This is not true at all. Euthanasia, by definition, has nothing to do with state sponsorship.

Let's take the human factor out of it. When a vet has to euthanize a dog...is the state paying for it? No. How about a horse? No? Dr. Kevorkian's patients...did the state pay for any of those? No? Hm. But they were all cases of euthanasia. Even if a country were to subsidize it (directly or indirectly) that does not change the meaning of the term, any more than a European country having state-sponsored colleges, free of cost, means that "college" includes "state-sponsored" in its definition.

The word is important because it confers a crucial distinction. Suicide (rightly) carries a stigma of a person in pain that can be escaped via other means. Euthanasia, by it's very definition, relates to death being imminent anyways, and the aversion of pain that is otherwise unavoidable and inescapable. There's a massive difference between a person who is misguided as they end their life when there is another way, and a person who has no other alternative and would prefer to die with dignity than suffer for several months without it and die soon anyways.

Yes, but creativity plays no part in creating any of those permutations. Saying there are infinite numbers of permutations as a defense of a particular variant is like taking a recording of an existing song, changing the pitch of a single note, and then claiming that it's a new song. The courts have already ruled on that concept.

Interesting...and thank you for answering. I needed that context. I've seen everything from physical therapy accomplishing the same thing as a recommended surgical procedure was supposed to do (good outcome) to an idiot eschewing normal treatments for cancer in favor of herbal remedies...which absolutely did not work at all (very bad outcome). And then of course there's the GNCs of the world, hawking trend after trend for profit, and paying fines to the FTC every few years as a cost of doing business. Every time I hear "alternative" in a medical context, I wonder if it's "do this as an alternative to that," or if it means "oh, you don't need to take insulin for your diabetes! Here...have some dried duck vaginas...it's an ancient alternative remedy that cures diabetes..."

I'm really glad that it worked out for you like it did; obviously, you fall into the first of the two categories described above. Is it weird that I almost feel uncomfortable that this is an Internet conversation about an emotionally-charged topic, and yet everything about our interaction has been totally civilized and truth-based? :)

Question...and this is a real question, not a retort, because I am curious. Did the alternative therapy work? I don't know what the problem was with your hand, or what the alternative to surgery was, and I could see this going either way.

I see and hear all the time about alternatives to X or Y medical procedure, but usually I haven't seen them turn out so well. But on the other hand, I totally agree that a lot of doctors follow a narrow path and get a bit heavy handed with surgery and drugs. I think I've been lucky; my doctor is fairly conservative and keeps things simple and it's been working very well for me.

At the end of the day, doctors are service providers...they are vendors. Just as with buying a car, a house, or even a pizza, you have to consider your vendor and choose wisely. The fact that they have all taken the Hippocratic Oath does not guarantee quality, intelligence or skill. The good ones are doing the best they can now, and always trying to improve the definition of "best." The bad ones can be lazy, narrow-minded, or just plain greedy.

While the poster (the one who talks about "blowing out the TCP connection stack," whatever the fuck that means) has the social skills of a rabid ferret, a honeypot can do pretty much what you want it to do; in that respect, he/she does have a good point. And a vulnerability exists which would operate in this fashion as well There was a nasty vulnerability (Broadpwn) in Broadcomm mobile SoCs that can be exploited in exactly this way (via a hostile WiFi AP) without even successfully connecting to a network. It was patched earlier this year...but if you're on an Android phone that isn't particularly new, you are likely vulnerable due to the OS fragmentation/support issue on that platform. And that, of course, ignores other forms of information harvesting (like recording SSID advertisements), or the possibility that they're maybe trying to MiTM everything but haven't gotten their kit working right yet.

Normally I would chalk fears like this up to paranoia...but this is the lounge for international travelers in North Korea's only international airport. I mean, honestly...if I could think of a single place that's most likely a site where travelers would be attacked, this is it. It's practically a line out of a comedy, it's so over-the-top as a description of a risky situation. Can we really say that North Korea...NORTH KOREA...has set up a WiFi network specifically for visiting foreigners just out of the goodness of their heart?

So, a few things.

One, when you are standing "next to" a nuclear reactor, you still have all of the shielding between you and the reactor. It's not that much radiation.

Two, the article points out how NASA monitors radiation exposure of it's astronauts, but airlines don't do any such thing for flight crews. Again, this is a false comparison. Astronauts pass outside of our atmosphere entirely, while airplanes do nothing of the sort. You may as well complain that they don't provide space suits when you fly on Jet Blue.

Three, they actually do show a little real science...and illustrate that the annual exposure of a full-time flight crew while in the air is about 3 mSv. And they state that 10 days in space gets you 4.3 mSv of exposure. So even by their own numbers, the simple fact is that this isn't a real problem. Effectively, a flight crew gets 4 times the exposure to "cosmic radiation" (as they call it in the article) as a person who is standing on the ground at sea level.

Next up: Businessinsider.com exposes the "massive" amounts of radiation that high-altitude mountain climbers receive. Not only are they really high up (like real astronauts!), they don't even have a plane around them!

Actually, no.

