In this case, neither answer is satisfactory because public healthcare doesn't work in the first place.
I see why you posted anonymously. Try looking at countries that already have universal public healthcare. Admire the fit, healthy populace. Note how much less they pay per person for healthcare.
Other than a post-surgery week-long course of antibiotics to cure infection in the skin around the wound, and five doses of paracetemol (max four doses per day, I had five over the course of a week), I haven't had any medication for over a year.
I don't do drugs. I don't do coca cola products either as they damage me mentally. I do have dietary issues with other substances (e.g. chocolate, milk and chilli peppers, but damnit, a mole sauce covered enchillada is actually worth dying for).
Everyone's different. What I did to lose weight (and sustain the loss) is probably damaging to my long term health, and very unsuitable for most people, and it's the only thing I've ever found that's actually worked for me.
I have a lot of sympathy for people that can't lose weight. I also despise people that are so fat they can't get out of bed. I recognise my own hypocrisy.
Again, stop looking for material on the web that tells you you're not being lazy but that it is normal to not be fit in your 30s. It's all plain false. You can weight 185 now just like you did at 18, especially if you're 6'1", which is nothing spectacular, without starving yourself at all.
I starved myself. I'm barely 6' and I can't get below 202lb. It just doesn't happen. I have to literally leave myself weak with hunger and grinding my teeth to even hit 202lb.
At 210-215lb I get admiring comments from ladies my age, I get jealous comments from male colleagues, I get told by medical professionals that it would be unhealthy for me to lose any more weight. I'm not an athlete, I can't run (knee problems) and my BMI is near the upper end of 'overweight'.
If by "doing things" you mean exercise, it costs absolutely nothing except maybe an extra shower now and then and a little bit more wear on clothes and shoes.
It costs time. I have little enough leisure time already without wasting it on boring-as-hell "exercise".
That said, I walk 4km a day, dance for an average of 6-10 hours a week and engage in two other sports every month or so; I actually get a lot of exercise. It's called commuting, socialising and having fun, and frankly if that's not enough, so be it.
Taxes taken from smokers are bundled with cash from other sources of general taxation.
The NHS is funded by general taxation.
No income from smoking reduces overall expenditure by the Government by £2bn, but increases the overall tax burden by £10bn.
To raise £10bn would require a 4-5% rise in income tax.
So sure, a pound spent on a smoker may not have come from the tax charged on their cigarettes, but that five quid sure as shit didn't just vanish into thin air.
(See also: Motoring taxation, Alcohol taxation and the unfeasibly large sums of money spent on selfish fuckers perpetuating the species)
Eat when you're hungry. Stop when you're not hungry, not when you are "full".
I tried that for a week. Gained over a stone in the week.
I'm almost always hungry. After eating a small meal my body tells me "That was great, eat more of it". After eating a large meal my body tells me, "That's what you need, find more".
I don't get told that I feel full, unless it's a genuine "there's no more room for food" message. I can get that message alongside the "ooh, food! good call!" hunger message too.
It's nice for you that your body works well, but not everybody is that lucky.
Actually, exercise is and always will be the first and foremost critical component to sustainable weight loss.
Bullshit. "Eat less, move more" is the guide, and of the two, "Eat less" matters far far more than "move more".
It's also a hell of a lot more sustainable.
More exercise builds more muscle and makes you hungrier. People with more muscle weigh more. Shit, it's why BMI is completely discredited as a measure of weight related health.
Lastly, as for dessert, if you're consuming a dessert more frequently than one or twice per week, you're doing it wrong. Ideally, dessert shouldn't be consumed more than one or twice per month
Dessert tastes good. If you're a monk and you hate yourself, eat dessert twice a month.
If you want to lose weight, just eat less overall. But feel free to eat dessert as often as you like, as long as you are still eating less overall.
A couple of years back I lost a stone a month four months in a row by eating pizza, kebabs, pies, chips and a hell of a lot of desserts (usually with lashings of lovely hot custard).
