It doesn't appear that the number of cops killed in a given year in the US has EVER EXCEEDED 300. The highest year on that chart looks like 1974, with 280.
How does that compare with other occupations? Hmmm . . . .
Have you ever expressed similar sentiments for logging personnel? Pilots? Fishermen? Truck drivers? (I'll give even odds that you are one of the millions of Americans who INTENTIONALLY CUT TRUCK DRIVERS OFF on a daily basis) How about auto mechanics? Have you ever given a thought to them? Do you think about miners, in the same way you think about cops?
There are a lot of occupations more dangerous than police work. I get so tired of the cops getting all the glory, all the sympathy - but you have none to spare for the people who keep the cogs of civilization working.
The 10 Deadliest Jobs:
1. Logging workers 2. Fishers and related fishing workers 3. Aircraft pilot and flight engineers 4. Roofers 5. Structural iron and steel workers 6. Refuse and recyclable material collectors 7. Electrical power-line installers and repairers 8. Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers 9. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers 10. Construction laborers
You may, of course, find and cite your own sources - but no credible source places police among the most dangerous professions. I, for one, have always resented the damned cops for asserting that they are in a dangerous profession. They lie, and the gullible public believes them. And NONE OF YOU GIVE A DAMN ABOUT US WHO DO DANGEROUS WORK!!
Please. More money does NOT make for better students. The poorest of students have often times been the best of students. Each individual student needs some THING to ignite a hunger for knowledge within him. If/when that hunger is lit, nothing can hold a student back, short of death.
We Americans, despite the economic "hardships" of the past decade, remain among the wealthiest people in history, world wide. We don't starve. We aren't dropping in the streets from diseases. We don't have open warfare in our streets. Barring some violent weather now and then, we almost all go home to find our homes intact every day.
More money in the education system, or even more money in the classroom, will NOT make for better students. History proves that idea to be FALSE.
Our education system is badly flawed, and that flaw can be traced, at least in part, to the idea that more money can "fix" education. We have pampered little children who are distracted by meaningless nonsense. Kim Kardashian? Reality TV? Rock stars? Sports? Oh yeah - drugs. I can understand drug usage by the dirt poor, who live miserable lives. Those who spend all day out scavenging for a little bit of food, and still go to bed hungry - I can forgive them for trying to escape reality. Our little rich kids, with to much time on their hands? Escape from reality? They are LOSERS. And, we have raised them to be LOSERS.
Money isn't the answer.
Kids need to learn morals. Kids need some hardship. Kids need to WORK for the privilege of higher education - and I do NOT MEAN that they should be impoverished for life in exchange for an education. I mean, they should have to WORK for the privilege, instead of being pampered.
Keep the money. Instead, go into the classrooms, and get tough. We've needed a strong dose of tough love in the classrooms for the past 30 years, or more. Crack the whip, and stop treating kids like babies. Just drop pre-school, headstart, kindergarten, and all the rest of that shit.
I started school at age 5, and went straight into first grade. One month after my 18th birthday, I graduated high school. No amount of pre-schooling implemented since 1960 has improved on the final results among high school grads. NOTHING has improved those final results.
All that money has been WASTED.
If you have an old rotten ship, which threatens to sink every time it sails, how can you justify continuing to send it to sea? How can you justify painting it, again and again, and calling it seaworthy?
That is precisely the state of our education system. It is sinking, and we continue to paint it, to make it look pretty.
Cut the funds, and force school administrators to actually EDUCATE children!
Uhhhm. Think about this a second. IT ISN'T JUST FACEBOOK! Take at least a second to think. Maybe 60, or 600 seconds?
You're right - if I post information to a site which is known to be non-private, and expect it to remain private, then I am indeed an idiot.