The problem with this is that the worst of the crapware (like Adups' garbage) is tied into the OS itself. So while, theoretically you could remove it...you're talking about altering the OS itself at a very low level. And that brings a host of other problems based around maintenance. New Android version from the manufacturer to address vulnerabilities? Get ready to hack the OS all over again and perform surgery to remove the bad parts...assuming that they are where they were last time. Have a problem with something not working right? Could be from the changes you made...but it's hard to tell and good luck getting any technical support at all. And all of this first requires that a person be a guru on the inner workings of Android, which is a pretty tall order; I would think that someone asking about phone variants out there isn't one of these people, because everyone who is a bona fide Android developer (developer of Android itself...not apps for the Android OS) is pretty plugged-in to the cellphone industry.

There is a difference between "technically possible" and "actually feasible."

I think you don't understand the difference between the pricing models, or the actual history you're referring to.

In the 1960s, you were charged rent for the terminal, yes. That was above and beyond the contract just to have access to the mainframe in the first place. You couldn't just go and buy a few seconds...or even a few hours...of compute time. You had to buy access on an annual basis.

Even so, the company type (service bureaus) that you're talking about were more like car rental companies. They had access to mainframes and provided defined services, not raw computing power. But even with that level of abstraction, you still couldn't buy on the micro-service level that you can get from AWS. You couldn't buy a minute of computing time, or a small bit of services on demand.

AWS and Azure represent the first time that such access has been available to anyone. Much less anyone who only need have an email address, credit card and the ability to read/watch tutorials on how to get started. There are no contract negotiations, no monthly quota, no credit checks, no need for a Dun and Bradstreet number. This has never happened before...yes, some aspects of pricing were based on timesharing of mainframes. But that was one aspect of pricing. It's like saying "you can rent a car by the mile!" when you can't. The fact that they may charge you an extra dime per mile or whatnot does not alter the fact that it happens in the larger context of a contract that charges you a base rate by the day.

There's a bigger challenge here to keep in mind.

In most other countries, it's hard to get a mortgage without paying credit-card interest rates. Why is this? Because the concept of a "credit rating" doesn't exist in any meaningful way. As a result, it's nearly impossible for banks to assess risk in a highly-standardized fashion. This, in turn, means that entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (who underwrite the vast majority of non-mansion-sized mortgages) cannot exist either, because standarization of risk rating underpins their entire function.

There's an underlying cry of "WHY DO THESE AGENCIES HAVE ACCESS TO ALL OUR INFORMATION???" and it's a good question to ask. Indeed, these agencies hold the keys to identifying (or impersonating) us all, and it's wise to examine whether that's a good thing or not. But they don't have that access for no particular reason besides corporate greed...they are part of a much-larger ecosystem that drives our housing market, among many other things. We shouldn't be examining this like it's just a solitary business function with no ties to anything else.

The larger problem, I think, is the way that we manage identities in the US. The anchor for all of it is the SSN; it was never meant to be used the way it's used today. It's like a login with no password, based on a relatively-predictable sequence, being used for everything. This nation needs an identity standard...but then you have constitutional issues due the the possibility of abuse. What we need is somewhere halfway between the SSN identifier of today and something that can lead to hearing "May I see your papers, please?"

You had me laughing at "Saudi Arabian Textbook," but then the Yoda thing...yeah.

It's especially funny when I think of all the people who would have seen this, having the opportunity to notice that someone who was clearly not human was in the picture...and still did nothing. Which, of course, goes back to why I find the phrase "Saudi Arabian Textbook" so hilarious.

Exactly.

The title of this posting could be paraphrased as, "Something gives you new hardware functionality...BUT ONLY IF YOU BUY THE NEW HARDWARE! *GASP*"

Really, I'm not sure why people don't automatically grasp that faster charging than standard USB = higher flow of charging = higher flow than a non-USB-C connector can supply. It's not Apple's fault that a new hardware spec (USB-C) with a new bit of functionality (an option for higher power supply) doesn't automatically cause that functionality to flow backwards to time and apply itself to prior USB standards.

...does "Mexican tax refund" sound like a euphemism for something not at all related to taxes?

You must not have much of a basis for comparison, then. See what they do to the people they disagree with. In particular, check out the organ harvesting...it's a hoot.

I think you hit the problem on the head. These aren't going to be implementers...they aren't going to be helpful like that. They won't fix anything, install anything, set up anything. They just want to sell you things. Best Buy is literally taking the worst part of the in-store experience and sending it to people at their homes.

From TFA:

What I think they're missing is the fact that in the store, you're not enjoying the experience that their salespeople provide. For example, the asshole who humped my leg trying to sell me higher-quality HDMI cables because they would have "less signal loss." Or the push to get the warranty for everything. Or the lies that places like Newegg "won't stand behind their products if there's a problem," which turns out to be the opposite of the truth. I stopped going to Best Buy altogether, and the main reason is their inept, dishonest, pushy salesforce.

Reading the comments above, I feel pretty comfortable that my derision and disdain for the blue-shirted assmunches that sell on behalf of Best Buy is a shared experience. Best Buy doesn't seem to have gotten the memo.

Indeed. And they should have put everything they have into not causing the problem in the first place. Not only has this sullied their name, it's impacted AirBnB as well. I doubt that AirBnB (who selected them as an official choice to recommend) will ever forget this.