like this, limit access to the data and make sure that there's an ability to log access and audit usage in order to look for strange patterns of behavior. Most corporations would rather just sweep things like this under the rug, but cooperating with the government to prosecute the kind of people who engage in that behavior and seeing them land long prison sentences instead of slaps on the wrist would help curtail it as well. Of course the upper management and C-level executives would never want to set that kind of precedent.
So if there were actual health concerns I will be exposed at work and what about the folks with property adjacent to commercial locations where towers are allowed? How do you keep the RF from crossing zoning boundaries?
The kind of people who will seek to ban something for the reasons that they've expressed probably lack the understanding of the technology or the reasoning ability to consider that.
As someone else pointed out, if there is a link between cellular radio waves and negative health effects, the biggest cause is going to be the radio in your phone that's right next to your head when you're talking on it. You know, the one that has to increase the power when the cell tower it's trying to connect to is farther away.
It really depends on why someone got sick. It's entirely possible that Joe's Deli keeps a clean kitchen and has good health practices, but that they got a bad batch of ingredients from one of their suppliers (along with any other restaurant that used them) which happens from time to time. Sometimes you can do everything right, but still have things go wrong. Unless you're going to insist that Joe's Deli do extensive testing on all of their ingredients, there isn't a lot you can do about things like that.
Since you apparently need an app to get it, I'm guessing that they already have your credit card on file and just bill you for it. The cameras are going to have a record of it as well.
Of course that doesn't stop someone from stealing a phone and using it to gain entry. I'd like to think that someone thought of that possibility and there's already a system in place to handle this, but I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't either.
This would in fact suggest the opposite. In a single payer system where the people visiting the doctor don't bear the direct costs, there's no incentive not to go to the doctor outside of the time spent going to the doctor. If you can't get instant access, why would you ever not go outside of a dislike of doctors or hospitals?
If you make people pay for it directly, they might be a bit more remiss to see a doctor over a reading from their gadget. I don't know much about the watch beyond some headlines, but presumably it can store the data and take several readings over time. If a person gets an odd reading once, they'll probably shrug it off. If it's consistent, maybe they are willing to pay for a doctor visit.
It's the same problem as when price controls are instituted in a shortage. People over-consume which makes the shortage worse, and there's no economic incentive for anyone on the outside to solve the problem. You're better off letting prices adjust and people will buy less in the face of higher direct cost and you'll get a better distribution of available goods. Meanwhile, increased prices single suppliers to bring more goods into that market (they want to sell where they can get more) which helps increase supply to meet the larger demand.
In a nationalized system the amount of health care is already established in advance, or has some other limitations in place. If there isn't an overwhelming demand for it, it will work reasonably well, but pressure to keep costs in check will mean that it's unlikely to be largely underutilized and capable of absorbing a large sudden spike in demand. If you get something like this that creates a sudden amount of demand, there's nothing there to cause consumers to self-regulate their behavior (outside of not wanting to deal with long waits for a limited resource) and the bureaucracy will not be able to react fast enough to the demand spike to do anything about it in the short term.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're going to go around pissing off the government, maybe it's best to try to avoid putting yourself in what could be a compromising situation. Even if (and that's a big if) the government were in on this, they didn't force Wilson to solicit the services of a prostitute. Even that itself will get you scooped up if they want you badly enough.
If you're going strictly on reasoning abilities, people probably shouldn't be considered adults until they're around 25. There's some research to suggest that the brain doesn't fully stop developing until a person is in their 30's. Where do you draw the line? Also, we know that abstinence-only sex education is a miserable failure and that trying to outright forbid teenagers from having sex is probably more likely to encourage them just to spite you.
An older adult that's trying to hook up with 16 year olds is a sleaze-ball regardless of whether it's legal or not. However, there are a lot of problems if you try to base adulthood around reasoning abilities. It's as arbitrary as age and there's likely going to be some people who never make the cut. Who is responsible for those people who are stuck being "children' for the rest of their lives?
Personally I think if you want to have a fair and useful measure, don't grant someone legal adulthood status until they can show they can be self-sufficient. If a person can't handle that, they probably can't handle the legal or other responsibilities (selective service) that come along with it. Even then, I don't know if I would want to go around telling people who are biologically adults that they're not allowed to have sex because they can't reach some arbitrary threshold. Similarly, there are some kids who had to grow up fast and can support themselves at 17, and at that point I can't see why I should have any right to tell them (in a legal sense, not as a matter of opinion or general speech) what they can or can't do with their body.
Well then. I suppose we should be thankful that they weren't trying to rescue drowning kittens.
Don't buy John Deere. If I were one of their competitors, I'd be jumping all over this to steal their customers.
It really comes down to how long that $200 phone will last you. If it never gets software updates, you probably need to replace it after a few years if you care about security at all. If you can keep a $1000 phone for five years instead of buying a $200 phone every year during that span, there's no difference in cost aside fluctuations in currency value over that time period.
I think the top end iPhone is probably worth closer to $600, but if Apple can get people to pay $1000 who am I to stop them. No one is going to tell their boss that they'd realistically be willing to work for less than their current salary. Charge what the market will bear and if the competition can't undercut you, that's their failing. However, the notion that you should always buy the absolute cheapest option is foolish in my opinion.
