Most people say "I don't like RPM" when they really mean "I don't like the package system as a whole".
Then someone will argue about apt for RPM, which just shows they're not used to a system built around apt rather than playing with individual repositories.
On a debian based system (like ubuntu or progeny) the entire distribution is built from the ground up with apt. Fedora isn't. Fedora also has never tried to include damn near every piece of free software on the planet, whereas debian includes all kinds of insane packages. It's rare for someone to need something that's not in the debian system (some exceptions apply, of course, since debian doesn't package a lot of nonfree stuff or stuff that's got legal entanglements).
What this means is that installing something large (like, say, mythtv, which I've done on fedora, and will state right here it's a major PITA) is a drawn out project on fedora or pretty much any other system that's not built on apt, it's a piece of cake on debian. Exceptions exist, of course, but in general this holds true.
Red Hat has excellent reasoning for why it doesn't package everything debian does - most notably, they're a lot smaller than the debian community and they are expected to support their product. Debian will tell you up front that the only support you get are your own two legs, a few mailing lists, an irc server, documentation, some newsgroups, some forums, and whatever you pay for from third parties. That (excepting the 3rd party support) is unacceptable to most large companies.
Anyway, most people don't have any beef with RPM as a format. Granted, it's not based on earlier widespread formats like.deb is, but damn near everything has tools to work with RPM so that's not much of an issue (and RPM is a published, open standard. Yeah, Red Hat created it, but almost everyone besides slackware and the debian-based distros use it).
They don't enforce the rule. There's no blowjob police in the military. What they do is tack that on to charges of a sexual nature - rape, sexual assault, etc. - to increase your chance of conviction and your time in prison.
Until the supreme court rules sodomy laws unconstitutional, most states also had laws just like that. They used them in the same way.
Now, I'm sure you'll be able to find an example or two of people who have actually been convicted for receiving oral sex from a consentual adult, but those are the extremely rare exceptions. In general, it's a non-issue unless you're a rapist or child molester.
I don't agree with your general assumption that people in the military are poorly educated and will follow immoral orders. It certainly doesn't translate to the Air Force. What I met there was a fairly representative sample of what I've met in the civilian world.
The Army and Navy are pretty much the same way. They don't want servicemembers who can't think for themselves. If you have poor judgement, you'll get yourself and your team killed (or your ship disabled). Being able to think also means you can consider the moral ramifications of what you're doing. You can't get one without the other unless you raise people from childhood that way, and the government would have very limited use of such people in the general military anyway. For those few uses the government has where someone willing (or eager) to follow immoral orders, there's plenty of people around from all classes of society they can use.
I won't comment on the Marines, since I was stationed in Okinawa and developed a strong dislike for them, and that would color any comment I made. Still, I don't think the Marines want complete zombies either.
It's not a class issue, and it's not an education issue - after all, all officers are required to have at least a bachelor's degree (at least in the Air Force, and I think it's the same in any branch), and enlisted folks start at higher rank if they've been to college (which encourages people who started college but couldn't finish for whatever reason to join up). I believe that most of the branches pay all or at least most of your tuition for college classes you take while in the military - the Air Force pays 100% tuition nowdays, and enlisted troops are encouraged to take advantage of it (in general, of course. There's the occasional commander who likes to be an ass about it, but that's rare).
Reguarding the draft, who do you think would be more likely to fight successfully? A guy who has spent three years in the Army, done multiple drills, and wants to be there, or a guy who got forced into it and whose training was trimmed as short as possible in order to get him out on the field?
The point about Japan I don't agree with. We had no reason to try to stop their expansionist moves in southeast Asia - in fact, it was WWII that brought us out of our isolationism. We were, up until that bombing, planning on staying out of the war alltogether, with the exception of arms sales and so forth.
As far as attacking being illegal, that depends on the circumstances. If we were attacked, then retaliation would be more than appropriate. Besides, most Americans don't give a rat's ass about the U.N. anyway.
Like I said before, I make no claim that the U.S. doesn't push people around. We most certainly do. And long-range weapons do make it easier for us to do it. That doesn't mean they don't also protect the citizens of the U.S. be relocating the fighting elsewhere. After all, you've had your homeland turned to smoking rubble. We haven't.
The National Guard is to protect the state. They do get used as regular military these days, but their main purpose is to act as the state army/air force.
Marines and B-52's exist so that we don't have to fight here. We can take the fight to you.
