Half the country must blame Bush. The other half blame Obama. Both played their parts. But we're to blame, myself included. If we really gave a shit, we would have been out in the streets when the Patriot Act passed (practically unanimously, by both parties.) This is our fault, and nothing is going to change because we don't really care enough to do anything about it other than point out how dumb "the other guy" is.
Obviously this is all anecdotal and not "scientific" compared with the study in the summary, but it should be clear that this problem of police violence is not going to be completely solved until the cultures of "shoot first and ask questions later" and "protect each other" within law enforcement are changed.
The study does not claim that cameras eliminate the problem. To quote the summary:
use-of-force by officers wearing cameras fell by 59%.
That's a good thing, even if it's not perfect. And it provides information to help understand when excesive force is being used, and provides evidence in cases when it is used. Unbiased evidence to help get to the actual truth. All of this is a Good Thing (tm).
Or should we let the perfect be the enemy of the good?
and reports against officers dropped by 87%
While most people on here are focusing on the police portion, the civilian portion is more damning. It shows the amount of crap police have to put up with by people who think they'll file a brutality report so they can not be held responsible for their actions.
Because the police have the power of the state behind them and have sworn to "protect and serve," they are held to a higher standard.
I don't have the link, but some on here will remember the video of the woman who was in the back of a police car yelling and screaming for the police to stop hitting her without realizing a camera was recording the whole thing. When she claimed police brutality, the video was shown and the charges were thrown out.
Sounds like a win-win. So why are so many in law enforcement opposed to the cameras?
While there is certainly some police abuse going on, there are much more claims by people of police abuse where none exists. Just like dashboard cameras, it works both ways so when people claim they weren't doing anything when they were shot, the camera will show them reaching for their gun (see the most recent shooting in Missouri though we don't have video of the incident).
Some people lie to protect themselves from the consequences of their actions. Some of those people a are criminals, some of those people a police. Like I said, cameras sound like a win-win.
How about because they are part of the MPAA cartel? Suing grandmas and kids all over the world. But yeah, their dubious "family members" (aka Sony Music, Sony Computer Entertainment) doesn't really contribute to their reputation, whether Sony Pictures have control over them or not.
Watching Sony bleed has really been the greatest xmas gift of this year.
I don't think it makes much sense to hate Sony Pictures because of the actions of Sony BMG. And I don't think it makes much sense of hate Sony Pictures because 9 out of 10 theater chains are chicken shit.
SOPA, MPAA, DCMA, copyright extensions, etc. are excellent reasons to hate the entire industry (Sony included). I just think singling out Sony is a bit ridiculous, as is the general over the top hatefest. So we can all pretend we're "shoving it to the man" when we watch a movie by some other major corporation doing the same shit. Or people pretending that pirating a movie is some nobel act rather than just being cheap and bored.
I never have understood the world's fetish with the US dollar. Every nation has a currency. The US economy is just as prone to stagnation, deficit, over, and under valuing as any other currency.
I'd like nothing better than to see the Rothschild's hold on international markets broken. If it takes China to do that, then all power to China in the endeavour.
You can thank Harry Dexter White for that. (And if you're American, you should thank him. Otherwise, maybe not.) See: The Battle of Bretton Woods. It really is pretty fascinating.
It may have been after the major movie chains did so, but Sony didn't let it go to anyone else either. Until now.
Actually, 9 out of the top ten chains pulled the movie. Only #6, Marcus Theaters, didn't. They are less than half the size of #5 (Cineplex Entertainment). They have about 3% of the screens of the top five.
It's hard to have a "blockbuster" release by opening only in the midwest on a limited number of screens. So Sony pulled it until they could negotiate with enough small players to make it worthwhile. I don't get all the hate toward Sony over this. It just seems like mob mentality to me, along with conflating Song Pictures with Sony BMG.
But they can't force theater chains to show the movie
Uh, yeah that can. They had contracts with the theaters to show the movie with penalties for the theaters if they backed out.
The theaters backed out anyway, and Sony waived the penalties for doing so. Sony caved, no matter what their rootkitting CEO wants you to think.
