Is this really where the Left is drawing the line in the sand?
I guess that when you don't have any effective resistance or solutions to these Big Issues yourself, you are reduced to histrionics about the looming Right Wing conspiracy behind whatever the peasants are concerned about.
I am on the left, but this stance is ridiculous and painfully counterproductive. If people don't care about or understand the economic crisis, it is our fault; yours and mine. There are plenty of reasons and room to care about both that and the TSA policies.
If you haven't already, try diluting it with a little water, maybe 1:5 at first.
You can also "practice" on American bourbons and rye whiskeys which are cheaper and still have a lot of character to discover (not the ones in plastic bottles). This is not to say bourbons are a second-tier drink; Rowan's Creek for example is magnificent. There's no sense buying the good stuff if it's a challenge to drink, and especially not if you are mixing it with amaretto.
It's weird how hard it is to find a good French onion soup.
OK, but I think the probability of catching a gun is so high that it's simply not worth it for a terrorist to try it. In effect we have nearly-perfect deterrence even though there are rare mistakes. I think, pragmatically speaking, that the gun control is a very good thing for air travel.
I'm less certain about knives or subduing weapons. It's sad but possible that a guy with a machete can keep passengers cowed until impact. On the other hand, medical facilities aren't there on a plane. Maybe passengers should be allowed to have tasers.
I don't think the guns and knives would do much, and would possibly lead to some incidents with "normal people" losing it on-flight (too much drink, or undiagnosed mental illness, &c.) It seems plausible that the probability of this is much higher than of terrorism. At the least, it should be taken into account. I am fairly pro-2nd amendment, but on a purely numbers level it just may not make sense to have a lot of guns on a plane (or at a school, &c.).
I agree with your spirit though. I think that the post-9/11 knowledge that hijacking=death is enough. A couple of terrorists armed only with knives would be easily taken down by the bum-rush of citizens armed with grim knowledge.
A terrorist with a decent, functional bomb would not be deterred by armed resistance. Assuming he has a real trigger and isn't trying to ignite his groin or shoes, it would all be over without anyone noticing.
Which leaves the possibility of terrorists with guns. However, I'm pretty sure that we achieve 100% gun control on planes anyway (feel free to present counterexample).
So McDonald's should be priced so the poor can't eat there (or so you seem to suggest), and then you complain about the average American food?
Duh. You can just buy the stuff that the poor can't afford, and everyone wins. Alternatively you can do a bit of research (this new "internet" helps a lot) and you can find, at reasonable price, both excellent things in great variety (in a bigger city), or at least some great local specialties (almost anywhere).
In my experience as a student in a big city, it does seem to take many foreigners at least a year or so to, for example, stop ordering Bud Light at a bar. I can only reasonably conclude that the diversity of American markets is intimidating and takes a certain amount of skill to navigate. Consider that you just didn't know how to do it.
But yeah, college towns are pretty awful. Avoid if possible.
That's true, but the idle rich tend to not take technical courses... It's a safe bet that Ivy League CS are smarter (on average).
But that's tangential; even if intelligence were the same, the training is totally different. These private mills are turning out day laborers (of whatever intelligence) and, as the original poster pointed out, not a whole lot of them.
Still, that there is more demand (in raw numbers) for code monkeys than theoretical computer scientists in the DHS (which I can imagine is a true bastion of intellectualism...) shouldn't be particularly surprising to anyone. It follows immediately that a program for generating the former would be more successful.
If one were from Mars, it would seem a little bit strange that the US is running a welfare program (DHS) whose principal recipients are private companies and foreigners, but for anyone living here it ought not be surprising.
If that's what you mean by syllabus, then I agree. However I notice that exam and quiz schedules and re-take policies are not included, so the relevance of your input to this discussion seems slight.
Yes, that's a truism that any reasonable person would agree with. Should you be able to sue me if I change it moderately, or if I reschedule a quiz by a week? Give me a break. Schools have policies to deal with these problems. Civil penalties for changing a syllabus are crazy.