The first use of the marines (if I remember right) was to invade Tripoli, because they had started attacking our vessels when we refused to pay them not to.
A good example of carpet bombing that wasn't used to just push people around was the bombing we performed on Japan. They attacked us in Pearl Harbor, and then from then on out we took the fight to them.
I won't dispute that they get used to force the will of the U.S. They do. But they also protect us by moving the fight away from the citizens.
And here's the point where you need to learn not to jump to conclusions, and read the actual content of the message.
"I could just as easily have said Mexico" means that I could have used Mexico instead of Canada in my example. It does not mean that we need to worry about Mexico. Indeed, a couple posts back, I stated that Canada was only an example, and I wasn't saying we needed to worry about them either.
The rest of your argument is fine. I don't agree with you, but at least its on topic to the original point I made.
Three attackers? When did I say we needed to worry about Mexico? You're putting words in my mouth again.
My original point was that the military protects us by preventing others from attacking us, and the current activities in the middle east have nothing to do with "preserving our freedom". I made no comment on the size requirements of our military. Reread my original post, examine it without making baseless assumptions, and respond to that if you have something to say. Making up stuff to argue with is no different than arguing with yourself, and for that you can leave me out of it.
You assume that Canada doesn't invade simply because they don't have a chance to win. IOW, you presume that invading other countries is a foregone conclusion and that a strong military deterrant is the only way to prevent this.
Don't go putting words in my mouth, I just woke up and haven't brushed my teeth yet.
I know as much as anyone that Canada wouldn't invade the U.S. in our current political climate, even if we disbanded the military entirely. They have no reason to, and it would put undue strain on their administration to try to govern us.
I used Canada as an example because they have a modern military and they share a huge border with us. I could just as easily have said Mexico, except I seriously doubt Mexico has any chance at all of beating us in a war. They just don't have the resources.
National security is much like computer security in the sense that you need several layers of it. Diplomacy and good foreign relations are good enough for Canada, but what about Iran or North Korea?
I agree with you to some extent - our troops aren't out "defending our freedom" in iraq right now. I don't have any freedom in iraq, because I live in the U.S. and have never been there (finished my enlistment about the time we started sending troops there).
They are defending our freedom in the sense that they exist and are a very good deterrant. They keep, say, Canada from invading us because Canada knows it couldn't win without extremely significant loss of life, if at all.
So they're not out there defending our freedom - they're right here defending our freedom. I wish more people would realize that before spouting comments like the one you're talking about.
I think you're treating a symptom, not the cause. If our guys are ill equipped out there, that just means more will die. Think Vietnam here - if our troops had the proper equipment, training, and support back then, there'd be a lot less names on the wall.
The guys in uniform don't (usually) start the war - they follow the orders of those who do. Your best bet, rather than reducing the defense budget now, is to convince congress to quit sending our troops off to fight. Once we're not fighting all the time, then we can worry about reducing the defense budget.
In America, the military doesn't protect your civil rights, except in the sense that they ward off invasion (the exception being if you're a member of the military, in which case your civil rights are quite a different matter, and the ones you don't sign over are protected by the military directly). The military is more or less the strong arm of the government in international affairs. Domestically, the military gets used more often for peaceful ventures such as disaster recovery and parades than it does in any martial sense. They can be used against the people, of course, but it's very rare for that to happen in the U.S.
Most military members do care quite a bit about civil rights, but they're not in a position to protect them unless ordered to.
Police act much more individually, so it depends on the cop. Some will play by the rules, some won't. Like Bob Dyllan said, sometimes you just find yourself over the line - in that sort of situation, best hope you get some good ones. In the end, though, it's up to the courts to protect your civil liberties.
It's been my experience that CD's scratch a lot more easily than vinyl.
I've got a ton of vinyl, and once owned quite a few CD's (most were stolen), and I took good care of both. The CD's would still get scratched, while the vinyl would be fine. Arguably, the vinyl had worse treatment because some of my records didn't have paper sleeves inside the album covers.
Of course, you started noticing trends... Geffen CD's would scratch if you looked at them too hard. I had a Motley Crue CD that I just threw around in the bottom of my stereo cabinet in the dust and never got scratched (I found out the hard way I don't like the Crue). One CD never left my CD player (an expensive sony 5-disc changer) and got a scratch somehow.
That sort of behavior taught me to buy my music from garage sales and flea markets on vinyl, which is what I did until mp3's became easily available. Still got all my records, but I don't know if I could find a music CD in my house if I looked for it.