You're an AC, so I shouldn't bother. First, but Sony Pictures is a different company from Sony BMG. Second, Sony could try force theaters to show the movie but all they have to do is say the withheld it for the public safety and odds are Sony would lose the legal battle. And if someone stubbed their toe during a showing of "The Interview", or a gun tooting wack-o has a hayday, Sony gets sued into oblivion.
Wrong. That is Sony propaganda. Everything the Sony CEO said was in service of his own cowardice. Yes, some theaters backed out. Others major movie theater chains BEGGED Sony to release the film.
More importantly, Sony could have released it direct to Video, to HBO, etc. You don't need to 'look for other ways' and if Netflix, HBO, and Hulu were 'afraid of getting hacked' They could simply have given it to the Pirate Bay.
This was a decision made by Sony, not anyone else. You on the other hand have fallen for a pack of lies.
"Some" theaters backed out? Bullshit, 9 out of the top ten theater chains in North America pulled out. They own a bunch of theaters that you probably think are "independent." They own virtually all the mega-plexes. Only Marcus Theaters (#6 and well under half the size of #5, or about 3% the size of the top five combined) didn't back out. Which is awesome but they are small potatoes for a "blockbuster" where you make most of your money on the opening weekend.
Why the fuck would they give it to pirate bay? They spent $44 million making the movie, they aren't going to fucking give it away. Sony wants to make money with the movie. Right, Son'y's evil. That's why.
Because some douchebags hacked them? Or because they have a sibling company (which they have no control over) that created a rootkit? Or because the five largest theater chains (which they have no control over) are too chicken shit to show their movie? Or because the large on demand streaming services (which they have no control over) are afraid of getting hacked and won't show the movie?
All this hatred directed at Sony Pictures is ridiculous.
The movie probably sucks. But bowing down to pressure from North Korea is ridiculous.
I am sure Hitler did not like The Great Dictator, but if he had tried to blackmail a US company into cancelling it, we would have laughed at him.
Sony should have done the same. I don't care what they got from the stolen emails, the only way to deal with terrorists demanding obedience is a bullet to their head, not a bow to to their feet.
Sony is not who bowed down to pressure. The 5 largest movie theater chains refused to show the movie out of fear, not Sony. Why can't anyone understand this? I was listening to an interview with the CEO of Sony Pictures and he made this perfectly clear, numerous times. But the interviewer kept coming back to "won't people see this as Sony backing down to terrorists?" And then the CEO would repeat, "we are looking for other ways to release the movie, but the large streaming services are afraid of getting hacked, etc..."
Just because it's popular to hate Sony, does not change the actual facts. Sony wants to release the movie. They want to make back the money they spent on it. But they can't force theater chains to show the movie and their normal model is to do release in a ton of theaters at once and have a big openning weekend. It looks like enough independent chains have come forward that Sony gets a Christmas present.
I don't really understand the issues. How much was Dish charging Fox News to deliver their content to Dish viewers? And what sort of fee increases was Dish asking for?
What you actually need are impartial and unbiased news networks who report news in a genuinely unbiased way, strictly separate their reporting from their editorialising and ask hard questions of whomever happens to be in charge and the opposition. Preferably this would codified with broadcast standards that they would be required to stick to.
I agree. But sadly that requires a demand for real journalism, but sensationalism and anger-porn are what people tend to gravitate toward.
No, it isn't a "great service" since a significant number of Dish customers are going to want to watch that programming and now won't be able to do so. That is the opposite of "great service."
Don't worry. Fox will cave and people will get their highly editorialized "news" to keep them happily enraged about all the wrong stuff. And Dish's tactics means they get all that spin without paying the higher rates that would be required by Fox's current demands. It's a win-win.
... You've already done that once already by pushing forward an SSL-related change far ahead of when it really needed to be, and now it looks like you're floating a trial balloon to go one step further.
Am I overreacting here? Or is Google going too far, too fast with this?
You are overreacting. It's a positive step and there is no good reason in 2014 that all internet traffic should not be encrypted. Oh, and it's a free browser and there are other options both free and proprietary.
because the DRM has long since been dropped in the music space.
