Triple-talk. Is the "main purpose" based on the design, the intentions of the owners, the most common usage, or what?
Clearly the design is to kill. Just as clearly, an extremely common purpose for actually having a gun is to demonstrate an ability and willingness to protect a person's rights or property.
Consider cars. Is the "main purpose" of a sports car transportation, getting women, or showing off wealth? It can really be any of the three, or more than one, depending on the owner. The fact that cars are nominally designed just for transportation doesn't mean that is really their main purpose for everyone.
It is important to be able to consider many aspects to the question, and shutting it down by saying that guns are only about killing doesn't get you anywhere.
Things like reputation and customer goodwill have value too, to the extent that the accountants will put numbers on them. Nothing in the "maximize profits" requirement says that you have to shit all over your customers for short-term gain. Contrary to what many people here think, the courts and the market are capable of understanding long-term strategies at the expense of quarterly profits. The law does not require them to act like assholes. They're acting like assholes simply because they are assholes, not because there's some legal requirement for it. It's obvious to you and me that this move is detrimental to their long-term profits, and if they believed the same and could back it up with facts then they would win any minority shareholder suit brought against them.
Your list is in order of decreasing price and decreasing quality. This is not a coincidence.
It's all about market segmentation. When selling a product, it's always desirable to get the customers who are willing to pay more to actually pay more money. This is hard, though, because you generally advertise the same price to everyone. So companies come up with various tactics to avoid this, such as multiple editions of a product with different prices, or charging a premium early and then lowering the price later on.
With movies, people who are really willing to pay a lot of money to see that movie will see it in the theater, where they're forking over $10 for the ticket and probably a bunch of money for food. Then the next tier down is people who are only moderately willing to pay money, they'll pay the $5 to rent the DVD some months later. And lastly you have people who don't care very much, and they'll watch it on the TV for free with advertisements.
Note that I'm not saying that any of the above is evil. Quite the opposite, it's simply good business sense. Most businesses, from hotels to airlines to even the individual movie theaters themselves (think matinee pricing) do this kind of thing. The trouble, of course, is that in an age where digital media can be copied effortlessly, market segmentation based around restricting who gets to see some bits no longer works very well.
Technically he's not wrong about the warrant. They can't force him to let them look inside. However what they can do is tell him that he either lets them look or he leaves.
The only thing a private property owner can force you to do is leave. However because of that, they can put almost any condition they like on your continued presence. The only exceptions are for things like racial discrimination.
If a store or other place of business wants to inspect all of your bags before they let you in, that is entirely within their rights. Note that if they want to inspect everything before you leave then they have essentially no way to enforce this, since you're leaving anyway. But if the movie theater says that as a condition of entering their business and seeing their movie, you will submit all bags to a search, you will wear a large floppy purple hat, and you will dance about singing Amazing Grace, then your choice is to do this or leave.
And if wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak.
It's easy to say things like, just double the mass of the RTG and just use an isotope with a longer half-life. It's much harder to actually find an isotope with that longer half life (the isotopes which have an appropriate half life and can be synthesized in the appropriate quantities, and to actually change the design of the spacecraft to accommodate the extra mass.
It's an extremely complex engineering problem with a lot of tradeoffs involved. If they could get more life "for free" then they certainly would, but unfortunately it's far from free when you get into the details.
I have seen the same thing, I just don't consider it political.
Look at people who are interested in politics in the US. They're not talking about what countries we like or hate. That's redneck talk. People who are truly interested in politics talk about personalitie,s about who they're going to vote for, about policies, whether a law will have the intended effect, what industries will be helped or hurt by an attempt at protectionism, strategies for blocking or passing legislation, etc. That's politics, and Chinese people don't give a damn about it, because they are completely uninvolved in the process. What you're describing is simple nationalism and it's a very different beast from politics.
Aside from that I completely agree with what you're saying. Chinese people seem to like their government at least as much as Westerners like theirs, possibly more because they don't have the concept of agitating for change. It's just that they are completely uninvolved with it.
You have to hand over papers to travel, you have to assemble in a "free speech zone" to protest, our enemies get tortured without a trial, photography is restricted in "sensitive" areas like train stations... the US may not be a fascist police state yet but it definitely resembles one these days.