I've taken several, and no it doesn't. To put it most simply, you can't, in principle, distinguish among these: "very smart;" "extremely good tutoring;" or "cheating".
You were right, of course, that "cheating" is probably the most likely explanation; and uniformly good performance is definitely correlated with it. I was ready to defend you until I read this inane babble.
I know of no decent university in which a syllabus is actually required for each class, let alone given any binding status. When one is given, it's always been a guideline. It's ridiculous to me to hold a course to the syllabus since there is variability between groups of students, and any instructor (even the best, and especially the best) is optimizing their class as they go along.
Maybe a diploma mill works this way, but it's a ghastly idea to me that to avoid a lawsuit I would have to stick to a pre-established schedule when the students obviously need, say, more time on topic X; or have mastered and are bored with topic Y.
On the other hand, maybe Jammie Thomas should be trying the defence of "it wasn't me, it was the Jamme-and-Daughter-Open-Source-Project wot did it"?
As a purely intellectual exercise, would any lawyers like to comment on whether this crazy strategy could work? I've thought of doing it before. What and how many aspects of one's personal life could one codify into a charter of incorporation? Can you really shell game yourself? It'd be awesome!
Of course they can't do anything about the amateur hackers, but I don't think that's the point. It's in their interest to make threatening announcements like this so that companies don't make a business out of poaching Kinects and rebadging/repurposing them essentially on Microsoft's dime. The point is to have a chilling effect on markets, not individuals directly. This isn't to say that this is a good or bad thing (let alone whether it's actually effective), but I suspect that amateur hardware hackers don't really significantly change the equation.
Of course the line between business and individual is blurry. Also, occasionally, a totally-amateur group gets whacked. I'd wager that this is mostly "mission creep", for example some overzealous newly-promoted True Believer looking for brownie points.
One notes that after 1940, the real scientists disappear from your list, and you're left with literally the head of the Nazi eugenics program (btw, he had an MD, not a Ph.D. as you oh-so-subtly imply) and two businessmen who were of course speaking only about the current market. It is interesting...
Well, maybe. In all those cases except maybe Israel, it would depend on whether the authoritarians took a shine to him. He'd either become a manufactured hero (and why am I supposed to think this is a good thing anyway?) or be imprisoned for a long time and/or disappeared. It's a similar, but different, game in the US but at least the stakes are a bit lower (=saner) on average for now. We should be preserving this particular "dumbness," not correcting it...
Can you really not imagine the SJ Games raid going down even worse (and for more specious reasons) in China or Iran? Seriously?
The rest of your post sort of makes sense (for a crypto-fascist), except for the Bud Light thing.
I read your site. If this is, in fact, you, it sounds like a real shitty thing, assuming that you are telling the unvarnished truth.
However, it has nothing to do with artists' rights in a general or policy sense. This is just plain old theft and fraud. It could happen in a world with "more" copyright, "less" copyright, or maybe even with no copyright protection at all.
Buy the old edition for $10 and photocopy just the problems (probably ~50 pages, or ~100 at most). The material is the same old schlock anyway and you don't need the current version unless maybe you're a true "template learner" (read: moron).
The professors should be doubly ashamed; they're milking their students and usually getting jackshit in royalties. Exploiting people for someone else for nearly free is the lowest of the low.
Then again, once i tried giving the equivalent problems for each edition of the book (since all they did was rearrange them) going back 3 editions. Nevertheless, some students managed to get confused about which edition they had (!), so I had to put the kibosh on it. Sigh. With such a braindead group of consumers, it's no wonder there's a racket.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice story. It was also nice of the photographers to let him clean the vomit off his face and uniform before taking the "victory" picture.
If I didn't know better, I would say it was right wing agit-prop painting the left as paranoid reactionary loons.
Unfortunately, it appears that this post is actually fair & representative: http://www.ordinary-gentlemen.com/2010/11/the-nation-defends-tsa-against-evil-koch-brothers/
(sigh)
And what the fuck is your point?