I'm still eating the same foods, and two weeks ago (i.e. before medical surgery which has thrown my eating patterns) I'd gained back around 7lb since that diet, and that was actually a cyclic peak that was on its way down.
So don't give the bullshit "it's all exercise", don't give the fascist "don't eat dessert", just focus on the sheer common sense: consume less energy than you expend.
It's pretty fucking basic, and the source of that energy consumption is entirely up for grabs.
As I said elsewhere, I'm 51 years old and still the same exact size and weight as when I was 19.
Men tend to gain a lot of muscle in the decade after they reach 19.
I was gaining muscle for 17-18 years after reaching 19. I didn't work out (bores me senseless) but my shoulders grew broader and stronger. Other men develop stronger wrists. There's a reason 19 year olds are called 'boys' and 31 year olds are called 'men'.
So maybe you can stay steady weight through that period, but most posters on Slashdot wont, and would be unhealthy if they tried.
More suitable is very subjective. You're absolutely correct that iTunes alone wont prevent many purchases, but that doesn't excuse the awful model Apple has forced on its customers (or indeed the inept implementation on Windows).
The most powerful documents are the ones which fit onto a single page.
People carry a good picture around for months. They pull it out in multiple meanings, share it with others, use it to discuss issues and set direction.
If you need notes, sure, powerpoint can provide notes that aren't even on the slides but still print out alongside them. But cut out the crap, reduce things to the simple basics and give people strong concepts they'll remember and work to.
If you need lots of slides to describe your topic then you haven't simplified enough. Write a document, a paper, a book, a website, anything that could be used as a reference. But present the basic summary, and give people something more basic than that to take away and remind them of the key things that actually matter.
Given that the iPad is currently the lowest priced tablet on the market
That's clearly just nonsense.
It's clearly excellent value for money when compared to equivalent hardware spec tablets, but if you want something cheap & nasty there are plenty of alternatives for far less.
Hasn't it occurred to you that I hate the iPad exactly _because_ of that?
If the iPad was a horribly locked down penis substitute that only a few people used (like a Windows Mobile phone) then I'd ignore its rampant stupidity.
Because Apple are marketing the hell out of it to try and get it sold as broadly as possible, and in so doing distorting the whole PC market, they're poisoning the distribution channels and the product pipeline for everyone else too.
I don't mind an app store. I don't want to be forced to only use one, from one company, ever. That's not healthy, but it's what Apple want, and it's what Apple are selling to a lot of people.
This is why I like Android. Whether it's as good an OS as iOS, whether the devices are cheaper, better, worse, fatter, heavier, slower than an iPad or whether I even want one, I want Android to succeed, because it represents end-user control over their computing devices. That's fucking important to me, and that's why I hate the iPad.
See the giant flashlight app? Not on a fucking iPad I wont, they don't support flash..
FF introduced AwesomeBar in 3, and even today, no other browser comes close to the level of intuitiveness achieved by it. Chrome's Omnibox, IE9's onebar, they all pale in comparison.
Intuitiveness? Unholy fucked up stupidity beyond comparison. Nobody else has got close to it because they want their browser to remain usable.
I love firefox, and use it on all platforms (including my mobile) but please, don't insult us by pretending AwesomeBar was anything other than sardonically named.
If they wanted to show the limited range Clarkson should have driven from London and tried the make it to Northern Scotland and let it run out of juice. The problem is he knows under normal driving conditions it'd do better than 200 miles and it might actually impress some people.
London to the north of Scotland? Dream on.
They could get from London to York by driving carefully. There's still a lot of England left before you even reach Scotland, Edinburgh's in the south of the country and York's only halfway to Edinburgh.
They could have demonstrated how fucking useless the car is for travelling from London to Scotland but that would've been a waste of their time, and they actually did use a comparable trip to demonstrate how pointlessly inconvenient another electric car was.
