Unless they completely screwed you over, and you have evidence to prove that.
Being right has nothing to do with [not] being stomped into the mud. One necessary condition here is the ability of the audience to comprehend your proof.
In this case, though, I think Tesla is wrong. The reporter drove the car exactly per instructions, and he was frequently on the phone with Tesla. He charged the car also per instructions. I do not know if he used the mode "Kill my battery but give me 10% more range" - but no sane person would be even trying to find this mode unless it is preset. If Tesla had to use this mode, on a preplanned trip, why didn't they preset it before delivering the car to the reporter?
Tesla is also haggling about a 2 mile "detour" in NYC, about 200 miles away from the failure point and before the last supercharge. This is ridiculous. Tesla instead should explain this:
Why the sequence of supercharges was yielding shorter and shorter remaining range at the end of the charge? ("Full" - 242 - 185 - 216.) Who is in charge of the charge here?
Why the charge meter and the odometer do not agree? (In other words, if the range meter reports 100 miles to empty it is correct only if you don't drive?)
Why the charge dropped from 90 miles to 25 miles overnight?
Why the "battery conditioning" that was supposed to improve the range made it worse? The missing (90-16)=74 miles of range would cover the whole segment between Norwich and Milford, probably even without a charge at Norwich.
Why the low voltage recharge is so pathetic? You'd have to set up camp near a 120V outlet if you want to charge the car.
All in all, I see that the reporter did all that he could to help the car to take this easy trip - but the car still failed. Lame, literally. Nobody should pay $100K for a car that can't take a road trip. EV manufacturers should lower their estimated range by measuring it not in ideal conditions but in real conditions, by physically driving the car - at night, in rain, in snow. Then the manufacturer can stand by these numbers - and journalists wouldn't be using them as an easy punching bag. EV makers are lying, all of them; they think puffing the range up helps them. But in reality the negative PR hurts them more. Be honest, say that the car cannot cover more than $m miles and nobody will take you to court. Those are expensive toys, and people who buy them have resources.
GMail can read your mail; that is a bigger hole than the IP address of a coffee shop.
Google, however, usually does not have a need to try and discover your real life identity. It is not automatically published for everyone to see. That is what is important. If a corporation sells your browser fingerprint, use a different browser. This one, FF with AdBlock + NoScript + Ghostery + whatever else, shows no ads, blocks web bugs, and runs no scripts. It may still be tracked by IP addresses and other unique information, but why advertisers would be building a list of people who refuse their product? What would they do to me, send the mafia in? I'm not their client, and they move on. I don't need to outrun the bear, I only need to outrun the average Internet user.
All wars are "us" vs. "them." Police already has a derogatory term "civilians" that they use on non-police citizens. Police officers are civilians as well (not the standing army, I hope.)
If things turn to worse, expect more definitions to fly by, all intended to separate "the good guys" from " the bad guys" in a way that favors one faction or another.
You have "sand n!ggers" in Afghanistan; you have some subhumans on the border; you will have yet another kind in ghettos, then they will discover militia terrorists in suburbs, then they will turn their attention to farmers and ranchers who cling to their guns and Bibles... there is a label for everyone.
You might be quite surprised at some of the surveillance tech in use.
There is no technology, outside of Star Trek, that would have detected chemical and biological weapons in that boat at a distance of a mile. Nuclear weapons don't radiate that much either (until they are used.)
Also, if we believe the TSA, the survival of this country hinges on the fact that every incoming laptop and every Flash disk must be examined by professionals for traces of terrism. (I'm not professional enough to figure out what can anyone find on a multi-GB Flash that is full of binaries.) This vital task cannot be done remotely.
That wouldn't be true even if you had said "cats" instead of "boats."
It's the oldest trick in spy movies. Why wouldn't that work if far more worked for the boat that came from Hawaii? Satellites have to be there to observe, and they have to be actually *used* to look at *that spot* instead of a billion other spots, and they have to see in darkness or through the cloud cover. Additionally, you don't have to swap ships, you can just swap the cargo if it is small and valuable. The cargo can be submerged under a pontoon, and you only throw the tow rope from one ship to another. You can even leave the pontoon in the sea, with a small, low power beacon that sends the GPS position, and the other ship will collect it in a few hours. Possibilities are endless. Why would none of that work?
there is no ammo box option. it's not an option in a civil society
That is correct. The ammo box is to be used when the society is no longer civil. For example, when your lords and masters tread upon you and enslave you. At one point it had something to do with taxes, at another - with slavery. Thirst for power also works. The society can drop the pretenses of civility very quickly (technically, at any time when civil methods are no longer advantageous.)
shooting people does what? turns you into a target for a manhunt. that's it
Largely yes, it does that. However it also tells others that their actions have consequences. Some people understand only the language of force; you can find many such people in your local MS13 gang - or, as Chris Dorner tells us, at LAPD headquarters. He may be wrong even in theory; and killing people over verbal offenses or over dismissal from a job is a terrible overreaction. He is very likely to be a mental patient because even in his manifesto you can see explosive rage where a reasonable man would record the conversation on his cell phone, then call his lawyer and get rich.
i don't really know why this stupid idea appeals to some people unless you are actually an unhinged individual
Mr. Dorner is unhinged, it is obvious from any one out of the many hints that he provided. Naturally, he is absolutely sure that he is perfectly sane and his actions are "necessary evil." All insane people are sure that they are sane. Half of his manifesto is talking about petty offenses that he was subjected to at work. He then proceeds to make a mountain out of that. A normal person would simply quit and move to a city with better PD, or he would take a different job altogether.
What stops DHS from continuing to arrest people wherever they want? Was anyone at DHS *punished* for this drug bust? Possession is 90% of the law, and DHS has you cuffed on the ground. Supreme Court is far away.
It doesn't matter. He bypassed the customs and border guards. He could carry *anything* in his boat - or anyone, to that matter.
However I don't know how could the border guards tell the difference between his boat (that came from the outside of the invisible line) and any boat that never left the US territory. There are thousands of those boats in water on any given day, all moving chaotically and reporting to no one. You cannot tell the difference between the boat that came to LA from Hawaii and the boat that came to LA from San Diego. Even the satellite observation is pointless if two identical boats approach the same point at the border and then "turn around" and go back where they came from. Especially at night. You have to be on site to notice that the boats did not turn around; the only things that did come back were the captain and the vessel's paperwork.
You painted a sad but true picture of a rogue state.
If we had any integrity maybe we could have just publicly retracted our participation in the Geneva convention if we don't want to follow it.
