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Comment: Re:Old thinking. (Score 1) 152

by grcumb (#46502083) Attached to: Eric Schmidt On Why College Is Still Worth It

'The economic return to higher education over a lifetime produces significant compound greater earnings.'

That has been true in the past.

Not exactly. You know what was true in the past? That a good education made you a better person.

Now, I won't deny for a second that there were numerous social and economic factors in getting the 'right' education from the 'right' schools. It's true that being a 'gentleman' was inextricably tied up with class, economic status and the clannishness of the privileged. But it was still about being the right sort of person rather than a more-or-less necessary precursor to employment. The cost in those days was primarily to keep the riff-raff out, rather than any reflection of economic realities (conditions in some British colleges, for example, were abominable).

In spite of all the hypocrisy and all the cant, a liberal education was designed to improve the person. It had little or nothing to do with employment, except inasmuch as employers at the time wanted 'improved' people for a number of lines of work.

Full Disclosure: It's easy for me to talk. I was one of the last people through a system that actually did focus on a decent general education, at a level of government funding that allowed me to finish 4 years of a double major with only $10,000 in debt, payable at a pittance a month over a ten-year term. I'm an arts major who's also a CTO, by the way.

Comment: Re:I RTFA. Gibberish. (Score 4, Informative) 247

by hey! (#46499351) Attached to: Transhumanist Children's Book Argues, "Death Is Wrong"

Science fiction author "Gennady Stolyarov" isn't listed in Internet Speculative Fiction Database either, and the book's publisher, "Rational Argumentator Press" has a grand total of *one* publication, and its web presence is a section of Mr. Stolyarov's personal site. So what we're dealing with here is the self-published work by an unpublished crank sci-fi author -- not that there's any dishonor in being an unpublished crank sci-fi author. There's lots of us around.

I peeked inside the book, and what strikes me is that if you squint, this *looks* like a religious tract pitched toward children, right down to the colorful but stiff illustrations. Take a look at the cover, with it's child dressed in a blue oxford shirt, red tie and khaki chinos banishing death. This is peculiar, in a way that I applaud; an image pitched at children by someone so far out of the mainstream that she has no idea what a culturally "normal" child looks like. That's a good thing for the world, although it may not do much for the author's message. It's more important for people with an oddball streak to write books than people who think like everyone else.

This book appears to come out of the same impetus that underlies a lot of religious impulse: rage at the fact we're are going to die. It's a fact we *should* be uncomfortable with. Religion does the most damage when it makes us too comfortable with the prospect of death. The afterlife becomes a make-up session where we can do the things we put off line life like reconciling with estranged loved ones.

Anyone who regards speculation about technological singularity enabling indefinite human life extension as a "promise" is taking far too much comfort in what is, at best, an intriguing idea. But the universe itself has a finite lifespan; any being who could last to the heat death of the universe, or even a single 2 million century "galactic year" would be so far from human that calling it "transhuman" would be like calling ourselves "transprotozoans".

Whether we just disappear after a mere century or so, or survive as something unrecognizable as human, our opportunity to experience the universe as ourselves, as humans, is brief. We should make the most of it, no matter what we plan to leave behind when our human existence is done.

Comment: Re:professional lobbying (Score 1) 55

Well, "set a thief to catch a thief."

One of the reasons for the dysfunction we have in Washington is that all the rules that are supposed to protect the public interest have become so complicated that they actually promote crony capitalism. You need someone who knows how to hack the system to catch people hacking the system.

Comment: Re:Bada boom bada bing (Score 3, Interesting) 220

by hey! (#46489947) Attached to: Elon Musk Addresses New Jersey's Tesla Store Ban

Damn straight. They're out to fuck you blind.

Dealers try to mystify and generally complicate the process of buying a car by offering to arrange financing, making you a trade-in "deal" and obfuscating the true cost of the car. Fortunately you can get a detailed break down of the dealer's costs (including factory to dealer incentives) from Consumer Reports. Then you arrange financing elsewhere (or pay cash), sell your existing car yourself, decide on how much markup you'll pay, and resolve not to buy any additional services or warranties through the dealer. If you do those things you won't be walking into the dealership like a lamb to slaughter. They might as well try to fuck the Rock of Gibraltar. Some of them will try, but you just walk out the door and find a dealership that will sell you a car on your terms.

The last car I bought I walked into the dealer; the salesman saw I had the printouts and said, "I'm not stupid. How much are you going to pay?" I named a price 5% over the dealer's true cost. I could have opened with 3%, but I appreciated not having to go through the whole ridiculous ritual. It was a reasonable offer and the salesman immediately accepted. Half an hour later we finished up the paperwork; I dropped off a cashier's check the following day and drove my car off the day after that. It was all low-key and civilized, and by executing the deal quickly the dealership earned a fair paycheck for a couple hours of work.