I've trademarked the grocers' apostrophe for my company: Sausage's and Apple's Inc.
Cease and desist immediately.
Is this really where the Left is drawing the line in the sand?
I guess that when you don't have any effective resistance or solutions to these Big Issues yourself, you are reduced to histrionics about the looming Right Wing conspiracy behind whatever the peasants are concerned about.
I am on the left, but this stance is ridiculous and painfully counterproductive. If people don't care about or understand the economic crisis, it is our fault; yours and mine. There are plenty of reasons and room to care about both that and the TSA policies.
Amaretto?! With scotch?!
If you haven't already, try diluting it with a little water, maybe 1:5 at first.
You can also "practice" on American bourbons and rye whiskeys which are cheaper and still have a lot of character to discover (not the ones in plastic bottles). This is not to say bourbons are a second-tier drink; Rowan's Creek for example is magnificent. There's no sense buying the good stuff if it's a challenge to drink, and especially not if you are mixing it with amaretto.
It's weird how hard it is to find a good French onion soup.
OK, but I think the probability of catching a gun is so high that it's simply not worth it for a terrorist to try it. In effect we have nearly-perfect deterrence even though there are rare mistakes. I think, pragmatically speaking, that the gun control is a very good thing for air travel.
I'm less certain about knives or subduing weapons. It's sad but possible that a guy with a machete can keep passengers cowed until impact. On the other hand, medical facilities aren't there on a plane. Maybe passengers should be allowed to have tasers.
I think you just prompted a slashdot-record number of informative, nearly identical replies.
I don't think the guns and knives would do much, and would possibly lead to some incidents with "normal people" losing it on-flight (too much drink, or undiagnosed mental illness, &c.) It seems plausible that the probability of this is much higher than of terrorism. At the least, it should be taken into account. I am fairly pro-2nd amendment, but on a purely numbers level it just may not make sense to have a lot of guns on a plane (or at a school, &c.).
I agree with your spirit though. I think that the post-9/11 knowledge that hijacking=death is enough. A couple of terrorists armed only with knives would be easily taken down by the bum-rush of citizens armed with grim knowledge.
A terrorist with a decent, functional bomb would not be deterred by armed resistance. Assuming he has a real trigger and isn't trying to ignite his groin or shoes, it would all be over without anyone noticing.
Which leaves the possibility of terrorists with guns. However, I'm pretty sure that we achieve 100% gun control on planes anyway (feel free to present counterexample).
So McDonald's should be priced so the poor can't eat there (or so you seem to suggest), and then you complain about the average American food?
Duh. You can just buy the stuff that the poor can't afford, and everyone wins. Alternatively you can do a bit of research (this new "internet" helps a lot) and you can find, at reasonable price, both excellent things in great variety (in a bigger city), or at least some great local specialties (almost anywhere).
In my experience as a student in a big city, it does seem to take many foreigners at least a year or so to, for example, stop ordering Bud Light at a bar. I can only reasonably conclude that the diversity of American markets is intimidating and takes a certain amount of skill to navigate. Consider that you just didn't know how to do it.
But yeah, college towns are pretty awful. Avoid if possible.
Each client can just re-skin other players as Jar Jar... ideally, the bottom 20% or so.
That's true, but the idle rich tend to not take technical courses... It's a safe bet that Ivy League CS are smarter (on average).
But that's tangential; even if intelligence were the same, the training is totally different. These private mills are turning out day laborers (of whatever intelligence) and, as the original poster pointed out, not a whole lot of them.
Still, that there is more demand (in raw numbers) for code monkeys than theoretical computer scientists in the DHS (which I can imagine is a true bastion of intellectualism...) shouldn't be particularly surprising to anyone. It follows immediately that a program for generating the former would be more successful.
If one were from Mars, it would seem a little bit strange that the US is running a welfare program (DHS) whose principal recipients are private companies and foreigners, but for anyone living here it ought not be surprising.
If that's what you mean by syllabus, then I agree. However I notice that exam and quiz schedules and re-take policies are not included, so the relevance of your input to this discussion seems slight.