No, "we" don't want to quit Geneva conventions because "we" want others to follow them when some of our soldiers are captured by the enemy. There was a lot of noise made that Iran took a picture of captured UK sailors "in violation of Geneva conventions." (I guess next time Iranians won't bother to prove that they treated their detainees well.)
The question is whether there is even a point trying to live up to a standard of morality and ethics in foreign relations
On an individual level everyone should live up to a standard of morality and ethics. Otherwise bad karma will bite you. Not in a religious sense; gods rarely interfere in human affairs (except FSM, who is always nearby, tweaking your measurements:-) Bad karma comes back just as a reflection of your own bad actions. Sell drugs, be killed by another drug dealer. Go shoot some "brown people" - don't wonder why you got shot up yourself. That's the primary mechanism of karma, and it works very well.
On the national level... well, accept the fact that you, as a citizen, have no control or even influence over political decisions. You are nothing but a worker ant whose only purpose is to make war materiel for your masters. Humanity knows of only one way to repair the damage; it's in the fourth box at this point.
I would rather live in a country where we had more expensive gasoline than one where we try to be the biggest bully, but maybe I am just naive.
Consider the option of Canada, if you are not afraid of -20C temperatures (at best) in winter. As the exodus picks up (for many reasons, political being the least important) the immigration rules will be tightened. At least you will stop financing killing people all over the world. As things are, you are "running with a machine gun and shooting brown people up" for about two months per year, considering your tax share and the percentage of taxes that directly and indirectly go to the altar of death. You don't have to be a grunt with a rifle; your hands are just as bloody if you buy ammo for the grunt, or even food, so that he can do his job in comfort. Every US taxpayer is guilty of that, and every US voter is guilty of electing a member of the War Party to the throne.
1. Except congress never declared war on Afghanistan or Iraq, and certainly not on Yemen or Pakistan.
Occupying force of armed foreigners on your land, sent by a foreign state, is all the proof of war that anyone needs. Who is giving a desert rat's behind about the fact that Congress hasn't authorized this war, or tens of wars prior?
Unlike wars against other sovereign nations, the enemy "soldiers" in Iraq and Afghanistan are actually also enemies of the local government.
Creative use of puppet governments is an old art. The one in Kabul is hardly the first example. Those puppets are convenient, aren't they? You pull a string and the puppet says what you want it to say.
The Taliban insurgency wouldn't have been possible without sufficient, widespread popular support. Taliban has that support; Karzai does not.
Imagine if China occupies the USA and makes one John Smith, a Chinese citizen, the new President of the USA? Will you obey his orders? The said John will otherwise call you a bad man, and the occupying force will blow you away, no questions asked or answered. Will it be OK with you?
I can't say about Iraq, but Afghanistan does not have a functioning government. It has one Mayor of Kabul and a bunch of warlords all around him, who occasionally say that they want his head on a pike. (At other times they don't say it out loud.) Insurgency is native to Afghanistan, and it is traditional, and it will not go away because a US-educated lawyer tells them so. In a democracy the power belongs to the people. It is interesting to note that Afghanistan, by this definition, is more democratic than the USA.
It is warfare because the strikes are done by military, against unspecific targets, without a court order for termination (even if one could be issued,) and in foreign countries. Additionally, warfare is carried out for political goals (removal of threat, for example) before the fact - whereas police actions are carried out to capture criminals after the fact. Police activities are under control of a judge. Military activities are under control of the political authorities - ultimately, under the President's command.
Some say strikes against civilians are terrorism. Perhaps so, and perhaps not. Strikes *specifically* on civilian targets, like those done by Clinton against Serbia, were probably terrorism. Strikes done largely on combatants are not terrorism. Terrorism is defined as warfare against noncombatants to achieve a political goal. There is no political goal to achieve by blowing villagers' huts up.
Most Taliban fighters are not uniformed. It las legal meaning because they have free will to fight. Many guerillas took part in World War II; and many uniformed soldiers fought willingly even when they could desert. IMO if you fight against a state you are at war with that state. A criminal does not fight against the state, and does not attack citizens of that state just because they are citizens. That's where, I think, the dividing line is.
2. Should warfare even be exempt from due process? why? or why not?
Warfare is exempt from due process by millennia of practice and because the soldiers of the enemy are not criminals. They would be criminals (in their own country) if they don't fight against you. They have no free will, in most cases. This is why captured enemy soldiers are not put on trial. They are not guilty. The only legal constraint on warfare is in a few internatonal treaties.
3. Should US citizens be given a level of due process better than non-US citizens?
No. The 5th Amendment uses the word "persons", not "citizens." Any sentient being under US Constitution's jurisdiction is a person. Anything else would open the door to citizens holding foreigners as slaves or as targets for archery practice.
I know this is a joke but have you ever grown a rose bush?
My grandparents did. It was pretty hard, considering the climate (-20C in winter is normal and expected for extended periods of time.) Maybe roses grow like kudzu where you live, but I haven't observed that firsthand.
Sure. However too few people (of all walks of life) have affinity for arts and beautiful things. Ghetto dwellers have plenty of free time, but how many works of art they have produced recently? See Sturgeon's Law.
the fact that efficiency continues to grow should make us richer, not poorer
This is still possible, if we figure out how to socialize those robotic factories that someone else built with money out of his pocket. Only the transition phase is unclear.
we better find something to do for the "useless" masses in their "spare" time.
And therein lies the problem. Make-work will not do. What idiot would be working - say, rolling a big stone up a mountain - if he doesn't have to? You will get robots that cater to your every whim; you will be living the lazy life. What will happen? You will get a massive crime problem because people always crave for power - or at least for respect, for their well-earned place in the society. Today you can become rich and be respected; you can work hard and be respected. This will not be possible anymore. What remains? There is only one way - you can *force* someone to respect you. Remember the London riots? A group of hooligans forced a man to take his clothes off. This was entirely innocent and harmless, compared to the "knockout king" games that are now popular in all ghettoized locations. Gangs will be forming from young men who have nothing better to do, and gangs will be fighting each other. This is what's coming - millions and millions of young and strong men who have no purpose in life and no motivation whatsoever to do anything productive (there is nothing, actually, that they can contribute - too few can write books or compose music.) Power over other humans is a very strong and addictive feeling. Vandalism will be also widespread, especially because it will be practically not punished - robots will rebuild for free. You may even have problem hiring the police - who is going to walk the beat at night and in rain when there is no damn reason to do that, unless you are one of very few men who will work just because it is the right thing to do. Those men will not last long; their own wives will do a quick job on their priorities in life.
In best case the society will devolve to the level of monkeys who don't need to work, to study, to invent - they have all the food and all the sex within reach. What else the majority will need?