Well, if England hadn't forced the damn puritans out, making them come over here and set up shop, we'd probably be just fine. We had an anti-sex bais from the start. Burning people alive or pressing them under barn doors with large rocks was OK though.
If it wasn't for the catholics (Maryland) and episcopalians (southern states), and maybe a little bit of the quakers (Pennsylvania - they were prudish but didn't force their views on people as much as the puritans), we'd be in a right mess over here. The puritans may be (mostly) gone now, but their legacy lives on.
Of course in the UK and the US it's illegal to possess certain movies because their content is considered to be illegal for reasons quite unrelated to censorship.
Dunno about the U.K., but in the U.S. there's very few types of films that can't be shown for reasons not related to censorship. This would be stuff like your neighbor's home videos, if you don't have permission from him, pirated movies, and stuff that's been given a security classification. Basically, it's OK to watch pretty much anything if you have permission from the people who own the rights to it (or fair use, which is arguably permission anyway).
Everything else I can think of that can't be shown is directly related to censorship. Child porn, snuff films (I think they're illegal, anyway), etc - they're restricted due to censorship. That's one of the few places almost everyone agrees with censorship, but that doesn't change what it is.
In Oklahoma, it's illegal to possess or use cigarettes if you're under 18. The cops give the kids tickets for it these days. A parent giving cigarettes to his/her child is "contributing to the deliquency of a minor", which is a crime, although I think it's a misdemeanor.
It wasn't that was a few years ago. Back in the late 80's a friend of mine was prescribed cigarettes at the age of 14 for his stress. I'm pretty sure you can't even do that now.
I'm not saying classified material doesn't leak out onto the net from tiem to time, but rest assured that it's very limited. When I was in (I left in 2002), there was no routable connection between SIPRNET and NIPRNET (the unclassified military network, which connects to the internet), so any classified material that gets out is because of mistakes. You know, the kind of mistakes they give you a ton of training on how to avoid and give you jailtime if you make...
They've got very stringent, written-out plans for how to deal with classified material being exposed. I've seen it in action many times with unclassified file servers dedicated for intelligence agencies. Worse comes to worse, they can disconnect the entire military from the rest of the internet if it's bad enough. All it takes is an order from a 4-star and a couple of button flips. Oh, and a _damn_ good reason:)
So I wouldn't worry overmuch about classified material being released. There's a lot of people whose jobs consist of preventing that, and they take their jobs very seriously. You probably would too if a mistake in your job would land you in military prison.
Like most military bases where the occupying force has some impunity, the off-duty soldiers are a little rowdy. 1) How would the locals perceive this, as a moral issue? Does anyone have a moral right to occupy the USA? 2) Would anyone protest, or perhaps organize violent resistance? Would there be any moral arguments for doing so?
Look at the situation in Okinawa in the late 90's and early 2000's - mostly civil, with a few incidents - I remember some marines burning down a bar while I was there, and one marine came home drunk, entered the apartment below his accidentally, and cuddled up with a 14 year old and fell asleep (nothing sexual happened, he basically stumbled into the room, climbed into bed, and passed out, never knowing that wasn't his wife next to him).
Some locals protested, the local military commander imposed some restrictions on personnel, etc. People have protested U.S. military presence there for ages, but the majority supported us. Things got a little bad for a while after a rape of a girl by an air force guy, but the military worked hard to overcome the bad image.
All in all, when there's military around, you see more stupid crime and sex crime. That just comes along with having a bunch of horny 18-year-olds around with few american women available.
All in all though, most places see more benefit from foreign troops than detriment. It drives the economy - look at what happened to the economy in the Phillipenes when the U.S. pulled out all their bases - they lost a major cash cow in the sense of american military members with fat paychecks (compared to the local economy). Most military personnel stationed overseas get along fine with the locals and are interested in experiencing the local culture (excepting places like Saudi, where there is very limited interaction), and the money that comes in because of it generally outweighs the bad points (rapes excepted, but they're a lot more rare than people think).
As far as sovreignity goes, that varies from place to place. I doubt anyone seriously thinks U.S. bases in Italy and Britain are a threat to those countries' sovreignity. Japan isn't allowed a military due to the treaty at the end of WWII, so we protect them - in their case, they've lost sovreignity, but we don't control their country - just limit their military forces. Occupation is what you see in Iraq, where we are more or less calling the shots and using the military to back it up - and the moral questions raised there are in constant debate.