I've found that spending just a little bit more on appliances instead of buying the cheapest model tends to save money in the long run. Something sold at half the price is not going to have the same level of build quality. If I need to spend an extra $60 so that I won't need to replace the thing after a few years, sign me up. Even with online shopping, you still end up nickle and diming yourself over the long run.
Any driver that's actively stealing packages is probably going to be caught much sooner as their employer is going to get a lot of complaints of missing packages and it's not too hard to figure out what's going on if they're all from the same truck. Hell, if they're actively looking to steal that badly, they might just drive off with the truck itself.
It's the slightly more clever thieves who are opportunistic that are harder to catch and can probably get away with things for much longer. If a customer complains that they didn't get a package is is because the driver stole it, it got lost in shipping, or because the customer actually received it but claimed that they didn't?
Doing this for any or all drivers seems kind of pointless, but if there were reason to suspect a particular driver, it would be a good way to catch them.
Why not charge those who engage in less healthy life styles more? If you think it actually makes no difference you are free to offer policies to those who would pay more at a reduced price. If John Hancock is wrong, they're leaving all kinds of money on the table by overcharging some of their customers. You could easily undercut them and make a tidy profit while doing so. Of course if they're not wrong . . .
Insurance is really just legalized gambling. Much like the tracks, not all horses are a good return on investment. No one wants to bet on a loser and the only reason to do so is because the payout is so high. Even then it's probably green overriding sense, as the results seem to show that such betting doesn't pay.
It's a free country. You're free to drink, smoke, fornicate, fight, and generally do as you please. The flip side of that is that it's also your responsibility to take care of yourself, because if someone else has to do it for you, how free are they? You can't reward good behavior without punishing bad behavior, and as far as human health goes, there's a whole lot of bad behavior.
"Hey, you, get off of my cloud."
That doesn't even rhyme properly.
You need something like "he who measured it, treasured it."
Maybe even something more clever, but rhyming with collapsed wave function isn't really any easier.
I think that the description is one of those things that's absurd in a way that makes people pause, but doesn't seem to trigger the thought that was intent to be conveyed. To most people, they're still imagining that there's a cat in the box, and being alive or dead doesn't matter because they imagine the cat about the same way. Maybe there's some other part of what does it mean to be both alive and dead at the same that makes their mind stray into philosophical territory that doesn't matter.
I think it was Einstein who used a similar metaphor only with a barrel of gunpowder that could either be set off or left alone. When people imagine an exploded barrel of gunpowder, the mental image is completely different than that of a barrel of gunpowder and it's easier to say that it doesn't make sense to say that a barrel of gunpowder is both states since they're so vastly different. With a cat, the cat is still there and its form hasn't really changed. It still looks the same and could be mistaken for sleeping perhaps.
Are you certain you won't just wind up with an algorithm that is good at lying to you, shifting blame for its mistakes, or other acts of subterfuge? The algorithm doesn't even need to be conscious of its actions to do those things. If you're using genetic algorithms you might want to be careful of what kind of engineering you're really doing.
Is anyone forcing you to work as much as you do? You can take as much additional free time as you would like to have. Maybe an extra two or three hours won't hurt you, but there are plenty of people who don't have jobs that pay as well or who made a lot of poor financial decisions or life choices which have left them with little or no capital.
Not everyone would starve, but you're going to begger some people. The only way this doesn't happen is if there is no loss in production as a result of less work (which could be viewed as an increase in productivity) because when you reduce the available resources, the effects are always going to be felt first by those who are the worst off.
There are better controlled studies that look at productivity based on how long a person has been working. Like anything, there are people who can go all day, but most people are going to start to taper off after around six hours, and few could do that without breaks.
However, the charts aren't particularly useful. You could also conclude that people who are less productive need to work more hours in order to have a similar standard of living. You see this is cities where prices rise and the people at the bottom of the economic ladder have to pick up extra jobs to make rent or afford groceries in the face of those increasing costs.
I recently went shopping at national chain clothing store to purchase a few things before going on a trip. Normally I'd just order most of this online, but it was short notice. The store had all kinds of discounts, including a special discount for that day. I think was was getting something like 25% off on top of a usual 50% discount that they offered. Of course when it came time to pay, I found out that I was paying about the same (if not a little bit more) as what I would expect to if I had ordered everything from Amazon.
The store advertised all of these wonderful discounts, but they just jacked up the price to offset any of these discounts. Apparently this is a common trend and has been for a while. If someone tells you that you're going to give you a discount in this day and age, they're really just pissing in your face while they're telling you it's raining. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out the discount wasn't even close to the best deal available in terms of final cost. It's just a good way to draw in some suckers who think they're savvy for getting such a good deal.
Probably not. Linus did once quip that all of the projects he made were named after him.
I don't personally mind Linus being a bit abrasive (and let's be honest, it's lead to some pretty funny quotes over the years), but I think the overall approach is a good one and that Linux would not be as good as it is today if he let substandard code into the system. Hopefully he's able to keep the same tough stance on quality while being able to communicate it more effectively.
