I think a lot of people don't realize that America has many freedoms (habeas corpus, throwing out criminal evidence on technical violations of search procedures, etc.) that even people in many other Western countries lack. Even in places like France and Canada, you can be held without being charged with a crime.
After two centuries of liberal democratic evolution, we have developed many checks on state power. Since we haven't faced terrorist foe on this scale in a long time (perhaps since the Barbary Pirate days), our pre-9/11 system wasn't particularly well-adapted to deal with such threats.
The question we need to ask is not "Are we living up to the Platonic ideal of a free state?" but "What is the reasonable tradeoff between the risk of giving the state too much power and the risk of making it too easy for terrorists to attack us?"
The operative portion of the old adage of about trading liberty for security is that giving up essential liberty is a mistake. Until someone can point to any material harm being done by the NSA wiretapping, it doesn't sound like any essential liberties are being sacrificed here, and the improvement in security seems reasonably compensatory for the risk (of over-empowering the state) undertaken.
But it does mean that everything possible will happen.
In an infinity between 3 and 4, 5 is ruled out by the laws you've set up. Similar logic would apply to an infinite universe with certain physical laws set up beforehand.
They didn't do such a great job in the auto industry. Sure, the workers are overpaid, but the companies are going under.
Besides, coding is generally a unique-project-oriented task, not an assembly line or tradecraft.
You're much better off becoming an entrepeneur. You can easily secure a six-figure income through the following process:
1) Identify a specialty that will be around for awhile (this is the tricky part, but do-able) 2) Get 3-5 years experience 3) Become an independent consultant at $50-$100+/hr, depending on market (did you do your homework in Step 1?). If you're ambitious, hire people who are in Step 2 and make 20/hr for their efforts too.
You can't "adjust" for a noncausal factor. It's like saying you can adjust the price of beans in Peru to account for how that affects the number of nipple piercings in California. Why would spending more on something you only need if you're sick make you healthier?
In fact, I think they've missed the obvious causation: Americans spend more on health care because they're sicker, or at least diagnosed with more sicknesses.
This study didn't look at those other countries, but I suspect again it's a case of different standard for diagnosis and a tendency for American diets to be generally unhealthier.
The problem is, I have a health condition that requires a trip to the emergency room once every few years, and some seriously expensive medicine to keep it under control.
If you're not sick, you wouldn't NEED more health care, and you were, you would. So of course the U.S. spends more: because Americans are more sick! We shouldn't expect that spending money to treat sickness would prevent us from becoming sick in the first place.
Also, are they being diagnosed the same way? Based on what I hear from Londoners and their disgust with NHS (to the point some of them come here for treatment because NHS refuses to believe they have a chronic disease or puts them on a six-month waiting list), I suspect not.
But more than anything, I go back to the prevalence of tea drinking. It explains a lot, especially when you take Japan into account.
This is the same reason Japan has the highest life expectancy in the world.
There are mountains of empirical evidence showing tea reduces risk of diabetes, heart disease, strokes, lung disease and cancer. Even the mechanisms are now fairly well-understood.
Anyone who has the least bit of concern for their health should either be drinking tea, taking a green tea supplement, or both.
"It ALSO takes bravery and courage to speak out in the current climate of this country and government. "
What a crock. No it doesn't, bashing Bush is the easiest, least brave thing in the world. It puts in you in absolutely no danger and a third of the country will canonize you for it.
Your ignorant talk about "lies and deceit" just proves the paranoia and delusion that leads you to believe this is some kind of bravery. The consensus estimates of the world's intelligence were not made by Bush, nor was the statement that the WMD case was a "slam dunk," nor did Bush force Bill Clinton to say exactly the same things about Iraq that you call lies. You can dwell on picayune details about aluminum tubes and trailer labs, but nothing will change those larger facts.
I'm getting so tired of hearing how "Bush lied us into war." It's a nice sound bite, but it's utter crap, which any 5-year-old can see through by askng the simplest of questions:
How did George Bush trick George Tenet into thinking the WMD case was a "slam dunk?"
