Yes, it really would. At one point just about every major piece of technology and science we have today would have been considered supernatural/metaphysical. Given the abundance of anecdotal evidence of "parapsychological" effects, it is completely reasonable to perform controlled experiments in order to evaluate whether those effects can be reproduced. That is the very nature of science.

It is also completely reasonable and scientific to periodically continue to perform those experiments as our tools and understanding grow, and to continue to ensure that the earlier falsification was justified and correct.

String theory?

I'm sorry, but you clearly have no idea how taxes on small businesses work. There is no "loss" or any of that nonsense. You can do taxes in two different ways, either cash basis or accrual. Either way, you pay tax on what you actually earned. This is simpler with the cash basis. The thing you may be getting confused with is when business pay tax on accrual, which is where they pay tax based on "booked" revenue, rather than actual revenue. In this case, if the actual revenue doesn't match what the booked revenue was, they are able to make an adjustment so that they only pay tax on what they actually earn.

You seem to have a (fairly typical) liberalish distaste for business - based on your clearly uneducated portrayal of how business operate. If you think that there's some sort of incentive for a small business like a dental office to earn $116 instead of $167, you're very misguided.

Additionally, you also clearly have no idea how insurance billing and negotiation work. Insurance billing and rates are done typically off of ICD9 codes, and are based on UNC (Usual and Customary), which in turn is based of of a multiple of medicare reimbursement. The provider charges a multiple of UNC as a standard practice, and then will go through a fairly difficult and lengthy negotiation process with the insurance company in order to "settle" at an agreed upon reimbursement. In fact, this process is so lengthy and difficult, there is an entire industry in health care that's dedicated to doing nothing but this, and to handle these negotiations. Take a look at a company called NCN (Nation Care Network). They are an example.

Because of the difficulty getting reimbursed in a timely manner from the insurance companies, and the cost involved in these negotiations, the providers will frequently inflate the amount they are billing, with full knowledge that they will not be reimbursed for this amount. They do this as a negotiating tactic for the insurance companies. This is the high "inflated" bill you're referring to.

It is extremely rare that anyone would actually pay that inflated amount. In fact, the providers will normally give you a nice discount off of UNC if you pay directly because it saves them the expense and hassle of getting reimbursed from the insurance companies.

The problems with the healthcare system in this country are not a result of evil money grubbing providers, or even of evil money grubbing insurance companies. The problems with the cost of healthcare are directly attributable to the regulatory environment.

If you doubt this in any way, go do some research. Go look at the cost of healthcare prior to medicare/medicaid, and then the cost of healthcare afterwards. Even a trivial bit of research will show you the huge spikes in costs. These spikes in cost are a direct result of the command economy approach to price setting in healthcare, and the fact that these rate tables are used as a basic for UNC.

The notion that adding even more of a command economy and a harsher regulatory environment is going to somehow make things better is ludicrous. The idea that putting the same people who have demonstrated their willingness to systematically abuse power in almost every scenario where power has been granted... that these people are going to make all of our lives better... this is nonsense and everyone knows it.

This entire healthcare law is about one thing: power. Anyone who is intellectually honest will recognize that. The disagreement is with whether granting these sweeping powers to a bureaucracy will make things better or worse. I don't know for sure, but I have my suspicions. Or we could ask the flood of healthcare workers and doctors that are fleeing the profession what they think about it all.

I suspect we, as a country, are going to get yet another lesson in "the law of unintended consequences".

The mistake you're making here is failing to understand the difference between constant factor and asymptotic bounds. In computer science, algorithm analysis explicitly ignores constant factors like computer speed, compiler speed, language speed etc... because asymptotically they are irrelevant.

For non math geeks, what I mean by asymptotic bounds is the curve of execution time as the number of inputs increases. When the number of inputs is low, the dominating concern is the constant factor, but as inputs increase this quickly becomes irrelevant.

Consider this: let's calculate every possible permutation of a set of inputs. Starting with two inputs, [1,2] then it's easy - { [1,2], [2,1] }. Still pretty easy when we go to three inputs: { [1,2,3], [1,3,2], [2,1,3],[2,3,1],[3,2,1],[3,1,2] }, but when we go to four it starts to become more annoying, and by the time we go to 15 or 20, we're getting crazy with the possible number of combinations. That's because the number of possible permutations is defined by the factorial n! (a factorial is numbers multiplied in decreasing order, so 5! means 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1).

Therefore calculating the possible number of permutations of a few numbers is easy, but calculating the number of permutations for many numbers takes a long time. It doesn't matter how fast the computer is, I can simply add more numbers and I will quickly outstrip your ability to calculate it.