But, what has been publicized? NSA intercepts EVERYTHING that the largest telcos carry. If it's digital, and it crosses Verizon's wires, it's intercepted. The metadata is recorded, and stored. EVERYTHING! Not just the shit I post or don't post to Facebook, but everything. Personal correspondence with the doctor, the preacher, teachers, shrinks, girlfriend, wife, mistress, with the children, with Amazon, Newegg, TigerDirect, Motorcyclesuperstore, Bikebandit, the motorcycle forums, PCoverclocker, hacking-lab, the employer, potential employers, potential educational institutions - EVERYTHING!
In short, we all live under a microscope, with the largest battery of computers and spying programs in the history of mankind collecting data about us.
And, I don't like that one bit. Congress doesn't have that right. Corporations don't have that right. The courts don't have that right. No individual, no agency, no construct made by mankind has that right.
Yeah, sure, Facebook is mentioned specifically - but Facebook is just part of the whole problem. Your government efffectively monitors your communications 24/7. And, I'm not aware of any sure method of evading that monitoring. There is no known proxy method, with or without encryption, that guarantees that you can evade the monitoring.
And, I resent that as much as I've ever resented anything in my life.
The day that I might actually DO SOMETHING that seems suspicious, "they" will pick through everything that is known about me, searching for ways to embarrass, discredit, and to convict me of some multitude of crimes, most of which are preposterous.
But all their preposterous accusations will be doublegood doublespeak.
Remember 'Running Man'? Just edit some video footage, and you can prove anything at all.
Nonsense. Complete and utter nonsense. Communications can be controlled, regardless of the pricing. The phone call can be totally free, and be monitored. Or, it can cost ten thousand dollars, and be monitored as well.
A dangerous person who is incarcerated should be strictly controlled. No access to telephones, or limited and closely monitored access is fine with me. Charging exorbitant prices is NOT alright. Someone is exploiting the prisoners and their families for profit, and THAT is exactly what I am talking about. The whole prison industry is exploiting the prisoners and their families.
Prisoners have less voice than any other group in America. No senator gives a damn about them, no congressman, no governor. Those prisoners with any voice at all are beholden to lawyers or to activists. They have few legal means of communication, and they are charged fees that are outrageous when they use them.
Your concerns about scams would be better addressed by getting control of all the cell phones smuggled into the prisons, oftentimes smuggled by the guards who are supposed to enforce the prison rules.
It would be virtually impossible for me to sneak a telephone into a prison, without being detected. But, I can offer a guard a hundred dollars to openly carry that telephone in to work with him, and he will readily give it to the individual I've specified. Some guards may hold out for more than a hundred dollars, some will simply refuse. Some few of them might go to the law, and report that I've attempted to bribe them. But, by and large, the guards are the major suppliers of cell phones within the prisons. And, THAT is where most of the scams come from.
In some cases, trustees may compromise the prison's own telephone system, but as nearly as I can tell, that is usually discovered in relatively short order, and corrected.
And, none of that justifies the flagrant exploitation of the people who are put in the care of the prison system.
Hmmmm. Interesting. He's not a fascist, but he doesn't care that many of his people are? I had never considered that. I based my judgement on the actions of the government, and his Maydan supporters. You may be right, I can't really tell.
We'll just have to disagree about nationalism. Pride in self is a good thing. Pride in community is good. Pride in nation is just a larger form of pride in community.
I am an American nationalist, and I'll apologize to no one for it.
Whatever. Aren't you literate? I'm trying to make sense of the word that you've attempted to spell. Dilantin? Are you trying to tell us that it's time for your medications? That's it. Dilantin. Well, run along and remind your mother that you need your meds!
Sorry, stupid, but you miss with that jab. There is not one bit of Russian in my genes. Well - possibly some undocumented marriage way back in the mists of time. Russians and Poles have been near neighbors for a long, long time. With a Slavic ancestry, I would be more inclined to side with Ukies, than with Russkies.
But, honesty trumps ancestry. This whole ball of feces was started by westerners, for the sake of profit.
You WILL note, please, that I have made zero attempt to defend Yanukovych. I have said repeatedly that the west installed a corrupt puppet - but I have never denied that the previous puppet was corrupt.
