I thought you were serious, until I read the name:) Good troll, sir! Would you, by any chance, also be the person behind the comments by our resident chyropractor troll?
...that netted billions of dollars for pharmaceutical cartels that sold H1N1 vaccine?
lol. Do you have any idea what the profit margin for these vaccines is? We're talking pennies per shot. Even if every single person in the world got a flu-shot, nobody would make "billions". The low profit margin is exactly why there's often a supply issue - the companies hate making them.
The problem is that the evidence goes both ways, some studies show a correlation, others don't.
You can say the same thing about research into "psychics". Hell, you can say the same thing about the age of the Earth - some studies show it's several billion years old, while some 'studies' show it's 6,000 years old. The question is how good are the studies. With "psi-research" we consistently find that the better designed a study is, the more likely it is to reach a negative result. With the cellphone-radiation claims, we find much the same thing. If only the shitty studies get positive results, then the evidence doesn't "go both ways" - it points in only one direction.
You know, as much as I hate pseudo-scientific fearmongering and general FUD, I'm kinda happy about this. The more ignorant people get scared away from using cellphones, the fewer idiots I'll have to dodge on the highway because they're changing lanes while texting, and the fewer nitwits I'll have to listen to on the bus or train as they babble on about some meaningless event in their shallow lives. If you ask me, we should put giant stickers on cell-phones with a death-head and a glaring "WARNING: THIS WILL MAKE YOU STERILE AND RETARDED". That way only people with triple digit IQ's and decent critical-thinking skills will buy them.
And we ignorant masses typically don't buy organic because we don't think it's worth the added price or environmental impact.
I just don't buy organic because it's a marketing gimmick aimed at ignorant masses. The added price and environmental impact just exacerbate the situation.
You know, criminal gangs tend to have their own systems of honour, temporary agreements between each-other, codes which they selectively enforce, etc. I wouldn't call that "gang law". However, if you think that this would be an appropriate label, then I would say that the same type of "law" applies on the global scale when it comes to relations between nations. In that case, we're merely arguing semantics, but I think they're important semantics (even if that is a bit of a misnomer) because there's a world of difference between criminal laws enforced by a government, and the types of agreements that occur between gangs or nations.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the invasion of Canada by the United States is next to impossible.
Oh, I agree. Like-minded nations make treaties and agreements in order to further their mutual interests, and violating well-established agreements isn't usually worthwhile except in extreme circumstances. For instance, if the entire world decided to stop selling oil to the the US at ANY price, they probably would invade Canada, but, short of that, the idea is ludicrous. I was simply using that scenario as an example; I wasn't suggesting that it was likely, or even mildly plausible.
However - getting back on topic - let's not confuse mutual cooperation with "international law" or the "rights of nations". There are no courts or police to enforce agreements between nations, or dictate rules for how sovereign states must behave. The global political environment is as close to anarchy as you'll ever get; individual entities do what's in their own best interest, cooperating when possible, and screwing over others when it seems prudent. Sometimes they even cooperate in order to screw-over a third party. Overall, the world operates on the principle of might-makes-right, or, more accurately, might-makes-it-irrelevant-who's-right. Talking about "international law" in that context is just ridiculous.
Tell that to Serbia. International law is enforced, just against the "lesser" countries, not against the US or Israel.
What happened to Serbia over Kosovo was a travesty; it had nothing to do with international law. It's no wonder that such bullying tactics aren't used against the US or Israel - they only work against nations which can't effectively defend themselves.
What happened in the Balkans in the early 90's was a peacekeeping mission - it also had little to do with international law. Similar peacekeeping missions were attempted between Israel and various neighboring states in the past, and were generally just as ineffective.
Nuking the Pentagon has a reasonable Barrier To Entry. It is not NEGLIGENTLY exposed, and one needs a nuke and a delivery method, however crude.
Replace "nuke" with "airliner", if it makes you feel better. Guess whoever built the Pentagon should be held responsible for the damaged sustained on 9/11, eh?
Leaving ones important command/control/infrastructure assets exposed to the internet, by contrast, is well established, by experts, including many experienced admins on this forum, as being thoroughly negligent.
