When the petition "formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race - Disclosure." reaches as many signatures (11,845) as actual pressing social issues.

Of course:

Q: how do you make a light shine in a blonde's eyes?
A: you point a flash light at her ear.

You're talking about US law.

This a EU investigation, and its legal grounding is different. Among others: tying your hardware to your software *is* illegal in EU, as it constitutes a bundled sale. Also, monopolies and oligopoles are under tight surveillance, and the EU can fine them if their margins reach beyond a certain threshold. There are full teams of statisticians who study sales numbers of telcos in EU, and determine what is a "fair" margin they are entitled to make.

This is what we call a "market-driven social economy", where we have managed to insert some of the good ideas of socialism while still relying on the market to allow some form of competition between tightly controlled corporations.

The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years, radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then, as the technology became more sophisticated, the controls were made touch sensitive ... now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant you had to stay infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme.

D. Adams, The hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy. Ch. 12.

BTW, a envisionment of natal in 1993, with datagloves: Charade, remote control of objects using free hand gestures published in Communications of the ACM. (Here for ps version)

The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years, radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then, as the technology became more sophisticated, the controls were made touch sensitive ... now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant you had to stay infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme.

D. Adams, The hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy. Ch. 12.

Is this what project natal will give us?
BTW, a envisionment of natal in 1993, with datagloves: Charade, remote control of objects using free hand gestures published in Communications of the ACM.

The most beautiful iconic language ever designed. Unfortunately, it didn't catch up. A quick intro. The official page (it's an authentic webpage from 1994, be indulgent with the formating!).

How is this "Insightful"? The USA are really doomed if its educated population actually believes this shit.

And how exactly, do you want to increase "parental responsibility"?

You want to set up a mandatory adult "schooling" education program? With what funds and who do you put in charge of creating this program, which would, admitedly, be a world premiere?

Or perhaps, you have the idea of sanctioning the parents when their children don't do their homework or don't attend school? This has been tried: it merely results in even more children dropping out of schools and even poorer education. Notwithstanding the creation of ghettoized populations cut back from any chances of ever raising out of poverty and poor education.

Even though it's costly, pouring more money at schools, providing teachers with the means to do their job well is the only method that has a track record of actually raising the education levels.

Yes, maybe the CPS' bureaucracy is choking the attempts of the few remaining dedicated teachers to do their job properly. In any case, I doubt it is much worse than the US Army bureaucracy, which is completely sold to the military industry.

Throwing more money in the school system provides the ability to hire more talents (at the management and operational levels), motivate the education personnel and, ultimately, raise the education levels globally. As for the details, let the teachers and their administration, who are in daily contact with the population they have to deal with, decide how it's better done.

> WHAT FUCKING MEDICAL SCHOOL IS TEACHING HOMEOPATHY?! I

In France, Spain, Italy, Brasil and perhaps a few other countries, you can not call yourself homeopath if you're not a certified general practionner with an additional specialization, complete with a university diploma.

As for encouraging doctors/nurses to take more interest in their patients: If they're any good, conventional doctors/nurses certainly have a lot of interest in the well being of their patient. That still does not equip them with the proper interviewing techniques to keep the needed level of attention.

There are more urgent issues in healthcare than eliminating homeopathy and greater scandals in medecine than correcting a fringe of innocuous homeopathy believers.

The collusion between big laboratories, World Health Organisation and western governments on the orchestration of the AH1N1 flu vaccination campaign, and various other "big medecine" abuses are far more detrimental (and costly) to public healthcare.

Your hypotheses 1) is exactly the way it works if you keep the present system in place, where homeopathy is a specialization incorporated in the classical medecine curriculum. Homeopaths are classical, certified doctors. They know their limits and will always redirect to a specialist patients who need specific care. It turns out their screening is more efficient, and therefore their contribution to public healthcare is better than the regular practionners. At least that's part of the explanation given by the studies.

I know these views quite controversed. There are strong political fights in France between the Academy of Medecine, made of famous professors who have found cures for cancers or alike, who despise the non-scientific nature of homeopathy, and the public health authorities, who casually observe "hey, there's this whole population segment, the homeopathy believers, who have very low healthcare costs while being in better shape overall. We may not know why, but we surely want to keep it that way."

Ultimately, the Academy of Medicine will most likely prevail. I'm not sure this is for the better.