This is the real question, not the technicality of the transition. This problem became apparent in 1970's in USSR. The society was technically prepared for a decent level of socialism, but the humans refused to be good little socialists - they tended to grab a piece here, to steal something there, to skip work elsewhere. Without application of a good whip to the bare backs of those bad workers they wouldn't do anything - and they didn't, and they were given the same social benefits as anyone else. That was ultimately the downfall of the socialist experiment - the tragedy of commons on the scale of a country. You need to find an answer to that before well-fed members of the brave new, robotically maintained world will start burning cities to the ground just for fun. They will do that, I have no doubt. The USA saw enough riots to learn how that works.
I do my research from my recipe database, which is synced to my phone. Usually this is while having lunch out somewhere.
It would be more efficient to do this research at home, where the supplies are. Because no sensor, outside of many-$K models, will tell you if this or that cheese is still edible. It's not just it's not moldy yet - you also need to consider if it is dry like a rock. (Dental implants cost more than a new bar of cheese.)
Cameras will not peer through the glass of bottles with herbs and will not tell you how much is remaining. It is a challenge to measure the remaining volume even if you are in business of making sensors for huge tanks full of stuff. Making a sensor that is cheap enough to be disposable is not possible with the current technology and the current wallet of an average customer.
And no, I won't re-buy smoked paprika and white pepper when I use them up, "just in case" I make a recipe that requires them again in the next year.
I see. You are unwilling to spend $3 on a bottle of pepper that is always usable and lasts forever, but you are ready to spend hundreds of dollars on technology that will not last more than a few years and will not be sufficiently reliable from day zero.
Large warehouses do maintain incremental inventory records by integrating input and output. But periodically they have to close the doors of the warehouse and to count everything, to reset the calculations. You can do the same - keep track of additions and expenses, and from time to time you open the cabinets up and physically check how much sugar is in this box, how much vegetable oil is in that bottle, and so on. I cannot think of a technology that would report all that while being so cheap that you can afford it. Food is too numerous in kind and too variable in state, shape, color, smell and every other parameter.
If I had room to space things out, pan and zoom cameras would be awesome.
Perhaps you need a fisheye camera and a LED light source inside the cabinet (or the refrigerator.) If you want it, why to deny yourself this toy - go ahead and build it! I do such things all the time (the WAF in this house is unbounded.)
Too bad nobody invents anything anymore. We'll never be able to have a fridge that can tell whats in it without someone having to scan bar codes all the time.
That's not the problem. I, or millions of others, can easily invent a jug that reports how much of the content is remaining. Are you willing to pay extra $1 for a $4 jug of milk with this function? And then throw that $1 into trash? When the economy is dying, jobs are disappearing, and we are transitioning from one recession right into another? Soon you will have all the time in the world to stare into your empty refrigerator.
It's far more useful to know what to buy, rather than to know what you already have. Those are different things. Besides, the refrigerator is not the only place where you keep food supplies. You may need salt, juice, oatmeal, pasta, rice, beans... lots of stuff is NOT in the refrigerator. Do you plan to install pan and zoom cameras in the pantry and in all the cabinets?
The best tool for food shopping is... the shopping list. You scribble an item in whenever you remember about it, and when you are in the store you have the complete list. You don't need to do research in the store - it is neither convenient nor reliable, and besides you probably don't have time to contemplate things while in the store - you have many other places to go to.
The past 60 years were special because at least during major parts of this time the music economy *did* generate enough income to live and create (not to be rich) for music beyond the mainstream.
The past 60 years were probably the peak of human labor efficiency. A single worker could feed the entire family, as I understand. There was plenty of cash in the economy.
The efficiency continues to grow, but the human involvement drops. Tomorrow *everything* will be done by robots, and humans - having no meaningful jobs - will be what, extinct? They sure won't have spare change for music. The state of things that you prefer can exist only in a wealthy society. I think we are past that; the future holds only a high caste of select few engineers and managers that take care of robotic factories, and a low caste of "useless." (How a human can compete with a computer?) We are almost there; but for now, since we don't have metal robots to do the work, we use flesh and blood robots, also known as Chinese workers. They aren't as cheap, but they are functionally equivalent.
At least the link is easy to hit;-) Not that there is any reason to. NSFW and such.
this would be a major change in the way our society has treated its artists at least in the decades after WW2
Why would that period of time be any special, compared to the way our society treated creators for 5,000 years of recorded history prior?
Every service will be paid exactly as much as the customer is willing to pay and the performer is willing to do it for. I can understand why a group of young boys cannot live on their music: because they aren't producing enough value! For example, the group of three spends a year and makes one CD that plays for 45 minutes. 1000 people in the world bought one, bringing in about $5K in revenue. Is this good or bad?
It is good because it is the true value of their product. I, for example, would not want their CD (I'd rather send the money to Rammstein, they at least know a thing or two about notes.) I may be wrong at that, having not heard the panicky crowd, but I'm comfortable in my ignorance:-)
This means that the band is simply not making enough public good to ask for an equivalent amount of public good back, in form of food, housing, etc. (what we normally call "money" as a shortcut.) Those guys may be OK in what they do, but they aren't doing enough of it. Perhaps there is no way to do more; as you said, they can only tour one city at a time, and they are limited to German-speaking countries. Well, I already mentioned some artists that overcame this little problem - and opened up a large market for themselves, a market that they cannot saturate even if they are on a tour every day of their lives.
The crew from Airplane should get a job. Their music may be nice, but I do not expect to get paid and live in luxury just because I whistle a tune for a minute every morning. People have to work hard to earn their living. Other people work from 9 to 5 moving boxes, driving trucks, welding metal. Musicians on tours work just as hard (I witnessed that firsthand.) But working hard is not enough; you also must do something that enough people consider useful.
Dirt and concrete floors are FAR more expensive than the best Persian rug. Just check out the prices of real estate. Those floors have to be attached to something...
In general you are right, though. "Worth having" == "optional, luxury item that one can easily do without." Optional items are cheap if their only utility value is small - but not zero. Companies that violate this rule lose in the market - nobody wants to buy their *useful* products for the asked price. (Perhaps MS' Surface is going down that route.) On the other hand, luxury items, like old paintings, or those hand-made rugs, command high price because they are unique, regardless of how much value you get out of that painting by Renoir.
Music is not finite. Live performances of a specific artist may be finite (nobody lives forever, especially bands) - but recordings of that music have no replication cost, no deterioration, and the only factor that keeps the price above zero is convenience, gratitude, and laws. Music recordings will never be a luxury item that people must fight each other to get. This leaves it in the "nice to have if I can be bothered" category - in this case, in a bargain bin, priced to sell for $1.
