So once again, Terminator shows us the way. Defeat the malware by stationing dogs near all computers to listen for the telltale hyper frequency comms emitted by the machines.

I did not mean to suggest that GE's business should be subsidized, just clarifying how this works. I think that I suggested that the loans would still happen without government assistance.

The general pattern is that governments want to give the appearance of aiding developing countries. If you just give another country money, they might buy from another country than yours. So, governments (including all developed countries) generally tie aid to purchases from the aiding country. An easy way to do this is to subsidize the loan. It winds up providing a competitive advantage for corporations that can talk their governments into doing it.

Whether it is good or bad depends on your beliefs about aid, corporate welfare, and the rules of international business competition. If everyone is doing it but you, you're going to lose business. I generally see all countries promising to not subsidize loans for purchases from their corporations as an improvement in the competitive environment. I also tend to see government aid as minimally or counter productive, so we're on the same side there.

You loan people X, they pay you back X plus interest. If the "plus interest" part is more than you could make putting your money to other uses (and the risk/reward calculus is acceptable), you make the loan. That it is international is a minor consideration - it gets factored in as an increase in the risk that you won't get paid back.

The government subsidizes loans to third world countries as a form of aid. Removal of the subsidy will not stop the loans. GE, for example, started as a manufacturer, but became a bank because they started loaning money to their customers to buy their products. The commercial loan business outgrew the manufacturing arm.

So, stopping the loans may hurt the US more than it helps, in strictly financial terms. We aren't building power plants at the rate the developing world is. If you want that business, you need to be prepared make deals that include financing.

I am a transplant patient. I have had a liver-kidney transplant as the culmination of a genetic condition. I have, obviously, had the condition my whole life. When I got out of college into a job with medical insurance, there were no "pre-existing condition" questions at all. As a salaried employee, I was immediately eligible for benefits on day 1. I was told this by an HR rep, and so it proved to be.

When I got the transplant (years later), I did get a letter from the insurance company - but they were checking to see if there was someone they could sue for the expense (there wasn't). A little seedy, but not refusing to pay.

The stories I've heard of insurance companies refusing to pay after years generally have 2 criteria: Not part of a group plan and failing to disclose a condition upon initial application. The deal is, if they give you a questionaire, the rates are dependent on your answers. So, if you say your perfectly healthy, you get a lower rate. If they then find out that you weren't perfectly healthy, and you knew that, then you're going to be in trouble. Group plans typically don't have the questionaire - I've only ever been asked if I smoke, for example. If I did smoke, and lied about it to get a lower rate, I should expect that to catch up to me when I get lung cancer.

As a motorcyclist -
Rain and cold are doable (for ever so slightly more money, for cold weather gear).
Snow is not, just not enough people with the equipment and skill to do it safely.
Large deliveries are doable, with mild modifications to the bike. My bike has a luggage mount that could be fitted with a cage that could hold 8-12 pies or so. You could fit 15lbs or so of stuff on the tail, and use a tank bag for transaction material. Most bikes could reasonably handle 150lbs of cargo, which is way more than you need for pizza delivery. If Domino's provided the bikes, it wouldn't be a big deal to fit them with a rack specially designed for pizza.

It would take a change in mind set on the part of Domino's. Realistically they'd have to provide the motorcycles. That is never going to happen for an entirely separate reason - you couldn't insure the operation. The extra insurance money would eat the fuel savings many times over. Also finding riders would be harder than finding drivers - although with reasonable benefits I'd seriously consider changing careers. Riding around all day beats sitting in a cube, hands down.

In CA, you'd probably get faster delivery too, due to lane sharing.

Range is less of an issue for childless couples and single people. When you have a family and aren't wealthy, long car trips become the only affordable way to travel. But then, Elon isn't selling to that demographic.

Communes can work on a larger scale than 3, but there are serious issues when you get above about 150 or so. That corresponds with research about the number of people that one person can know. When you get a situation where everyone doesn't know everyone, you start to get a breakdown in the trust that is essential for a commune to function. Even with a strong government, it isn't socially/economically stable anymore. And it's always hard to get the next generation to agree to the social contract, if they have other options.

One example:
http://www.hutterites.org/
They limit at about 15 families (they run to very large families) per commune.

I was in the ER in August. I pretty much went straight in - they had an IV in me within 10 minutes of hitting the door. Carson City, NV, USA.

In San Francisco, on the other hand, I was in closet on a gurney for 8 hours before they could find a bed. Go figure. I would guess local circumstances have more bearing than the country.

Similar problems, btw - dehydration, as a complication of other issues.

Means testing requires assessing income. People are motivated to hide income, which necessitates a large and expensive apparatus to determine (fairly!) what people's income/means actually is. Cheating becomes rampant, you wind up with Greece.

But maybe rich people in the UK are just way more honest than everywhere else.

If you compare everything vs placebo, you are comparing them to each other. If xxxxx reduces blood pressure 23% vs placebo, and yyyyy reduces blood pressure 29% vs placebo, then you know yyyyy is somewhat better at reducing blood pressure than xxxxx.

If only you could make yyyyy stop causing hair growth on the palms.

Never read the Express, don't know their reputation. But even before scrapping current ships, you have issues.

You're about 75% of India and dropping. I know India is super-militant with lots of overseas commitments </sarcasm>, but how small were you planning on letting your navy get?

The problem with manned space flight, that is, getting somewhere else isn't putting people in a tube and blasting off. Its propulsion. If we are wasting money moving people around pointlessly, you aren't using that money to develop propulsion systems.

Think of it as a long term project that has bottlenecks. The big bottleneck isn't people, its getting something, anything to a meaningful destination. If you can't move 1kg of computer to Alpha Centari, you can't move 80kg of human + the several tons of support systems s/he will need to stay alive.

So, do the logical, and develop a system that can move 1kg before you stack 2 tons on your spaceship.

And, of course, try to be respectful of people that you disagree with.

Ah, thanks. I'm taken aback. In Carson City, my options are Walmart, Savemart, Raley's, Smiths, Scolaris, Trader Joes. I think the drive for those is, on average, more though. I really would have expected a much greater variety.

What do you consider a long drive? In NV, I have 3 grocery stores that are about 2miles out of the way on the way home from work, or 3 or 4 others within 5 miles from home. (12miles from home to work, curious store distribution). I would have expected a city to offer mad choice.

Self-righteous people won't buy shirts that accurately describe them.