If Porkoshenko hadn't been so intent on ethnic cleansing, things might have gone as the Cock brothers desired. Unfortunately, Porky is a fascist. Let's see you try to deny that.
BTW - nationalism is a good thing. It is not related to fascism or socialism. Nationalism is an independent phenomenon, independent of any political persuasion.
Tough shit. It is not my duty to inform government on my activities. If government believes that I might be meeting with a KGB agent, then government can get a damned warrant, and begin tracking me. Government may not have a blanket warrant to place every citizen under constant surveillance, 24/7 for the rest of eternity.
Only if, and only when, I have engaged in some suspicious activity which has caught the attention of a government agent should government gain any prerogatives regarding surveillance.
I do, of course. Any Unix-like is better than Microsoft, naturally. That doesn't change the fact that I despise Intel for that bit of underhanded nonsense. And, as I stated above, that isn't the only reason I despise Intel. They may not be in the same league as Microsoft used to be - but they are the same sort of players.
Wow. I owe you. 'Press ENTER' by John Varley. I read this story many moons ago. I was impressed with it. Loved it, in fact. I remember the story. I've looked for it. I couldn't remember the title for certain, and entirely forgot the author's name. I've gone so far as to tell the story in a much abbreviated fashion to other Sci-Fi readers - and they couldn't name the story or the author.
When you named it, I went looking for it. Not available on Kindle, or anyplace else I checked - not in electronic format, anyway. So, I looked in the usual piracy places.
It's worth it to me, because I don't like Intel's past business practices. They have been shitheads worthy of comparison to Microsoft. How 'bout that unique identifier thing? Every time your computer connected to any network, anywhere in the world, the damned CPU offered a unique identifier, unless you knew to turn that identifier off. Anonymous tips to the police? Forget that. Whistleblower hotline? Yeah, sure. Anonymous submissions to an editorial page? That's out of the question. In each instance, the identifier was sent, and the entire world knew exactly where to go to find the "anonymous" whistleblower.
I won't buy an Intel chip, for that and other reasons.
Russian surveillance of the general population would be predicated on Russian software running on Russian hardware, within Russian networks. Take that Russian hardware, install Linux on it, and run it in western networks, and you've probably made things harder on BOTH Russian and western surveillance communities.
I'd be happy to experiment with this. Maybe I can get them to send me a free computer to play with, if I promise to send them my results?
There would be no lost margins. The home grown computers would be priced high enough to compensate for the higher costs of labor, regulation, licensing, etc. The only loss would be competitiveness on the GLOBAL market. Those computers would sell here in the states, where Chinese and/or Asian computers were no longer available. They might export as well to other western nations that may have been cut off from Asian supply at the same time that the US was cut off.
Yes, if China or Asia were to stop exporting to us, we WOULD begin our own production.
I suspect that initially, we might suffer from poor quality. But, we have the capability to produce quality goods - it would just take a little time to get QA/QC up to speed.
Adventures in Ukraine? Oh - you're talking about the Brothers Cock. They saw a potential market, destabilized the government, and installed their own puppets. They didn't care how closely those puppets might be aligned with fascism or nazism, the Brothers Cock wanted their own puppets.
Russian adventurism? That's old history. The US continued that saga in Afghanistan, investing billions of dollars in subduing a people who just won't subdue.
Isn't adventurism a wonderful thing?
You know you really shouldn't be pointing fingers like that.
Oh, I failed to address Georgia. That's really very much the same story as Ukraine. The west didn't like the status quo, and moved in on Georgia. And, another damned fool was set up in charge of things in Georgia. He was less closely aligned with fascism and nazism, but he sure as hell wasn't democratically inclined. He went out of his way to piss off ethnic Russians, much as Porkoshenko did in Ukraine.
Although I am browsing for the components to build a new computer, I am using a machine considerably more than five years old. Performance is acceptable in almost all cases. It is more than adequate for business purposes. The primary reason I am shopping for a new machine, is reliability. The individual components are all past their expected life expectancy. In short, I fully expect it to crash one day in the not-distant future, and never start up again.