Yes. But things that are "worth having" are usually priced lower than things that you "must have."
IMO, very few pieces of music qualify for "must have." Consequently, "avant chello" - that may be had as a curiosity - may well be somewhere among free samples and free newspapers.
To be honest, I don't know, I am just trying to find some optimism here.
Understood. But just for sake of argument:
Of course it should be. But still somehow here we are today
Yes. That's the definition of malfunction. You don't change your approach to an essential device if the device decided to quit on you. It remains the device, and it needs to be repaired or replaced with a new one. If a fuse blows I do not start learning to live in darkness (that would be a compromise) - I fix the fuse and whatever caused it to blow.
"What compromise can you suggest here?" -- Restore liberty, restore the Bill of Rights, kick out the corruption [...]
I don't see a compromise here. Those are your wishes. Why the government should do any of these things? Who or what forces it to do so? All three branches of the government are now under the same roof, and the fourth one (the media) has been bought out.
I guess government can either do this the easy way or the hard way.
There are other factors at play. The USA is facing an imminent economic collapse because of chronic mismanagement and because the level of consumption does not even nearly match the level of production. I very much doubt that an averaged american even works enough to buy his daily bread. His food comes borrowed abroad, in form of free money that the USA prints to finance the ever-growing international trade (and the inflation of the USD.) Technically speaking, the USA can feed itself - this is one of few areas where the country is good. But the food cannot be produced without fertilizers, fuel, machinery, water, power, and it cannot be delivered without oil and trucks. Lacking those, the agricultural output will drop to the levels of 19th century - and we don't even have enough horses and other domestic cattle to pull the plow, except Amish.
As soon as the collapse happens, the government will be forced to establish martial law and a rigid system of food distribution (for those lucky enough to be under such a system.) Therefore, what's the point of trading political power for being nice if a few years down the road the government will still be forced to do the unpopular move?
But even if we pretend that no collapse is ever going to happen and everything is just peachy, let's consider why the government would want to step back and relax the fascist rules and regulations that it imposed on the country? The only reason is to prevent the uprising. (With the collapse out of the picture, the oppressive rule would be the only cause.) What is the upside and what is the downside for the government if it doesn't step back? The upside is that the government gets absolute control over the country. The downside is that some troublemakers with guns are killed. Hey, why is this a downside? It's an advantage; we don't need no stinking troublemakers here. So what is the real downside then? Bad PR abroad? Hardly a concern when you sit on a good stash of nuclear weapons. Attrition among the peasants and grunts of your own army? Hah, that's what they are here for - to die for their masters. Some shooting around, some cities ravaged? Big deal, who needs those cities anyway? On the other hand, a lot of "disadvantaged folks" (a.k.a. ghetto dwellers) will be summarily destroyed, cleaning the slate for the new society where work is not a luxury and not a privilege, it's the back-breaking duty, and FSM forbid you slack in that.
So if you think cynically enough you see that the government *wants* the civil war, as long as they can win it easily enough. This will scrap the old USA and will create a completely new country; the term USSA is not new, but perhaps it will be fitting. This country will be renewed (the current society of slackers is hopeless) and everyone will be given his daily food (just like in USSR.) This new country will be actually viable, for a while, because 100 million free laborers are bound to make something useful, after all. The old USD will be abandoned; its current
Face it. If the military goes nuts and wants to seize power, there's nothing an assault rifle or three hundred million assault rifles is going to do to stop them.
You don't even need an "assault rifle", whatever it may be. You have 100,000,000 rifles in the country. Let's say only 10% of them will be ever fired at the enemy. Let's say only 10% of those shots will hit the target. What do we have as result? The one million army is wiped out, down to the last man. That's the current size of the US Army, counting all the non-combat personnel and discounting all the desertions that are bound to happen.
Note that it doesn't matter what happens to the shooter. He can be killed on the spot; but more likely he will get away, to fight another day. I don't even mention shooting from a well prepared position that allows the shooter the preplanned escape and at the same time leaves the position mined. The score then could be 10 to 1, with the one escaping without a scratch. The reason for that is that the rebels will have the initiative; they don't have to fight here and now. The soldiers will have to go where told, position themselves in the streets and do their patrols there, in the open. They will have no initiative, and they will be defenseless against a man with a.223 hundreds of yards away, in a maze of buildings and alleyways and basements and roofs and everywhere in between. How many troops will it take to search a city block in NYC? What is the chance of them finding a hidden rifle hung in a garbage shute? Even if they are lucky, what is the chance of matching the rifle to any inhabitant of that city block? (Gloves are cheap, and they can be easily destroyed after use.) You don't have to look like Rambo either; an old, one-legged and one-eyed man may be the one who did the shot; or a 14 y/o girl, or a fat matron, or a man with a briefcase and in a business suit. There is just no way to tell.
The government is not your negotiating partner. It is your tool, your slave. It shouldn't have any interests of its own. If your vacuum cleaner doesn't work you don't negotiate the new terms with it, you throw it out and get a new one.
all this military claptrap is a f-cking waste of money
It is the side effect of the government forming a society within the society - and now having its own interests. The military and helicopters protect that privileged society. What do you do with your computer if it gets a virus? Do you negotiate with it about how many your files it may overwrite per day, or how often it may crash the system?
Conflict is expensive, and often slows down progress.
Conflict is the only way out of many dead end situations. Imagine that you are a slave who is abused, and your owner is living happily, spending fruits of your labor. What compromise can you suggest here? He gives you one free hour per month, and in return you do what? You have no goods to bargain with because you are not in control of anything.
"more likely to shoot himself in the leg and shouldn't be trusted with anything more dangerous than a pointed stick"
Countries have done many mobilizations in the course of last few centuries. In each case all they got were draftees who were "more likely to shoot himself in the leg and shouldn't be trusted with anything more dangerous than a pointed stick." How long did it take to train them? Not long at all, especially if they wanted to learn. A volunteer will be very eager to learn because he knows that his life is on the line; otherwise he wouldn't become a volunteer; he'd just sell his weapons for food, and those who are more competent will use them. The civil war in the USA will not have a front, and there will be no territories to conquer and hold. It will be a war of attrition. The regular army will be sitting ducks just due to the nature of their job. A foot patrol, count four, leaves the base? A foot patrol, count three, returns. Repeat this day in and day out, and pretty soon all the army can do is to hole up behind the walls of the base and dare not venture out. This is the Afghanistan mode, one you can see today. Such surrounded troops are already defeated because they are not capable of doing their job. Eventually an enterprising water engineer finds a tap and poisons their water, and they are done with.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless they completely screwed you over, and you have evidence to prove that.