They also seem to be the only ones making the 55 mile range claim and they never bothered to actually test the range. I always considered the episode biased but I got upset hearing it was mostly scripted ahead of time. As I said in an earlier post it calls into question every review they have ever done.
Read the fucking article which addresses all of your concerns. Except for your stupidity - I can see why you've posted anonymously.
Surely changing the law would make sense, rather than using archaic irrelevant laws to prevent people doing something that feels natural and normal to them?
I'd love abandonware (whether computer programs, TV programmes, films, music or books) to fall out of copyright. Proving something is abandonware is tricky. Better to significantly reduce copyright terms.
I don't think however that the BBC destroying old tapes/films because they either saved money be re-using the physical media or because they saved money by not having to store it was at any point intended to become a trap.
I suspect the BBC would admit themselves that it's a shame they can't produce a DVD with the original Doctor Who on it, or add it to iPlayer (free for UK TV licence holders).
(There's also the fact that Apple's marketshare was and is a fraction of Microsoft's.)
I would be interested to hear with somebody who actually knows what they're talking about, though. What makes Apple's situation acceptable in the eyes of the law?
I don't know what I'm talking about (see my posting history;) but you've already answered your own question.
Apple weren't exploiting a dominant market position to prevent competition.
Slashdot Mirror
In this case, neither answer is satisfactory because public healthcare doesn't work in the first place.
I see why you posted anonymously. Try looking at countries that already have universal public healthcare. Admire the fit, healthy populace. Note how much less they pay per person for healthcare.
Your definition of "doesn't work" doesn't work.
Other than a post-surgery week-long course of antibiotics to cure infection in the skin around the wound, and five doses of paracetemol (max four doses per day, I had five over the course of a week), I haven't had any medication for over a year.
I don't do drugs. I don't do coca cola products either as they damage me mentally. I do have dietary issues with other substances (e.g. chocolate, milk and chilli peppers, but damnit, a mole sauce covered enchillada is actually worth dying for).
Everyone's different. What I did to lose weight (and sustain the loss) is probably damaging to my long term health, and very unsuitable for most people, and it's the only thing I've ever found that's actually worked for me.
I have a lot of sympathy for people that can't lose weight. I also despise people that are so fat they can't get out of bed. I recognise my own hypocrisy.
Again, stop looking for material on the web that tells you you're not being lazy but that it is normal to not be fit in your 30s. It's all plain false. You can weight 185 now just like you did at 18, especially if you're 6'1", which is nothing spectacular, without starving yourself at all.
I starved myself. I'm barely 6' and I can't get below 202lb. It just doesn't happen. I have to literally leave myself weak with hunger and grinding my teeth to even hit 202lb.
At 210-215lb I get admiring comments from ladies my age, I get jealous comments from male colleagues, I get told by medical professionals that it would be unhealthy for me to lose any more weight. I'm not an athlete, I can't run (knee problems) and my BMI is near the upper end of 'overweight'.
Tell me, am I lazy? Or are you a fuckwit.
If by "doing things" you mean exercise, it costs absolutely nothing except maybe an extra shower now and then and a little bit more wear on clothes and shoes.
It costs time. I have little enough leisure time already without wasting it on boring-as-hell "exercise".
That said, I walk 4km a day, dance for an average of 6-10 hours a week and engage in two other sports every month or so; I actually get a lot of exercise. It's called commuting, socialising and having fun, and frankly if that's not enough, so be it.
Taxes taken from smokers are bundled with cash from other sources of general taxation.
The NHS is funded by general taxation.
No income from smoking reduces overall expenditure by the Government by £2bn, but increases the overall tax burden by £10bn.
To raise £10bn would require a 4-5% rise in income tax.
So sure, a pound spent on a smoker may not have come from the tax charged on their cigarettes, but that five quid sure as shit didn't just vanish into thin air.
(See also: Motoring taxation, Alcohol taxation and the unfeasibly large sums of money spent on selfish fuckers perpetuating the species)
Eat when you're hungry. Stop when you're not hungry, not when you are "full".