Five year old technology would serve me fine, if I could find new components. And, that same technology would serve 90% of the business and home markets as well.
Specifically, I'm running the second incarnation of the Sledgehammer chip. One of the first dual core Opterons. This Opteron is an upgrade - the same motherboard hosted a first generation Sledgehammer before that.
Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 165/0/4
product: Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 165 vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] bus info: cpu@0 width: 64 bits capabilities:
mathematical co-processor,
FPU exceptions reporting,
wp,
virtual mode extensions,
debugging extensions,
page size extensions,
time stamp counter,
model-specific registers,
4GB+ memory addressing (Physical Address Extension),
machine check exceptions,
compare and exchange 8-byte,
on-chip advanced programmable interrupt controller (APIC),
fast system calls,
memory type range registers,
page global enable,
machine check architecture,
conditional move instruction,
page attribute table,
36-bit page size extensions,
clflush,
multimedia extensions (MMX),
fast floating point save/restore,
streaming SIMD extensions (SSE),
streaming SIMD extensions (SSE2),
HyperThreading,
fast system calls,
no-execute bit (NX),
multimedia extensions (MMXExt),
fxsr_opt,
64bits extensions (x86-64),
multimedia extensions (3DNow!Ext),
multimedia extensions (3DNow!),
rep_good,
nopl,
pni,
lahf_lm,
cmp_legacy,
vmmcall
I can see that math isn't your strong suit. Five bits of data listed, and you only see four.
The more important thing is, you do not value your privacy. Other people do. It is no one's business who I saw on vacation. I may have met a KGB agent, or I may have met my mistress, or I may have talked to a "spiritual advisor", or I may have just basked in the solitude of the wilderness. And - it's no one's business.
You obviously didn't address me, but I'd like to answer your questions.
First - I believe that punishment for certain crimes should be swift and harsh. Truly heinous crimes should be met with harsh punishment, up to and including capital punishment. I'm talking about murder, kidnapping, brutal rape, maiming and disfigurement, slavery, sex traffiking minors - truly heinous crimes.
We should NOT be punishing people for petty bullshit. Caught smoking a joint, you go to jail for a year, or maybe even prison for five years? That is preposterous.
Stealing food because you're hungry? Again - that's preposterous. No civilized nation can justify that. In a civilized nation, no one is hungry. And, if someone is truly hungry, a civilized nation won't punish anyone for taking basic survival needs.
Second - punishment after getting out of the system. By now, you realize that NO ONE "gets out" of the system. You have become a statistic and a suspect, and you will remain both a statistic and a suspect for all of your life. End of story, here in America.
Let us suppose that I were caught shoplifting candy as a youth. And, let us suppose that some local neighborhood cop caught me shoplifting. That cop would give me a stern talking to, put the Fear of God into me, take me home to talk to my parents, and go his merry way. End of story. No judge, no jury, no YDC, no nothing. I don't shoplift anymore, and the problem is solved.
That doesn't happen anymore. Even children who commit such minor crimes are arrested, taken to a detention center, parents informed, lawyers appointed, and legal processes started. And, the kid has a record which never goes away completely. Sure, his COURT RECORDS might be expunged, but his POLICE RECORD remains forever. Police never expunge their arrest records, so a six year old arrested for running away from home because Mommy was unreasonable about some sweets will have a record until he dies at age 106.
That crap is all so wrong.
Oh - the cop who caught me shoplifting? He was a beat cop. That is, he actually walked a beat, on the south side of town, mostly up and down Long Avenue, through the business section. He LIVED there. He was known to all the kids, known to all the criminals, known to all the business owners. He was a neighbor. He CARED about the neighborhood. His kid went to a different elementary school than I did, but we went to the same Junior High and High school later. That is something that we have lost in the US - we don't have neighborhood cops anymore. No skin off a cop's nose to lock up some kid he has never met before, and will probably never see again.
