Comment Re:That'll stop the terrorists! (Score 3, Insightful) 236
Actually, we'll just outlaw hobby drones. We can add that to outlawed real chemistry kits and outlawed lasers.
Actually, we'll just outlaw hobby drones. We can add that to outlawed real chemistry kits and outlawed lasers.
So a well funded player rolls out a new camera missing a feature its established and highly regarded competitors have, and a web site gives them a great review. Dang, why didn't I have that domain name! I should write bad reviews of the new Samsung and wait for the next model and ask for a reviewers copy. I ought to get some spending cash then!
I think that could, in the modern American political discourse, be the refrain. Have a look at a map. Generally speaking, urban areas vote blue and in favor of some sort of a national vision, whereas rural areas consistently lap up a steady diet of misinformation that says they are supporting the cities when every outlay from the state capitals to even the federal government suggests the opposite is true. The rural areas say they hate government and redistribution of wealth - fine - then let them do without the wealth redistributed to them and maybe cities, unshackled by them, can begin to turn their own finances around.
Laws prohibiting municipal broadband are entirely anti-city. In a country where politics is such that cities are routinely decried (while ironically states redistribute their tax revenues to rural areas and suburbs), I think it is time to frame broadband rights as a freedom from government for cities.
Cities should be allowed to be more independent from the states that hold them. They should not be stripped of the competitive advantages that localized economies of scale provide. They should be allowed to offer their own utilities, to toll the interstates that cut through them, and they shouldn't have to pay a gasoline tax that largely serves rural interests, and above all, part of that independence should be to allow them to offer broadband.
You invent externalities as if there is some kind of mandate that "Society has to bear the solution to some problem." Here's the reality. I absolutely do not. You can't argue in generalized terms about the affairs of humans in a digital age where everyone is perfectly capable of understanding their economic interests. If I live on a big hill, I don't have to care if your beachfront sinks. If it is cheaper for me to burn coal to heat with, I'm going to burn coal. It's that simple. Raising the taxes on my energy is really, to me, you screwing up my life so that you can have your fancy beachfront house. It's equally not fair, either way, and there's not so much as the notion of external costs as it is you are looking to raise a rent on the poor to preserve your beach property and fancy solar sailboats while the rest of us try and buy bread. We don't need you. We don't need your coasts. There's too many people already, as your side is fond of saying!
Your theory of damages is entirely ridiculous. If I burn a mount of coal in Kentucky, then the best you can say is that technically, perhaps, I helped make global sea levels rise. That would suck if you were living in New York or on the coast.
But, let's review the science:
a) CO2 is making sea levels rise and warming the planet and changing the climate. But no mathematical or climate model has been remotely accurate. The models do NOT actually predict climate, and that's really a huge problem. So you can't remove my burning coal mountain, then re-add it, and hold me culpable for anything, with any degree of certainty at all other than your lunatic religion.
b) Any contemplated action proposed by the environmental left, from carbon taxes to transaction taxes, has the effect of creating an enormous economic problem for the poor and middle class. If I 'm poor, I don't care if the coastlines sink. I don't own my building. Landlords do. So screw them! I'll move! Why should I care about your solar panel house in New Jersey with your scenic rich yardwork, when I'm poor in Kentucky? Answer is, I don't. All I see is that you want to make my fuel more expensive, my food more expensive, everything more expensive, when I'm trying to get the basics, and that cuts into whatever savings I have... makes me poorer, and having your cronies take those taxes to build a library for "me" doesn't cut the rusk as some kind of compensation.
So the bottom line is that. If you really want to save the planet, then go right ahead and invest your money in whatever it takes to make green stuff. If it is cheaper, I'll buy it. But if you are going to spend your life making my life miserable to save your beachfront property, when I don't even have property worth saving other than a burning pile of coal and a rifle, then show up claiming you are coming after me, then you're gonna get the rifle, and deserve it!
Is ist just me or is anyone else actually concerned that a have-a-go engineer can apparently quite easily achieve significantly bettr results than a team of so-called expert doctors in their own field?
RTFA please.
The description does indeed try to imply that the above is the case. But it's far from the truth, as much as internet armchair experts would like to believe.