This is not true, even if Apple insists on saying it is. As near as I can tell, what they mean is that they aren't putting DRM on music that was added after the DRM-free date. However, the iTunes library is full of music that is as "protected" by DRM as it ever was. Or at least that was true three years ago, when I spent far too much time working out how to strip the DRM off of a song I downloaded from it.
No, they removed the DRM from the vast majority of their catalog and automatically upgraded songs in the iTunes library back in 2009. The reason that not all music is DRM free is not all labels and artists agreed to sell non-DRM music. Apple has to abide by it's contracts, even if it pisses a few people off.
Not to be preachy, but it always strikes me as odd to what lengths some people will go to mitigate the damage their drinking does, rather than exercising just a bit of self control and not drinking to the point of intoxication. Having to make computers take care of us in this fashion and stop us from harming ourselves just seems silly.
Believing that it's silly to use technology to help people make better decisions when they are impaired seems silly to me. Doubly so on a site supposedly for people that are into technology.
We are all capable of making our own decisions, without the need for verification. Those that need verification prompts to exist in our society, need to seriously rethink their basic thought process and self control.
It must be tough being perfect in an imperfect world. See, I can be judgmental too. That was fun.
Gravity forbid we use tools and technology to help us make better decisions.
You neglect about 8000 papers of 12000 papers originally involved that were discarded by the authors of this study, because they lacked a pithy statement in the abstract as to whether they agreed or disagreed with the global warming consensus.
Papers that are not addressing AGW and take no position on AGW are irrelevant, no matter how many ad hominem labels you spew and assumptions you make. Many climate studies are purely refining and making observations (and contrary to the spin of propagandist, the vast majority find that the heat content of the Earth as a whole is increasing). As to a "pithy statement in the abstract," the whole point of a fucking abstract is to summarize the findings of the paper.
The ACTUAL SCIENTIFIC CONTENT of those 12000 papers played no role at all in this crappy piece of cargo cult science, it was all about whether people made certain statements in the abstract or not.
It's a simple analysis of the position taken in papers. And, again, the whole point of an abstract is to summarize methodologies and findings. The fact that it collides with your worldview is irrelevant. The fact that in your heart of hearts you believe in a massive effort by climates scientists to take part in a worldwide multi-national conspiracy to do what ever strange thing it is that you think they are doing is irrelevant.
Can you link me to some conclusive research? Because I haven't found any. There seem to be just as many studies opposing that humans are responsible as there are studies implicating us.
We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.
Based on those percentages, of the approximately 3977 papers published that took a position on AGW, about 3893 supported AGW and around 84 rejected AGW. So the appearance that their are "just as many" opposing studies is an illusion.
Most of the debate comes from industries who stand to loose from climate based taxes.
Or from the various powerful special interests that stand to gain from climate-based spending and taxes.
Here's the list of largest companies by revenue. And that's excluding state owned companies, like Saudi Aramco. I'm not seeing a lot of powerful special interest groups that stand to make money from climate-based spending and taxes in that list . But I sure see a lot who would like to keep the status quo.
terrorists, stop being an idiot. Richard Reid tried to light a shoe bomb and didn't kill anyone, yet let at all of the trouble and hassle EVERYONE who flies has to go through now. It isn't always about death. It's also about our way of life. How much money do you think is being spent to find explosives on persons who fly?
So stop saying "More people are killed by albino left-handed sharks than terrorists because that isn't the point."
No, that's exactly the point. We've completely caved to fear and thrown what little moral standing we had in the world right out the window. We've spent well over a trillion dollars, killed thousands of people directly, tens of thousands indirectly and replaced an evil but fairly contained dictator with a sectarian battlefield. Because we're bad at math and suck at assessing threats. We are a nation cowards, armed to the teeth and afraid of shadows. We are the fucking boogieman.
And before I get shit for it, no I don't think we deserved to be attacked on 9/11 and terrorists are asshats. But that doesn't justify overreacting and it doesn't justify holding people sans due process and torture.
This was 100% politics and had little to do with much else. Why else release such inflammatory information AGAIN?
...