Leaving ones important command/control/infrastructure assets exposed on the surface is well established, by experts, as being thoroughly negligent. Clearly all important infrastructure projects should be build at least a mile underground in order to prevent attacks. Any buildings on the surface are just asking for it.
Ah so anyone who doesnt agree with your nuclear sycophancy needs to be educated.
Correct.
The post you replied to was from an intelligent well educated person, who made a lot of sense.
Incorrect.
You on the other hand.....just cant accept that apart form vested interests with a profit motive the public clearly dont want nuclear power.
I can accept it just fine; you don't seem to understand that the public is retarded. Wether we're talking about acceptance of religion, "alternative medicine", psychics, UFO's, conspiracy theories, or fear of Nuclear power, vaccines, and GM food, "The Public" is completely clueless and deeply wrong.
You can gnash your teeth and shout and scream but you wont change that.
I don't need to change the minds of idiots - I only need to ignore them and work around them.
If the US decides to invade Canada tomorrow for no reason whatsoever, who's going to stop them? What do you imagine the international community will do?
Even in the case of Iraq, the UN didn't want to do anything except write strongly worded letters. If you think international laws are actually enforcable, you're a fool.
In the first documented and well-confirmed act of cyber-warfare, does this mean that both the USA and Israel have declared war against Iran, and that Iran would be in its rights to strike back at targets in both countries and kill people there?
There's no such things as "rights" when we're talking about nations. They can do whatever the hell they want, and so can any other nation. The prudent ones tend not to act in a way that'll get them anhilliated.
If dropping a nuke on the Pentagon is deemed an act of war, then surely placing it in such a vulnerable location in the first place must count as treason. I mean, who would knowingly place such a valuable (and apparently, easily accessed) facility that's so vital to the defence of the country, in such danger of attack in the first place?
We need to do even less business with the North Koreans. Because, of course, i've been told my entire life as a Canadian that refusing to do business with Bad People is the way to overthrow governments and win the hearts and minds of people. So the more evil North Korea does, the less business we need to do with them, FOR FREEDOM! Or something.
Partisan? Ofcourse, it's a politicised issue! Do you cry "partisan!" if i link to Dawkins in a creationism vs. evolution debate? No? Obviously what matters is if the arguments are valid not that some people are "partisan" to the arguments.
It's nice of you to assume that my answer would be "no", but you happen to be wrong. Debates are pointless. Trotting out the newest poster boy for either side isn't particularly convincing. I want to see hard data from a non-partisan source, not talking points repeated ad-nauseum.
Hammer and sickle and the proletariat? please grow up beyond the mind of a cold war victim. ("overthrowing of the proletariat" made me laugh though, next time try "the proletariat overthrowing capitalism" or similar to avoid embarassment)
It's true, I'm not up on my double-speak. Never needed it much. Thanks for the lesson!
If you had spent half the time writing this drivel to actually research this issue, you would know that fossil and nuclear have been subsidized through the roof for half a decade now, right from R&D to purchasing guarantees to insurance. Subsidized renewables? On an absolute scale sure (and we should have more of that), on a scale relative to non-renewable energy, renewable subsidies are a joke.
GM isn't the devil. It is just risky and the reward it offers is control of our food source handed to a select few.
Complete bullshit; the kind of nonsense which only people who believe that GM is Teh Devil could convince themselves of. Here in the real world GM is far safer than the kind of genetic tinkering we've been doing for thousands of years, the results are much more stringently regulated, and it has no implications whatsoever for "control of our food". Your conspiracy-theories notwithstanding, Monsanto isn't out to rule the world, and they have no chance of controlling the food supply regardless of what they do. It takes a special kind of stupid to go around screaming that GM is bad because DA EEEEEVIL CORPORATOINS WONT TO ROOL UZ ALL!! It's right up there with General Ripper and his "Precious Bodily Fluids", blaming fluoride on a communist plot. It's completely ridiculous, yet gets taken seriously even by otherwise intelligent people simply because they don't bother to do any research and they have an automatic aversion to someone screwing with their food.
