Additionally, I think that the increase in the average human life span over the centuries is more directly coupled with the removal of long term harmful components in our lives verses medical treatment. For example, lead-based face powder or the Romans use of "Sugar of Lead" where they would put vinegar in a lead pot and drink it.
To some extent, it's difficult to separate those things. The same advances in medical knowledge that lead to better direct medical treatments also lead to the understanding that things like lead (and mercury and asbestos and nicotine) are not healthy and should be avoided.
As fas as I see you are still free to sell you[r] watch if you please. What you can't do is to turn selling watches into a business while getting these goods from the gray market.
To the law, there's no difference between selling one watch on Craig's list or selling thousands at Costco. The only difference is how likely you are to get caught.
As far as I know, studies have shown that it doesn't matter whether you were born as a healthy baby back then versus now, as a person's life expectancy when controlled for infant mortality, has remained basically steady, with improvements in healthcare cancelling out all the crap we try to kill ourselves with. It's just that we manage to keep more babies alive til they get cancer.
That's not entirely true. While the increase in average life span is not as dramatic if you remove the effect of infant mortality, there is still a huge increase in the last 150 years. For example, if you look at the life expectancy for a 10-year-old white male, in 1850 it was 58 years, in 1900 it was 60.59 years, in 1950 it was 68.98 years and in 2004 it was 76.3 years. There are lots of factors other than infant mortality that have improved over that time: safer working conditions, access to health care, even refrigeration (an astonishing number of people died of food poisoning in the "the good old days" speaking of "crap we try to kill ourselves with").
If you drop anything with high surface area into the ocean and check it out fifty years later, it might be the norm to find some microbe busily breaking it down with a slight twist...
Geologist Seth Stein says new science tells us that the hazard has been significantly overestimated, and that we should not spend billions on earthquake preparations in the Midwest.
I hate to break it to you Seth, but in every disaster movie I've ever seen, the guy who dies first (usually in an ironic way) is the scientist who says there's no danger and we don't need to prepare.
1990's: "Spam email is using up all the available bandwidth." 2000's: "P2P file-sharing is using up all the available bandwidth." 2010's: "Netflix is using up all the available bandwidth."
Somehow the internet survived and will continue to do so.
We haven't had a major terrorist incident in the US for a while. Why?
A: There hasn't been any credible ability to do so by the bad guys
B: Nobody wants to harm the US any more
C: The counterterrorism efforts have prevented such an attack
D: Increased Vigilance of Everyday Americans
They have not been any successful terror incidents in the US since 9/11 but there have been several attempts (underpants bomber, Times Square bomber, etc). What stopped those attempts from becoming incidents was not $80B intelligence, but the vigilance of ordinary citizens (cost: $0). Even on 9/11, one of the four planes did not hit its target due the action of ordinary citizens.
Yes, size matters, but an array of small antennas can have the same effective size (or larger) than one large parabolic dish and still take up less physical volume (it could lie flat against your roof). The bigger advantage is that such arrays can be steered electronically so you don't need to do fine mechanical adjustments to a dish to aim at the satellite and can even aim at a different satellite without any mechanical gears or motors.
Murdoch's paywall sites (with the exception of the WSJ) are not just losing subscribers, they're also losing advertisers. A newspaper can't survive on subscription fees alone, advertising has always been the largest source of revenue.
"690 billion page views to its 540 million users in August"? Good lord, that's 1278 page views PER USER in just one month! That's (on average) 41 page views per user, per day, every single day! The mind boggles.
According to the numbers published by one app developer, iPhone apps have a 95% piracy rate. This is despite that fact that iPhone is a closed system and requires jailbreaking the device before piracy is even possible, so open versus closed system doesn't really seem to have an effect on piracy rates. Of course, this is based on the numbers from only one iPhone app developer (but the 67% piracy rate in the above article is also based on number from only one Android app developer). As high as these numbers are, it really doesn't mean that most users pirate, it just means that the few people who do pirate install a lot more apps than those that don't.
No electricity producer could stay in business if they lost half their power in transmission and distribution. Even in Edison's day with DC transmission, I doubt the losses were ever 50%. With modern high-voltage AC transmission, typical losses are around 2%.
Why? Do you want elections to be decided by people forced to participate with no interest in the political process? Do you want to deny fellow citizens the right to abstain from voting if they feel the choice of candidates amounts to no choice at all?
All rights are voluntary, or they aren't really rights. Freedom of religion doesn't mean you can't be an atheist. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you can't be quiet if you want to. The right to participate in the political process inherently includes the right to choose not to participate. Anything else is fascism.