The really sad part though is that it is highly possible that the release of this report will cost Americans their lives. The world is a dangerous place, but it's stupid to poke the enemy or hand them such a public relations win as this will be. We will be lectured by Iran and North Korea for human rights abuses and you can bet ISIS will be happy to use this to recruit/conscript more help.
(sarcasm)Oh Yea! That's great.. (/sarcasm)
The really sad part is that people get so caught up in petty politics that they can't see that torturing people is immoral and ineffective and that maybe we should consider not fucking torturing people and hold ourselves to a higher standard than "other people are worse than us."
The waterboarding done by the Japanese involved putting a hose down peoples throats, filling their stomachs to the bursting point and then hitting the victims stomach with sticks until it actually did burst.
Not even close to the same thing.
But still cruel, ineffective at actually getting reliable information and likely used on people that didn't have the information they sought and we (US citizens) should be fucking ashamed of our government and ourselves by proxy.
Abusing / competing with dealerships is one issue.
There is another issue with vertical integration, and it's been discussed a lot in relation to Comcast having some vertical integration; both producing and distributing content, running the infrastructure and the value-add services on top of that infrastructure. As mentioned elsewhere, dealers make their money via their service department and extras like upgraded stereos and other options. If the manufacturer is the only dealer, that means for some items they are the only service center, and can charge $400 for a radiator cap which should cost $4.
...
The irony here is that dealers are the ones that are notorious for overcharging for parts and labor now. I understand the intent of the original laws, but they don't work. Having dealers has not worked out in the best interest of consumers. Times have changed and we don't live in the era of two or three big automakers. There are about a dozen major automakers selling cars in the US so there is plenty of competition in case a few "behave badly." This is the exact opposite of the cable industry.
Dealers basically have a geographical monopoly. We'd be better off if GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Suzuki, Mercedes, BMW, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Tesla etc were competing for return customers.
Slashdot Mirror
Must ... blame ... Bush ...
Half the country must blame Bush. The other half blame Obama. Both played their parts. But we're to blame, myself included. If we really gave a shit, we would have been out in the streets when the Patriot Act passed (practically unanimously, by both parties.) This is our fault, and nothing is going to change because we don't really care enough to do anything about it other than point out how dumb "the other guy" is.
...
Obviously this is all anecdotal and not "scientific" compared with the study in the summary, but it should be clear that this problem of police violence is not going to be completely solved until the cultures of "shoot first and ask questions later" and "protect each other" within law enforcement are changed.
The study does not claim that cameras eliminate the problem. To quote the summary:
use-of-force by officers wearing cameras fell by 59%.
That's a good thing, even if it's not perfect. And it provides information to help understand when excesive force is being used, and provides evidence in cases when it is used. Unbiased evidence to help get to the actual truth. All of this is a Good Thing (tm).
Or should we let the perfect be the enemy of the good?
and reports against officers dropped by 87% While most people on here are focusing on the police portion, the civilian portion is more damning. It shows the amount of crap police have to put up with by people who think they'll file a brutality report so they can not be held responsible for their actions.
Because the police have the power of the state behind them and have sworn to "protect and serve," they are held to a higher standard.
I don't have the link, but some on here will remember the video of the woman who was in the back of a police car yelling and screaming for the police to stop hitting her without realizing a camera was recording the whole thing. When she claimed police brutality, the video was shown and the charges were thrown out.
Sounds like a win-win. So why are so many in law enforcement opposed to the cameras?
While there is certainly some police abuse going on, there are much more claims by people of police abuse where none exists. Just like dashboard cameras, it works both ways so when people claim they weren't doing anything when they were shot, the camera will show them reaching for their gun (see the most recent shooting in Missouri though we don't have video of the incident).
Some people lie to protect themselves from the consequences of their actions. Some of those people a are criminals, some of those people a police. Like I said, cameras sound like a win-win.
How about because they are part of the MPAA cartel? Suing grandmas and kids all over the world. But yeah, their dubious "family members" (aka Sony Music, Sony Computer Entertainment) doesn't really contribute to their reputation, whether Sony Pictures have control over them or not. Watching Sony bleed has really been the greatest xmas gift of this year.