However, there are still some people that should just be told to straight up piss off however since dealing with their crap just isn't worth your time. They can always fork the project if they really want to do things their own way.
I think it's also coinciding with more public consciousness regarding health. I started eating out a lot less after learning that carbs weren't as good for you as the FDA had been suggesting. Most restaurants are still offering low fat dishes that are loaded with carbs because that's what everyone thought they needed. That it's probably cheaper to make high carbohydrate dishes likely factors into it as well. Since I started cooking more at home and adjusted my diet, I lost about 30 lbs. and that was without having to be a gym rat or super active.
I would add that video cooking tutorials on various sites make it even easier, especially for novices. I've used some a few times when making foreign dishes when I'm not familiar with the cooking style or if the preparation seems a bit more complicated. Cooking can be quite enjoyable, especially if you have someone who's willing (or in the case of your offspring has no real choice in the matter) to do the dishes for you afterwards.
I'm not even sure there's a problem. If you were to look back 10 years ago, I would imagine that the gap was even worse. There used to be a a big concern over the digital divide and that certain groups of people would be cut out of the digital economy because they lacked access to computers. Since then it seems to have been reframed (it's in the title of the URL that I can't get to load) to mean that not everyone has the same amount of resources.
I suspect that this a problem that's already being solved. Not because anyone went out of their way to fix it, but because computers (in some form or another) kept getting cheaper and more accessible. There are certainly some aspects of computing that aren't as easy to accomplish without a PC, but most people won't benefit more from a PC than having a phone with internet connection. This just comes across as a solution in search of a good problem.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. Wall Street is rife with insider information sharing and they make some exceptionally high salaries. I suspect that it probably has to do more with relative salary and that even if you make good money, if someone else at the company is making a lot more than you, you're going to feel as though you're being shorted and might look for other ways to supplement your income. Individual personality probably factors in heavily as well. There are some people (see Wall Street) who are so immoral that it doesn't matter how much they make when there's an opportunity to make just a little bit more. Culture could play some role as well.
If you want to stop problems like this, limit access to the data and make sure that there's an ability to log access and audit usage in order to look for strange patterns of behavior. Most corporations would rather just sweep things like this under the rug, but cooperating with the government to prosecute the kind of people who engage in that behavior and seeing them land long prison sentences instead of slaps on the wrist would help curtail it as well. Of course the upper management and C-level executives would never want to set that kind of precedent.
Reminds me of an old joke: What did the cannibal do after he dumped his girlfriend?
Wipe his ass.
So if there were actual health concerns I will be exposed at work and what about the folks with property adjacent to commercial locations where towers are allowed? How do you keep the RF from crossing zoning boundaries?
The kind of people who will seek to ban something for the reasons that they've expressed probably lack the understanding of the technology or the reasoning ability to consider that.
As someone else pointed out, if there is a link between cellular radio waves and negative health effects, the biggest cause is going to be the radio in your phone that's right next to your head when you're talking on it. You know, the one that has to increase the power when the cell tower it's trying to connect to is farther away.
It really depends on why someone got sick. It's entirely possible that Joe's Deli keeps a clean kitchen and has good health practices, but that they got a bad batch of ingredients from one of their suppliers (along with any other restaurant that used them) which happens from time to time. Sometimes you can do everything right, but still have things go wrong. Unless you're going to insist that Joe's Deli do extensive testing on all of their ingredients, there isn't a lot you can do about things like that.
Since you apparently need an app to get it, I'm guessing that they already have your credit card on file and just bill you for it. The cameras are going to have a record of it as well.
Of course that doesn't stop someone from stealing a phone and using it to gain entry. I'd like to think that someone thought of that possibility and there's already a system in place to handle this, but I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't either.
This would in fact suggest the opposite. In a single payer system where the people visiting the doctor don't bear the direct costs, there's no incentive not to go to the doctor outside of the time spent going to the doctor. If you can't get instant access, why would you ever not go outside of a dislike of doctors or hospitals?
If you make people pay for it directly, they might be a bit more remiss to see a doctor over a reading from their gadget. I don't know much about the watch beyond some headlines, but presumably it can store the data and take several readings over time. If a person gets an odd reading once, they'll probably shrug it off. If it's consistent, maybe they are willing to pay for a doctor visit.
It's the same problem as when price controls are instituted in a shortage. People over-consume which makes the shortage worse, and there's no economic incentive for anyone on the outside to solve the problem. You're better off letting prices adjust and people will buy less in the face of higher direct cost and you'll get a better distribution of available goods. Meanwhile, increased prices single suppliers to bring more goods into that market (they want to sell where they can get more) which helps increase supply to meet the larger demand.
In a nationalized system the amount of health care is already established in advance, or has some other limitations in place. If there isn't an overwhelming demand for it, it will work reasonably well, but pressure to keep costs in check will mean that it's unlikely to be largely underutilized and capable of absorbing a large sudden spike in demand. If you get something like this that creates a sudden amount of demand, there's nothing there to cause consumers to self-regulate their behavior (outside of not wanting to deal with long waits for a limited resource) and the bureaucracy will not be able to react fast enough to the demand spike to do anything about it in the short term.