You'll solve the orange cone season by lowering the voting age. The reason the U.S. has a uniform voting age of 21 is because the U.S. Department of Transportation won't give a state highway funds unless it conforms. Louisiana was the last holdout, and even they folded - and 18 year olds drinking at mardi gras was a major income for them.
They have tools for figuring out what roads need expansion and how to route traffic. You've probably seen them - they're these little black wires attached to a box chained to a random road sign. They'll stay there for a couple days and then be gone.
Those count how many cars roll over them. They're not 100% accurate, but they don't need to be - you're looking for a ballpark figure anyway. You can have someone check the box at certain intervals to see how traffic varies during different times of the day. Best of all - your privacy is perfectly safe - it can't tell the difference between your tires and anyone elses, unless you drive with sawblades on your hubs.
Of course, then there's little shits like I was when I was a kid, bouncing a bicycle tire on the thing. Dunno if it actually counted it, but I did notice they reworked the street a few months later...
Well, I can't compare with European traffic 'cause I never made it over there, but I can compare it with driving in Okinawa.
One major thing I noticed is that at least in the western states, a large truck can go pretty much anywhere. In Okinawa, that's definiately not true - there are places compact cars have difficulties with. The lanes in the U.S. are much wider, and the distances between towns (again, talking western U.S.) is much farther. The speed limits are higher, but then again that's not too different from Europe, from what I hear - in Okinawa, the highest speed limit is 80 kph, and that's just on one toll road - all other highways are 60 at the most. Traffic there was also really crowded compared to here, although there's certainly areas of the U.S. that have it just as bad.
Highway driving... well, you can drive for quite a while on most highways without having to slow down for some idiot as long as you're not trying to drive on a holiday. The roads are boring though - we went the utilitarian approach, so most of our Interstate system is long and straight and boring. Germany actually tried to make theirs scenic from what I hear. Of course, the shortest distance between two points is a line, so arguably you get where you're going quicker. In Okinawa, the roads twist around every which way, but then again the roads are older than the invention of the automobile.
I think the size of the roads are the biggest difference to me. I own a 1965 ford galaxie, and there's no way I could have driven it in a residential area of Okinawa - it's wider than the road. I'd have problems with most business areas. The size thing goes with everything, though - you'd really have to experience the difference to understand - _everything_ is big in America. Compare the size of Oklahoma (where I live) with some European countries some time, then reflect on the fact that only 3 million people live in the entire state. We tend to spread out a bit.
Nope, never made it out that way, but that sounds pretty cool. How well does the system work for you? Is it actively monitored by cameras and such? Just curious.
It's true that trucks take longer to stop, but here on the U.S. Interstate system (I'm assuming you're not from the U.S., given you're speaking metric) trucks are everywhere.
What you get is a high speed traffic jam - thirty cars waiting on a combination of trucks being forced to drive slow and slow drivers who think it's perfectly fine to drive next to a truck and match its speed. Swift (a trucking company in the U.S.) used to govern their trucks down to 65, and it caused all kinds of problems for other drivers. They're obstacles, just like putting rocks in the middle of the road.
When all vehicles have the same speed limit, there's less variance in the actual speed people drive, so you encounter fewer vehicles (unless you're a speeder, of course).
And remember - those truckers are very likely better drivers than the people in the cars. Spend enough time in a truck and you'll see how little most regular drivers know about highway driving.
The Autobahn doesn't really compare well to U.S. driving - the driving situation is too different. All the little rules that are just considered common courtesy in the U.S. are law there (drive in the rightmost lane on long stretches, only pass on the left, leave the left lane as soon as you pass, etc.). Here, on a four lane highway in Oklahoma, I drive consistantly on the left because I go about five miles over, although I pull to the right if someone fast comes up behind me. In Germany, I'd get ticketed for that.
Also bear in mind that the Autobahn is monitored electronically and the speed limits are variable depeinding on the amount of traffic at any one time. The U.S. doesn't have anything like that (and really, with as much Interstate as we've got here, we can't).
Better would be to compare states with similar driving conditions but different speed limits. In Oklahoma, the speed limit on the Interstate is 70. In Illinois, it's 65. In Texas, I think it's lower for trucks than cars (which always seemed abysmally stupid to me - you're causing obstacles in traffic that way). It makes more sense to compare the accident rates on selected areas of similar highway and derive your results from that.
Slashdot Mirror
Most people say "I don't like RPM" when they really mean "I don't like the package system as a whole".