I tried that for a week. Gained over a stone in the week.
I'm almost always hungry. After eating a small meal my body tells me "That was great, eat more of it". After eating a large meal my body tells me, "That's what you need, find more".
I don't get told that I feel full, unless it's a genuine "there's no more room for food" message. I can get that message alongside the "ooh, food! good call!" hunger message too.
It's nice for you that your body works well, but not everybody is that lucky.
Actually, exercise is and always will be the first and foremost critical component to sustainable weight loss.
Bullshit. "Eat less, move more" is the guide, and of the two, "Eat less" matters far far more than "move more".
It's also a hell of a lot more sustainable.
More exercise builds more muscle and makes you hungrier. People with more muscle weigh more. Shit, it's why BMI is completely discredited as a measure of weight related health.
Lastly, as for dessert, if you're consuming a dessert more frequently than one or twice per week, you're doing it wrong. Ideally, dessert shouldn't be consumed more than one or twice per month
Dessert tastes good. If you're a monk and you hate yourself, eat dessert twice a month.
If you want to lose weight, just eat less overall. But feel free to eat dessert as often as you like, as long as you are still eating less overall.
A couple of years back I lost a stone a month four months in a row by eating pizza, kebabs, pies, chips and a hell of a lot of desserts (usually with lashings of lovely hot custard).
I'm still eating the same foods, and two weeks ago (i.e. before medical surgery which has thrown my eating patterns) I'd gained back around 7lb since that diet, and that was actually a cyclic peak that was on its way down.
So don't give the bullshit "it's all exercise", don't give the fascist "don't eat dessert", just focus on the sheer common sense: consume less energy than you expend.
It's pretty fucking basic, and the source of that energy consumption is entirely up for grabs.
I put sugar in my coffee. I know how much I put in too:
Lots.
As a net percentage of my daily calories, it's actually pushing the 10% mark on work days.
As a total amount though, my black coffee with sugar is still fewer calories than a low-fat latte with none..
And nobody eats sugar by the teaspoon
Of course not, that would be foolish. Sugar lumps are superior in every possible way.
Ah, that crush, that rush of sweetness, that melting feeling, reaching for the next one out of the box..
Dang. I need sugar now :(
As I said elsewhere, I'm 51 years old and still the same exact size and weight as when I was 19.
Men tend to gain a lot of muscle in the decade after they reach 19.
I was gaining muscle for 17-18 years after reaching 19. I didn't work out (bores me senseless) but my shoulders grew broader and stronger. Other men develop stronger wrists. There's a reason 19 year olds are called 'boys' and 31 year olds are called 'men'.
So maybe you can stay steady weight through that period, but most posters on Slashdot wont, and would be unhealthy if they tried.
I eat one meal a day and gain weight on it.
To lose weight I have to stop eating entirely some days.
You're lucky, weight control is easy for you. Not everyone else has that luxury.
More suitable is very subjective. You're absolutely correct that iTunes alone wont prevent many purchases, but that doesn't excuse the awful model Apple has forced on its customers (or indeed the inept implementation on Windows).
The most powerful documents are the ones which fit onto a single page.
People carry a good picture around for months. They pull it out in multiple meanings, share it with others, use it to discuss issues and set direction.
If you need notes, sure, powerpoint can provide notes that aren't even on the slides but still print out alongside them. But cut out the crap, reduce things to the simple basics and give people strong concepts they'll remember and work to.
If you need lots of slides to describe your topic then you haven't simplified enough. Write a document, a paper, a book, a website, anything that could be used as a reference. But present the basic summary, and give people something more basic than that to take away and remind them of the key things that actually matter.
Given that the iPad is currently the lowest priced tablet on the market
That's clearly just nonsense.
It's clearly excellent value for money when compared to equivalent hardware spec tablets, but if you want something cheap & nasty there are plenty of alternatives for far less.
Hasn't it occurred to you that I hate the iPad exactly _because_ of that?