Obviously, he didn't. The intel was simply wrong.
And frankly, it is damned unpatriotic to spread these kinds of lies about Bush.
He didn't break the law or violate the Constitution. He gathered intel incident to the use of military force, which every court has held falls under Presidential Article II powers.
Frankly, it baffles me that anyone could be upset about better monitoring of Al Qaeda suspects. It's pretty asinine. Why do they think we haven't been attacked in five years? Every FISA warrant requires a mountain of paperwork. If you want to track every call made this week by someone who talked to Al Qaeda last week, good luck going through FISA; you'll need a forest's worth of dead trees.
You know, in most of Europe you don't EVER need a warrant for this kind of thing. Hell, in France they don't even have habeas corpus: they can just hold you in prison till they feel like letting you go, for any crime. So I'm getting really tired of hearing about the Dark Night of Fascism under Bush.
It takes "courage" to bash the President in a liberal democracy? Maybe you could explain that to the Iranian and Chinese dissidents languishing in prisons for criticizing their governments.
While Hollywood types are pinning medals on themselves and telling each other how courageous they are for risking the real possibility that someone might call them "brave," our troops are fighting for freedom and democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's courage.
It's really not that difficult. Just have decent technical skills and one or more of the following:
1) Excellent grasp of English and writing skills 2) Some kind of paper that says you have knowledge in a business area (i.e., CPA, CFP, business degree) so that you're valuable on IT projects in that area 3) Strong enough interpersonal skills that you can use to develop a personal "trust" relationship with clients
That's really all it takes. There are a LOT of IT jobs that require these things, more than can be filled, and such qualities are difficult to get from a $5/hr coder in India or China, or even a foreign import working for $35K here.
You may still lose your job due to conditions in your industry/company/technology, but there will generally be another one waiting for people that can bridge the IT/business communication gap.
Hey, it has a word processor, and while it has no hard drive and the Internet didn't even exist when it was made it DOES have a nifty handle on the back, one of those fancy new 3.5" drives, and 2K of static RAM!
Well, then the CEOs must be Democrats, because it's the conservatives who are fired, demoted, and harassed to the point that they're outnumbered 5:1 in newsrooms.
LOL The point, which I will put in caps since you missed the other three times, is that EMPLOYEES DON'T FOLLOW THE POLITICAL AGENDAS OF THE COMPANY'S OWNERSHIP.
John works for comedy central. Comedy central makes money by making people laugh. Jon makes people laugh. Ergo, his job his safe.
Apparently it never occurred to you that same theory applies to newspeople.
So, say, Corporation F tells the stories that Politician B wants, and Politician B makes it so Corporation F's owner can own more media so, giving Corp F's owner more money and Poli B more sheeple.
Yes, that would be true if the corporation had control over the day-to-day choice of what gets published and what slant gets put on it. They don't, as anyone who has worked in a newsroom can tell you. If they did, they wouldn't hire all those Democrats! Use your head, man.
Do you really think a 90% Democrat press corps is going to report things with a GOP slant? Sheesh.
Slashdot Mirror
"we don't have perpetual energy machines"
r ee_electricity.html
Hey, speak for yourself. These guys have been making them for years.
http://www.ftn.info/mainsite/welcome.asp
http://befreetech.com/feinfo.htm
http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/contributions/f
http://www.nmsr.org/denislee.htm
I think a lot of people don't realize that America has many freedoms (habeas corpus, throwing out criminal evidence on technical violations of search procedures, etc.) that even people in many other Western countries lack. Even in places like France and Canada, you can be held without being charged with a crime.
After two centuries of liberal democratic evolution, we have developed many checks on state power. Since we haven't faced terrorist foe on this scale in a long time (perhaps since the Barbary Pirate days), our pre-9/11 system wasn't particularly well-adapted to deal with such threats.
The question we need to ask is not "Are we living up to the Platonic ideal of a free state?" but "What is the reasonable tradeoff between the risk of giving the state too much power and the risk of making it too easy for terrorists to attack us?"