.deb is, but damn near everything has tools to work with RPM so that's not much of an issue (and RPM is a published, open standard. Yeah, Red Hat created it, but almost everyone besides slackware and the debian-based distros use it).
Then someone will argue about apt for RPM, which just shows they're not used to a system built around apt rather than playing with individual repositories.
On a debian based system (like ubuntu or progeny) the entire distribution is built from the ground up with apt. Fedora isn't. Fedora also has never tried to include damn near every piece of free software on the planet, whereas debian includes all kinds of insane packages. It's rare for someone to need something that's not in the debian system (some exceptions apply, of course, since debian doesn't package a lot of nonfree stuff or stuff that's got legal entanglements).
What this means is that installing something large (like, say, mythtv, which I've done on fedora, and will state right here it's a major PITA) is a drawn out project on fedora or pretty much any other system that's not built on apt, it's a piece of cake on debian. Exceptions exist, of course, but in general this holds true.
Red Hat has excellent reasoning for why it doesn't package everything debian does - most notably, they're a lot smaller than the debian community and they are expected to support their product. Debian will tell you up front that the only support you get are your own two legs, a few mailing lists, an irc server, documentation, some newsgroups, some forums, and whatever you pay for from third parties. That (excepting the 3rd party support) is unacceptable to most large companies.
Anyway, most people don't have any beef with RPM as a format. Granted, it's not based on earlier widespread formats like
They don't enforce the rule. There's no blowjob police in the military. What they do is tack that on to charges of a sexual nature - rape, sexual assault, etc. - to increase your chance of conviction and your time in prison.
Until the supreme court rules sodomy laws unconstitutional, most states also had laws just like that. They used them in the same way.
Now, I'm sure you'll be able to find an example or two of people who have actually been convicted for receiving oral sex from a consentual adult, but those are the extremely rare exceptions. In general, it's a non-issue unless you're a rapist or child molester.
I don't agree with your general assumption that people in the military are poorly educated and will follow immoral orders. It certainly doesn't translate to the Air Force. What I met there was a fairly representative sample of what I've met in the civilian world.
The Army and Navy are pretty much the same way. They don't want servicemembers who can't think for themselves. If you have poor judgement, you'll get yourself and your team killed (or your ship disabled). Being able to think also means you can consider the moral ramifications of what you're doing. You can't get one without the other unless you raise people from childhood that way, and the government would have very limited use of such people in the general military anyway. For those few uses the government has where someone willing (or eager) to follow immoral orders, there's plenty of people around from all classes of society they can use.
I won't comment on the Marines, since I was stationed in Okinawa and developed a strong dislike for them, and that would color any comment I made. Still, I don't think the Marines want complete zombies either.
It's not a class issue, and it's not an education issue - after all, all officers are required to have at least a bachelor's degree (at least in the Air Force, and I think it's the same in any branch), and enlisted folks start at higher rank if they've been to college (which encourages people who started college but couldn't finish for whatever reason to join up). I believe that most of the branches pay all or at least most of your tuition for college classes you take while in the military - the Air Force pays 100% tuition nowdays, and enlisted troops are encouraged to take advantage of it (in general, of course. There's the occasional commander who likes to be an ass about it, but that's rare).
Reguarding the draft, who do you think would be more likely to fight successfully? A guy who has spent three years in the Army, done multiple drills, and wants to be there, or a guy who got forced into it and whose training was trimmed as short as possible in order to get him out on the field?
The point about Japan I don't agree with. We had no reason to try to stop their expansionist moves in southeast Asia - in fact, it was WWII that brought us out of our isolationism. We were, up until that bombing, planning on staying out of the war alltogether, with the exception of arms sales and so forth.
As far as attacking being illegal, that depends on the circumstances. If we were attacked, then retaliation would be more than appropriate. Besides, most Americans don't give a rat's ass about the U.N. anyway.
Like I said before, I make no claim that the U.S. doesn't push people around. We most certainly do. And long-range weapons do make it easier for us to do it. That doesn't mean they don't also protect the citizens of the U.S. be relocating the fighting elsewhere. After all, you've had your homeland turned to smoking rubble. We haven't.
The National Guard is to protect the state. They do get used as regular military these days, but their main purpose is to act as the state army/air force.
Marines and B-52's exist so that we don't have to fight here. We can take the fight to you.
The first use of the marines (if I remember right) was to invade Tripoli, because they had started attacking our vessels when we refused to pay them not to.
