I agree to a point. Taking away the license is problematic because it is not immediately enforceable. In the US, people without insurance and licenses drive all the time.
Community service is an immediate effective penalty that can be verified. Did the person show up? No? Contempt of court and 48 hours in jail instead. They had all the opportunity in the world to show up. Community service does not have to be a set time, and usually is not. 10 hours within the next 90 days. Something like that should account for people's schedules and emergencies. If you can't find 10 hours within 90 days you can choose between 48 hours in jail and no license.
Start doing that and I promise you that people will not only drive the speed limit, but start driving better overnight.
Repeated offenses can result in a termination of the license.
I still believe that is discriminatory and unfair. While you claim that mindset is popular with GOP candidates, I am not GOP. Not Democrat either. If anything I have Libertarian leanings.
Is is enormously offensive, unfair, and shortsighted to penalize or tax somebody based on their wealth. Why? Simply because I have more money? Maybe, just maybe, I actually earned it? Maybe I give back to society?
Basing something on wealth has a far more damaging effect on society too. In order to do it, you must obtain information. Now you have a whole game of tax loop holes and lying. It is damaging to our right to privacy. I believe that the government has absolutely no right to know how much I earn at all, or where I spend it.
I would prefer a more passive system based on consumption. That is absolutely fair. If I had a billion dollars and you were to tax me along side somebody that made an average living we would be taxed the same if we lived more or less the same. That is fair. He lives in a modest 3 bedroom house, I live in a modest 3 bedroom house. However, when I want to spend $30 million dollars on a jet now I am paying quite a bit for that privilege. It is built into the cost of the jet. That is fair. If I wanted to not pay those taxes then my option is to live exactly the same as somebody making $35,000 a year (or whatever the average is right now).
If I lived like a hermit and had a farm I could pay no taxes at all. I would also consume nothing. That billion dollars would just sit there steadily increasing from investments and interest. At some point I am going to die and all that wealth can transfer to the person I designate. Now I imagine at some point, that somebody is going to want to spend that money. It becomes taxed at that point. That is fair. I was never penalized for being rich, I had all the privacy I ever wanted, and I never evaded any taxation.
If the person was being penalized for simply disobeying the law, the fine would be the same regardless of who the person is, how much money they have, what color they are, what they believe. The moment you change it be anything else other than behavior, it is by very definition, a discriminatory practice.
I don't think it is a different discussion to have something other than fines. The fact is that almost everything related to finances these days, which very closely ties in with fines, is unfair and favors those with money over those that don't have money.
The answer is not to penalize those with money more, but to change the foundation of the system itself to remove money from the equation. We can do that with traffic laws.
Getting to the movie theater faster by risking the lives of other people is definitely immoral.
Only if it is intentional. The majority of bad drivers don't set out with a selfish intent and/or to create a dangerous environment for others. I know some people that truly think they are good drivers and are as nice of a person you could hope to meet. I am in outright terror in the passenger seat with them driving.
It is intent. Only a fraction of drivers out there truly create a dangerous environment and do so knowingly. That is when that person is being selfish, sociopathic, etc.
I think there is more evil intent when you pee in the pool. Unless you are a very small child you absolutely know you are doing something wrong, you are just too damn lazy to get out of the pool or rationalize it as "everybody is doing it". So maybe we need a study to show how many rich people pee in the pool. It would be more accurate than looking at traffic tickets.
I think the article itself is trying to say that all wealthy people are evil. Some comments are saying that as well.
Honestly, I do not believe that wealth affects peoples behavior towards others in a significant way. Wealthy people that act like that are just as much of an asshole when they were not wealthy. Perhaps being born to wealth and privilege from the start with a poor upbringing could be an environment in which those kind of assholes grow in.
I grew up in what you could call upper middle class to the lower upper class. My family made a ton of money through hard work and sacrifice. While I had opportunities and access to resources, I was raised in a fairly strict environment and not spoiled by any definition of the word. Whatever I wanted, I had to work damn hard to get it as a child. Most of my prized possessions as a child were bought with money I earned myself. Not from getting good grades, but actually mowing lawns and washing cars.
In a way I find the article stupid and offensive simply because I know that my family was not like that, and I have had plenty of mentors and great people in my life that have acted with honor and a deep sense of civic duty. The more intelligent and wealthy you are the more responsible you are to make the world a better place. Those kinds of ideals I was surrounded with.
People that acted contrary to that were to be stayed away from and seen for what they were.
That is a great point. We will soon be coming to a time where the military could be split down the middle with the flick of a switch. The heads of the military would have access to all the advanced hardware while the regular military personnel would be forced to deal with it via conventional weapons.
Let's just hope that even the AI will require enough support staff that it will still be difficult to run it on their own.
What you are talking about is not much different than Skynet. Except we don't have Ahhnold and this Skynet would slightly less homicidal.
It's much different now, especially in developed countries.
In the US it is nearly impossible for a colonel, in military uniform, to walk around with a side arm in public and give orders. It is highly, highly, likely that somebody would call the cops. The only exception would be if the public was convinced that there was immediate danger that required military intervention. So unless Bruce Willis is blowing up the local mall and smoke is everywhere, I think that the public is going to react rather negatively to military personnel acting like military in public.
It is the exact opposite in some place like Burma. A man in uniform with a side arm is something to be feared. Greatly feared. If he says to lay down on the ground, I am betting that most citizens will comply immediately.