In fact, this is going to be pretty much true of anything that runs in higher order time ( O(n ^ x) ) because as the number of inputs increases, the time required to calculate it increases exponentially. As long as x > 1, eventually, no matter how fast your computer is, the constant factor improvements gained by your computer speed will be dominated by the exponent x.

Now, when you start talking about P and NP, things get more complex, but for simplicity's sake imagine that the class of algorithms that are P are things we can "put our finger on", or technically, those whose execution times are bounded by a polynomial. NP problems are even more complex than this, in that they can't even be bounded within polynomial time constraints. Factoring numbers is part of the NP problem space, and cryptography relies on this.

The exciting/terrifying thing about this news is the notion that we can take a problem from the NP class and make it P, and if this is the case it has profound implications.

Is developing in C or asm writing a program?

Is developing in Python writing a program?

Is developing in Java writing a program?

Is developing in Javascript with NodeJS a program?

Is developing in C using NaCL for a web page writing a program?

If I take a program developed in C and port it to Javascript to run in the browser via LLVM/Emscripten does it cease to be a program?

Is this a program?
https://developer.cdn.mozilla.net/media/uploads/demos/a/z/azakai/3baf4ad7e600cbda06ec46efec5ec3b8/bananabread_1373485124_demo_package/index.html

"Web programming" is writing programs on or for the web. "Web design" is something different.

"Web programmers" are people who write software that runs in an amazing cross platform VM: the browser.

I'm one of them.

I know you were just trying to be cute with your comment, but you were legitimately called out on it because it is BS. It's best not to try to defend a bad argument. Just evaluate, learn, adjust your understand and move on.

Frankly, you're either grossly uneducated, or a troll. Either way you're showing your ignorance.

Just because you might know a little C or ASM does not give you the right to sneer at talented developers who chose different platforms. Go here and tell me these people aren't "real programmers": http://www.chromeexperiments.com/

Guess what: I code in C and asm, I hand solder my own boards. I write cross platform drivers for Windows and Mac. I'm reasonably proficient in probably every language you've ever heard of, from Clipper to RPG (on the AS400) to Java and .Net and I've been doing it for about 17 years now professionally, longer as a hobby. And you know what? I choose to spend 90% of my current development time in Javascript, both in the browser and in NodeJS.

Hopefully one day, if I work really hard and keep trying, maybe I can be considered a "programmer" in your book.

There's a mind-numbingly obvious solution to your problem here.

Become a customer.

It's very simple. Sign up and start paying for the services. I'm highly dependent on Google services, I run my whole business off them. It was an unacceptable risk to me to be locked out, or not have customer support, so I simply signed up and started paying for it.

For $5 per month, I have a phone number to call if anything goes wrong, and real customer support: http://contact.googleapps.com/?&rd=1

The wonderful thing about a free society is that no one works by force (unlike statist governements).

If a consenting adult chooses to engage in a mutually beneficial contract and sell his time and service to another for an agreed upon compensation, that hardly fits your example of "capitalists have the right to the lions share of the fruits of others' labor".

The fact that a voluntary system of rewards, employment, creation, production and business opportunity is a superior system to leftist/statist "work for the common good" scheme should be obvious to anyone that can read English - because those that can read English should have read Animal Farm at some point.

This is a common misunderstanding/misperception. The Libertarians vehemently oppose corporate welfare and public/private partnerships. What you're calling "pro-corporate" is really not true - they believe that in general, the market should be left alone, regulation minimized and clear separation between companies and government should exist. They are deeply suspicious of things like the military-industrial complex.

The Libertarians believe that a person has a right to the fruit of their own labors, and that people should be free from burdensome regulation and oppressive government manipulation of markets. This is not "pro corporate" this is "pro human". They also believe that just as a person should be free to succeed, they should be free to fail. The libertarians are passionately opposed to "bail outs" and "stimulus" government corporate welfare programs.

Any Libertarian who tried to pull the sort of shenanigans that we're seeing here would be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail by his/her own party.

Yes indeed, and I'm glad. I'd rather see an ad for something I'm interested in than constant True.com or e-harmony adds.

The internet as I know it starts with the Google home page. And yes, I was there during the 1200 baud dial-up BBS days. Or are you saying you prefer Bing? Are you honestly going to tell me that we are worse off now that we have a universe of information at our fingertips than we were back in the IRC days? Really?

Steal my privacy? Hardly. When I walk into the Home Depot and ask the cashier where I can find a garden hose, he tells me, and also suggests some other products I might be interested in since I'm there looking for a garden hose. I'm really happy he does. Well, damn, I guess he just "stole my privacy". I suppose it would be better for me to have to wander every aisle and manually check every product until I can find it huh?

