Is this true? Will americans be required to have microchips?

[EEVblog]

I often think on what benefits tehnology brought to us. In what ways electronics for instance improuved our lives ? Egh ?.

Why are you even on an electronics forum?

4. space exploration ? politic correct lies on how the appolo put a man to the moon .. ?  total hoax.

We have ourselves a live one here folks!

god is internet, internet is god. no book readings, no art creativity. just profiles on facebook. even now, there is this new job: "professional video blogger". what the f** that means anyway? .

It means I make a full time living making informative and entertaining videos for, in this case, a niche market.
What did you think it means? 

there's a guy with a child (?!), who needs some money right ? so he delivers industry biased oppinions towards happy crowds while we are softened by the "openness and unique style" which by itself does not need a motto, or publicity. Beeing "normal" in a anormal society kind of message.

Too much wacky weed today? 

Dave.

[elektronicks]

i was addressing intelects with higher iq.  everybody is not america. eectronics is not dave and certainly you missed a lot of things.

[EEVblog]

i was addressing intelects with higher iq.  everybody is not america. eectronics is not dave and certainly you missed a lot of things.

  That statement makes absolutely zero sense.

Dave.

[elektronicks]

ok. I'll answer the questions:

I was building some synthesizers for my own use when i accidentaly watched a video of yours about arduino. I dislike up until today your atitudine towards laughing at any names, languages. examples: arduino <- idiots. or "chinglish". I'm neither chinese, nor italian, but i know for sure they do speak english, while you and all the others have to attend long hours of chineese just to say hello, which of course, you do not require as this derives from the self confident established status qvo.

Then i was looking for informative videos like you might call them tutorials and then I thought, why the hell learning anything from watching a video and not pickup books or attent a university, a thing you might also consider to suggest to your audience since some of them want to get good education. We really do no care about you beeing a cat / non cat admirative, or having the child speaking about "private lives" we do have.

You also might say: don't like it .. skip it. This is something I will probably consider given the loads of crap coming from the statements like: "I'm proud to be an american", a statement which also fail to answer the question: how is that relating to any electronic matters, you ofcouse, beeing supposed to moderate these things, as you have an audience from all over the world. ain't that right ?

Ok, I had no intention to start a hot debate here, but since it happened, let's consider the involvement of engineers in this subject we are posting here: microchiping the population. Was this even possible should the engineers have a strong moral standing ? Or if they were more informed in other matters than the one derived from: "you have to be on electronic forum only if you are interested in electronics" How norrow is that ?

[GeoffS]

Narrow.

If you're not interested in electronics, then there really isn't much point in being here, being that this is an electronics forum. 
Can't make it clearer than that.

Sure, occasionally a thread pops up on a non electronics subject, or like the micro chipping America, marginally electronics related. If you're here purely for these sorts of topics, you're going to get pretty bored while we talk about electronics, this being an electronics forum. 

[Mediarocker]

i was addressing intelects with higher iq.  everybody is not america. eectronics is not dave and certainly you missed a lot of things.

Before you attempt to address "high IQ intellects," you must first possess the required IQ of whom you are attempting to address.

A lone transistor cannot decipher C++ on it's own.

[elektronicks]

all the americans here: gather up! There has been an alternative view intrusion people. Let's kill the bastard. And where is the GLOBAL moderator? This is something you call "terrorists" so you feel atacked. ) The interesting thing, there is some TRUTH in it. This is why you feel attacked. So .. was that inteligent enough transistor boy ?

[elektronicks]

guys look. I will not continue this. I was just filling pasionally attached to some ideas of freedom and ideals which if you have a good look at the world as it is and compare it to the idiotic blogs, forums, and how internet changed in a negative way the way we used to read, feel or even love (dave finds that quite interesting to provide ways of pickup up girls online - i find it a disgrace).

Nobody really knows what will be next, and how far this lunatic industry continue to provide means of control to some other lunatics. I'm in a quite small and insignificant country with no real chance to compete with any of you - this gives me the nothing to loose bit so I have a view from a stakeless position.

As far as I'm concerned I will seek proper education should I decide to learn electronics. Entertainment after.

one transistor out.