Only that you don't find one kilogram of natural uranium sitting around just like that. You've got to separate it from the actual rock by chemically dissolving it with acid, then extracting yellowcake from that solution, and then extract natural uranium from that.
You can feel free to provide some numbers and/or references, any time you're ready.
It is far easier and cheaper to mine and burn 14 tons of coal than one kilogram of uranium. Which is reflected by the price: one kilogram of unprocessed pitchblende costs around EUR 100.
Wow. So market value is an accurate reflection of how difficult something is to mine? Damn! You learn something new every day.
In that case, gold must be REALLY hard and expensive to mine! It must be WAY more dangerous than uranium! All those videos I saw about people panning for it in rivers must just be government propaganda. And the thought of how bad the diamond mines must be... it just makes me shudder.
The same universe that outlaws booze, because of one groups moral beliefs.
Pretty sure that's a religious-right thing, there.
Fact of the matter, is the people against GMO are a vocal minority.
In my experience, they tend to be the majority. Every person I know seems to think that GM is Teh Devil. The response here on slashdot seems to indicate the same. Of course, I think they're a bunch of idiots whose views are based on fear-mongering and rumor, but that doesn't change the fact that the idiots are in the majority.
That is only a solution in a dictatorship and not in a demogracy where about 90% of the voters are against it.
I hereby invoke Sturgeons Law.
In cases where the public is acting like an irrational animal, the role of government is to calm, educate, and guide - not to cave in to their slightest whim. If 90% of voters suddenly decided that slavery should be legal, I'd expect my government to do everything in it's power to put a stop to that.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose calling me a troll is easier than responding to my post.
Yeah, I'm sorry that I refuse to be trolled by someone who's claiming that LCD's are too inefficient, so we should switch to CRT's :)
I thought you were serious, until I read the name :) Good troll, sir! Would you, by any chance, also be the person behind the comments by our resident chyropractor troll?
...that netted billions of dollars for pharmaceutical cartels that sold H1N1 vaccine?
lol. Do you have any idea what the profit margin for these vaccines is? We're talking pennies per shot. Even if every single person in the world got a flu-shot, nobody would make "billions". The low profit margin is exactly why there's often a supply issue - the companies hate making them.
This anti-vaccine shit never gets old :)
The problem is that the evidence goes both ways, some studies show a correlation, others don't.
You can say the same thing about research into "psychics". Hell, you can say the same thing about the age of the Earth - some studies show it's several billion years old, while some 'studies' show it's 6,000 years old. The question is how good are the studies. With "psi-research" we consistently find that the better designed a study is, the more likely it is to reach a negative result. With the cellphone-radiation claims, we find much the same thing. If only the shitty studies get positive results, then the evidence doesn't "go both ways" - it points in only one direction.
You know, as much as I hate pseudo-scientific fearmongering and general FUD, I'm kinda happy about this. The more ignorant people get scared away from using cellphones, the fewer idiots I'll have to dodge on the highway because they're changing lanes while texting, and the fewer nitwits I'll have to listen to on the bus or train as they babble on about some meaningless event in their shallow lives. If you ask me, we should put giant stickers on cell-phones with a death-head and a glaring "WARNING: THIS WILL MAKE YOU STERILE AND RETARDED". That way only people with triple digit IQ's and decent critical-thinking skills will buy them.
And we ignorant masses typically don't buy organic because we don't think it's worth the added price or environmental impact.
I just don't buy organic because it's a marketing gimmick aimed at ignorant masses. The added price and environmental impact just exacerbate the situation.
You know, criminal gangs tend to have their own systems of honour, temporary agreements between each-other, codes which they selectively enforce, etc. I wouldn't call that "gang law". However, if you think that this would be an appropriate label, then I would say that the same type of "law" applies on the global scale when it comes to relations between nations. In that case, we're merely arguing semantics, but I think they're important semantics (even if that is a bit of a misnomer) because there's a world of difference between criminal laws enforced by a government, and the types of agreements that occur between gangs or nations.
Were you born in 2003, or did you just ignore the middle east up to that point?