I don't think it makes much sense to hate Sony Pictures because of the actions of Sony BMG. And I don't think it makes much sense of hate Sony Pictures because 9 out of 10 theater chains are chicken shit.
SOPA, MPAA, DCMA, copyright extensions, etc. are excellent reasons to hate the entire industry (Sony included). I just think singling out Sony is a bit ridiculous, as is the general over the top hatefest. So we can all pretend we're "shoving it to the man" when we watch a movie by some other major corporation doing the same shit. Or people pretending that pirating a movie is some nobel act rather than just being cheap and bored.
I don't care what part of Sony it is, Sony A is Sony B is Sony C is all goddamned Sony.
And you admit it: they caved due to fear of lawsuits due to fear of terrorists. Which is still caving due to fear.
Shocking that a corporation would try to avoid losing money. Shocking!!!
I never have understood the world's fetish with the US dollar. Every nation has a currency. The US economy is just as prone to stagnation, deficit, over, and under valuing as any other currency.
I'd like nothing better than to see the Rothschild's hold on international markets broken. If it takes China to do that, then all power to China in the endeavour.
You can thank Harry Dexter White for that. (And if you're American, you should thank him. Otherwise, maybe not.) See: The Battle of Bretton Woods. It really is pretty fascinating.
Uh, Sony pulled the plug too.
It may have been after the major movie chains did so, but Sony didn't let it go to anyone else either. Until now.
Actually, 9 out of the top ten chains pulled the movie. Only #6, Marcus Theaters, didn't. They are less than half the size of #5 (Cineplex Entertainment). They have about 3% of the screens of the top five.
It's hard to have a "blockbuster" release by opening only in the midwest on a limited number of screens. So Sony pulled it until they could negotiate with enough small players to make it worthwhile. I don't get all the hate toward Sony over this. It just seems like mob mentality to me, along with conflating Song Pictures with Sony BMG.
But they can't force theater chains to show the movie
Uh, yeah that can. They had contracts with the theaters to show the movie with penalties for the theaters if they backed out.
The theaters backed out anyway, and Sony waived the penalties for doing so. Sony caved, no matter what their rootkitting CEO wants you to think.
You're an AC, so I shouldn't bother. First, but Sony Pictures is a different company from Sony BMG. Second, Sony could try force theaters to show the movie but all they have to do is say the withheld it for the public safety and odds are Sony would lose the legal battle. And if someone stubbed their toe during a showing of "The Interview", or a gun tooting wack-o has a hayday, Sony gets sued into oblivion.
Wrong. That is Sony propaganda. Everything the Sony CEO said was in service of his own cowardice. Yes, some theaters backed out. Others major movie theater chains BEGGED Sony to release the film.
More importantly, Sony could have released it direct to Video, to HBO, etc. You don't need to 'look for other ways' and if Netflix, HBO, and Hulu were 'afraid of getting hacked' They could simply have given it to the Pirate Bay.
This was a decision made by Sony, not anyone else. You on the other hand have fallen for a pack of lies.
"Some" theaters backed out? Bullshit, 9 out of the top ten theater chains in North America pulled out. They own a bunch of theaters that you probably think are "independent." They own virtually all the mega-plexes. Only Marcus Theaters (#6 and well under half the size of #5, or about 3% the size of the top five combined) didn't back out. Which is awesome but they are small potatoes for a "blockbuster" where you make most of your money on the opening weekend.
Why the fuck would they give it to pirate bay? They spent $44 million making the movie, they aren't going to fucking give it away. Sony wants to make money with the movie. Right, Son'y's evil. That's why.
Go fuck yourself.
Because some douchebags hacked them? Or because they have a sibling company (which they have no control over) that created a rootkit? Or because the five largest theater chains (which they have no control over) are too chicken shit to show their movie? Or because the large on demand streaming services (which they have no control over) are afraid of getting hacked and won't show the movie?
All this hatred directed at Sony Pictures is ridiculous.
The movie probably sucks. But bowing down to pressure from North Korea is ridiculous.
I am sure Hitler did not like The Great Dictator, but if he had tried to blackmail a US company into cancelling it, we would have laughed at him.