Yes, that's a truism that any reasonable person would agree with. Should you be able to sue me if I change it moderately, or if I reschedule a quiz by a week? Give me a break. Schools have policies to deal with these problems. Civil penalties for changing a syllabus are crazy.
I've taken several, and no it doesn't. To put it most simply, you can't, in principle, distinguish among these: "very smart;" "extremely good tutoring;" or "cheating".
You were right, of course, that "cheating" is probably the most likely explanation; and uniformly good performance is definitely correlated with it. I was ready to defend you until I read this inane babble.
"closed environment" and "open internet" are mutually exclusive.
also, good training is very rarely the same thing as good performance.
I know of no decent university in which a syllabus is actually required for each class, let alone given any binding status. When one is given, it's always been a guideline. It's ridiculous to me to hold a course to the syllabus since there is variability between groups of students, and any instructor (even the best, and especially the best) is optimizing their class as they go along.
Maybe a diploma mill works this way, but it's a ghastly idea to me that to avoid a lawsuit I would have to stick to a pre-established schedule when the students obviously need, say, more time on topic X; or have mastered and are bored with topic Y.
Chinese hate Koreans.
On the other hand, maybe Jammie Thomas should be trying the defence of "it wasn't me, it was the Jamme-and-Daughter-Open-Source-Project wot did it"?
As a purely intellectual exercise, would any lawyers like to comment on whether this crazy strategy could work? I've thought of doing it before. What and how many aspects of one's personal life could one codify into a charter of incorporation? Can you really shell game yourself? It'd be awesome!
Of course they can't do anything about the amateur hackers, but I don't think that's the point. It's in their interest to make threatening announcements like this so that companies don't make a business out of poaching Kinects and rebadging/repurposing them essentially on Microsoft's dime. The point is to have a chilling effect on markets, not individuals directly. This isn't to say that this is a good or bad thing (let alone whether it's actually effective), but I suspect that amateur hardware hackers don't really significantly change the equation.
Of course the line between business and individual is blurry. Also, occasionally, a totally-amateur group gets whacked. I'd wager that this is mostly "mission creep", for example some overzealous newly-promoted True Believer looking for brownie points.
One notes that after 1940, the real scientists disappear from your list, and you're left with literally the head of the Nazi eugenics program (btw, he had an MD, not a Ph.D. as you oh-so-subtly imply) and two businessmen who were of course speaking only about the current market. It is interesting...
Well, maybe. In all those cases except maybe Israel, it would depend on whether the authoritarians took a shine to him. He'd either become a manufactured hero (and why am I supposed to think this is a good thing anyway?) or be imprisoned for a long time and/or disappeared. It's a similar, but different, game in the US but at least the stakes are a bit lower (=saner) on average for now. We should be preserving this particular "dumbness," not correcting it...
Can you really not imagine the SJ Games raid going down even worse (and for more specious reasons) in China or Iran? Seriously?
The rest of your post sort of makes sense (for a crypto-fascist), except for the Bud Light thing.
I read your site. If this is, in fact, you, it sounds like a real shitty thing, assuming that you are telling the unvarnished truth.
However, it has nothing to do with artists' rights in a general or policy sense. This is just plain old theft and fraud. It could happen in a world with "more" copyright, "less" copyright, or maybe even with no copyright protection at all.
& you could die in a fire. :)
Buy the old edition for $10 and photocopy just the problems (probably ~50 pages, or ~100 at most). The material is the same old schlock anyway and you don't need the current version unless maybe you're a true "template learner" (read: moron).
The professors should be doubly ashamed; they're milking their students and usually getting jackshit in royalties. Exploiting people for someone else for nearly free is the lowest of the low.
Then again, once i tried giving the equivalent problems for each edition of the book (since all they did was rearrange them) going back 3 editions. Nevertheless, some students managed to get confused about which edition they had (!), so I had to put the kibosh on it. Sigh. With such a braindead group of consumers, it's no wonder there's a racket.