[MikeK]

Well, according to this "non employee" small businesses (that's like mine and maybe Dave) accounts in the US for nearly a Trillion of the GDP and over 21 Million jobs. I'd say that counts as a significant employer. Most of those are less than half a Million a year. That means there are about 20 Million middle class citizens making their own jobs outside the corporate circle. That's about 1% of the adult population and probably more than 2% of working adults.

http://www.census.gov/econ/smallbus.html#EmpSize

The largest single group in terms of dollars in wages is the group over 10,000 employees with 1.6T. The second largest group is self employed people who account for almost a Trillion in sales. You can't assume that's all salary of course, but it does represent employment and GDP. That means, with less than 3% of the total population, small businesses are the second largest single group of employers in terms of annual GDP. Looks to me like the middle class are better at making jobs than the Billionaires.

Actually, it's ONLY the middle class that creates jobs.  When a big chain whatnot opens another store it's because of middle class demand.  If the middle class wasn't buying stuff that store would shut down overnight.  Economies have been demand based, since forever.  Rich people largely don't spend their income.  The middle class spends almost all of their income.  The opinion that rich people are job creators is wrong.

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--And here is the latest from the NHS. Go figure.

--http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9639090/Cystic-Fibrosis-sufferer-denied-chance-of-life-drug-by-NHS.html

"Cystic Fibrosis sufferer is being refused a "chance of life" drug by the NHS despite the manufacturer offering it to her for free."

--Now, if someone in you family has suffered from this terrible disease, please know that what ever the family decides is fine by me. And please do not waste your efforts trying to cobble together some half baked fantasy that I am accusing you of murdering your loved one, as happened earlier when I plainly stated ""If any of you happen to be the competent family representative in an end of life situation, then of course you would be the one to make the difficult decisions, and you would have my approval and sympathy."

--Most of us have lost loved ones, and many of us have faced some rather difficult circumstances in this regard. So please so not think that the fact that you have lost someone, means that you know better than everyone else.

"Don't give up the ship"
Captain James Lawrence USN  1781 - 1813
 
Best Regards
Clear Ether

[poptones]

Whoopee, so what else is new. The same thing happens in the US, we call it the DEA and if they don't bless it no one gets it no matter how promising it might be.

So, I'm assuming this would mean you would support decriminalizing the potions and herbs we decide to put into our own bodies?

[mariush]

He's also ignoring the fact that :

* the company received $75 million dollars in donations from a CF foundation to make the drug
* the company offered it only on a temporary basis (no guarantee it would give it a year from now)
* they're selling the drug for $300k a year.  How much markup do you think it's in that price, especially since only 5% of the people sick with CF can actually use the drug?

Basically it's just a PR move, marketing, to put pressure on NHS to approve the drug. Once NHS approves the drug, free healthcare and all that, the company gets 300 patients x $300k  a year doing nothing.

India has the right idea about medicine, and more countries are taking advantage of international treaties to produce cheap medicine :

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120523/03175119032/generics-drive-down-drug-prices-india-tpp-trying-to-stop-that.shtml

As that shows, there's been an interesting twist in this story. Cipla, another Indian manufacturer of generics, has announced that it too is coming out with a version of Nexavar, pricing it at $125 for 120 tablets. That's even cheaper than Natco's price of $163, to say nothing of Bayer's $5,128 for the same course.

[G7PSK]

The link on cystic fibrosis seems to be broken, but we are continually seeing this sort of headline as people who are terminally ill grab at any straws in order to try and stay alive for a few more days. We have an organization here called NICE, national institute for clinical excellence. Their job is to look at all drugs and make a decision as to whether they give value for money and or work as the manufacturers claim and to what extent they work. Any heath system has to draw a line somewhere as to cost and efficacy, there are many drugs around that will extend the life of some patients but who it is can be a lottery and cost tens of thousands for a few days.

[SgtRock]

Dear G7PSK:

--In this case the drug is being offered for free. So even if it is only for a year, I think it would probably be worth doing. Of course I do not have all the facts and am basing my opinion on what facts I can obtain. Certainly, the explanation provided by the NHS is bureaucratic double speak of the highest order.

--I am very well aware that the NHS cannot, and should not spend hundreds of thousand per year for courses of drugs. On the other hand if you have or can raise the money from volunteers, and spend it to prolong your life, you should be allowed to do so. You can bet your bottom dollar that the nomenclatura that run these socialist governments are going to do so for themselves and at your expense. The companies that makes these drugs should be allowed to sell them and to and make a profit doing so.