Sony should have done the same. I don't care what they got from the stolen emails, the only way to deal with terrorists demanding obedience is a bullet to their head, not a bow to to their feet.
Sony is not who bowed down to pressure. The 5 largest movie theater chains refused to show the movie out of fear, not Sony. Why can't anyone understand this? I was listening to an interview with the CEO of Sony Pictures and he made this perfectly clear, numerous times. But the interviewer kept coming back to "won't people see this as Sony backing down to terrorists?" And then the CEO would repeat, "we are looking for other ways to release the movie, but the large streaming services are afraid of getting hacked, etc..."
Just because it's popular to hate Sony, does not change the actual facts. Sony wants to release the movie. They want to make back the money they spent on it. But they can't force theater chains to show the movie and their normal model is to do release in a ton of theaters at once and have a big openning weekend. It looks like enough independent chains have come forward that Sony gets a Christmas present.
I don't really understand the issues. How much was Dish charging Fox News to deliver their content to Dish viewers? And what sort of fee increases was Dish asking for?
Brilliant!
What you actually need are impartial and unbiased news networks who report news in a genuinely unbiased way, strictly separate their reporting from their editorialising and ask hard questions of whomever happens to be in charge and the opposition. Preferably this would codified with broadcast standards that they would be required to stick to.
I agree. But sadly that requires a demand for real journalism, but sensationalism and anger-porn are what people tend to gravitate toward.
No, it isn't a "great service" since a significant number of Dish customers are going to want to watch that programming and now won't be able to do so. That is the opposite of "great service."
Don't worry. Fox will cave and people will get their highly editorialized "news" to keep them happily enraged about all the wrong stuff. And Dish's tactics means they get all that spin without paying the higher rates that would be required by Fox's current demands. It's a win-win.
... You've already done that once already by pushing forward an SSL-related change far ahead of when it really needed to be, and now it looks like you're floating a trial balloon to go one step further.
Am I overreacting here? Or is Google going too far, too fast with this?
You are overreacting. It's a positive step and there is no good reason in 2014 that all internet traffic should not be encrypted. Oh, and it's a free browser and there are other options both free and proprietary.
because the DRM has long since been dropped in the music space.
This is not true, even if Apple insists on saying it is. As near as I can tell, what they mean is that they aren't putting DRM on music that was added after the DRM-free date. However, the iTunes library is full of music that is as "protected" by DRM as it ever was. Or at least that was true three years ago, when I spent far too much time working out how to strip the DRM off of a song I downloaded from it.
No, they removed the DRM from the vast majority of their catalog and automatically upgraded songs in the iTunes library back in 2009. The reason that not all music is DRM free is not all labels and artists agreed to sell non-DRM music. Apple has to abide by it's contracts, even if it pisses a few people off.
Not to be preachy, but it always strikes me as odd to what lengths some people will go to mitigate the damage their drinking does, rather than exercising just a bit of self control and not drinking to the point of intoxication. Having to make computers take care of us in this fashion and stop us from harming ourselves just seems silly.
Believing that it's silly to use technology to help people make better decisions when they are impaired seems silly to me. Doubly so on a site supposedly for people that are into technology.
We are all capable of making our own decisions, without the need for verification. Those that need verification prompts to exist in our society, need to seriously rethink their basic thought process and self control.
It must be tough being perfect in an imperfect world. See, I can be judgmental too. That was fun.
Gravity forbid we use tools and technology to help us make better decisions.
You neglect about 8000 papers of 12000 papers originally involved that were discarded by the authors of this study, because they lacked a pithy statement in the abstract as to whether they agreed or disagreed with the global warming consensus.
Papers that are not addressing AGW and take no position on AGW are irrelevant, no matter how many ad hominem labels you spew and assumptions you make. Many climate studies are purely refining and making observations (and contrary to the spin of propagandist, the vast majority find that the heat content of the Earth as a whole is increasing). As to a "pithy statement in the abstract," the whole point of a fucking abstract is to summarize the findings of the paper.