The operative portion of the old adage of about trading liberty for security is that giving up essential liberty is a mistake. Until someone can point to any material harm being done by the NSA wiretapping, it doesn't sound like any essential liberties are being sacrificed here, and the improvement in security seems reasonably compensatory for the risk (of over-empowering the state) undertaken.
I wonder why that is?
Oh, right, because it has its own bigger gas tank, and connecting to the motorycle's gas tank would be stupid and worthless.
Seriously, who are they kidding with this?
Those who can't do, manage.
Those who can't do or manage, teach.
Those who can't do, manage, or teach... write tech articles for Inquirer.
But it does mean that everything possible will happen.
In an infinity between 3 and 4, 5 is ruled out by the laws you've set up. Similar logic would apply to an infinite universe with certain physical laws set up beforehand.
Plus, it would mean the terrorists have won.
Because then that would be a violation of their civil rights.
Faster than light, yes. Transferring information, no.
They didn't do such a great job in the auto industry. Sure, the workers are overpaid, but the companies are going under.
Besides, coding is generally a unique-project-oriented task, not an assembly line or tradecraft.
You're much better off becoming an entrepeneur. You can easily secure a six-figure income through the following process:
1) Identify a specialty that will be around for awhile (this is the tricky part, but do-able)
2) Get 3-5 years experience
3) Become an independent consultant at $50-$100+/hr, depending on market (did you do your homework in Step 1?). If you're ambitious, hire people who are in Step 2 and make 20/hr for their efforts too.
My first response is "What contest?"
My second is "Who cares. They can probably use this more than I can anyway."
You can't "adjust" for a noncausal factor. It's like saying you can adjust the price of beans in Peru to account for how that affects the number of nipple piercings in California. Why would spending more on something you only need if you're sick make you healthier?
In fact, I think they've missed the obvious causation: Americans spend more on health care because they're sicker, or at least diagnosed with more sicknesses.
This study didn't look at those other countries, but I suspect again it's a case of different standard for diagnosis and a tendency for American diets to be generally unhealthier.
However, Britain's universal health-care system shouldn't get credit for better health, Marmot and Blendon agreed.
Both said it might explain better health for low-income citizens, but can't account for better health of Britain's more affluent residents.
Marmot cautioned against looking for explanations in the two countries' health-care systems.
"It's not just how we treat people when they get ill, but why they get ill in the first place," Marmot said.
The problem is, I have a health condition that requires a trip to the emergency room once every few years, and some seriously expensive medicine to keep it under control.
It sounds to me like you're an alcoholic.
If you're not sick, you wouldn't NEED more health care, and you were, you would. So of course the U.S. spends more: because Americans are more sick! We shouldn't expect that spending money to treat sickness would prevent us from becoming sick in the first place.
Also, are they being diagnosed the same way? Based on what I hear from Londoners and their disgust with NHS (to the point some of them come here for treatment because NHS refuses to believe they have a chronic disease or puts them on a six-month waiting list), I suspect not.
But more than anything, I go back to the prevalence of tea drinking. It explains a lot, especially when you take Japan into account.
This is the same reason Japan has the highest life expectancy in the world.
There are mountains of empirical evidence showing tea reduces risk of diabetes, heart disease, strokes, lung disease and cancer. Even the mechanisms are now fairly well-understood.
Anyone who has the least bit of concern for their health should either be drinking tea, taking a green tea supplement, or both.
"It ALSO takes bravery and courage to speak out in the current climate of this country and government. "
What a crock. No it doesn't, bashing Bush is the easiest, least brave thing in the world. It puts in you in absolutely no danger and a third of the country will canonize you for it.
Your ignorant talk about "lies and deceit" just proves the paranoia and delusion that leads you to believe this is some kind of bravery. The consensus estimates of the world's intelligence were not made by Bush, nor was the statement that the WMD case was a "slam dunk," nor did Bush force Bill Clinton to say exactly the same things about Iraq that you call lies. You can dwell on picayune details about aluminum tubes and trailer labs, but nothing will change those larger facts.