I live right here, in the US. And, I agree with AC's post. There is no justifiable reason that the prison system should charge as much as $75 for a short conversation with a prisoner. None. That "service" only helps to justify the statement that the prison systems are run for profit.
The United States cannot justify it's huge prison population. The US cannot justify privatized prisons. The US cannot justify locking people away for decades for crimes in which no person was hurt. ESPECIALLY since murderers often walk free after 5 to 10 years.
Face it - our system is fucked. Money making slave holes sums it up nicely.
You need to get off the grass, AC. There were no telephones in jails when I was young. The prisoner was searched before being led into a room, and sat down on one side of a table. His visitors were already seated on the other side of the table. No materials were to be handed across the table. Photos, letters, and court documents could be laid on the table, and viewed, but nothing could cross the line painted down the middle of the table. If it did, the guard at the end of the table would declare that the visit was over, and the prisoner would be escorted out of the room, then the guests would leave. At no time would the exit door be opened while the prisoner was in the room. And, of course, the prisoner would be searched again after he left the visiting room.
I heard that the state prison permitted physical contact, so that a prisoner might have a hug and a kiss from wife and children, but I never had the opportunity to verify that.
No, I wasn't the prisoner, I was a visitor. I spent most of my time staring at the guard at the end of the table - he was a mean looking sumbitch!
Well, dcw3, I've not quite decided what I think about that statement. It doesn't quite fit into my view of things - but it sort of rings true. The customer has to have some want or need that I can provide for, or I'm out of business. Sure, there are lots of OTHER reasons for me to go out of business, but there has to be a customer. I'm still thinking about "Customers are the job creators". to be perfectly honest. They are, and they aren't.
I do know that today's common wisdom in the financial world bucks all the common wisdom learned WW1 and WW2. When I was learning about business, I was taught that "People are your most valuable asset." Today, people are as expendable as the supplies on the cleaning lady's cart.
Historically, small businesses create more jobs than any corporation does. Mom and pop businesses. Family businesses. Local cooperatives. Some individual who sticks his neck out - and entrepreneur. Young companies create jobs - older, more established businesses do not.
Of at least equal importance, is the question of WHEN do businesses create jobs? Small businesses, new businesses, and startups create jobs all the time. Large corporations instead only "create" jobs in times of plenty. That is - they stand back, and watch the small players take the risks. When they see little guys making a go of it, then they either buy out the little guy, or go directly into competition with that little guy.
You spent 100 years taking over US politics - yes, we're aware of that now. To bad "we the people" weren't aware of it twenty or more years ago. NAFTA should have been the real giveaway, but people had their heads in the sand.
It isn't exactly government's plan. It is Corporate America's plan, and the people in government are just the chumps carrying out orders. The backers of NAFTA went to Washington with untold millions of dollars in their pockets. They bought and paid for politicos, they issued orders, and the politicos simply followed those orders. Ditto with Cafta, and now the TPP. Your congress critter and mine aren't really privy to the secret plans, they just sell out to the highest bidders, then do what they are told to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Uhhhh - you're pulling emotional strings here. How about we examine the actual numbers of cops killed, nationwide?
http://www.nleomf.org/facts/of...
It doesn't appear that the number of cops killed in a given year in the US has EVER EXCEEDED 300. The highest year on that chart looks like 1974, with 280.
How does that compare with other occupations? Hmmm . . . .
Have you ever expressed similar sentiments for logging personnel? Pilots? Fishermen? Truck drivers? (I'll give even odds that you are one of the millions of Americans who INTENTIONALLY CUT TRUCK DRIVERS OFF on a daily basis) How about auto mechanics? Have you ever given a thought to them? Do you think about miners, in the same way you think about cops?
There are a lot of occupations more dangerous than police work. I get so tired of the cops getting all the glory, all the sympathy - but you have none to spare for the people who keep the cogs of civilization working.