--And yes I am well aware that the looters are after the Pharmaceutical companies, as well as the Oil Companies, Coal Companies, Insurance Companies, Corporations, Billionaires, Rich People, Stock Holders, etc. It would be very much less work to just make a list of what they do not want to loot, it their quest to become the next USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, etc.

--When I recommend the story of The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg, to people to illustrate why just confiscating things will not work, I am told that I just want to kill people. Its as if they think that arithmetic is a capitalist plot.

--Finally Poptones has said "So, I'm assuming this would mean you would support decriminalizing the potions and herbs we decide to put into our own bodies?"
To which my answer would be, as a general matter yes, of course. As a general principle I am in favor of Liberty, and I am not sitting here full of envious hatred, plotting ways to run peoples lives, or to confiscate their property. If we all try to use government power against each other, we will become state vassals. I would welcome a fuller discussion of the DEA and the Drug War, but this is not my thread, so I will leave it at that.

"The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money."
Margaret Thatcher 1925 -

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[tom66]

Dear G7PSK:

--In this case the drug is being offered for free. So even if it is only for a year, I think it would probably be worth doing. Of course I do not have all the facts and am basing my opinion on what facts I can obtain. Certainly, the explanation provided by the NHS is bureaucratic double speak of the highest order.

But you have to take into the account is it OK to give someone false hope? For example, say it gives them a good life for a year. They might expect, perhaps even demand that it continue. It is manipulation of the highest order. But it is a sticky situation, very difficult to decide. And $300k/yr is outrageous. I understand drugs cost quite a bit of money to develop, but that pricing is ridiculous.

--I am very well aware that the NHS cannot, and should not spend hundreds of thousand per year for courses of drugs. On the other hand if you have or can raise the money from volunteers, and spend it to prolong your life, you should be allowed to do so. You can bet your bottom dollar that the nomenclatura that run these socialist governments are going to do so for themselves and at your expense. The companies that makes these drugs should be allowed to sell them and to and make a profit doing so.

Private healthcare is available in the UK and you may use it by paying for it. If there is a $300k/yr drug, and you have $300k/yr, you may spend it on that drug.

--And yes I am well aware that the looters are after the Pharmaceutical companies, as well as the Oil Companies, Coal Companies, Insurance Companies, Corporations, Billionaires, Rich People, Stock Holders, etc. It would be very much less work to just make a list of what they do not want to loot, it their quest to become the next USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, etc.

I do not speak for everyone but my opinions certainly do not cover "looting" these companies of their profits. However, I do consider some practices they employ to be anti-competitive and anti-consumer, and would prefer that they are regulated, which improves competition between companies, and eventually results in better prices and products for consumers.

As for rich people, everyone should pay their share to keep society running and people more able to pay more should do so.

[SgtRock]

Dear Tom:

--Thank you for a well thought out and reasoned response. You may have, however, have put the cat among the pigeons, with your statement about not wanting to loot companies. The looters are not going to like that one. I am glad to hear that private healthcare is still available in the UK. Bonus! It is under threat in the US, at least with regard to private insurance plans. The "Single Payer" plan is the eventual goal, and Insurance Companies are already being told what they must cover.

--You stated "But you have to take into the account is it OK to give someone false hope? For example, say it gives them a good life for a year. They might expect, perhaps even demand that it continue. It is manipulation of the highest order. But it is a sticky situation, very difficult to decide. And $300k/yr is outrageous. I understand drugs cost quite a bit of money to develop, but that pricing is ridiculous."

--The young lady no doubt is probably thinking that another year or so false hope, is probably is just the thing, if the drug can be obtained at no cost. Note that the drug is useful only to 5% of Cystic Fibrosis sufferers who have a certain gene mutation. The company in question may, perhaps foolishly, have decided to develop this drug for a rather limited customer base, at a cost of perhaps billions, and hence the high price. Eventually the drug will be available as a generic, as with many, at first expensive, life saving drugs. Kill the Goose, and no more golden eggs.

--I agree with you about the role of government in providing a fair playing field, in order to promote competition. Competition is what eventually brings things to market at fair prices. You cannot very well keep selling your green peppers at the farmers market for 2 dollars, when the guy in the next stall is selling them for for 1. Unfortunately governments rarely undertake regulation merely to promote competition, and redistrubutionist "Social Policy" creeps in, obviating the fair competition principle. Often governments force insurance companies to cover things. This allows the governments to put the costs of these programs, somewhere other than the budget, where taxpayers could see them.

--You also said "As for rich people, everyone should pay their share to keep society running and people more able to pay more should do so."