You could look at this as the degree in which the military is separated from the citizenry. I would think the US would be in the top 5 certainly. First place is probably held by some EU country or a more tropical country where people are more concerned about chilling out.
If there was mass protests in the US and we go to the point of a civil war, or a coup, it is far more likely that citizens would have significant military support. Military personnel here are citizens too. Whatever is pissing us off to the point that armed conflict is actually being used to resolve it is going to gather proportional support from the military. I can easily see members of the National Guard loading up on weapons and joining the citizens.
What we have to worry about is hired mercenaries. Look at the Arab Spring movement right now. I keep seeing articles about governments like Libya that used mercenaries to perform actions that their own military would not go along with.
Blackwater type security companies are who you would need to fear. After all, the most disturbing and heinous acts committed against Iraqi civilians was by mercenary groups granted immunity. Shit hits the fan, and the 1% (the evil evil rich people) would just have them on retainer.
It would be interesting though. I'll give odds that some good ol' boys who raided a National Guard armory are going to win:)
They stole nearly a trillion dollars right in front of our faces. I am talking about a subset of people that have the state of being rich. Saying that all wealthy people are evil just plays right into their hands by engaging in class warfare.
What does morality have to do with driving and traffic tickets?
Most of the time it has nothing to do with a desire to cheat, steal, or harm another person. It could just be ignorance and bad driving habits. You could be a great driver and habitually speed 5-10 mph above the limit. That is not, in of itself, a sign of sociopathic behavior. Cutting people off and trying to run them off the road *is*.
Parking tickets are a better indicator. I personally know of some people that are not anything close to rich, but have a ton of parking tickets. They have TV shows about the boot being put on people that act that way. If anything, that would be independent of wealth. We all have experienced those assholes who cannot part for shit. You know the type. Those that literally park with no regard to anyone else, if they are even lined up the spot correctly, or blocking somebody else.
Making a ticket proportional to wealth is just discrimination. I hate it when people just want to penalize the rich for "being" rich. It's stupid and disingenuous to the debate over traffic safety.
You really want change? Eliminate the financial penalty entirely. Mandate that every ticket is a minimum 10 hours of community service picking up trash, visiting senior citizens, meals on wheels, whatever. If the minimum was an entire days worth of work on the weekend that benefited the community traffic violations would plummet. We can't do that because we built an entire financial infrastructure out of people breaking laws and being fined. All that encouraged was greater fines, gaming of the system (fucking with orange lights to increase running reds), and new laws to increase revenue.
My grandfather was a traffic cop who barely wrote any tickets. Towards the end of his career he was catching hell because he was not meeting his quota. He would actually give warnings and talk to people to explain why it was dangerous. Can't have that.
As for the study, I think it is incredibly stupid to say, "the rich" are more immoral. While it is true that the rich are less affected by most penalties, a more accurate statement would be that our current environment financially rewards those who act like douchnozzles to the rest of us. Large scale sociopathic behavior has so many legal loop holes that it is readily apparent that the whole game is rigged.
Those that act with honor, give back to their communities, are penalized and have to work that much harder in business to compete. It takes sacrifice, financial sacrifice, to operate a company that refuses to outsource, screw employees over, and actually work to the benefit of society instead of just giving lip service.
There are plenty of rich people that are complete sociopaths, but I also know quite a few that are genuinely nice people that care. There is nothing about the state of being wealthy that induces immoral behavior. Immoral behavior exists independently. It's the regulations and tax laws that allow immoral people to attain wealth easier.
If "copper telephones" are anything like what we have in the US, a corded telephone connected to the wall receives all the power it needs to operate from the CO (central office) in the street. In this situation the telco does not need to concern itself about any equipment on-premises. As long as the customer has a standard cordless telephone that is enough to place a call.
This is the primary reason why people claim that corded telephones and copper service is the most reliable method of communication in an emergency. Which is true as long as you place zero responsibility on the consumer beyond the possession of a standard telephone required for service.
The alternative is still fairly cheap, but it requires telcos to actually upgrade. There is no reason that the same battery/diesel backups in the CO's can't be used as a backup for fiber.
What is not solved is that you now need battery backup on-premises. That is not an insurmountable problem. Most cable companies in the US have been offering VOIP service for years with equipment that has built-in battery backups. It varies, but I have seen VOIP only equipment that allows a standard phone connection, and cablemodem/VOIP combos that do both. In any case, $50 at any electronics store will get you a battery backup capable of a few hours with the load from a base station for a cordless telephone.
The biggest challenge in the US has been providing emergency phone call support. For quite some time VOIP services offered by the cable companies did not have the capability of connecting you to the correct PSAP and transmitting the correct information. To my knowledge that has been largely solved. The major VOIP providers I deal with have been offering e911 services for almost two years and I have been able to offer 911 on any VOIP desk phone in any branch office with only minor coding efforts.
I don't know how much money the telcos would gain by getting rid the COs entirely. I am betting that they are staying on copper for telephone because it is cheaper than upgrading all the COs to fiber and providing customers on-premises equipment that they have never had to provide before.
Also remember, that battery/diesel backups don't last forever anyways. That goes for cell phone towers too. Any major disaster with sustained power outages for more than a day or two is going to see severe impact in service for all communications.
Number one you can't film things like that in space.... well not right now due to policy... so it could change...
Well don't forget about the fact that gravity does not exist on the space station too. Can you imagine what that would be like in a confined space? People curled up into tight little balls propelling themselves around. The horror...
I'm sorry, with all due respect, that is bullshit.
The only reason why Macs are perceived as more secure is because they have less market share, and therefore less interest to those who make the malware. Period.