The ACTUAL SCIENTIFIC CONTENT of those 12000 papers played no role at all in this crappy piece of cargo cult science, it was all about whether people made certain statements in the abstract or not.
It's a simple analysis of the position taken in papers. And, again, the whole point of an abstract is to summarize methodologies and findings. The fact that it collides with your worldview is irrelevant. The fact that in your heart of hearts you believe in a massive effort by climates scientists to take part in a worldwide multi-national conspiracy to do what ever strange thing it is that you think they are doing is irrelevant.
I understand how science works, thanks.
Can you link me to some conclusive research? Because I haven't found any. There seem to be just as many studies opposing that humans are responsible as there are studies implicating us.
Just as many? From Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature:
We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.
Based on those percentages, of the approximately 3977 papers published that took a position on AGW, about 3893 supported AGW and around 84 rejected AGW. So the appearance that their are "just as many" opposing studies is an illusion.
Most of the debate comes from industries who stand to loose from climate based taxes.
Or from the various powerful special interests that stand to gain from climate-based spending and taxes.
Here's the list of largest companies by revenue. And that's excluding state owned companies, like Saudi Aramco. I'm not seeing a lot of powerful special interest groups that stand to make money from climate-based spending and taxes in that list . But I sure see a lot who would like to keep the status quo.
terrorists, stop being an idiot. Richard Reid tried to light a shoe bomb and didn't kill anyone, yet let at all of the trouble and hassle EVERYONE who flies has to go through now. It isn't always about death. It's also about our way of life. How much money do you think is being spent to find explosives on persons who fly?
So stop saying "More people are killed by albino left-handed sharks than terrorists because that isn't the point."
No, that's exactly the point. We've completely caved to fear and thrown what little moral standing we had in the world right out the window. We've spent well over a trillion dollars, killed thousands of people directly, tens of thousands indirectly and replaced an evil but fairly contained dictator with a sectarian battlefield. Because we're bad at math and suck at assessing threats. We are a nation cowards, armed to the teeth and afraid of shadows. We are the fucking boogieman.
And before I get shit for it, no I don't think we deserved to be attacked on 9/11 and terrorists are asshats. But that doesn't justify overreacting and it doesn't justify holding people sans due process and torture.
This was 100% politics and had little to do with much else. Why else release such inflammatory information AGAIN?
...
The really sad part though is that it is highly possible that the release of this report will cost Americans their lives. The world is a dangerous place, but it's stupid to poke the enemy or hand them such a public relations win as this will be. We will be lectured by Iran and North Korea for human rights abuses and you can bet ISIS will be happy to use this to recruit/conscript more help.
(sarcasm)Oh Yea! That's great.. (/sarcasm)
The really sad part is that people get so caught up in petty politics that they can't see that torturing people is immoral and ineffective and that maybe we should consider not fucking torturing people and hold ourselves to a higher standard than "other people are worse than us."
The waterboarding done by the Japanese involved putting a hose down peoples throats, filling their stomachs to the bursting point and then hitting the victims stomach with sticks until it actually did burst.
Not even close to the same thing.
But still cruel, ineffective at actually getting reliable information and likely used on people that didn't have the information they sought and we (US citizens) should be fucking ashamed of our government and ourselves by proxy.
Abusing / competing with dealerships is one issue.
There is another issue with vertical integration, and it's been discussed a lot in relation to Comcast having some vertical integration; both producing and distributing content, running the infrastructure and the value-add services on top of that infrastructure. As mentioned elsewhere, dealers make their money via their service department and extras like upgraded stereos and other options. If the manufacturer is the only dealer, that means for some items they are the only service center, and can charge $400 for a radiator cap which should cost $4.
The irony here is that dealers are the ones that are notorious for overcharging for parts and labor now. I understand the intent of the original laws, but they don't work. Having dealers has not worked out in the best interest of consumers. Times have changed and we don't live in the era of two or three big automakers. There are about a dozen major automakers selling cars in the US so there is plenty of competition in case a few "behave badly." This is the exact opposite of the cable industry.
Dealers basically have a geographical monopoly. We'd be better off if GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Suzuki, Mercedes, BMW, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Tesla etc were competing for return customers.