There's an enormous difference between something like a movie theater, where the ID requirement is set by that private entity, and something like alcohol purchases or airline flying, where the government requires it. If I want to, I can set up a movie theater which does not check ID. I may not be able to get movies from the studios and I may encounter some community outcry, but it will be legal. But I cannot fly on a commercial airliner without showing ID (or pretending I lost it); it is illegal to do otherwise. This is the fundamental problem. People should be allowed to require it, but they must not be required to require it.
Being forced to show ID to buy alcohol is also a travesty and a horrible civil rights violation which, strangely, almost nobody cares about.
As for using my name when I buy the ticket, that's entirely circular reasoning. The only reason I have to use my real name when I buy my ticket is because I have to show ID when I check in, and the names must match. If there were no ID requirement then I could maintain privacy when purchasing the ticket as well.
Talking about hundreds of people trying to make their flights is also circular. You wouldn't have clogged security lines in the first place if the TSA's policies weren't so completely absurd.
Previously you did not need an excuse. You could simply state up front that you are flying without ID. You'd be shuffled to a special security line which would search you more thoroughly, and then you would go on your way like all the rest. With this rule change you do need an excuse of some kind, but you didn't need one before.
I'm serious here. Why should they require ID? What problem will it solve? If your answer to the last question is "it will stop terrorists", please explain exactly how it would do so.
What the hell do you mean no one has a problem with them truly searching you before you board the plane? I have a problem with it, and so do a whole lot of other people.
You have it backwards. Asking what right they're violating is looking at it from the wrong angle. Instead ask what part of the Constitution authorizes them to require ID for travel. Remember, if it's not in the Constitution, they can't do it.
What doesn't do what with anything else? I don't really understand what you're saying with that.
A third-party VoIP app is not going to be integrated into AT&T's cellular network. Call handoff requires some pretty sophisticated routing to work properly. The original cell needs to detect that the phone is moving away and needs to hand off, but before it actualy gets out of range. At this point it needs to find out which new tower is within range, talk to it to tell it to take over the call, then coordinate with the phone to get it to talk to the new tower.
It's theoretically possible to do this between WiFi and cell towers but it requires active participation from both sides. I haven't heard of any cell phone companies opening up their equipment to third parties so that they can dynamically hand off calls in real time from other media.
If you're talking about switching between VoIP on WiFi and VoIP on a cell data network, that would be fine. But VoIP on cell data networks is poor anyway due to high latencies, and it's completely against AT&T's and Apple's terms of service, so it's a non-starter in this particular scenario.
But if most people don't use all their minutes, why would they go through the trouble of using some special WiFi VoIP app which will cut out as soon as they walk out the door when they could just use their cellular subscription to make a normal phone call?
The incentive to avoid using the carrier's network only exists if there's some cost involved. That cost is AT&T's profit, and they won't like losing out. The people who wouldn't be paying any extra money to AT&T have no reason to fiddle with third-party VoIP apps in the first place.
Possibly, although some are pretty small. A knife? No way. Knives can be absolutely miniscule. Remember that the 9/11 hijackers used box cutters, which are about the size of credit cards.
Weak. Running an open source OS on closed source hardware is defeating the purpose of running an open source system. Call me back when your BIOS is open and the design of the CPU and every other chip on the motherboard is made available for tweaking.
Path MTU discovery relies on getting ICMP packets from the router in question to inform the sender that the packet has been dropped due to MTU limits. Some routers don't send this notification, and some firewalls black it, which breaks path MTU discovery. Vista's black hole router detection allows it to discover the path MTU in this scenario, where the traditional technique simply fails. It's not the same thing at all.
That's data and not voice, though. All iPhone subscribers get unlimited data, so there's no extra money to be made there. They do have limited voice time, however, and I'm sure that just like any other cell phone provider, the rates they get for overage are quite lucrative.
If you really think about it, it makes sense. It reduces stress on AT&T's network while at the same time making Apple's users happy. It reduces AT&T's opportunity to collect fat revenues from people exceeding their allotted monthly time as well. I think that they would be against this. However they may not be in a position to actually disallow it, making it Apple's decision. They at least would have no reason to do so.
That's interesting, because my impression has been quite different. From what I've seen, the people that age are largely apolitical. Not anti-Communist at all, they just don't care. Largely they think the government is doing a decent job, but with no strong feelings on the subject. Personally I think this attitude is completely understandable. The current government is doing a fairly decent job of things overall, and why would you care about politics if you can't affect them in any way?