So if I go out in the middle of nowhere in the desert and build a house, it is kind of stupid for me to claim that my house is safer just because nobody tried to rob it in 15 years.
Sony was thought of as impenetrable with their PS3. Pissed the wrong people off when they removed the OtherOS support... and lo and behooooold.... security was destroyed. I can download over 200 PS3 games right now with all sorts of firmware and methods to "pwn" the PS3. I hate Sony so I have no interest in giving them money for that POS.
It's about interest and if the "right" people have an interest in compromising security on an operating system, it gets compromised.
You can sit there all you want and "think" FreeBSD, and specifically Apple's variant, is more secure by design... but just wait and see what happens. Success will be Apple's greatest enemy on that front.
No operating system is without flaws and no operating system can withstand a sustained attack from millions of people looking for one. All you can do is best practices, pay attention to critical updates, and actually pay attention to logs. Basically don't treat security as something passive that requires no work on your part.
P.S - Look up the PwnToOwn contest and try telling us again that Macs are safer than Windows. Based on what??
(and yes, yes, tablets suck for real work, yadda yadda, no one is using them for real work, toy os etc etc - just heading off that stuff at the pass.)
Welll... they do.
RDP and other remote control apps are neat, but very hard to do real work with. Using a tablet as a tablet, means one handed typing. Anything else is basically no different than a laptop. Having it propped up and typing with two hands does not really count as a tablet either.
That's all the article is really about. Using the tablet as a thin client to desktop with a lot more resources. Hardly ground breaking as an idea. The challenge is that tablets are a really poor thin client interface due to their inputs and the fact that those inputs were not designed for most of the remote systems they connect to.
If your work is graphic arts however, then you can build a really snazzy interface with a touch pad to draw and use all the normal tools you have access to. Quite a bit of reports, and content consumption related tasks can translate quite well to tablets. It may require some tablet specific UI designs, but it is still doable.
Where tablets fail is any kind of rapid data input. There is a problem with the form factor, but beyond that the real difficulty is one handed typing. Most people have issue with obtaining any kind of useful speed and accuracy. I've seen some neat ideas like FrogPad and others where it involves combinations with one hand. I am going to try something like that, but its usefulness will depend on how easily I can train my one hand to type fast enough.
For me I have to be able to type rapidly since I work on headless Linux servers a *lot*. Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass it is to try and type a grep statement on a log file really fast? A lot of the useful symbols for Linux are complex and time consuming to enter on a virtual keyboard.
If I am remote then a tablet can be useful simply because of its form factor and it means I have to carry less. However, doing real work still requires a full machine for me. Meaning, full size keyboard, regular sized mouse, and multiple large screens.
In the end it will depend on just work you need to accomplish and where. I don't rule out that tablets can be useful, but to say they can be an actual replacement at this point for a full sized interface is stretching it. What I really, really, really look forward to is the kind of stuff IBM is working on. A circlet I can just put around my head would eliminate the need to type with fingers entirely.
I am looking at tablets with portable keyboards (something like the Logitech solar keyboard) and mice as a solution for remote workers. Best of both worlds.
If Netflix really wants some special video playing tech, they can manufacture their own tablet, and write their own software. So that their subscribers cover 100% of the cost, and I 0%.
I largely feel the same way you do. However, since I actually try to manage a collection of thousands and thousands of music CDs and DVDs from the last 20 years I am getting to the point where I would be interested in purchasing a subscription service.
It's actually far more cost effective in the long run. So I have Netflix, which is not all it could be... yet. The resistance is from Big Content because the last thing they could possibly want is for Netflix to succeed.
I own a WD TV Live Plus. It is my sole Netflix device and I don't object to the DRM software being on it for that purpose.
Considering my entertainment budget, I would be perfectly willing to part with $75-100 per month if I had access to all the latest released movies and TV shows, with no advertisements, and no ad overlays of any kind.
No, they still sell it to you, just without DRM. And you probably get it cheaper too, because without DRM they have no hold on you.
That's the thing though. Part of the reason why SOPA/PIPA is being pushed so hard along with ACTA is that they don't have a hold on you. DRM is an illusion created by the ignorance of the masses. That's a scary ass way to maintain control. In this case, information literally kills them like sunlight removing a bad odor from a couch cushion.
Even with the DRM on the Netflix device, the digital stream still must be sent to the TV. HDCP has been cracked and bypassed. That's if you want to do the work yourself. Piracy, in a way, is the ultimate expression of Open Source. Whatever you want or think you need, somebody else out there has thought of it, is thinking about it, and is working to provide it to you for *free*.
Every episode on TV, all the movies, all the music, is at my fingertips in HD 5.1 surround sound with no commercials or advertisements at all. In fact, the whole process is automated with RSS and scripts. Since some of the TV I like is broadcast, and zips by my face anyways, I have no problems accessing it via different means. Even the web downloads that have no advertising overlays in the middle of the show! There is such a demand for that product, it is being pirated now too. Clearly, I am not the only one who hates overlays so much now huh?:)
My purchasing of movies and music is entirely voluntary, not forced. They have no control over me anymore. Have not had it for years.
So the real question is why support a framework and standard for DRM in web browsers when it is utterly ineffective at accomplishing its goal?
The information is getting out there faster and faster. Big Content does not want to face the truth. People are willing to pay for a product, just not the product that they want to sell. With the product being available so easy for free, Big Content better wake up and figure out that people are lazy and like shiny neat interfaces. Without an easy affordable way to consume products on our terms, they are going to continue to lose.