A good example of carpet bombing that wasn't used to just push people around was the bombing we performed on Japan. They attacked us in Pearl Harbor, and then from then on out we took the fight to them.
I won't dispute that they get used to force the will of the U.S. They do. But they also protect us by moving the fight away from the citizens.
And here's the point where you need to learn not to jump to conclusions, and read the actual content of the message.
"I could just as easily have said Mexico" means that I could have used Mexico instead of Canada in my example. It does not mean that we need to worry about Mexico. Indeed, a couple posts back, I stated that Canada was only an example, and I wasn't saying we needed to worry about them either.
The rest of your argument is fine. I don't agree with you, but at least its on topic to the original point I made.
Three attackers? When did I say we needed to worry about Mexico? You're putting words in my mouth again.
My original point was that the military protects us by preventing others from attacking us, and the current activities in the middle east have nothing to do with "preserving our freedom". I made no comment on the size requirements of our military. Reread my original post, examine it without making baseless assumptions, and respond to that if you have something to say. Making up stuff to argue with is no different than arguing with yourself, and for that you can leave me out of it.
You assume that Canada doesn't invade simply because they don't have a chance to win. IOW, you presume that invading other countries is a foregone conclusion and that a strong military deterrant is the only way to prevent this.
Don't go putting words in my mouth, I just woke up and haven't brushed my teeth yet.
I know as much as anyone that Canada wouldn't invade the U.S. in our current political climate, even if we disbanded the military entirely. They have no reason to, and it would put undue strain on their administration to try to govern us.
I used Canada as an example because they have a modern military and they share a huge border with us. I could just as easily have said Mexico, except I seriously doubt Mexico has any chance at all of beating us in a war. They just don't have the resources.
National security is much like computer security in the sense that you need several layers of it. Diplomacy and good foreign relations are good enough for Canada, but what about Iran or North Korea?
I agree with you to some extent - our troops aren't out "defending our freedom" in iraq right now. I don't have any freedom in iraq, because I live in the U.S. and have never been there (finished my enlistment about the time we started sending troops there).
They are defending our freedom in the sense that they exist and are a very good deterrant. They keep, say, Canada from invading us because Canada knows it couldn't win without extremely significant loss of life, if at all.
So they're not out there defending our freedom - they're right here defending our freedom. I wish more people would realize that before spouting comments like the one you're talking about.
I think you're treating a symptom, not the cause. If our guys are ill equipped out there, that just means more will die. Think Vietnam here - if our troops had the proper equipment, training, and support back then, there'd be a lot less names on the wall.
The guys in uniform don't (usually) start the war - they follow the orders of those who do. Your best bet, rather than reducing the defense budget now, is to convince congress to quit sending our troops off to fight. Once we're not fighting all the time, then we can worry about reducing the defense budget.
Until then, I say give 'em the best we can.
In America, the military doesn't protect your civil rights, except in the sense that they ward off invasion (the exception being if you're a member of the military, in which case your civil rights are quite a different matter, and the ones you don't sign over are protected by the military directly). The military is more or less the strong arm of the government in international affairs. Domestically, the military gets used more often for peaceful ventures such as disaster recovery and parades than it does in any martial sense. They can be used against the people, of course, but it's very rare for that to happen in the U.S.
Most military members do care quite a bit about civil rights, but they're not in a position to protect them unless ordered to.
Police act much more individually, so it depends on the cop. Some will play by the rules, some won't. Like Bob Dyllan said, sometimes you just find yourself over the line - in that sort of situation, best hope you get some good ones. In the end, though, it's up to the courts to protect your civil liberties.
It's been my experience that CD's scratch a lot more easily than vinyl.
I've got a ton of vinyl, and once owned quite a few CD's (most were stolen), and I took good care of both. The CD's would still get scratched, while the vinyl would be fine. Arguably, the vinyl had worse treatment because some of my records didn't have paper sleeves inside the album covers.
Of course, you started noticing trends... Geffen CD's would scratch if you looked at them too hard. I had a Motley Crue CD that I just threw around in the bottom of my stereo cabinet in the dust and never got scratched (I found out the hard way I don't like the Crue). One CD never left my CD player (an expensive sony 5-disc changer) and got a scratch somehow.
That sort of behavior taught me to buy my music from garage sales and flea markets on vinyl, which is what I did until mp3's became easily available. Still got all my records, but I don't know if I could find a music CD in my house if I looked for it.
