I have a relative that was tested by the Red Cross to have antibodies a couple months after having COVID. I assume that would also qualify her to be without a mask given that her body has the necessary defense mechanisms?

I asked my local grocery store why there were products missing recently. You know what their response was? "Amazon leased the warehouse of their distributor and is reducing how much can be delivered to the local stores."

That is a major hazard in this society. We have literally a couple giant companies controlling mostly all the commerce. If they don't control it directly, they usually control the back end infrastructure. I can say people have the freedoms to buy/sell elsewhere, but in reality, most people are pretty boxed in to a few specific gatekeepers at this point. This is even more true in an age where we depend on online shopping because of various restrictions that now exist.

I get what they are saying. But the slashdot author of the article is clearly a journalist and not a scientist. We don't proclaim "the science is settled and no further discovery is allowed here". We never do that. Well, actually a lot of people do, especially those who like to say "science says this" but don't actually understand the scientific method.

A lot of very "scientific" people sure knew a lot of science to prove the earth was the center of the universe. And it hampered further progress to say the science was settled because those who discovered new facts about the universe were silenced by those [political] scientists who didn't want to re-evaluate after a conclusion could be reached.

True science is always seeking to better understand our world. We get a pretty good idea of how things work, but we should be ready to be open to re-evaluate as new information of discoveries come out. I am not denying that they found asteroid dust, etc there. I simply take exception to the "now everything is settled and there can be no more debate" kind of journalistic approach. We need to always be ready to evaluate our findings as future data comes to light.

There are unlimited disaster scenarios at our disposal. We cannot foresee all scenarios (especially uncommon), it would bankrupt resources and cause harm in other areas. Ultimately, most resource issues are not just a matter of political desire, but of a real scarcity of resources.

What government can do is to prepare to remove roadblocks of legislative and logistical nature so that when a disaster occurs, they can get the disaster response professionals the needed items as quickly as possible. Part of that process is to ensure a local resource and manufacturing capacity. Retooling takes time, but not nearly as much time as building from scratch.

I personally agree with this policy whether it was Trump or whether it was Biden who initiated it. This issue should transcend political party anyway. Who cares who takes credit for it. Nations maintain peace best when they are each ready to react to natural and artificially created events within their realm without the need to rob others during a crisis. Having resources and manufacturing capabilities in place and active will help in this regard.

I am part Native American. If the same logic was going against some protected class like ours, everyone would be on our side. Even if some of our fellow people committed stupid violence.

The best way to preserve freedom is to make sure you can have a vigorous debate in the public square. Even if I do not support Trump, I would need to acknowledge that the best chance for peace in society is to not censor ideas. It is better for everybody to keep a healthy discussion, not just push ideas underground.

When people stop feeling like their ideas matter, they lash out and hurt people. We need to make sure we can always talk to each other.

That's what I thought too! ;-)

I am not sure if that logic stands that well on its own. What if a criminal rented your hotel, does that make you guilty. Or how about if a malicious user had phone conversations over a cellular network? Would Verizon be guilty?

In order for you to be part of the crime, you have to be actively engaged in the criminal intent. This would apply to fringe sites as well as mainstream. There is a reason why craigslist is not personally responsible for a psycho murder from a sale gone bad. They did not intend to have murderers selling stuff.

I am not familiar with Parler, but I am pretty sure they would have terms of service that ban illegal activity. I would assume the website/app lives up to similar standards as Craigslist (which would not be hard to do) and that they were not themselves encouraging the crimes. It is rather hyperbolic to accuse them of "being involved in something", if they are really just a social network that allows users to post stuff.

Actually, no it was not more cost-effective and reliable. Certain areas of the company switched over, but some transitions were near impossible. I could tell you about serious company losses incurred by mainframe issues, but I would be betraying confidence of a former employer. I know for a fact that the mainframe process flows consumed far more support hours than systems that were converted over to more modern languages. It may be hard for someone on the outside to understand (and would require significant detail and data to show) but what it came down to, in our experience, was that mainframe was not more reliable than more distributed systems and far more costly when all costs are considered. However, certain aspects of the mainframe were cheaper to maintain than to switch over due to the extremely high cost of switching.

As a business, our company-wide goal was to ultimately switch everything off of mainframe due to risks and costs. But those transition costs can also be pretty steep. There are so many things to consider when you are on a proprietary system. But one of the biggest perceived risks for our institution was the fact that it is harder and harder to find recruits who even want to maintain these systems. Nobody comes out of college with COBAL or PL/I or DB2 and IMS experience anymore. And fewer and fewer want to tackle that. Even transitions cost more at this point because there are few contractors who even want to tackle it.

I get the argument in certain circumstances that maintaining your mainframe is cheaper than transitioning. But I would never recommend companies adopt a mainframe computing strategy at this point in technological history.

A fool and his/her money will soon be parted.

This is true ^^^^^

I worked for a company that had both. It was a financial institution. The mainframe was seen as a major cost, a major liability, and a constant source of pain in getting new recruits. The only reason it stuck was that it was risky and cost prohibitive to move everything to x86 platforms and modern languages. No company who expects to compete in the next 30 years should be entrenching themselves in an IBM captivated mainframe environment.

I remember the day our mainframe went down at a large company I was at. Absolutely worst disaster ever. And IBM had to manually send someone to "unlock" features of the mainframe to even attempt to recover. Oh, and JCL is not something that is friendly to use in a modern computing environment.

The most successful areas of our company had run away from mainframe as fast as they could. The most problematic areas clung to the mainframe like it was the last lifeboat off the Titanic. IBM is good at creating a cult that is hard to get out of, and that is about the only reason companies stay with large monolithic platforms like that.

This really is a symptom of bad algorithms. Amazon needs to adjust to weigh in more than proximity. There needs to be time to delivery, average workload, etc. To put so much weight on the absolute nearest phone shows that some adjustments need to be made to the algorithm that picks possible delivery drivers.

I recovered from it. I will admit, for a little bit I was somewhat concerned about my breathing. And I was exhausted. But a couple months after COVID, I am feeling great. In some ways I am thankful to be done with it. I have no long term observable problems as a result of my sickness.

If my child or friend was sick with it, would I be concerned? Probably not unless there was an underlying condition. In my case, and in my family members (who were exposed and likely had it but were not tested) the worst part was extreme tiredness and a bad cough. It was not something I would ask for, but also not the worst thing I have ever experienced.

After having the disease, I have a greater peace of mind because I know I have likely built an immunity to current strains. That is certainly a nice consolation prize for winning the COVID lottery :-)

This is all anecdotal from my experience and perspective. Based on my experience, I think it would be good for this disease to pass through the population quicker so that we can move on. We have very good methods of protecting the vulnerable if we actually followed best practices on separation in nursing homes/hospitals/home care. We have good friends who are vulnerable to a lot more than COVID due to underlying medical issues and they have been successful in avoiding a lot more than COVID for years. For those who are not vulnerable, I would say this is on the scale of chicken pox (obviously different, just in the same overall not-pleasant factor), totally not fun, but you are glad you are done with it when it is over.

Now that they will have more space, can they put in some public toilets, and camping spaces in unused road lanes? :-)

So I realize that many legislators are out of touch with.... reality... but once you publish something on the internet, it will pretty much always exist. By proposing legislation to ban these plans, they are actually exercising the Streisand Effect. The more they talk about it, the more you have people "needing" to get the plans because they heard it talked about.

So there is no solution to information already existing on the internet. Basically, you just let it go. If you have a problem with people using their new knowledge, you need to find ways for them to help redirect their behavior in a healthy way.