Going along with these stupid standards is just accepting worthless code on your computer and enabling them to continue in their own death spiral, which is dangerous to the rest of us, since they are determined to take our Freedom with it.
Okay. I lost somebody in Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.
The solution is technology on the planes, not violation of our Privacy, dignity, and Freedom on the ground.
Flight 103 could have been prevented if the airlines were forced to use technology available at the time. It has been proved, based on evidence, that if shielded and reinforced baggage containers were used, that there would have been a high likelihood that the plane would have survived.
Those were available. It was basically bullet proof linings on the baggage containers, and on the internal spaces down below. It would have absorbed a great deal of energy. Maybe there would have still been injuries, and fatalities. From what I understand though, the hole that was punched in the plane would have been prevented.
That's baggage. I'm perfectly willing to concede that the airlines can inspect all of my baggage (which does not include looking at files on hard drives) for safety.
As for the passenger cabin, Israel has been separating the the flight cabin and passenger cabin for years from what I hear. It does not take an extreme amount of engineering to completely separate the cabins. You could go so far as a complete separation where pilots have a different physical entrance.
How do terrorists take control of the plane then? All the pilots have to do is nut up and not take orders for any reason. Just disconnect the communication lines to the passenger cabin and land at the nearest airport and let special forces come in and kill the fuckers.
We don't need the TSA. What we need is intelligence and courage. Flying is risky. You are going to take the risk that some crazy people might get on the plane with you and you might die. However, if they could never influence the pilot directly, or indirectly, and only blow up the plane (mitigated with technology) then the risk is the same regardless of the method of transport.
Just use the technology we have, grow a pair, and get on with our lives.
I for one will never sacrifice Freedom for the alleged increase in security.
Anything that Microsoft offers is going to be vastly superior.... in at least one sense as it relates to Google Docs.
Office 365 is a paid only service where the users would be the customers and not the product. That's MS current alternative to Google Docs, and really, they had it up before Google Docs. At least, AFAIK, they did internally. I am not really sure when they officially starting offering it as SaaS.
Google Docs, the free version, is not something I would ever use for business for one second. You have no reason to trust Google, and really, you can't take on that kind of liability with most businesses that deal with anything close to sensitive information about customers. Not possible unless you are really stupid, have no lawyers to tell you are stupid, or just reckless.
There *is* a paid version of Google Docs. You can disable advertisements in gmail in the paid version. However, I still don't feel good about Google having access to all that information. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
With both SaaS platforms you have APIs and can integrate other processes. I'm sure they are pretty similar in the vast majority of features and capabilities.
In the end, I would not want to use either one of them. If I can roll my own and host my own servers I would do that. I am not faced with that particular problem. Most of the stuff I deal with already has robust platforms for that particular industry that allow for a lot of collaboration already.
What MS is really butthurt about when it comes to Google Docs is that they are not offering the free product. MS is not the only one butthurt about it either. The number of businesses that can't make it because they can't compete against Google's free is quite large.
I don't have any particular answers to that. I just know Google causes a lot of problems for business simply because they leverage their advertising revenue to drive products from a paid model down to a free model.
Newsflash: Today is a horrible oppressive time for the vast majority of people.
The difference is that, as a whole, we have become far less capable through the loss of common knowledge. Knowledge that would allow you to survive a winter, make a fire, harvest crops, that kind of stuff.
We've gone soft and stupid. Truth hurts I guess.
Without a Walmart and a McDonald's I doubt the average American could survive a month.
Of course that is made worse by a progressive campaign to destroy innovation and freedom with absurdly oppressive and draconian IP laws.
Take a negro (I think African American is the proper term) today and compare him or her to their forebears and you will find they are soft, entitled, stupid, and basically far less capable of surviving without all the comforts of modern technology. That goes for any other oppressed demographic you can find, even Native Americans. Ohhh, and the White People too.
2nd Newflash: Everybody is oppressed. The illusion of one race being better off than another is just a 3rd party tactic used to divide people.
It's a full on race to make Idiocracy a documentary.
Yes, there were some bad nasty things done in America's past. Still being done today. Does not make my point about how far we have fallen any less true, or sad.
Let me ask you this, since you brought up African Americans.... why is it that African Americans (and others) fought so hard for equality and Freedom and yet take everything for granted today? Where is the million man march on Washington for a free Internet? Protests against the Patriot Act?
Nope. It's all consumerism and despair.
Real Americans fought for Freedom in WWII. Now we just pay billions of dollars for mercenaries through well connected people and corporations to uphold America's name in the world by killing women and children.
American used to mean something good. Noble. A fierce passion for Freedom, justice, and equality. What is it now?
Like I said, truth hurts. I sincerely doubt the average American could ride a horse right now if they had to do so. How could they? It's not some walled garden application on their shiny.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate to get technical, but do worms even have heads?
Sure. It's the one the shit does not come out of.
A one line disparaging response based solely on the fact I agree with some Libertarian positions is indicative of being a mental child.
If you want to support your inflammatory statement try making logical and civil arguments against my own arguments or Libertarian positions.
I agree to a point. Taking away the license is problematic because it is not immediately enforceable. In the US, people without insurance and licenses drive all the time.
Community service is an immediate effective penalty that can be verified. Did the person show up? No? Contempt of court and 48 hours in jail instead. They had all the opportunity in the world to show up. Community service does not have to be a set time, and usually is not. 10 hours within the next 90 days. Something like that should account for people's schedules and emergencies. If you can't find 10 hours within 90 days you can choose between 48 hours in jail and no license.