The article itself appears to state that the problem was that 1) the initial advice was to wait, which after (appropriately) consulting with a number of experts they had done, and a followup showed progression. Even the first advice was not totally misplaced. Then what happened was that he suggested that the neurosurgeons basically invent a procedure specifically for him, and used 3D printing to create a model for them. The result was he did find someone willing to try (my guess is they refused the conventional approach) a less invasive procedure that removed 95% of the tumor. Now that may sound revolutionary, but neurosurgery is a tricky business, and depending on the tumor 95% may be equivalent to buying a little time while doing nothing at all, especially since they already knew that the tumor was growing aggressively. If the conventional approach would have had more of a chance of removing more of the tumor, possibly all of it with negative margins, that would be a far more definitive approach. Doctors aren't always right, but if you get a sufficiently experienced expert opinion, it'll usually reflect what is possible to do currently, with a reasonable margin of both safety and success.
Not everyone has the same harm vs benefit outlook. You might want a perfect green earth but I like cheap energy today and can live with the health risks. We are all going to die someday and at least I want to be warm. So the short answer is, I don't care about your genes and you don't care if people freeze. To each his own. There is no "we".
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
So, yeah, as soon as people figure out what it is that is being measured, expect them to alter their behavior to make that measure useless.
Tell that to Obamacare.
MDs and institutions now get less money when they take care of sicker patients whose socioeconomic status causes them to be less compliant and have more adverse outcomes. Congratulations, now no one wants those patients doubly. Oh, and they still can't pay for health insurance.
It is a FACT that ebola is ONLY CONTAGIOUS when symptoms are present.
Only if you ignore the last fifteen years of established science. Many people get Ebola and never show symptoms at all. We know this because they test positive for the antibodies to Ebola. Those people are believed to have had the virus in their blood at some point during the course of the disease. Therefore, under the right circumstances, it is possible for someone not showing symptoms of Ebola to spread the disease. It is highly unlikely, and has not been documented to occur in the wild so far (that we know of), but claiming that it is impossible based solely on limited anecdotal evidence is downright terrifyingly bad science.
I'd be happy to dig up the citations again if you really want me to, or you can just Google it yourself.
That's just patently wrong. Having antibodies to Ebola doesn't mean you had the disease, it means you were exposed to the virus. There was a study in 2000 Lancet which looked at seroconversion in close contacts of individuals ill with ebola, which showed that 11/24 people seroconverted in the absence of symptoms. However, the scientists were unable to isolate virus from these patients. This suggests that there are people who have either a defect in the ability of Ebola to infect them, or their innate immune response is able to deal with Ebola. There is no evidence from the last 30 years that there any asymptomatic individual acts as a carrier.
That's not insightful.
If you cannot isolate infectious virus or amplify its genetic material from someone's bodily fluids, they are not infectious.
Making assertions based on panic is not reasonable. Maybe if the nurse wasn't treated like a criminal leper on coming home, she wouldn't be lashing out and would stay home.
Are you kidding be. Would be stupid to do that. The whole point is that many of not most H1B ers are working for less because they'd much rather be in this country. The threat of losing the visa it's what keeps them indentured servants. Just look at the biomedical research industry. No one will ever give them citizenship ebb masse... it would destroy the system by which having a PhD became about as profitable as being on welfare.
You know that you don't have to just add useless and uninteresting words to something that already had substance, right? At least borrow some quotes from Socrates' Dialogues to spice things up: There is admirable truth in that. That is not to be denied. That appears to be true. All this seems to flow necessarily out of our previous admissions. I think that what you say is entirely true. That, replied Cebes, is quite my notion. To that we are quite agreed. By all means. I entirely agree and go along with you in that. I quite understand you. I shall still say that you are the Daedalus who sets arguments in motion; not I, certainly, but you make them move or go round, for they would never have stirred, as far as I am concerned. If you're going to say _nothing_, at least be interesting about it, post anonymously, or risk looking more clueless / foolish. This is why the moderation system is in place, and mods typically don't listen to inanities like "Well said" when deciding on what to spend their points.
1. I'm too busy to sit around thinking up additional words to throw in so I can score "mod" points
2. The people I like on Slashdot are too busy to read a bunch of additional words I only threw in so I can score "mod" points
3. It's not in my nature to waste words, or to waste time
If other posts here on Slashdot are any indication, "Mr. Councilman" is just as likely to lose political points by supporting the poor.
Actually this particular councilman represents an extremely high-rent district--Manhattan's upper east side. I doubt there are many wealthier neighborhoods in the world. He's not doing this to 'score points', he's doing it to do the right thing.
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.