Well, if England hadn't forced the damn puritans out, making them come over here and set up shop, we'd probably be just fine. We had an anti-sex bais from the start. Burning people alive or pressing them under barn doors with large rocks was OK though.
If it wasn't for the catholics (Maryland) and episcopalians (southern states), and maybe a little bit of the quakers (Pennsylvania - they were prudish but didn't force their views on people as much as the puritans), we'd be in a right mess over here. The puritans may be (mostly) gone now, but their legacy lives on.
Of course in the UK and the US it's illegal to possess certain movies because their content is considered to be illegal for reasons quite unrelated to censorship.
Dunno about the U.K., but in the U.S. there's very few types of films that can't be shown for reasons not related to censorship. This would be stuff like your neighbor's home videos, if you don't have permission from him, pirated movies, and stuff that's been given a security classification. Basically, it's OK to watch pretty much anything if you have permission from the people who own the rights to it (or fair use, which is arguably permission anyway).
Everything else I can think of that can't be shown is directly related to censorship. Child porn, snuff films (I think they're illegal, anyway), etc - they're restricted due to censorship. That's one of the few places almost everyone agrees with censorship, but that doesn't change what it is.
In Oklahoma, it's illegal to possess or use cigarettes if you're under 18. The cops give the kids tickets for it these days. A parent giving cigarettes to his/her child is "contributing to the deliquency of a minor", which is a crime, although I think it's a misdemeanor.
It wasn't that was a few years ago. Back in the late 80's a friend of mine was prescribed cigarettes at the age of 14 for his stress. I'm pretty sure you can't even do that now.
I'm not saying classified material doesn't leak out onto the net from tiem to time, but rest assured that it's very limited. When I was in (I left in 2002), there was no routable connection between SIPRNET and NIPRNET (the unclassified military network, which connects to the internet), so any classified material that gets out is because of mistakes. You know, the kind of mistakes they give you a ton of training on how to avoid and give you jailtime if you make...
:)
They've got very stringent, written-out plans for how to deal with classified material being exposed. I've seen it in action many times with unclassified file servers dedicated for intelligence agencies. Worse comes to worse, they can disconnect the entire military from the rest of the internet if it's bad enough. All it takes is an order from a 4-star and a couple of button flips. Oh, and a _damn_ good reason
So I wouldn't worry overmuch about classified material being released. There's a lot of people whose jobs consist of preventing that, and they take their jobs very seriously. You probably would too if a mistake in your job would land you in military prison.
Like most military bases where the occupying force has some impunity, the off-duty soldiers are a little rowdy. 1) How would the locals perceive this, as a moral issue? Does anyone have a moral right to occupy the USA? 2) Would anyone protest, or perhaps organize violent resistance? Would there be any moral arguments for doing so?
Look at the situation in Okinawa in the late 90's and early 2000's - mostly civil, with a few incidents - I remember some marines burning down a bar while I was there, and one marine came home drunk, entered the apartment below his accidentally, and cuddled up with a 14 year old and fell asleep (nothing sexual happened, he basically stumbled into the room, climbed into bed, and passed out, never knowing that wasn't his wife next to him).
Some locals protested, the local military commander imposed some restrictions on personnel, etc. People have protested U.S. military presence there for ages, but the majority supported us. Things got a little bad for a while after a rape of a girl by an air force guy, but the military worked hard to overcome the bad image.
All in all, when there's military around, you see more stupid crime and sex crime. That just comes along with having a bunch of horny 18-year-olds around with few american women available.
All in all though, most places see more benefit from foreign troops than detriment. It drives the economy - look at what happened to the economy in the Phillipenes when the U.S. pulled out all their bases - they lost a major cash cow in the sense of american military members with fat paychecks (compared to the local economy). Most military personnel stationed overseas get along fine with the locals and are interested in experiencing the local culture (excepting places like Saudi, where there is very limited interaction), and the money that comes in because of it generally outweighs the bad points (rapes excepted, but they're a lot more rare than people think).
As far as sovreignity goes, that varies from place to place. I doubt anyone seriously thinks U.S. bases in Italy and Britain are a threat to those countries' sovreignity. Japan isn't allowed a military due to the treaty at the end of WWII, so we protect them - in their case, they've lost sovreignity, but we don't control their country - just limit their military forces. Occupation is what you see in Iraq, where we are more or less calling the shots and using the military to back it up - and the moral questions raised there are in constant debate.
Was a typo on my part - I meant drinking age.
That's what I get for posting when I've got insomnia.