Meanwhile, in the real world, the invasion of Canada by the United States is next to impossible.
Oh, I agree. Like-minded nations make treaties and agreements in order to further their mutual interests, and violating well-established agreements isn't usually worthwhile except in extreme circumstances. For instance, if the entire world decided to stop selling oil to the the US at ANY price, they probably would invade Canada, but, short of that, the idea is ludicrous. I was simply using that scenario as an example; I wasn't suggesting that it was likely, or even mildly plausible.
However - getting back on topic - let's not confuse mutual cooperation with "international law" or the "rights of nations". There are no courts or police to enforce agreements between nations, or dictate rules for how sovereign states must behave. The global political environment is as close to anarchy as you'll ever get; individual entities do what's in their own best interest, cooperating when possible, and screwing over others when it seems prudent. Sometimes they even cooperate in order to screw-over a third party. Overall, the world operates on the principle of might-makes-right, or, more accurately, might-makes-it-irrelevant-who's-right. Talking about "international law" in that context is just ridiculous.
If it becomes more economical to get the oil from the oil sands, maybe :).
The yanks already get most of their oil from us, so I'm thinking they can't be all that uneconomical ...
Tell that to Serbia. International law is enforced, just against the "lesser" countries, not against the US or Israel.
What happened to Serbia over Kosovo was a travesty; it had nothing to do with international law. It's no wonder that such bullying tactics aren't used against the US or Israel - they only work against nations which can't effectively defend themselves.
What happened in the Balkans in the early 90's was a peacekeeping mission - it also had little to do with international law. Similar peacekeeping missions were attempted between Israel and various neighboring states in the past, and were generally just as ineffective.
Nuking the Pentagon has a reasonable Barrier To Entry. It is not NEGLIGENTLY exposed, and one needs a nuke and a delivery method, however crude.
Replace "nuke" with "airliner", if it makes you feel better. Guess whoever built the Pentagon should be held responsible for the damaged sustained on 9/11, eh?
Leaving ones important command/control/infrastructure assets exposed to the internet, by contrast, is well established, by experts, including many experienced admins on this forum, as being thoroughly negligent.
Leaving ones important command/control/infrastructure assets exposed on the surface is well established, by experts, as being thoroughly negligent. Clearly all important infrastructure projects should be build at least a mile underground in order to prevent attacks. Any buildings on the surface are just asking for it.
Ah so anyone who doesnt agree with your nuclear sycophancy needs to be educated.
Correct.
The post you replied to was from an intelligent well educated person, who made a lot of sense.
Incorrect.
You on the other hand.....just cant accept that apart form vested interests with a profit motive the public clearly dont want nuclear power.
I can accept it just fine; you don't seem to understand that the public is retarded. Wether we're talking about acceptance of religion, "alternative medicine", psychics, UFO's, conspiracy theories, or fear of Nuclear power, vaccines, and GM food, "The Public" is completely clueless and deeply wrong.
You can gnash your teeth and shout and scream but you wont change that.
I don't need to change the minds of idiots - I only need to ignore them and work around them.
I think many people would disagree.
I think many people are retarded. So what?
If the US decides to invade Canada tomorrow for no reason whatsoever, who's going to stop them? What do you imagine the international community will do?
Even in the case of Iraq, the UN didn't want to do anything except write strongly worded letters. If you think international laws are actually enforcable, you're a fool.
Canada?
Step 1: Come back to reality.
Step 2: Stop posting paranoid bullshit on slashdot.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: We all profit!
In the first documented and well-confirmed act of cyber-warfare, does this mean that both the USA and Israel have declared war against Iran, and that Iran would be in its rights to strike back at targets in both countries and kill people there?
There's no such things as "rights" when we're talking about nations. They can do whatever the hell they want, and so can any other nation. The prudent ones tend not to act in a way that'll get them anhilliated.
If dropping a nuke on the Pentagon is deemed an act of war, then surely placing it in such a vulnerable location in the first place must count as treason. I mean, who would knowingly place such a valuable (and apparently, easily accessed) facility that's so vital to the defence of the country, in such danger of attack in the first place?