If the iPad was a horribly locked down penis substitute that only a few people used (like a Windows Mobile phone) then I'd ignore its rampant stupidity.
Because Apple are marketing the hell out of it to try and get it sold as broadly as possible, and in so doing distorting the whole PC market, they're poisoning the distribution channels and the product pipeline for everyone else too.
I don't mind an app store. I don't want to be forced to only use one, from one company, ever. That's not healthy, but it's what Apple want, and it's what Apple are selling to a lot of people.
This is why I like Android. Whether it's as good an OS as iOS, whether the devices are cheaper, better, worse, fatter, heavier, slower than an iPad or whether I even want one, I want Android to succeed, because it represents end-user control over their computing devices. That's fucking important to me, and that's why I hate the iPad.
See the giant flashlight app? Not on a fucking iPad I wont, they don't support flash..
Nonetheless, iTunes is a monstrous calamity as a desktop application.
Not quite as bad a Quicktime for Windows, but since it usually installs that too..
I should not need to install any desktop software to use my portable Internet device. None. None at all. None.
Making me install any is bad. Making me install something as shit as iTunes is about as far from an ideal situation as you'll get.
Just fucking works my arse.
FF introduced AwesomeBar in 3, and even today, no other browser comes close to the level of intuitiveness achieved by it. Chrome's Omnibox, IE9's onebar, they all pale in comparison.
Intuitiveness? Unholy fucked up stupidity beyond comparison. Nobody else has got close to it because they want their browser to remain usable.
I love firefox, and use it on all platforms (including my mobile) but please, don't insult us by pretending AwesomeBar was anything other than sardonically named.
If they wanted to show the limited range Clarkson should have driven from London and tried the make it to Northern Scotland and let it run out of juice. The problem is he knows under normal driving conditions it'd do better than 200 miles and it might actually impress some people.
London to the north of Scotland? Dream on.
They could get from London to York by driving carefully. There's still a lot of England left before you even reach Scotland, Edinburgh's in the south of the country and York's only halfway to Edinburgh.
They could have demonstrated how fucking useless the car is for travelling from London to Scotland but that would've been a waste of their time, and they actually did use a comparable trip to demonstrate how pointlessly inconvenient another electric car was.
They also seem to be the only ones making the 55 mile range claim and they never bothered to actually test the range. I always considered the episode biased but I got upset hearing it was mostly scripted ahead of time. As I said in an earlier post it calls into question every review they have ever done.
Read the fucking article which addresses all of your concerns. Except for your stupidity - I can see why you've posted anonymously.
Mesopotamia?
Egypt?
Peru?
The idea that a ruling elite is bad for everyone else isn't new. Finding something elegant to replace it has been the difficult bit.
Dang, caught again :(
Surely changing the law would make sense, rather than using archaic irrelevant laws to prevent people doing something that feels natural and normal to them?
I'm sure the Queen is a Queen fan, but she's not the rights holder for their music, even Killer Queen.
I'd love abandonware (whether computer programs, TV programmes, films, music or books) to fall out of copyright. Proving something is abandonware is tricky. Better to significantly reduce copyright terms.
I don't think however that the BBC destroying old tapes/films because they either saved money be re-using the physical media or because they saved money by not having to store it was at any point intended to become a trap.
I suspect the BBC would admit themselves that it's a shame they can't produce a DVD with the original Doctor Who on it, or add it to iPlayer (free for UK TV licence holders).
Some television of the past has even been deliberatly destroyed for legal reasons, or because it is embarassing to the company today.
Or because it cost too much to retain it.
There's a distressing amount of BBC material that's gone forever, very intentionally, primarily due to cost reasons.
(There's also the fact that Apple's marketshare was and is a fraction of Microsoft's.)
I would be interested to hear with somebody who actually knows what they're talking about, though. What makes Apple's situation acceptable in the eyes of the law?
I don't know what I'm talking about (see my posting history ;) but you've already answered your own question.
Apple weren't exploiting a dominant market position to prevent competition.