Ye Gods... really?
If you're quarantined and you see neighbors dying of Ebola, for fuck sakes - do your rights demand that you escape by any means, carry it with you, and spread it to other areas?
I get individual rights over statism, and would be among the first to take up arms against a tyranny, but damn... think of your fellow human beings for once.
I see you're still stuck in that Party vs. Party trap.
In fairness, I suspect that GP was assuming that aid and care would still be shipped in (volunteer basis of course), which does not preclude or invalidate a quarantine.
Guns? Yeah, we got 'em in spades. Good luck using one to stop an M1 Abrams, a Hellfire missile, an AC-130, or suchlike.
Yes, we also have rights, but... an extreme and obvious case such as an Ebola outbreak in the US will obviously trump those rights (hell, past presidents have suspended habeas corpus before in the name of extremes...)
It is impossible to quarantine an area encompassing Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Congo, etc.
Completely? You'd be right. On the other hand, blockading air and maritime travel, and deploying military forces on the borders of these countries would go a hell of a long way towards containing the disease.
The rest, while yes I agree would suck hard, is probably and sadly the only way to be certain that no one outside those areas get infected.
SpaceX has promise, but Boeing has shown it can deliver.
...eventually, and only after the requisite pork has been spread across a multitude of states and subcontractors to keep the requisite congress-critters happy.
Not to knock Boeing's technical prowess, but damn - they do know how to play the game (which explains why they're getting a piece of the contract most likely...)
As a very apt comparison, go back to the days when the F-16 first came out: relatively cheap, by some upstart company (General Dynamics), a revolutionary design, the first 9-G capable fighter, and was an all-around workhorse that could do (within reason) damned near anything you demanded of it. It's still in production today (albeit as a division of Lockheed-Martin), with a design that stands to be around for decades to come. Compare and contrast this with, oh, the F-35/6/whatever that's been nothing but a massive money-sink to date.
Thinking the same thing. Ostensibly, a government agency would stay the hell out of the way save for basic health/safety concerns... but in the age of bureaucrats who want to puff up their service records, I can see such a commission going straight to hell in an awful hurry.
(OTOH, seeing how ineffectual the FCC is at doing its job viz. the Internet and Network Neutrality, who knows?)
One small problem with your statement:
The vast majority of smart phone users don't use iPhones, but Apple's done pretty well.
A very significant portion of the public does use iPhones (here in PDX it's roughly half and half). The only two human beings I've seen who use and *like* Windows Phones were as follows: a gent who wanted something cheap and worked in
Did you just suggest an Arctic expedition that vanished ~170 years ago and claimed 128 lives [...]
To be fair, the lives lost weren't due to the sinking, but due to the trek they were forced to make over the ice. IIRC, recovered tin cans from the first campsite, and testing tissue from the excavated remains of three buried crew members showed that lead poisoning was likely a huge factor in the decisions that led to most of their deaths.
Not sure if the ship itself will yield any further clues as to the conditions that lead to the tragedy (aside from knowing precisely where it was stuck in the ice, anyway).
Well since you are getting connection to the internet for free...
Nope, not true.
I don't have Comcast's phone or TV service (both of which suck), and only have their internet service because that's what we're stuck with in this little town for broadband (at least until sat/wireless catches up in speed).
And doing so for a commercial purpose. Which, in theory, could make it criminal.
At the very least they are modifying user content, which should by all rights push them out of any DMCA safe harbor protections.
Agreed - I suspect that the translation from AT&T is as follows:
"Please don't up the definition... we suck, and don't want to have to explain why we can't provide "Broadband" to the majority of our customers anymore."
The sad part is, I bet that all the other ISPs are silently cheering AT&T on.
Oftentimes, they do that when the candidate has little-to-no experience in the office.
Kind of odd in this case, but with most political appointees the press likes it's a means to hedge against cries of nepotism, favoritism, or suchlike. Gives them a means to shout "...see? Mr. So-and-So is qualified for the job!!!!11!!"
No, the exact opposite of what we need right now is a series of executive orders enforcing implementations that hurt technology, rather than foster it.
Example? If one came down the pike demanding that all government agencies use only Microsoft-built operating systems (or worse, one forcing the use of
Depends if you have a license or not - $200 and a doc's note is pretty much all you need, then you're pretty much off to the races if you're growing for yourself. IF you're on disability, the $200 is discounted substantially (my in-laws had a license... it was weird going to their house for the first time and seeing ganja *trees* growing right next to their house... okay, maybe not real trees, but these bastards were 12' tall.)
Then again, if you don't want to do the paperwork, Vancouver, WA is only like 20 minutes' drive north of PDX.
Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