You'll solve the orange cone season by lowering the voting age. The reason the U.S. has a uniform voting age of 21 is because the U.S. Department of Transportation won't give a state highway funds unless it conforms. Louisiana was the last holdout, and even they folded - and 18 year olds drinking at mardi gras was a major income for them.
They have tools for figuring out what roads need expansion and how to route traffic. You've probably seen them - they're these little black wires attached to a box chained to a random road sign. They'll stay there for a couple days and then be gone.
Those count how many cars roll over them. They're not 100% accurate, but they don't need to be - you're looking for a ballpark figure anyway. You can have someone check the box at certain intervals to see how traffic varies during different times of the day. Best of all - your privacy is perfectly safe - it can't tell the difference between your tires and anyone elses, unless you drive with sawblades on your hubs.
Of course, then there's little shits like I was when I was a kid, bouncing a bicycle tire on the thing. Dunno if it actually counted it, but I did notice they reworked the street a few months later...
That's what it was, my bad. The difference in speed limits for trucks was some other state, not Texas.
Well, I can't compare with European traffic 'cause I never made it over there, but I can compare it with driving in Okinawa.
One major thing I noticed is that at least in the western states, a large truck can go pretty much anywhere. In Okinawa, that's definiately not true - there are places compact cars have difficulties with. The lanes in the U.S. are much wider, and the distances between towns (again, talking western U.S.) is much farther. The speed limits are higher, but then again that's not too different from Europe, from what I hear - in Okinawa, the highest speed limit is 80 kph, and that's just on one toll road - all other highways are 60 at the most. Traffic there was also really crowded compared to here, although there's certainly areas of the U.S. that have it just as bad.
Highway driving... well, you can drive for quite a while on most highways without having to slow down for some idiot as long as you're not trying to drive on a holiday. The roads are boring though - we went the utilitarian approach, so most of our Interstate system is long and straight and boring. Germany actually tried to make theirs scenic from what I hear. Of course, the shortest distance between two points is a line, so arguably you get where you're going quicker. In Okinawa, the roads twist around every which way, but then again the roads are older than the invention of the automobile.
I think the size of the roads are the biggest difference to me. I own a 1965 ford galaxie, and there's no way I could have driven it in a residential area of Okinawa - it's wider than the road. I'd have problems with most business areas. The size thing goes with everything, though - you'd really have to experience the difference to understand - _everything_ is big in America. Compare the size of Oklahoma (where I live) with some European countries some time, then reflect on the fact that only 3 million people live in the entire state. We tend to spread out a bit.
Nope, never made it out that way, but that sounds pretty cool. How well does the system work for you? Is it actively monitored by cameras and such? Just curious.
It's true that trucks take longer to stop, but here on the U.S. Interstate system (I'm assuming you're not from the U.S., given you're speaking metric) trucks are everywhere.
What you get is a high speed traffic jam - thirty cars waiting on a combination of trucks being forced to drive slow and slow drivers who think it's perfectly fine to drive next to a truck and match its speed. Swift (a trucking company in the U.S.) used to govern their trucks down to 65, and it caused all kinds of problems for other drivers. They're obstacles, just like putting rocks in the middle of the road.
When all vehicles have the same speed limit, there's less variance in the actual speed people drive, so you encounter fewer vehicles (unless you're a speeder, of course).
And remember - those truckers are very likely better drivers than the people in the cars. Spend enough time in a truck and you'll see how little most regular drivers know about highway driving.
The Autobahn doesn't really compare well to U.S. driving - the driving situation is too different. All the little rules that are just considered common courtesy in the U.S. are law there (drive in the rightmost lane on long stretches, only pass on the left, leave the left lane as soon as you pass, etc.). Here, on a four lane highway in Oklahoma, I drive consistantly on the left because I go about five miles over, although I pull to the right if someone fast comes up behind me. In Germany, I'd get ticketed for that.
Also bear in mind that the Autobahn is monitored electronically and the speed limits are variable depeinding on the amount of traffic at any one time. The U.S. doesn't have anything like that (and really, with as much Interstate as we've got here, we can't).
Better would be to compare states with similar driving conditions but different speed limits. In Oklahoma, the speed limit on the Interstate is 70. In Illinois, it's 65. In Texas, I think it's lower for trucks than cars (which always seemed abysmally stupid to me - you're causing obstacles in traffic that way). It makes more sense to compare the accident rates on selected areas of similar highway and derive your results from that.