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Triple-talk. Is the "main purpose" based on the design, the intentions of the owners, the most common usage, or what?
Clearly the design is to kill. Just as clearly, an extremely common purpose for actually having a gun is to demonstrate an ability and willingness to protect a person's rights or property.
Consider cars. Is the "main purpose" of a sports car transportation, getting women, or showing off wealth? It can really be any of the three, or more than one, depending on the owner. The fact that cars are nominally designed just for transportation doesn't mean that is really their main purpose for everyone.
It is important to be able to consider many aspects to the question, and shutting it down by saying that guns are only about killing doesn't get you anywhere.
Things like reputation and customer goodwill have value too, to the extent that the accountants will put numbers on them. Nothing in the "maximize profits" requirement says that you have to shit all over your customers for short-term gain. Contrary to what many people here think, the courts and the market are capable of understanding long-term strategies at the expense of quarterly profits. The law does not require them to act like assholes. They're acting like assholes simply because they are assholes, not because there's some legal requirement for it. It's obvious to you and me that this move is detrimental to their long-term profits, and if they believed the same and could back it up with facts then they would win any minority shareholder suit brought against them.
Your list is in order of decreasing price and decreasing quality. This is not a coincidence.
It's all about market segmentation. When selling a product, it's always desirable to get the customers who are willing to pay more to actually pay more money. This is hard, though, because you generally advertise the same price to everyone. So companies come up with various tactics to avoid this, such as multiple editions of a product with different prices, or charging a premium early and then lowering the price later on.
With movies, people who are really willing to pay a lot of money to see that movie will see it in the theater, where they're forking over $10 for the ticket and probably a bunch of money for food. Then the next tier down is people who are only moderately willing to pay money, they'll pay the $5 to rent the DVD some months later. And lastly you have people who don't care very much, and they'll watch it on the TV for free with advertisements.
Note that I'm not saying that any of the above is evil. Quite the opposite, it's simply good business sense. Most businesses, from hotels to airlines to even the individual movie theaters themselves (think matinee pricing) do this kind of thing. The trouble, of course, is that in an age where digital media can be copied effortlessly, market segmentation based around restricting who gets to see some bits no longer works very well.
Technically he's not wrong about the warrant. They can't force him to let them look inside. However what they can do is tell him that he either lets them look or he leaves.
The only thing a private property owner can force you to do is leave. However because of that, they can put almost any condition they like on your continued presence. The only exceptions are for things like racial discrimination.
If a store or other place of business wants to inspect all of your bags before they let you in, that is entirely within their rights. Note that if they want to inspect everything before you leave then they have essentially no way to enforce this, since you're leaving anyway. But if the movie theater says that as a condition of entering their business and seeing their movie, you will submit all bags to a search, you will wear a large floppy purple hat, and you will dance about singing Amazing Grace, then your choice is to do this or leave.
And if wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak.
It's easy to say things like, just double the mass of the RTG and just use an isotope with a longer half-life. It's much harder to actually find an isotope with that longer half life (the isotopes which have an appropriate half life and can be synthesized in the appropriate quantities, and to actually change the design of the spacecraft to accommodate the extra mass.
It's an extremely complex engineering problem with a lot of tradeoffs involved. If they could get more life "for free" then they certainly would, but unfortunately it's far from free when you get into the details.
Space is only an hour's drive away, if your Civic can drive straight up.
Only existed for a scant couple of years? Might want to do a little research on that.
I have seen the same thing, I just don't consider it political.
Look at people who are interested in politics in the US. They're not talking about what countries we like or hate. That's redneck talk. People who are truly interested in politics talk about personalitie,s about who they're going to vote for, about policies, whether a law will have the intended effect, what industries will be helped or hurt by an attempt at protectionism, strategies for blocking or passing legislation, etc. That's politics, and Chinese people don't give a damn about it, because they are completely uninvolved in the process. What you're describing is simple nationalism and it's a very different beast from politics.
Aside from that I completely agree with what you're saying. Chinese people seem to like their government at least as much as Westerners like theirs, possibly more because they don't have the concept of agitating for change. It's just that they are completely uninvolved with it.
You have to hand over papers to travel, you have to assemble in a "free speech zone" to protest, our enemies get tortured without a trial, photography is restricted in "sensitive" areas like train stations... the US may not be a fascist police state yet but it definitely resembles one these days.