The 10 Deadliest Jobs:
1. Logging workers
2. Fishers and related fishing workers
3. Aircraft pilot and flight engineers
4. Roofers
5. Structural iron and steel workers
6. Refuse and recyclable material collectors
7. Electrical power-line installers and repairers
8. Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers
9. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers
10. Construction laborers
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...
You may, of course, find and cite your own sources - but no credible source places police among the most dangerous professions. I, for one, have always resented the damned cops for asserting that they are in a dangerous profession. They lie, and the gullible public believes them. And NONE OF YOU GIVE A DAMN ABOUT US WHO DO DANGEROUS WORK!!
Please. More money does NOT make for better students. The poorest of students have often times been the best of students. Each individual student needs some THING to ignite a hunger for knowledge within him. If/when that hunger is lit, nothing can hold a student back, short of death.
We Americans, despite the economic "hardships" of the past decade, remain among the wealthiest people in history, world wide. We don't starve. We aren't dropping in the streets from diseases. We don't have open warfare in our streets. Barring some violent weather now and then, we almost all go home to find our homes intact every day.
More money in the education system, or even more money in the classroom, will NOT make for better students. History proves that idea to be FALSE.
Our education system is badly flawed, and that flaw can be traced, at least in part, to the idea that more money can "fix" education. We have pampered little children who are distracted by meaningless nonsense. Kim Kardashian? Reality TV? Rock stars? Sports? Oh yeah - drugs. I can understand drug usage by the dirt poor, who live miserable lives. Those who spend all day out scavenging for a little bit of food, and still go to bed hungry - I can forgive them for trying to escape reality. Our little rich kids, with to much time on their hands? Escape from reality? They are LOSERS. And, we have raised them to be LOSERS.
Money isn't the answer.
Kids need to learn morals. Kids need some hardship. Kids need to WORK for the privilege of higher education - and I do NOT MEAN that they should be impoverished for life in exchange for an education. I mean, they should have to WORK for the privilege, instead of being pampered.
Keep the money. Instead, go into the classrooms, and get tough. We've needed a strong dose of tough love in the classrooms for the past 30 years, or more. Crack the whip, and stop treating kids like babies. Just drop pre-school, headstart, kindergarten, and all the rest of that shit.
I started school at age 5, and went straight into first grade. One month after my 18th birthday, I graduated high school. No amount of pre-schooling implemented since 1960 has improved on the final results among high school grads. NOTHING has improved those final results.
All that money has been WASTED.
If you have an old rotten ship, which threatens to sink every time it sails, how can you justify continuing to send it to sea? How can you justify painting it, again and again, and calling it seaworthy?
That is precisely the state of our education system. It is sinking, and we continue to paint it, to make it look pretty.
Cut the funds, and force school administrators to actually EDUCATE children!
Uhhhm. Think about this a second. IT ISN'T JUST FACEBOOK! Take at least a second to think. Maybe 60, or 600 seconds?
You're right - if I post information to a site which is known to be non-private, and expect it to remain private, then I am indeed an idiot.
But, what has been publicized? NSA intercepts EVERYTHING that the largest telcos carry. If it's digital, and it crosses Verizon's wires, it's intercepted. The metadata is recorded, and stored. EVERYTHING! Not just the shit I post or don't post to Facebook, but everything. Personal correspondence with the doctor, the preacher, teachers, shrinks, girlfriend, wife, mistress, with the children, with Amazon, Newegg, TigerDirect, Motorcyclesuperstore, Bikebandit, the motorcycle forums, PCoverclocker, hacking-lab, the employer, potential employers, potential educational institutions - EVERYTHING!
In short, we all live under a microscope, with the largest battery of computers and spying programs in the history of mankind collecting data about us.
And, I don't like that one bit. Congress doesn't have that right. Corporations don't have that right. The courts don't have that right. No individual, no agency, no construct made by mankind has that right.