We need to do even less business with the North Koreans. Because, of course, i've been told my entire life as a Canadian that refusing to do business with Bad People is the way to overthrow governments and win the hearts and minds of people. So the more evil North Korea does, the less business we need to do with them, FOR FREEDOM! Or something.
Partisan? Ofcourse, it's a politicised issue! Do you cry "partisan!" if i link to Dawkins in a creationism vs. evolution debate? No? Obviously what matters is if the arguments are valid not that some people are "partisan" to the arguments.
It's nice of you to assume that my answer would be "no", but you happen to be wrong. Debates are pointless. Trotting out the newest poster boy for either side isn't particularly convincing. I want to see hard data from a non-partisan source, not talking points repeated ad-nauseum.
Hammer and sickle and the proletariat? please grow up beyond the mind of a cold war victim. ("overthrowing of the proletariat" made me laugh though, next time try "the proletariat overthrowing capitalism" or similar to avoid embarassment)
It's true, I'm not up on my double-speak. Never needed it much. Thanks for the lesson!
If you had spent half the time writing this drivel to actually research this issue, you would know that fossil and nuclear have been subsidized through the roof for half a decade now, right from R&D to purchasing guarantees to insurance. Subsidized renewables? On an absolute scale sure (and we should have more of that), on a scale relative to non-renewable energy, renewable subsidies are a joke.
Now that's funny, right there :)
GM isn't the devil. It is just risky and the reward it offers is control of our food source handed to a select few.
Complete bullshit; the kind of nonsense which only people who believe that GM is Teh Devil could convince themselves of. Here in the real world GM is far safer than the kind of genetic tinkering we've been doing for thousands of years, the results are much more stringently regulated, and it has no implications whatsoever for "control of our food". Your conspiracy-theories notwithstanding, Monsanto isn't out to rule the world, and they have no chance of controlling the food supply regardless of what they do. It takes a special kind of stupid to go around screaming that GM is bad because DA EEEEEVIL CORPORATOINS WONT TO ROOL UZ ALL!! It's right up there with General Ripper and his "Precious Bodily Fluids", blaming fluoride on a communist plot. It's completely ridiculous, yet gets taken seriously even by otherwise intelligent people simply because they don't bother to do any research and they have an automatic aversion to someone screwing with their food.
Only that you don't find one kilogram of natural uranium sitting around just like that. You've got to separate it from the actual rock by chemically dissolving it with acid, then extracting yellowcake from that solution, and then extract natural uranium from that.
You can feel free to provide some numbers and/or references, any time you're ready.
It is far easier and cheaper to mine and burn 14 tons of coal than one kilogram of uranium. Which is reflected by the price: one kilogram of unprocessed pitchblende costs around EUR 100.
Wow. So market value is an accurate reflection of how difficult something is to mine? Damn! You learn something new every day.
In that case, gold must be REALLY hard and expensive to mine! It must be WAY more dangerous than uranium! All those videos I saw about people panning for it in rivers must just be government propaganda. And the thought of how bad the diamond mines must be ... it just makes me shudder.
Do you think Klaus Traube had no halfway-useful education?
Naw, I just think he's an idiot. There's a handful in every field. Observe:
http://www.ae911truth.org/
http://www.pilotsfor911truth.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scientific_Dissent_From_Darwinism
'nuff said.
The same universe that outlaws booze, because of one groups moral beliefs.
Pretty sure that's a religious-right thing, there.
Fact of the matter, is the people against GMO are a vocal minority.
In my experience, they tend to be the majority. Every person I know seems to think that GM is Teh Devil. The response here on slashdot seems to indicate the same. Of course, I think they're a bunch of idiots whose views are based on fear-mongering and rumor, but that doesn't change the fact that the idiots are in the majority.
That is only a solution in a dictatorship and not in a demogracy where about 90% of the voters are against it.
I hereby invoke Sturgeons Law.
In cases where the public is acting like an irrational animal, the role of government is to calm, educate, and guide - not to cave in to their slightest whim. If 90% of voters suddenly decided that slavery should be legal, I'd expect my government to do everything in it's power to put a stop to that.