This is the way buying a car should be: you tell the dealer which model you want, hand over a check and drive off. Letting the dealer do anything else "for you" is asking to be screwed over. Despite what the salesman claims, there is nothing the dealer can do to make your life simpler, except maybe fetching your plates from the motor vehicle registry. Do everything else yourself, including determining the price you'll pay for the car.

Comment: So it seemed simple at first... (Score 0) 347

by SuperBanana (#46486599) Attached to: EU Votes For Universal Phone Charger

Seemed simple at first. Everyone can just go with micro USB, right?

Then I realized that batteries are getting bigger (and able to handle faster charge rates), and it's way, way past due for cell phones to start supporting USB3.

So can they make two standards, USB2 micro and USB3 micro?

Also, here's the original EU press release: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

I don't see any mention of a specific standard...?

Comment: combustion engines: demonstrated unreliability (Score 3) 327

by SuperBanana (#46478691) Attached to: What If the Next Presidential Limo Was a Tesla?

Tesla can certainly bring it, but the internal combustion engine has over a century of demonstrated reliability.

Keeping in mind that electric cars have been around longer than gasoline cars, and than electric motors are used in the powertrain of every modern locomotive in the united states (and are the prime movers for almost any industrial plant)...not really, actually.

Car engines need a lot of maintenance due to all their sensors, electromechanical and mechanical valves, mazes of hoses and wiring (all of which has to deal with high temperatures), dependence on multiple fluid types (the fuel, the coolant, the lubricant) and need for so much cooling (gasoline engines waste 3/4 of their fuel on heat.) One of the reasons Tesla is getting away with not having dealers is that the cars are so much simpler drivetrain-wise. I imagine the only fluids that need changing are the brake fluid and probably the gearbox oil.

An electric car for the presidential limo would be brilliant, particularly since it typically doesn't need to travel very far most of the time, and an electric vehicle provides massive torque for handling the heft of all that chassis and armor. Adapting an electric drivetrain, in part because of how simple it is and how flexible one can be with component locations, would actually make it far easier on the coach builder. Tesla already has a dual-motor AWD drivetrain, so they've definitely got the oomph (although I suspect the dual-motor drivetrain motors are individually smaller.)

Comment: Re:Poor Record on Health (Score 1) 561

by hey! (#46475387) Attached to: White House: Get ACA Insurance Coverage, Launch Start-Ups

Sick citizens cost a state, not in on-the-book expenditures, but in lost productivity and higher hospitalization costs -- especially because of the large number of very sick people covered by hospitals' indigent care pools. This directly translates into higher dollar costs in health care and insurance.

The same insurance that would cost my family $8811/year in Massachusetts would cost an unbelievable $12576 in Mississippi, even though everything else is much more expensive here. Mississippi has the lowest cost of living in the country; Massachusetts is among the highest. Yet they pay 40% more for the same health insurance, when all things being equal you'd expect them to pay 30% less. Why? Is medical care cheaper here? Absolutely not. We're chock full of very expensive, high tech teaching hospitals where the cost of an aspirin would give you a stroke. We have the most expensive cost for medical procedures in the country of any state but Alaska.

So why is health insurance such a relative bargain here? Because we have by far the lowest rate of uninsured people in the country (4.0%) thanks to Mitt Romney's implementation of what later came to be called "Obamacare". Yes, our medical care is more expensive here but because we get preventive care and screening we use less of it.

Mississippi's uninsured rate is 15%, and consequently it's full of poor, unnecessarily sick people. the number of unnecessarily sick people. Here in Massachusetts when you hit 65 you can expect to enjoy 15 years of *healthy* life before your health fails. In Mississippi it's 10.8 years. Mississippi has a shocking infant mortality rate -- a total of 1% of live births. And all those unnecessarily sick babies who didn't get prenatal care cost people living in Mississippi a fortune.

So while Mississippi saves immediate cash outlay by not expanding Medicaid, that's penny wise and pound foolish. People carrying insurance end up spending so much more they could expand Medicaid for a fraction of the costs, and if you're a Mississippian you can expect to get more sick and die younger than any other state in the country. Some deal.

Mississippi has one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the country -- a shocking 1% (10 per 1000 live births) of newborns in Mississippi don't make it. Sick, uninsured babies are very expensive.

Comment: Re:I went back to corporate America because Obamac (Score 1) 561

by hey! (#46474715) Attached to: White House: Get ACA Insurance Coverage, Launch Start-Ups

>> few hundred bucks a month for health care

You don't have a family with kids..who occasionally get sick and broken bones, do you?

I have a family with kids. Under ACA my cost for a silver level plan, after my tax credit, works out to $712/month. That's a lot: almost as much as we pay for food. But considering how much we use the doctor and even the hospital, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

A fail-safe circuit will destroy others. -- Klipstein