I'm getting so tired of hearing how "Bush lied us into war." It's a nice sound bite, but it's utter crap, which any 5-year-old can see through by askng the simplest of questions:
How did George Bush trick George Tenet into thinking the WMD case was a "slam dunk?"
Obviously, he didn't. The intel was simply wrong.
And frankly, it is damned unpatriotic to spread these kinds of lies about Bush.
He didn't break the law or violate the Constitution. He gathered intel incident to the use of military force, which every court has held falls under Presidential Article II powers.
Frankly, it baffles me that anyone could be upset about better monitoring of Al Qaeda suspects. It's pretty asinine. Why do they think we haven't been attacked in five years? Every FISA warrant requires a mountain of paperwork. If you want to track every call made this week by someone who talked to Al Qaeda last week, good luck going through FISA; you'll need a forest's worth of dead trees.
You know, in most of Europe you don't EVER need a warrant for this kind of thing. Hell, in France they don't even have habeas corpus: they can just hold you in prison till they feel like letting you go, for any crime. So I'm getting really tired of hearing about the Dark Night of Fascism under Bush.
It takes "courage" to bash the President in a liberal democracy? Maybe you could explain that to the Iranian and Chinese dissidents languishing in prisons for criticizing their governments.
While Hollywood types are pinning medals on themselves and telling each other how courageous they are for risking the real possibility that someone might call them "brave," our troops are fighting for freedom and democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's courage.
CS may be in decline, but the business school equivalent seems to be doing very well.
And from I've seen,the reported salaries tend to show why. People want job skills, not useless theory.
It's really not that difficult. Just have decent technical skills and one or more of the following:
1) Excellent grasp of English and writing skills
2) Some kind of paper that says you have knowledge in a business area (i.e., CPA, CFP, business degree) so that you're valuable on IT projects in that area
3) Strong enough interpersonal skills that you can use to develop a personal "trust" relationship with clients
That's really all it takes. There are a LOT of IT jobs that require these things, more than can be filled, and such qualities are difficult to get from a $5/hr coder in India or China, or even a foreign import working for $35K here.
You may still lose your job due to conditions in your industry/company/technology, but there will generally be another one waiting for people that can bridge the IT/business communication gap.
Hey, it has a word processor, and while it has no hard drive and the Internet didn't even exist when it was made it DOES have a nifty handle on the back, one of those fancy new 3.5" drives, and 2K of static RAM!
Google it. Every poll ever done shows it. This will get you started.
Pew Survey Finds Moderates, Liberals Dominate News Outlets
editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/ article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000517184 - 60k - Cached -
(Hint: Pew is not a "neocon think tank." Nor is Editor and Publisher.)
You need to stop bleieveing whatever Chomsky tells you, and learn to deal with the actual facts.
Well, then the CEOs must be Democrats, because it's the conservatives who are fired, demoted, and harassed to the point that they're outnumbered 5:1 in newsrooms.
LOL The point, which I will put in caps since you missed the other three times, is that EMPLOYEES DON'T FOLLOW THE POLITICAL AGENDAS OF THE COMPANY'S OWNERSHIP.
John works for comedy central. Comedy central makes money by making people laugh. Jon makes people laugh. Ergo, his job his safe.
Apparently it never occurred to you that same theory applies to newspeople.
So, say, Corporation F tells the stories that Politician B wants, and Politician B makes it so Corporation F's owner can own more media so, giving Corp F's owner more money and Poli B more sheeple.
Yes, that would be true if the corporation had control over the day-to-day choice of what gets published and what slant gets put on it. They don't, as anyone who has worked in a newsroom can tell you. If they did, they wouldn't hire all those Democrats! Use your head, man.
Do you really think a 90% Democrat press corps is going to report things with a GOP slant? Sheesh.
Come on, is anyone really that surprised or outraged? This predates the Internet.
It's all fun and games till someone is plotting to simultaneously nuke NY, LA, and DC.