Being right has nothing to do with [not] being stomped into the mud. One necessary condition here is the ability of the audience to comprehend your proof.
In this case, though, I think Tesla is wrong. The reporter drove the car exactly per instructions, and he was frequently on the phone with Tesla. He charged the car also per instructions. I do not know if he used the mode "Kill my battery but give me 10% more range" - but no sane person would be even trying to find this mode unless it is preset. If Tesla had to use this mode, on a preplanned trip, why didn't they preset it before delivering the car to the reporter?
Tesla is also haggling about a 2 mile "detour" in NYC, about 200 miles away from the failure point and before the last supercharge. This is ridiculous. Tesla instead should explain this:
All in all, I see that the reporter did all that he could to help the car to take this easy trip - but the car still failed. Lame, literally. Nobody should pay $100K for a car that can't take a road trip. EV manufacturers should lower their estimated range by measuring it not in ideal conditions but in real conditions, by physically driving the car - at night, in rain, in snow. Then the manufacturer can stand by these numbers - and journalists wouldn't be using them as an easy punching bag. EV makers are lying, all of them; they think puffing the range up helps them. But in reality the negative PR hurts them more. Be honest, say that the car cannot cover more than $m miles and nobody will take you to court. Those are expensive toys, and people who buy them have resources.
Doesn't gmail log every IP you logged in from?
GMail can read your mail; that is a bigger hole than the IP address of a coffee shop.
Google, however, usually does not have a need to try and discover your real life identity. It is not automatically published for everyone to see. That is what is important. If a corporation sells your browser fingerprint, use a different browser. This one, FF with AdBlock + NoScript + Ghostery + whatever else, shows no ads, blocks web bugs, and runs no scripts. It may still be tracked by IP addresses and other unique information, but why advertisers would be building a list of people who refuse their product? What would they do to me, send the mafia in? I'm not their client, and they move on. I don't need to outrun the bear, I only need to outrun the average Internet user.
All wars are "us" vs. "them." Police already has a derogatory term "civilians" that they use on non-police citizens. Police officers are civilians as well (not the standing army, I hope.)
If things turn to worse, expect more definitions to fly by, all intended to separate "the good guys" from " the bad guys" in a way that favors one faction or another.
You have "sand n!ggers" in Afghanistan; you have some subhumans on the border; you will have yet another kind in ghettos, then they will discover militia terrorists in suburbs, then they will turn their attention to farmers and ranchers who cling to their guns and Bibles... there is a label for everyone.
You might be quite surprised at some of the surveillance tech in use.
There is no technology, outside of Star Trek, that would have detected chemical and biological weapons in that boat at a distance of a mile. Nuclear weapons don't radiate that much either (until they are used.)
Also, if we believe the TSA, the survival of this country hinges on the fact that every incoming laptop and every Flash disk must be examined by professionals for traces of terrism. (I'm not professional enough to figure out what can anyone find on a multi-GB Flash that is full of binaries.) This vital task cannot be done remotely.
That wouldn't be true even if you had said "cats" instead of "boats."
It's the oldest trick in spy movies. Why wouldn't that work if far more worked for the boat that came from Hawaii? Satellites have to be there to observe, and they have to be actually *used* to look at *that spot* instead of a billion other spots, and they have to see in darkness or through the cloud cover. Additionally, you don't have to swap ships, you can just swap the cargo if it is small and valuable. The cargo can be submerged under a pontoon, and you only throw the tow rope from one ship to another. You can even leave the pontoon in the sea, with a small, low power beacon that sends the GPS position, and the other ship will collect it in a few hours. Possibilities are endless. Why would none of that work?
there is no ammo box option. it's not an option in a civil society
That is correct. The ammo box is to be used when the society is no longer civil. For example, when your lords and masters tread upon you and enslave you. At one point it had something to do with taxes, at another - with slavery. Thirst for power also works. The society can drop the pretenses of civility very quickly (technically, at any time when civil methods are no longer advantageous.)
shooting people does what? turns you into a target for a manhunt. that's it
Largely yes, it does that. However it also tells others that their actions have consequences. Some people understand only the language of force; you can find many such people in your local MS13 gang - or, as Chris Dorner tells us, at LAPD headquarters. He may be wrong even in theory; and killing people over verbal offenses or over dismissal from a job is a terrible overreaction. He is very likely to be a mental patient because even in his manifesto you can see explosive rage where a reasonable man would record the conversation on his cell phone, then call his lawyer and get rich.
i don't really know why this stupid idea appeals to some people unless you are actually an unhinged individual
Mr. Dorner is unhinged, it is obvious from any one out of the many hints that he provided. Naturally, he is absolutely sure that he is perfectly sane and his actions are "necessary evil." All insane people are sure that they are sane. Half of his manifesto is talking about petty offenses that he was subjected to at work. He then proceeds to make a mountain out of that. A normal person would simply quit and move to a city with better PD, or he would take a different job altogether.
What stops DHS from continuing to arrest people wherever they want? Was anyone at DHS *punished* for this drug bust? Possession is 90% of the law, and DHS has you cuffed on the ground. Supreme Court is far away.
You only think you were unobserved.
It doesn't matter. He bypassed the customs and border guards. He could carry *anything* in his boat - or anyone, to that matter.
However I don't know how could the border guards tell the difference between his boat (that came from the outside of the invisible line) and any boat that never left the US territory. There are thousands of those boats in water on any given day, all moving chaotically and reporting to no one. You cannot tell the difference between the boat that came to LA from Hawaii and the boat that came to LA from San Diego. Even the satellite observation is pointless if two identical boats approach the same point at the border and then "turn around" and go back where they came from. Especially at night. You have to be on site to notice that the boats did not turn around; the only things that did come back were the captain and the vessel's paperwork.
You painted a sad but true picture of a rogue state.
If we had any integrity maybe we could have just publicly retracted our participation in the Geneva convention if we don't want to follow it.
No, "we" don't want to quit Geneva conventions because "we" want others to follow them when some of our soldiers are captured by the enemy. There was a lot of noise made that Iran took a picture of captured UK sailors "in violation of Geneva conventions." (I guess next time Iranians won't bother to prove that they treated their detainees well.)