I can talk to my phone and say "What's the population of Isreal?" and my freaking phone will answer me. With citations. And for this mind blowing ability, the cost I must pay is to see advertisements that I'm interested in? We're living in a unimaginable universe that even the authors of Star Trek couldn't envision - and for that phenomenal access to the collective intelligence of mankind, I get unobtrusive suggestions for products that might help me out. And your answer to this is "Google must be stopped?" What the hell?

How about, "Thanks Google. Thanks for being a large part of making the world into a Sci-Fi fantasy. And by the way, thanks for doing it in a really ethical way. We see you, and we appreciate you."

As Bastiat pointed out so eloquently in That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen your $800 per month is what is seen.

What is not seen, is the $800 per month that this no longer costs your neighbors.

All government spending is not evil, and all public works aren't bad. But it is a mistake, a fallacy, to think that taking $800 per month from your neighbors so you can spend it is somehow good for the economy, or your neighbors.

When we must engage in public works, we should do so - hold our nose and accept the necessary evil. This, however, should never be mistaken for economic activity. That is an illusion.

It is worth taking a hard, critical look at yourself and what it is you do. Is your job really justified? Maybe so, perhaps you are a civil engineer or water treatment specialist, I have no way of knowing. Only your conscience can guide you when you wake up in the morning and greet your struggling neighbors, look them in the eye, and know that they are paying for you to do what you do.

Have you actually used KDE recently? The reason I ask is because I hadn't. I had it in my mind, like you, that it was basically a windows clone desktop (because that's how it used to be). Recently, Unity on Ubuntu annoyed me enough that I installed Kubuntu. I have to tell you, I was blown away. Modern KDE is nothing like windows. It's stunning, really - quite amazing, and has some great paradigms that I haven't seen in any other OS, like actually making the desktop area useful.

Navigating to apps etc.. is pretty awesome. Every time I boot it up I'm just struck by how beautiful it is, I really don't understand how Apple gets all this "beauty" cred. To me, it looks like a turd compared to KDE. It's in the eye of the beholder, I guess - but if you haven't tried it recently, I highly recommend giving it a shot.

Thanks, and actually I added the quotes for exactly that reason. The left, like the right, has many different viewpoints (many of which I passionately agree with), so in an attempt to emphasis the generic nature of my argument I added the quotes. The "left" is a bad label, as is the "right" but for lack of better terms or many pages of explanation of the complex and rich philosophy and history of both "sides", I used the generically accepted labels, but tried to qualify them with quotes to emphasize the fact that they were just labels. Sorry if I didn't communicate that well.

A lot of people are confused about how this sort of law could be passed in Texas, which according to left-wing groupthink is a regressive bible-thumping gun-toting desert filled with rednecks who hate Darwin and force kids to pray in school.

This, of course, is nonsense. Much of the anti-Texas sentiment results from fundamental ideological differences that go to the core of the "left" versus "right" arguments.

Texans, for very valid historical reasons, have a deep seated mistrust of centralized government and authority. This can be seen in pretty much every part of our culture, especially our constitution and court systems. This way of thinking, of course, is a direct attack on everything that those on the "left" believe in. Even worse, the evidence clearly shows that our way of governing and beliefs work very well - from tort reform, to right to work, to zero income tax (just to name a few) we have a state that cherishes individual liberty, resists government interference, and we have one of the best economies in the world to show for it.

The success of Texas is a sore tooth to those on the "left". As a result, they are forced to rely on ad-hominem attacks and mischaracterization in a defensive attempt to protect and justify their beliefs, even though even casual comparisons of the success of cities and states that implement those beliefs shows that they are clearly misguided.

The fact is, disturbing as it may seem to those on the "left", Texas is beautiful, tolerant, friendly and a wonderful place to live. I moved my family here from the east coast seven years ago, and it was one of the best decisions we've ever made.

This law is just another example (among many) of Texas following in its long tradition of codifying individual rights and protecting liberties. Yes, Texas has some black marks in it's history - but show me a state (or country) that doesn't!

There is a reason why people from all over the country are flooding here, and why we gained four seats in the house in 2010. As much vitriol, misrepresentation and flat out lying that those on the "left" do about Texas, the truth is becoming more and more evident to those around the country, that just as once the United States was the place that people fled to in order to escape oppressive government, now Texas has become a safe haven within the U.S. for the same reasons.

Please go read Bastiat: http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html it will do you a lot of good intellectually.

While there are many things about python that I love (array slicing, list comprehensions, etc...) the lack of anonymous in-lines really kills it for me. I enjoy working with python, and for certain apps python/django is a clear win - but these days I find myself mostly slinging nodejs code.