Start doing that and I promise you that people will not only drive the speed limit, but start driving better overnight.
Repeated offenses can result in a termination of the license.
I still believe that is discriminatory and unfair. While you claim that mindset is popular with GOP candidates, I am not GOP. Not Democrat either. If anything I have Libertarian leanings.
Is is enormously offensive, unfair, and shortsighted to penalize or tax somebody based on their wealth. Why? Simply because I have more money? Maybe, just maybe, I actually earned it? Maybe I give back to society?
Basing something on wealth has a far more damaging effect on society too. In order to do it, you must obtain information. Now you have a whole game of tax loop holes and lying. It is damaging to our right to privacy. I believe that the government has absolutely no right to know how much I earn at all, or where I spend it.
I would prefer a more passive system based on consumption. That is absolutely fair. If I had a billion dollars and you were to tax me along side somebody that made an average living we would be taxed the same if we lived more or less the same. That is fair. He lives in a modest 3 bedroom house, I live in a modest 3 bedroom house. However, when I want to spend $30 million dollars on a jet now I am paying quite a bit for that privilege. It is built into the cost of the jet. That is fair. If I wanted to not pay those taxes then my option is to live exactly the same as somebody making $35,000 a year (or whatever the average is right now).
If I lived like a hermit and had a farm I could pay no taxes at all. I would also consume nothing. That billion dollars would just sit there steadily increasing from investments and interest. At some point I am going to die and all that wealth can transfer to the person I designate. Now I imagine at some point, that somebody is going to want to spend that money. It becomes taxed at that point. That is fair. I was never penalized for being rich, I had all the privacy I ever wanted, and I never evaded any taxation.
If the person was being penalized for simply disobeying the law, the fine would be the same regardless of who the person is, how much money they have, what color they are, what they believe. The moment you change it be anything else other than behavior, it is by very definition, a discriminatory practice.
I don't think it is a different discussion to have something other than fines. The fact is that almost everything related to finances these days, which very closely ties in with fines, is unfair and favors those with money over those that don't have money.
The answer is not to penalize those with money more, but to change the foundation of the system itself to remove money from the equation. We can do that with traffic laws.
Getting to the movie theater faster by risking the lives of other people is definitely immoral.
Only if it is intentional. The majority of bad drivers don't set out with a selfish intent and/or to create a dangerous environment for others. I know some people that truly think they are good drivers and are as nice of a person you could hope to meet. I am in outright terror in the passenger seat with them driving.
It is intent. Only a fraction of drivers out there truly create a dangerous environment and do so knowingly. That is when that person is being selfish, sociopathic, etc.
I think there is more evil intent when you pee in the pool. Unless you are a very small child you absolutely know you are doing something wrong, you are just too damn lazy to get out of the pool or rationalize it as "everybody is doing it". So maybe we need a study to show how many rich people pee in the pool. It would be more accurate than looking at traffic tickets.
I think the article itself is trying to say that all wealthy people are evil. Some comments are saying that as well.
Honestly, I do not believe that wealth affects peoples behavior towards others in a significant way. Wealthy people that act like that are just as much of an asshole when they were not wealthy. Perhaps being born to wealth and privilege from the start with a poor upbringing could be an environment in which those kind of assholes grow in.
I grew up in what you could call upper middle class to the lower upper class. My family made a ton of money through hard work and sacrifice. While I had opportunities and access to resources, I was raised in a fairly strict environment and not spoiled by any definition of the word. Whatever I wanted, I had to work damn hard to get it as a child. Most of my prized possessions as a child were bought with money I earned myself. Not from getting good grades, but actually mowing lawns and washing cars.
In a way I find the article stupid and offensive simply because I know that my family was not like that, and I have had plenty of mentors and great people in my life that have acted with honor and a deep sense of civic duty. The more intelligent and wealthy you are the more responsible you are to make the world a better place. Those kinds of ideals I was surrounded with.
People that acted contrary to that were to be stayed away from and seen for what they were.
That is a great point. We will soon be coming to a time where the military could be split down the middle with the flick of a switch. The heads of the military would have access to all the advanced hardware while the regular military personnel would be forced to deal with it via conventional weapons.
Let's just hope that even the AI will require enough support staff that it will still be difficult to run it on their own.
What you are talking about is not much different than Skynet. Except we don't have Ahhnold and this Skynet would slightly less homicidal.
It's much different now, especially in developed countries.
In the US it is nearly impossible for a colonel, in military uniform, to walk around with a side arm in public and give orders. It is highly, highly, likely that somebody would call the cops. The only exception would be if the public was convinced that there was immediate danger that required military intervention. So unless Bruce Willis is blowing up the local mall and smoke is everywhere, I think that the public is going to react rather negatively to military personnel acting like military in public.
It is the exact opposite in some place like Burma. A man in uniform with a side arm is something to be feared. Greatly feared. If he says to lay down on the ground, I am betting that most citizens will comply immediately.
You could look at this as the degree in which the military is separated from the citizenry. I would think the US would be in the top 5 certainly. First place is probably held by some EU country or a more tropical country where people are more concerned about chilling out.
If there was mass protests in the US and we go to the point of a civil war, or a coup, it is far more likely that citizens would have significant military support. Military personnel here are citizens too. Whatever is pissing us off to the point that armed conflict is actually being used to resolve it is going to gather proportional support from the military. I can easily see members of the National Guard loading up on weapons and joining the citizens.