The question is whether there is even a point trying to live up to a standard of morality and ethics in foreign relations
On an individual level everyone should live up to a standard of morality and ethics. Otherwise bad karma will bite you. Not in a religious sense; gods rarely interfere in human affairs (except FSM, who is always nearby, tweaking your measurements :-) Bad karma comes back just as a reflection of your own bad actions. Sell drugs, be killed by another drug dealer. Go shoot some "brown people" - don't wonder why you got shot up yourself. That's the primary mechanism of karma, and it works very well.
On the national level ... well, accept the fact that you, as a citizen, have no control or even influence over political decisions. You are nothing but a worker ant whose only purpose is to make war materiel for your masters. Humanity knows of only one way to repair the damage; it's in the fourth box at this point.
I would rather live in a country where we had more expensive gasoline than one where we try to be the biggest bully, but maybe I am just naive.
Consider the option of Canada, if you are not afraid of -20C temperatures (at best) in winter. As the exodus picks up (for many reasons, political being the least important) the immigration rules will be tightened. At least you will stop financing killing people all over the world. As things are, you are "running with a machine gun and shooting brown people up" for about two months per year, considering your tax share and the percentage of taxes that directly and indirectly go to the altar of death. You don't have to be a grunt with a rifle; your hands are just as bloody if you buy ammo for the grunt, or even food, so that he can do his job in comfort. Every US taxpayer is guilty of that, and every US voter is guilty of electing a member of the War Party to the throne.
1. Except congress never declared war on Afghanistan or Iraq, and certainly not on Yemen or Pakistan.
Occupying force of armed foreigners on your land, sent by a foreign state, is all the proof of war that anyone needs. Who is giving a desert rat's behind about the fact that Congress hasn't authorized this war, or tens of wars prior?
Unlike wars against other sovereign nations, the enemy "soldiers" in Iraq and Afghanistan are actually also enemies of the local government.
Creative use of puppet governments is an old art. The one in Kabul is hardly the first example. Those puppets are convenient, aren't they? You pull a string and the puppet says what you want it to say.
The Taliban insurgency wouldn't have been possible without sufficient, widespread popular support. Taliban has that support; Karzai does not.
Imagine if China occupies the USA and makes one John Smith, a Chinese citizen, the new President of the USA? Will you obey his orders? The said John will otherwise call you a bad man, and the occupying force will blow you away, no questions asked or answered. Will it be OK with you?
I can't say about Iraq, but Afghanistan does not have a functioning government. It has one Mayor of Kabul and a bunch of warlords all around him, who occasionally say that they want his head on a pike. (At other times they don't say it out loud.) Insurgency is native to Afghanistan, and it is traditional, and it will not go away because a US-educated lawyer tells them so. In a democracy the power belongs to the people. It is interesting to note that Afghanistan, by this definition, is more democratic than the USA.
1. Is what we are doing warfare? why? or why not?
It is warfare because the strikes are done by military, against unspecific targets, without a court order for termination (even if one could be issued,) and in foreign countries. Additionally, warfare is carried out for political goals (removal of threat, for example) before the fact - whereas police actions are carried out to capture criminals after the fact. Police activities are under control of a judge. Military activities are under control of the political authorities - ultimately, under the President's command.
Some say strikes against civilians are terrorism. Perhaps so, and perhaps not. Strikes *specifically* on civilian targets, like those done by Clinton against Serbia, were probably terrorism. Strikes done largely on combatants are not terrorism. Terrorism is defined as warfare against noncombatants to achieve a political goal. There is no political goal to achieve by blowing villagers' huts up.
Most Taliban fighters are not uniformed. It las legal meaning because they have free will to fight. Many guerillas took part in World War II; and many uniformed soldiers fought willingly even when they could desert. IMO if you fight against a state you are at war with that state. A criminal does not fight against the state, and does not attack citizens of that state just because they are citizens. That's where, I think, the dividing line is.
2. Should warfare even be exempt from due process? why? or why not?
Warfare is exempt from due process by millennia of practice and because the soldiers of the enemy are not criminals. They would be criminals (in their own country) if they don't fight against you. They have no free will, in most cases. This is why captured enemy soldiers are not put on trial. They are not guilty. The only legal constraint on warfare is in a few internatonal treaties.
3. Should US citizens be given a level of due process better than non-US citizens?
No. The 5th Amendment uses the word "persons", not "citizens." Any sentient being under US Constitution's jurisdiction is a person. Anything else would open the door to citizens holding foreigners as slaves or as targets for archery practice.
I know this is a joke but have you ever grown a rose bush?
My grandparents did. It was pretty hard, considering the climate (-20C in winter is normal and expected for extended periods of time.) Maybe roses grow like kudzu where you live, but I haven't observed that firsthand.
Sure. However too few people (of all walks of life) have affinity for arts and beautiful things. Ghetto dwellers have plenty of free time, but how many works of art they have produced recently? See Sturgeon's Law.
the fact that efficiency continues to grow should make us richer, not poorer
This is still possible, if we figure out how to socialize those robotic factories that someone else built with money out of his pocket. Only the transition phase is unclear.
we better find something to do for the "useless" masses in their "spare" time.
And therein lies the problem. Make-work will not do. What idiot would be working - say, rolling a big stone up a mountain - if he doesn't have to? You will get robots that cater to your every whim; you will be living the lazy life. What will happen? You will get a massive crime problem because people always crave for power - or at least for respect, for their well-earned place in the society. Today you can become rich and be respected; you can work hard and be respected. This will not be possible anymore. What remains? There is only one way - you can *force* someone to respect you. Remember the London riots? A group of hooligans forced a man to take his clothes off. This was entirely innocent and harmless, compared to the "knockout king" games that are now popular in all ghettoized locations. Gangs will be forming from young men who have nothing better to do, and gangs will be fighting each other. This is what's coming - millions and millions of young and strong men who have no purpose in life and no motivation whatsoever to do anything productive (there is nothing, actually, that they can contribute - too few can write books or compose music.) Power over other humans is a very strong and addictive feeling. Vandalism will be also widespread, especially because it will be practically not punished - robots will rebuild for free. You may even have problem hiring the police - who is going to walk the beat at night and in rain when there is no damn reason to do that, unless you are one of very few men who will work just because it is the right thing to do. Those men will not last long; their own wives will do a quick job on their priorities in life.
In best case the society will devolve to the level of monkeys who don't need to work, to study, to invent - they have all the food and all the sex within reach. What else the majority will need?
This is the real question, not the technicality of the transition. This problem became apparent in 1970's in USSR. The society was technically prepared for a decent level of socialism, but the humans refused to be good little socialists - they tended to grab a piece here, to steal something there, to skip work elsewhere. Without application of a good whip to the bare backs of those bad workers they wouldn't do anything - and they didn't, and they were given the same social benefits as anyone else. That was ultimately the downfall of the socialist experiment - the tragedy of commons on the scale of a country. You need to find an answer to that before well-fed members of the brave new, robotically maintained world will start burning cities to the ground just for fun. They will do that, I have no doubt. The USA saw enough riots to learn how that works.