Why does the sun move across the sky? God did it... no wait, the earth is rotating so it only seems the sun moves across the sky.
"The earth is rotating" is the answer to the question "How does the sun move across the sky?" "Why does the sun move across the sky?" is a philosophical question, and there is still plenty of room for God in those answers.
Slashdot Mirror
To some extent, it's difficult to separate those things. The same advances in medical knowledge that lead to better direct medical treatments also lead to the understanding that things like lead (and mercury and asbestos and nicotine) are not healthy and should be avoided.
To the law, there's no difference between selling one watch on Craig's list or selling thousands at Costco. The only difference is how likely you are to get caught.
That's not entirely true. While the increase in average life span is not as dramatic if you remove the effect of infant mortality, there is still a huge increase in the last 150 years. For example, if you look at the life expectancy for a 10-year-old white male, in 1850 it was 58 years, in 1900 it was 60.59 years, in 1950 it was 68.98 years and in 2004 it was 76.3 years. There are lots of factors other than infant mortality that have improved over that time: safer working conditions, access to health care, even refrigeration (an astonishing number of people died of food poisoning in the "the good old days" speaking of "crap we try to kill ourselves with").
That's why I don't worry about the acres of plastic floating in the Pacific.
Yours Sincerely,
Gmail.co.uk
I hate to break it to you Seth, but in every disaster movie I've ever seen, the guy who dies first (usually in an ironic way) is the scientist who says there's no danger and we don't need to prepare.
Why is the invisible hand putting on an invisible rubber glove and telling me to bend over?
1990's: "Spam email is using up all the available bandwidth."
2000's: "P2P file-sharing is using up all the available bandwidth."
2010's: "Netflix is using up all the available bandwidth."
Somehow the internet survived and will continue to do so.
D: Increased Vigilance of Everyday Americans
They have not been any successful terror incidents in the US since 9/11 but there have been several attempts (underpants bomber, Times Square bomber, etc). What stopped those attempts from becoming incidents was not $80B intelligence, but the vigilance of ordinary citizens (cost: $0). Even on 9/11, one of the four planes did not hit its target due the action of ordinary citizens.
Obviously, your children don't work at Foxconn.
Yes, size matters, but an array of small antennas can have the same effective size (or larger) than one large parabolic dish and still take up less physical volume (it could lie flat against your roof). The bigger advantage is that such arrays can be steered electronically so you don't need to do fine mechanical adjustments to a dish to aim at the satellite and can even aim at a different satellite without any mechanical gears or motors.
Those are fictional sentient characters.
A billion dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A TRILLION dollars.
Murdoch's paywall sites (with the exception of the WSJ) are not just losing subscribers, they're also losing advertisers. A newspaper can't survive on subscription fees alone, advertising has always been the largest source of revenue.
It was a typo. It's supposed to be "fight or enrage local people".
Doh!
"690 billion page views to its 540 million users in August"? Good lord, that's 1278 page views PER USER in just one month! That's (on average) 41 page views per user, per day, every single day! The mind boggles.
They pull over and ask a gas station attendant what their password is.
According to the numbers published by one app developer, iPhone apps have a 95% piracy rate. This is despite that fact that iPhone is a closed system and requires jailbreaking the device before piracy is even possible, so open versus closed system doesn't really seem to have an effect on piracy rates. Of course, this is based on the numbers from only one iPhone app developer (but the 67% piracy rate in the above article is also based on number from only one Android app developer). As high as these numbers are, it really doesn't mean that most users pirate, it just means that the few people who do pirate install a lot more apps than those that don't.
How exactly do you get "service above best efforts"? Isn't "best" the maximum by definition?
No electricity producer could stay in business if they lost half their power in transmission and distribution. Even in Edison's day with DC transmission, I doubt the losses were ever 50%. With modern high-voltage AC transmission, typical losses are around 2%.
It starred Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr, what did you expect?
I think you put quotation marks around the wrong word. They're definitely an industry; whats debatable is whether they are entertaining.
Why? Do you want elections to be decided by people forced to participate with no interest in the political process? Do you want to deny fellow citizens the right to abstain from voting if they feel the choice of candidates amounts to no choice at all? All rights are voluntary, or they aren't really rights. Freedom of religion doesn't mean you can't be an atheist. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you can't be quiet if you want to. The right to participate in the political process inherently includes the right to choose not to participate. Anything else is fascism.
"The earth is rotating" is the answer to the question "How does the sun move across the sky?" "Why does the sun move across the sky?" is a philosophical question, and there is still plenty of room for God in those answers.