What we have to worry about is hired mercenaries. Look at the Arab Spring movement right now. I keep seeing articles about governments like Libya that used mercenaries to perform actions that their own military would not go along with.
Blackwater type security companies are who you would need to fear. After all, the most disturbing and heinous acts committed against Iraqi civilians was by mercenary groups granted immunity. Shit hits the fan, and the 1% (the evil evil rich people) would just have them on retainer.
It would be interesting though. I'll give odds that some good ol' boys who raided a National Guard armory are going to win :)
Subtle my ass.
They stole nearly a trillion dollars right in front of our faces. I am talking about a subset of people that have the state of being rich. Saying that all wealthy people are evil just plays right into their hands by engaging in class warfare.
What does morality have to do with driving and traffic tickets?
Most of the time it has nothing to do with a desire to cheat, steal, or harm another person. It could just be ignorance and bad driving habits. You could be a great driver and habitually speed 5-10 mph above the limit. That is not, in of itself, a sign of sociopathic behavior. Cutting people off and trying to run them off the road *is*.
Parking tickets are a better indicator. I personally know of some people that are not anything close to rich, but have a ton of parking tickets. They have TV shows about the boot being put on people that act that way. If anything, that would be independent of wealth. We all have experienced those assholes who cannot part for shit. You know the type. Those that literally park with no regard to anyone else, if they are even lined up the spot correctly, or blocking somebody else.
Making a ticket proportional to wealth is just discrimination. I hate it when people just want to penalize the rich for "being" rich. It's stupid and disingenuous to the debate over traffic safety.
You really want change? Eliminate the financial penalty entirely. Mandate that every ticket is a minimum 10 hours of community service picking up trash, visiting senior citizens, meals on wheels, whatever. If the minimum was an entire days worth of work on the weekend that benefited the community traffic violations would plummet. We can't do that because we built an entire financial infrastructure out of people breaking laws and being fined . All that encouraged was greater fines, gaming of the system (fucking with orange lights to increase running reds), and new laws to increase revenue.
My grandfather was a traffic cop who barely wrote any tickets. Towards the end of his career he was catching hell because he was not meeting his quota. He would actually give warnings and talk to people to explain why it was dangerous. Can't have that.
As for the study, I think it is incredibly stupid to say, "the rich" are more immoral. While it is true that the rich are less affected by most penalties, a more accurate statement would be that our current environment financially rewards those who act like douchnozzles to the rest of us. Large scale sociopathic behavior has so many legal loop holes that it is readily apparent that the whole game is rigged.
Those that act with honor, give back to their communities, are penalized and have to work that much harder in business to compete. It takes sacrifice, financial sacrifice, to operate a company that refuses to outsource, screw employees over, and actually work to the benefit of society instead of just giving lip service.
There are plenty of rich people that are complete sociopaths, but I also know quite a few that are genuinely nice people that care. There is nothing about the state of being wealthy that induces immoral behavior. Immoral behavior exists independently. It's the regulations and tax laws that allow immoral people to attain wealth easier.
They won't operate the same at all.
If "copper telephones" are anything like what we have in the US, a corded telephone connected to the wall receives all the power it needs to operate from the CO (central office) in the street. In this situation the telco does not need to concern itself about any equipment on-premises. As long as the customer has a standard cordless telephone that is enough to place a call.
This is the primary reason why people claim that corded telephones and copper service is the most reliable method of communication in an emergency. Which is true as long as you place zero responsibility on the consumer beyond the possession of a standard telephone required for service.
The alternative is still fairly cheap, but it requires telcos to actually upgrade. There is no reason that the same battery/diesel backups in the CO's can't be used as a backup for fiber.
What is not solved is that you now need battery backup on-premises. That is not an insurmountable problem. Most cable companies in the US have been offering VOIP service for years with equipment that has built-in battery backups. It varies, but I have seen VOIP only equipment that allows a standard phone connection, and cablemodem/VOIP combos that do both. In any case, $50 at any electronics store will get you a battery backup capable of a few hours with the load from a base station for a cordless telephone.
The biggest challenge in the US has been providing emergency phone call support. For quite some time VOIP services offered by the cable companies did not have the capability of connecting you to the correct PSAP and transmitting the correct information. To my knowledge that has been largely solved. The major VOIP providers I deal with have been offering e911 services for almost two years and I have been able to offer 911 on any VOIP desk phone in any branch office with only minor coding efforts.
I don't know how much money the telcos would gain by getting rid the COs entirely. I am betting that they are staying on copper for telephone because it is cheaper than upgrading all the COs to fiber and providing customers on-premises equipment that they have never had to provide before.
Also remember, that battery/diesel backups don't last forever anyways. That goes for cell phone towers too. Any major disaster with sustained power outages for more than a day or two is going to see severe impact in service for all communications.
women have become obsolite
Really? You must have one fantastically talented hand....
You can't use self-shots taken by a monkey. They all have monkey butts and penises in them. Or slow mo shots of another monkey throwing poo.
It would never pass YouTube's decency standards.
He takes nigger cock up his ass
I think if you are taking cock up your ass, the last thing you care about is what color it is.
Don't worry. This is the exception.
Number one you can't film things like that in space.... well not right now due to policy... so it could change...
Well don't forget about the fact that gravity does not exist on the space station too. Can you imagine what that would be like in a confined space? People curled up into tight little balls propelling themselves around. The horror...
I'm sorry, with all due respect, that is bullshit.