I do my research from my recipe database, which is synced to my phone. Usually this is while having lunch out somewhere.
It would be more efficient to do this research at home, where the supplies are. Because no sensor, outside of many-$K models, will tell you if this or that cheese is still edible. It's not just it's not moldy yet - you also need to consider if it is dry like a rock. (Dental implants cost more than a new bar of cheese.)
Cameras will not peer through the glass of bottles with herbs and will not tell you how much is remaining. It is a challenge to measure the remaining volume even if you are in business of making sensors for huge tanks full of stuff. Making a sensor that is cheap enough to be disposable is not possible with the current technology and the current wallet of an average customer.
And no, I won't re-buy smoked paprika and white pepper when I use them up, "just in case" I make a recipe that requires them again in the next year.
I see. You are unwilling to spend $3 on a bottle of pepper that is always usable and lasts forever, but you are ready to spend hundreds of dollars on technology that will not last more than a few years and will not be sufficiently reliable from day zero.
Large warehouses do maintain incremental inventory records by integrating input and output. But periodically they have to close the doors of the warehouse and to count everything, to reset the calculations. You can do the same - keep track of additions and expenses, and from time to time you open the cabinets up and physically check how much sugar is in this box, how much vegetable oil is in that bottle, and so on. I cannot think of a technology that would report all that while being so cheap that you can afford it. Food is too numerous in kind and too variable in state, shape, color, smell and every other parameter.
If I had room to space things out, pan and zoom cameras would be awesome.
Perhaps you need a fisheye camera and a LED light source inside the cabinet (or the refrigerator.) If you want it, why to deny yourself this toy - go ahead and build it! I do such things all the time (the WAF in this house is unbounded.)
Too bad nobody invents anything anymore. We'll never be able to have a fridge that can tell whats in it without someone having to scan bar codes all the time.
That's not the problem. I, or millions of others, can easily invent a jug that reports how much of the content is remaining. Are you willing to pay extra $1 for a $4 jug of milk with this function? And then throw that $1 into trash? When the economy is dying, jobs are disappearing, and we are transitioning from one recession right into another? Soon you will have all the time in the world to stare into your empty refrigerator.
every Sunday I bring my lovely wife a bouquet of fresh roses
How many rose bushes have you personally killed over those 20 years? Why do you hate them so much? :-)
I personally leave all the harmless vegetation where it belongs - in the ground. If some woman doesn't like that, it's her own problem.
It's far more useful to know what to buy, rather than to know what you already have. Those are different things. Besides, the refrigerator is not the only place where you keep food supplies. You may need salt, juice, oatmeal, pasta, rice, beans... lots of stuff is NOT in the refrigerator. Do you plan to install pan and zoom cameras in the pantry and in all the cabinets?
The best tool for food shopping is ... the shopping list. You scribble an item in whenever you remember about it, and when you are in the store you have the complete list. You don't need to do research in the store - it is neither convenient nor reliable, and besides you probably don't have time to contemplate things while in the store - you have many other places to go to.
The past 60 years were special because at least during major parts of this time the music economy *did* generate enough income to live and create (not to be rich) for music beyond the mainstream.
The past 60 years were probably the peak of human labor efficiency. A single worker could feed the entire family, as I understand. There was plenty of cash in the economy.
The efficiency continues to grow, but the human involvement drops. Tomorrow *everything* will be done by robots, and humans - having no meaningful jobs - will be what, extinct? They sure won't have spare change for music. The state of things that you prefer can exist only in a wealthy society. I think we are past that; the future holds only a high caste of select few engineers and managers that take care of robotic factories, and a low caste of "useless." (How a human can compete with a computer?) We are almost there; but for now, since we don't have metal robots to do the work, we use flesh and blood robots, also known as Chinese workers. They aren't as cheap, but they are functionally equivalent.
At least the link is easy to hit ;-) Not that there is any reason to. NSFW and such.
this would be a major change in the way our society has treated its artists at least in the decades after WW2
Why would that period of time be any special, compared to the way our society treated creators for 5,000 years of recorded history prior?
Every service will be paid exactly as much as the customer is willing to pay and the performer is willing to do it for. I can understand why a group of young boys cannot live on their music: because they aren't producing enough value! For example, the group of three spends a year and makes one CD that plays for 45 minutes. 1000 people in the world bought one, bringing in about $5K in revenue. Is this good or bad?
It is good because it is the true value of their product. I, for example, would not want their CD (I'd rather send the money to Rammstein, they at least know a thing or two about notes.) I may be wrong at that, having not heard the panicky crowd, but I'm comfortable in my ignorance :-)
This means that the band is simply not making enough public good to ask for an equivalent amount of public good back, in form of food, housing, etc. (what we normally call "money" as a shortcut.) Those guys may be OK in what they do, but they aren't doing enough of it. Perhaps there is no way to do more; as you said, they can only tour one city at a time, and they are limited to German-speaking countries. Well, I already mentioned some artists that overcame this little problem - and opened up a large market for themselves, a market that they cannot saturate even if they are on a tour every day of their lives.
The crew from Airplane should get a job. Their music may be nice, but I do not expect to get paid and live in luxury just because I whistle a tune for a minute every morning. People have to work hard to earn their living. Other people work from 9 to 5 moving boxes, driving trucks, welding metal. Musicians on tours work just as hard (I witnessed that firsthand.) But working hard is not enough; you also must do something that enough people consider useful.
Dirt and concrete floors are FAR more expensive than the best Persian rug. Just check out the prices of real estate. Those floors have to be attached to something...
In general you are right, though. "Worth having" == "optional, luxury item that one can easily do without." Optional items are cheap if their only utility value is small - but not zero. Companies that violate this rule lose in the market - nobody wants to buy their *useful* products for the asked price. (Perhaps MS' Surface is going down that route.) On the other hand, luxury items, like old paintings, or those hand-made rugs, command high price because they are unique, regardless of how much value you get out of that painting by Renoir.
Music is not finite. Live performances of a specific artist may be finite (nobody lives forever, especially bands) - but recordings of that music have no replication cost, no deterioration, and the only factor that keeps the price above zero is convenience, gratitude, and laws. Music recordings will never be a luxury item that people must fight each other to get. This leaves it in the "nice to have if I can be bothered" category - in this case, in a bargain bin, priced to sell for $1.