Yeah, sure, Facebook is mentioned specifically - but Facebook is just part of the whole problem. Your government efffectively monitors your communications 24/7. And, I'm not aware of any sure method of evading that monitoring. There is no known proxy method, with or without encryption, that guarantees that you can evade the monitoring.
And, I resent that as much as I've ever resented anything in my life.
The day that I might actually DO SOMETHING that seems suspicious, "they" will pick through everything that is known about me, searching for ways to embarrass, discredit, and to convict me of some multitude of crimes, most of which are preposterous.
But all their preposterous accusations will be doublegood doublespeak.
Remember 'Running Man'? Just edit some video footage, and you can prove anything at all.
Nonsense. Complete and utter nonsense. Communications can be controlled, regardless of the pricing. The phone call can be totally free, and be monitored. Or, it can cost ten thousand dollars, and be monitored as well.
A dangerous person who is incarcerated should be strictly controlled. No access to telephones, or limited and closely monitored access is fine with me. Charging exorbitant prices is NOT alright. Someone is exploiting the prisoners and their families for profit, and THAT is exactly what I am talking about. The whole prison industry is exploiting the prisoners and their families.
Prisoners have less voice than any other group in America. No senator gives a damn about them, no congressman, no governor. Those prisoners with any voice at all are beholden to lawyers or to activists. They have few legal means of communication, and they are charged fees that are outrageous when they use them.
Your concerns about scams would be better addressed by getting control of all the cell phones smuggled into the prisons, oftentimes smuggled by the guards who are supposed to enforce the prison rules.
It would be virtually impossible for me to sneak a telephone into a prison, without being detected. But, I can offer a guard a hundred dollars to openly carry that telephone in to work with him, and he will readily give it to the individual I've specified. Some guards may hold out for more than a hundred dollars, some will simply refuse. Some few of them might go to the law, and report that I've attempted to bribe them. But, by and large, the guards are the major suppliers of cell phones within the prisons. And, THAT is where most of the scams come from.
In some cases, trustees may compromise the prison's own telephone system, but as nearly as I can tell, that is usually discovered in relatively short order, and corrected.
And, none of that justifies the flagrant exploitation of the people who are put in the care of the prison system.
Hmmmm. Interesting. He's not a fascist, but he doesn't care that many of his people are? I had never considered that. I based my judgement on the actions of the government, and his Maydan supporters. You may be right, I can't really tell.
We'll just have to disagree about nationalism. Pride in self is a good thing. Pride in community is good. Pride in nation is just a larger form of pride in community.
I am an American nationalist, and I'll apologize to no one for it.
Whatever. Aren't you literate? I'm trying to make sense of the word that you've attempted to spell. Dilantin? Are you trying to tell us that it's time for your medications? That's it. Dilantin. Well, run along and remind your mother that you need your meds!
Sorry, stupid, but you miss with that jab. There is not one bit of Russian in my genes. Well - possibly some undocumented marriage way back in the mists of time. Russians and Poles have been near neighbors for a long, long time. With a Slavic ancestry, I would be more inclined to side with Ukies, than with Russkies.
But, honesty trumps ancestry. This whole ball of feces was started by westerners, for the sake of profit.
You WILL note, please, that I have made zero attempt to defend Yanukovych. I have said repeatedly that the west installed a corrupt puppet - but I have never denied that the previous puppet was corrupt.
If Porkoshenko hadn't been so intent on ethnic cleansing, things might have gone as the Cock brothers desired. Unfortunately, Porky is a fascist. Let's see you try to deny that.
BTW - nationalism is a good thing. It is not related to fascism or socialism. Nationalism is an independent phenomenon, independent of any political persuasion.
Tough shit. It is not my duty to inform government on my activities. If government believes that I might be meeting with a KGB agent, then government can get a damned warrant, and begin tracking me. Government may not have a blanket warrant to place every citizen under constant surveillance, 24/7 for the rest of eternity.
Only if, and only when, I have engaged in some suspicious activity which has caught the attention of a government agent should government gain any prerogatives regarding surveillance.