The only reason why Macs are perceived as more secure is because they have less market share, and therefore less interest to those who make the malware. Period.
So if I go out in the middle of nowhere in the desert and build a house, it is kind of stupid for me to claim that my house is safer just because nobody tried to rob it in 15 years.
Sony was thought of as impenetrable with their PS3. Pissed the wrong people off when they removed the OtherOS support... and lo and behooooold.... security was destroyed. I can download over 200 PS3 games right now with all sorts of firmware and methods to "pwn" the PS3. I hate Sony so I have no interest in giving them money for that POS.
It's about interest and if the "right" people have an interest in compromising security on an operating system, it gets compromised.
You can sit there all you want and "think" FreeBSD, and specifically Apple's variant, is more secure by design... but just wait and see what happens. Success will be Apple's greatest enemy on that front.
No operating system is without flaws and no operating system can withstand a sustained attack from millions of people looking for one. All you can do is best practices, pay attention to critical updates, and actually pay attention to logs. Basically don't treat security as something passive that requires no work on your part.
P.S - Look up the PwnToOwn contest and try telling us again that Macs are safer than Windows. Based on what??
Apples are for homosexuales, le fruitcaques. Also, Bonch is a faggot.
You do realize the irony right? Nothing sounds manly, or heterosexuale, when you say it in French.
(and yes, yes, tablets suck for real work, yadda yadda, no one is using them for real work, toy os etc etc - just heading off that stuff at the pass.)
Welll... they do.
RDP and other remote control apps are neat, but very hard to do real work with. Using a tablet as a tablet, means one handed typing. Anything else is basically no different than a laptop. Having it propped up and typing with two hands does not really count as a tablet either.
That's all the article is really about. Using the tablet as a thin client to desktop with a lot more resources. Hardly ground breaking as an idea. The challenge is that tablets are a really poor thin client interface due to their inputs and the fact that those inputs were not designed for most of the remote systems they connect to.
If your work is graphic arts however, then you can build a really snazzy interface with a touch pad to draw and use all the normal tools you have access to. Quite a bit of reports, and content consumption related tasks can translate quite well to tablets. It may require some tablet specific UI designs, but it is still doable.
Where tablets fail is any kind of rapid data input. There is a problem with the form factor, but beyond that the real difficulty is one handed typing. Most people have issue with obtaining any kind of useful speed and accuracy. I've seen some neat ideas like FrogPad and others where it involves combinations with one hand. I am going to try something like that, but its usefulness will depend on how easily I can train my one hand to type fast enough.
For me I have to be able to type rapidly since I work on headless Linux servers a *lot*. Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass it is to try and type a grep statement on a log file really fast? A lot of the useful symbols for Linux are complex and time consuming to enter on a virtual keyboard.
If I am remote then a tablet can be useful simply because of its form factor and it means I have to carry less. However, doing real work still requires a full machine for me. Meaning, full size keyboard, regular sized mouse, and multiple large screens.
In the end it will depend on just work you need to accomplish and where. I don't rule out that tablets can be useful, but to say they can be an actual replacement at this point for a full sized interface is stretching it. What I really, really, really look forward to is the kind of stuff IBM is working on. A circlet I can just put around my head would eliminate the need to type with fingers entirely.
I am looking at tablets with portable keyboards (something like the Logitech solar keyboard) and mice as a solution for remote workers. Best of both worlds.
Firing all the teachers in a teacher won't do a damn thing
I didn't do too well in that physics class but I think that would, like, hurt or something.
If Netflix really wants some special video playing tech, they can manufacture their own tablet, and write their own software. So that their subscribers cover 100% of the cost, and I 0%.
I largely feel the same way you do. However, since I actually try to manage a collection of thousands and thousands of music CDs and DVDs from the last 20 years I am getting to the point where I would be interested in purchasing a subscription service.
It's actually far more cost effective in the long run. So I have Netflix, which is not all it could be... yet. The resistance is from Big Content because the last thing they could possibly want is for Netflix to succeed.
I own a WD TV Live Plus. It is my sole Netflix device and I don't object to the DRM software being on it for that purpose.
Considering my entertainment budget, I would be perfectly willing to part with $75-100 per month if I had access to all the latest released movies and TV shows, with no advertisements, and no ad overlays of any kind.
No, they still sell it to you, just without DRM. And you probably get it cheaper too, because without DRM they have no hold on you.
That's the thing though. Part of the reason why SOPA/PIPA is being pushed so hard along with ACTA is that they don't have a hold on you. DRM is an illusion created by the ignorance of the masses. That's a scary ass way to maintain control. In this case, information literally kills them like sunlight removing a bad odor from a couch cushion.
Even with the DRM on the Netflix device, the digital stream still must be sent to the TV. HDCP has been cracked and bypassed. That's if you want to do the work yourself. Piracy, in a way, is the ultimate expression of Open Source. Whatever you want or think you need, somebody else out there has thought of it, is thinking about it, and is working to provide it to you for *free*.
Every episode on TV, all the movies, all the music, is at my fingertips in HD 5.1 surround sound with no commercials or advertisements at all. In fact, the whole process is automated with RSS and scripts. Since some of the TV I like is broadcast, and zips by my face anyways, I have no problems accessing it via different means. Even the web downloads that have no advertising overlays in the middle of the show! There is such a demand for that product, it is being pirated now too. Clearly, I am not the only one who hates overlays so much now huh? :)
My purchasing of movies and music is entirely voluntary, not forced. They have no control over me anymore. Have not had it for years.