--"Their share" always turns out to be more and more. Lets just see how France does with that one. Perhaps you are correct, also perhaps not.

"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
Ronald Reagan 1911 - 2004

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[G7PSK]

The other problem is liability the drug may be free but is it approved in the UK if not can a doctor be liable for the administration of such a drug.

[poptones]

What idiocy. The US has had single payer health insurance for decades and no one has been told they cannot buy private health insurance. The UK has had it for some time and, I believe, this is what they have in Canada as well. In the US it's called medicare and it's doubly ironic that most of the people who are ON medicare don't realize that it is single payer insurance and, more crazily, do not even support it when asked. "I will do everything I can to stand against single payer health insurance, but don't touch my medicare!"

This is just perverse. Talk about the haves wanting to stick it to the have-nots...

[SgtRock]

Dear EEVBees:

--Poptones has said "What idiocy" to the assertion that under the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" (Obamacare) insurance companies will cease to exist. As per usual the comments are long on accusations of "idiocy" and "the haves wanting to stick it to the have-nots" but short on links to dispositive information. The tone has mellowed somewhat from his previous accusation that I was accusing him of murdering his father, pointedly ignoring that I has said "If any of you happen to be the competent family representative in an end of life situation, then of course you would be the one to make the difficult decisions, and you would have my approval and sympathy."

--Now it seems this "idiocy" has spread to the NY Times Opinionator Blog where an opinion piece by Emanual and Liebman, both advisers to the Obama Administration on the healthcare bill, lay out just how the government is going to make the insurance companies "unnecessary". See link below.

--http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/the-end-of-health-insurance-companies/?comments#permid=7

"The End of Health Insurance Companies - Here’s a bold prediction for the new year. By 2020, the American health insurance industry will be extinct."

--So there you have it folks. Two, shall I say liberal, advisers to the Obama Administration on the 1000 page healthcare bill, that had to be passed so we could find out what was in it, joyously predict the disappearance of health insurance companies in the NY Times blog, and people who think that there might just be something to it are accused of idiocy.

--And now for our next act, dancing his renowned Shilly Shally the famous ...

"Facts are stubborn things."
Ronald Reagan 1911 - 2004

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[poptones]

ROTFL. So you need "sources" to "prove" that medicare is single payer insurance? How about a fucking ENCYCLOPEDIA sarge? But I'm sure you don't have such a thing, it not having a public forum where every right wing nutcase can espouse his own elitist view of what freedoms really mean "free" and what freedoms are really just a "priviledge" taken for granted by those anti-American "liberals." Oh wait, we do have that - it's called wikipedia... and even there, where one can occasionally find page after page of the single word "penis," you won't find such nonsense. Medicare is single payer, and that payer is the government. By definition. For half a century. And yet "the government will be lousy at providing health insurance."

Amazing. My dad had Medicare. He also had Blue Cross AND Veteran's health insurance. And in spite of having TWO government run, single payer insurance plans, he still found enough value in Blue Cross to keep up his union dues.

50 years of civilian single payer health insurance, and we still have insurance companies.

Must have been a miracle. Aren't we lucky.

[tom66]

Oh, I cannot wait until the election is over, even as a Briton. i just want it to end. I don't care who wins any more.

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--I do not recall mentioning Medicare. I did however contend that the ACA would drive insurance companies out of the healthcare business. Once again the answer was profane, disgusting, hostile, hateful, and personal, but it did not address the question of the government replacing all health care insurance companies with a one size fits all Single Payer government program. It just pretended I had mentioned Medicare and then attacked that straw man.

--Narry a mention of the two Obama Health Care Advisers predicting the extinction of health care insurance in the NY Times blog. Uh, lets just pretend we did not see that one, kind of like Benghazi.

--Yes, ladies and gentlemen that was indeed an amazing dance of the Shilly Shally, order some more drinks, and soon PeeTee will be right back out to dance the dance of the Seven Veils. And if you are lucky you will get to experience some more scabrous evacuations. Bonus!

--And someone please quit holding down Tom66 and making him read the 12th page of a thread he is not interested in.

"All I wants of you, Cap'n Simmons, is plain seevility, and that of the commonest goddamndest kind!"
Zeph W. Pease

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[tom66]

I am glued to this thread (not against my will though); I like seeing the arguments between the two sides, it keeps me informed about absolutely nothing, but it is interesting to read nonetheless.