Because they all do it, we should just let it slide? Fuck that shit! Start putting these fuckers in jail until they stop doing it!
There's an enormous difference between something like a movie theater, where the ID requirement is set by that private entity, and something like alcohol purchases or airline flying, where the government requires it. If I want to, I can set up a movie theater which does not check ID. I may not be able to get movies from the studios and I may encounter some community outcry, but it will be legal. But I cannot fly on a commercial airliner without showing ID (or pretending I lost it); it is illegal to do otherwise. This is the fundamental problem. People should be allowed to require it, but they must not be required to require it.
How about we just let people of any age buy alcohol? Shocking, I know, but it works just fine in various other countries around the world.
Being forced to show ID to buy alcohol is also a travesty and a horrible civil rights violation which, strangely, almost nobody cares about.
As for using my name when I buy the ticket, that's entirely circular reasoning. The only reason I have to use my real name when I buy my ticket is because I have to show ID when I check in, and the names must match. If there were no ID requirement then I could maintain privacy when purchasing the ticket as well.
Talking about hundreds of people trying to make their flights is also circular. You wouldn't have clogged security lines in the first place if the TSA's policies weren't so completely absurd.
Previously you did not need an excuse. You could simply state up front that you are flying without ID. You'd be shuffled to a special security line which would search you more thoroughly, and then you would go on your way like all the rest. With this rule change you do need an excuse of some kind, but you didn't need one before.
Why?
I'm serious here. Why should they require ID? What problem will it solve? If your answer to the last question is "it will stop terrorists", please explain exactly how it would do so.
What the hell do you mean no one has a problem with them truly searching you before you board the plane? I have a problem with it, and so do a whole lot of other people.
You have it backwards. Asking what right they're violating is looking at it from the wrong angle. Instead ask what part of the Constitution authorizes them to require ID for travel. Remember, if it's not in the Constitution, they can't do it.
What doesn't do what with anything else? I don't really understand what you're saying with that.
A third-party VoIP app is not going to be integrated into AT&T's cellular network. Call handoff requires some pretty sophisticated routing to work properly. The original cell needs to detect that the phone is moving away and needs to hand off, but before it actualy gets out of range. At this point it needs to find out which new tower is within range, talk to it to tell it to take over the call, then coordinate with the phone to get it to talk to the new tower.
It's theoretically possible to do this between WiFi and cell towers but it requires active participation from both sides. I haven't heard of any cell phone companies opening up their equipment to third parties so that they can dynamically hand off calls in real time from other media.
If you're talking about switching between VoIP on WiFi and VoIP on a cell data network, that would be fine. But VoIP on cell data networks is poor anyway due to high latencies, and it's completely against AT&T's and Apple's terms of service, so it's a non-starter in this particular scenario.
But if most people don't use all their minutes, why would they go through the trouble of using some special WiFi VoIP app which will cut out as soon as they walk out the door when they could just use their cellular subscription to make a normal phone call?
The incentive to avoid using the carrier's network only exists if there's some cost involved. That cost is AT&T's profit, and they won't like losing out. The people who wouldn't be paying any extra money to AT&T have no reason to fiddle with third-party VoIP apps in the first place.
Possibly, although some are pretty small. A knife? No way. Knives can be absolutely miniscule. Remember that the 9/11 hijackers used box cutters, which are about the size of credit cards.
Weak. Running an open source OS on closed source hardware is defeating the purpose of running an open source system. Call me back when your BIOS is open and the design of the CPU and every other chip on the motherboard is made available for tweaking.
Path MTU discovery relies on getting ICMP packets from the router in question to inform the sender that the packet has been dropped due to MTU limits. Some routers don't send this notification, and some firewalls black it, which breaks path MTU discovery. Vista's black hole router detection allows it to discover the path MTU in this scenario, where the traditional technique simply fails. It's not the same thing at all.
That's data and not voice, though. All iPhone subscribers get unlimited data, so there's no extra money to be made there. They do have limited voice time, however, and I'm sure that just like any other cell phone provider, the rates they get for overage are quite lucrative.
That's interesting, because my impression has been quite different. From what I've seen, the people that age are largely apolitical. Not anti-Communist at all, they just don't care. Largely they think the government is doing a decent job, but with no strong feelings on the subject. Personally I think this attitude is completely understandable. The current government is doing a fairly decent job of things overall, and why would you care about politics if you can't affect them in any way?