Yes. But things that are "worth having" are usually priced lower than things that you "must have."
IMO, very few pieces of music qualify for "must have." Consequently, "avant chello" - that may be had as a curiosity - may well be somewhere among free samples and free newspapers.
To be honest, I don't know, I am just trying to find some optimism here.
Understood. But just for sake of argument:
Of course it should be. But still somehow here we are today
Yes. That's the definition of malfunction. You don't change your approach to an essential device if the device decided to quit on you. It remains the device, and it needs to be repaired or replaced with a new one. If a fuse blows I do not start learning to live in darkness (that would be a compromise) - I fix the fuse and whatever caused it to blow.
"What compromise can you suggest here?" -- Restore liberty, restore the Bill of Rights, kick out the corruption [...]
I don't see a compromise here. Those are your wishes. Why the government should do any of these things? Who or what forces it to do so? All three branches of the government are now under the same roof, and the fourth one (the media) has been bought out.
I guess government can either do this the easy way or the hard way.
There are other factors at play. The USA is facing an imminent economic collapse because of chronic mismanagement and because the level of consumption does not even nearly match the level of production. I very much doubt that an averaged american even works enough to buy his daily bread. His food comes borrowed abroad, in form of free money that the USA prints to finance the ever-growing international trade (and the inflation of the USD.) Technically speaking, the USA can feed itself - this is one of few areas where the country is good. But the food cannot be produced without fertilizers, fuel, machinery, water, power, and it cannot be delivered without oil and trucks. Lacking those, the agricultural output will drop to the levels of 19th century - and we don't even have enough horses and other domestic cattle to pull the plow, except Amish.
As soon as the collapse happens, the government will be forced to establish martial law and a rigid system of food distribution (for those lucky enough to be under such a system.) Therefore, what's the point of trading political power for being nice if a few years down the road the government will still be forced to do the unpopular move?
But even if we pretend that no collapse is ever going to happen and everything is just peachy, let's consider why the government would want to step back and relax the fascist rules and regulations that it imposed on the country? The only reason is to prevent the uprising. (With the collapse out of the picture, the oppressive rule would be the only cause.) What is the upside and what is the downside for the government if it doesn't step back? The upside is that the government gets absolute control over the country. The downside is that some troublemakers with guns are killed. Hey, why is this a downside? It's an advantage; we don't need no stinking troublemakers here. So what is the real downside then? Bad PR abroad? Hardly a concern when you sit on a good stash of nuclear weapons. Attrition among the peasants and grunts of your own army? Hah, that's what they are here for - to die for their masters. Some shooting around, some cities ravaged? Big deal, who needs those cities anyway? On the other hand, a lot of "disadvantaged folks" (a.k.a. ghetto dwellers) will be summarily destroyed, cleaning the slate for the new society where work is not a luxury and not a privilege, it's the back-breaking duty, and FSM forbid you slack in that.
So if you think cynically enough you see that the government *wants* the civil war, as long as they can win it easily enough. This will scrap the old USA and will create a completely new country; the term USSA is not new, but perhaps it will be fitting. This country will be renewed (the current society of slackers is hopeless) and everyone will be given his daily food (just like in USSR.) This new country will be actually viable, for a while, because 100 million free laborers are bound to make something useful, after all. The old USD will be abandoned; its current
Face it. If the military goes nuts and wants to seize power, there's nothing an assault rifle or three hundred million assault rifles is going to do to stop them.
You don't even need an "assault rifle", whatever it may be. You have 100,000,000 rifles in the country. Let's say only 10% of them will be ever fired at the enemy. Let's say only 10% of those shots will hit the target. What do we have as result? The one million army is wiped out, down to the last man. That's the current size of the US Army, counting all the non-combat personnel and discounting all the desertions that are bound to happen.
Note that it doesn't matter what happens to the shooter. He can be killed on the spot; but more likely he will get away, to fight another day. I don't even mention shooting from a well prepared position that allows the shooter the preplanned escape and at the same time leaves the position mined. The score then could be 10 to 1, with the one escaping without a scratch. The reason for that is that the rebels will have the initiative; they don't have to fight here and now. The soldiers will have to go where told, position themselves in the streets and do their patrols there, in the open. They will have no initiative, and they will be defenseless against a man with a .223 hundreds of yards away, in a maze of buildings and alleyways and basements and roofs and everywhere in between. How many troops will it take to search a city block in NYC? What is the chance of them finding a hidden rifle hung in a garbage shute? Even if they are lucky, what is the chance of matching the rifle to any inhabitant of that city block? (Gloves are cheap, and they can be easily destroyed after use.) You don't have to look like Rambo either; an old, one-legged and one-eyed man may be the one who did the shot; or a 14 y/o girl, or a fat matron, or a man with a briefcase and in a business suit. There is just no way to tell.
The government is not your negotiating partner. It is your tool, your slave. It shouldn't have any interests of its own. If your vacuum cleaner doesn't work you don't negotiate the new terms with it, you throw it out and get a new one.
all this military claptrap is a f-cking waste of money
It is the side effect of the government forming a society within the society - and now having its own interests. The military and helicopters protect that privileged society. What do you do with your computer if it gets a virus? Do you negotiate with it about how many your files it may overwrite per day, or how often it may crash the system?
Conflict is expensive, and often slows down progress.
Conflict is the only way out of many dead end situations. Imagine that you are a slave who is abused, and your owner is living happily, spending fruits of your labor. What compromise can you suggest here? He gives you one free hour per month, and in return you do what? You have no goods to bargain with because you are not in control of anything.
"more likely to shoot himself in the leg and shouldn't be trusted with anything more dangerous than a pointed stick"
Countries have done many mobilizations in the course of last few centuries. In each case all they got were draftees who were "more likely to shoot himself in the leg and shouldn't be trusted with anything more dangerous than a pointed stick." How long did it take to train them? Not long at all, especially if they wanted to learn. A volunteer will be very eager to learn because he knows that his life is on the line; otherwise he wouldn't become a volunteer; he'd just sell his weapons for food, and those who are more competent will use them. The civil war in the USA will not have a front, and there will be no territories to conquer and hold. It will be a war of attrition. The regular army will be sitting ducks just due to the nature of their job. A foot patrol, count four, leaves the base? A foot patrol, count three, returns. Repeat this day in and day out, and pretty soon all the army can do is to hole up behind the walls of the base and dare not venture out. This is the Afghanistan mode, one you can see today. Such surrounded troops are already defeated because they are not capable of doing their job. Eventually an enterprising water engineer finds a tap and poisons their water, and they are done with.