So the real question is why support a framework and standard for DRM in web browsers when it is utterly ineffective at accomplishing its goal?
The information is getting out there faster and faster. Big Content does not want to face the truth. People are willing to pay for a product, just not the product that they want to sell. With the product being available so easy for free, Big Content better wake up and figure out that people are lazy and like shiny neat interfaces. Without an easy affordable way to consume products on our terms, they are going to continue to lose.
Going along with these stupid standards is just accepting worthless code on your computer and enabling them to continue in their own death spiral, which is dangerous to the rest of us, since they are determined to take our Freedom with it.
I concur. Entirely.
Reminds word for word how the scene went down in Fight Club. The one where Norton is describing how they calculate whether or not to do a recall.
Okay. I lost somebody in Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.
The solution is technology on the planes, not violation of our Privacy, dignity, and Freedom on the ground.
Flight 103 could have been prevented if the airlines were forced to use technology available at the time. It has been proved, based on evidence, that if shielded and reinforced baggage containers were used, that there would have been a high likelihood that the plane would have survived.
Those were available. It was basically bullet proof linings on the baggage containers, and on the internal spaces down below. It would have absorbed a great deal of energy. Maybe there would have still been injuries, and fatalities. From what I understand though, the hole that was punched in the plane would have been prevented.
That's baggage. I'm perfectly willing to concede that the airlines can inspect all of my baggage (which does not include looking at files on hard drives) for safety.
As for the passenger cabin, Israel has been separating the the flight cabin and passenger cabin for years from what I hear. It does not take an extreme amount of engineering to completely separate the cabins. You could go so far as a complete separation where pilots have a different physical entrance.
How do terrorists take control of the plane then? All the pilots have to do is nut up and not take orders for any reason. Just disconnect the communication lines to the passenger cabin and land at the nearest airport and let special forces come in and kill the fuckers.
We don't need the TSA. What we need is intelligence and courage. Flying is risky. You are going to take the risk that some crazy people might get on the plane with you and you might die. However, if they could never influence the pilot directly, or indirectly, and only blow up the plane (mitigated with technology) then the risk is the same regardless of the method of transport.
Just use the technology we have, grow a pair, and get on with our lives.
I for one will never sacrifice Freedom for the alleged increase in security.
The IRS will at least occasionally give back when it has taken more than it should. The TSA has yet to do that.
So you are essentially complaining that the TSA does not have their version of the reach-around?
Anything that Microsoft offers is going to be vastly superior.... in at least one sense as it relates to Google Docs.
Office 365 is a paid only service where the users would be the customers and not the product. That's MS current alternative to Google Docs, and really, they had it up before Google Docs. At least, AFAIK, they did internally. I am not really sure when they officially starting offering it as SaaS.
Google Docs, the free version, is not something I would ever use for business for one second. You have no reason to trust Google, and really, you can't take on that kind of liability with most businesses that deal with anything close to sensitive information about customers. Not possible unless you are really stupid, have no lawyers to tell you are stupid, or just reckless.
There *is* a paid version of Google Docs. You can disable advertisements in gmail in the paid version. However, I still don't feel good about Google having access to all that information. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
With both SaaS platforms you have APIs and can integrate other processes. I'm sure they are pretty similar in the vast majority of features and capabilities.
In the end, I would not want to use either one of them. If I can roll my own and host my own servers I would do that. I am not faced with that particular problem. Most of the stuff I deal with already has robust platforms for that particular industry that allow for a lot of collaboration already.
What MS is really butthurt about when it comes to Google Docs is that they are not offering the free product. MS is not the only one butthurt about it either. The number of businesses that can't make it because they can't compete against Google's free is quite large.
I don't have any particular answers to that. I just know Google causes a lot of problems for business simply because they leverage their advertising revenue to drive products from a paid model down to a free model.
Newsflash: Today is a horrible oppressive time for the vast majority of people.
The difference is that, as a whole, we have become far less capable through the loss of common knowledge. Knowledge that would allow you to survive a winter, make a fire, harvest crops, that kind of stuff.
We've gone soft and stupid. Truth hurts I guess.
Without a Walmart and a McDonald's I doubt the average American could survive a month.
Of course that is made worse by a progressive campaign to destroy innovation and freedom with absurdly oppressive and draconian IP laws.
Take a negro (I think African American is the proper term) today and compare him or her to their forebears and you will find they are soft, entitled, stupid, and basically far less capable of surviving without all the comforts of modern technology. That goes for any other oppressed demographic you can find, even Native Americans. Ohhh, and the White People too.
2nd Newflash: Everybody is oppressed. The illusion of one race being better off than another is just a 3rd party tactic used to divide people.
It's a full on race to make Idiocracy a documentary.
Yes, there were some bad nasty things done in America's past. Still being done today. Does not make my point about how far we have fallen any less true, or sad.
Let me ask you this, since you brought up African Americans.... why is it that African Americans (and others) fought so hard for equality and Freedom and yet take everything for granted today? Where is the million man march on Washington for a free Internet? Protests against the Patriot Act?
Nope. It's all consumerism and despair.
Real Americans fought for Freedom in WWII. Now we just pay billions of dollars for mercenaries through well connected people and corporations to uphold America's name in the world by killing women and children.
American used to mean something good. Noble. A fierce passion for Freedom, justice, and equality. What is it now?
Like I said, truth hurts. I sincerely doubt the average American could ride a horse right now if they had to do so. How could they? It's not some walled garden application on their shiny.