I do, of course. Any Unix-like is better than Microsoft, naturally. That doesn't change the fact that I despise Intel for that bit of underhanded nonsense. And, as I stated above, that isn't the only reason I despise Intel. They may not be in the same league as Microsoft used to be - but they are the same sort of players.
Wow. I owe you. 'Press ENTER' by John Varley. I read this story many moons ago. I was impressed with it. Loved it, in fact. I remember the story. I've looked for it. I couldn't remember the title for certain, and entirely forgot the author's name. I've gone so far as to tell the story in a much abbreviated fashion to other Sci-Fi readers - and they couldn't name the story or the author.
When you named it, I went looking for it. Not available on Kindle, or anyplace else I checked - not in electronic format, anyway. So, I looked in the usual piracy places.
Yeah - I'm re-reading it now.
Want to know more? Press ENTER.
It's worth it to me, because I don't like Intel's past business practices. They have been shitheads worthy of comparison to Microsoft. How 'bout that unique identifier thing? Every time your computer connected to any network, anywhere in the world, the damned CPU offered a unique identifier, unless you knew to turn that identifier off. Anonymous tips to the police? Forget that. Whistleblower hotline? Yeah, sure. Anonymous submissions to an editorial page? That's out of the question. In each instance, the identifier was sent, and the entire world knew exactly where to go to find the "anonymous" whistleblower.
I won't buy an Intel chip, for that and other reasons.
Yes, no, maybe?
Russian surveillance of the general population would be predicated on Russian software running on Russian hardware, within Russian networks. Take that Russian hardware, install Linux on it, and run it in western networks, and you've probably made things harder on BOTH Russian and western surveillance communities.
I'd be happy to experiment with this. Maybe I can get them to send me a free computer to play with, if I promise to send them my results?
There would be no lost margins. The home grown computers would be priced high enough to compensate for the higher costs of labor, regulation, licensing, etc. The only loss would be competitiveness on the GLOBAL market. Those computers would sell here in the states, where Chinese and/or Asian computers were no longer available. They might export as well to other western nations that may have been cut off from Asian supply at the same time that the US was cut off.
Yes, if China or Asia were to stop exporting to us, we WOULD begin our own production.
I suspect that initially, we might suffer from poor quality. But, we have the capability to produce quality goods - it would just take a little time to get QA/QC up to speed.
Adventures in Ukraine? Oh - you're talking about the Brothers Cock. They saw a potential market, destabilized the government, and installed their own puppets. They didn't care how closely those puppets might be aligned with fascism or nazism, the Brothers Cock wanted their own puppets.
Russian adventurism? That's old history. The US continued that saga in Afghanistan, investing billions of dollars in subduing a people who just won't subdue.
Isn't adventurism a wonderful thing?
You know you really shouldn't be pointing fingers like that.
Oh, I failed to address Georgia. That's really very much the same story as Ukraine. The west didn't like the status quo, and moved in on Georgia. And, another damned fool was set up in charge of things in Georgia. He was less closely aligned with fascism and nazism, but he sure as hell wasn't democratically inclined. He went out of his way to piss off ethnic Russians, much as Porkoshenko did in Ukraine.
Yeah, and I build interstellar craft in Homeworld. Yeah - I still play that in a VM.
Although I am browsing for the components to build a new computer, I am using a machine considerably more than five years old. Performance is acceptable in almost all cases. It is more than adequate for business purposes. The primary reason I am shopping for a new machine, is reliability. The individual components are all past their expected life expectancy. In short, I fully expect it to crash one day in the not-distant future, and never start up again.
Five year old technology would serve me fine, if I could find new components. And, that same technology would serve 90% of the business and home markets as well.
Specifically, I'm running the second incarnation of the Sledgehammer chip. One of the first dual core Opterons. This Opteron is an upgrade - the same motherboard hosted a first generation Sledgehammer before that.
Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 165 /0/4
product: Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 165
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
bus info: cpu@0
width: 64 bits
capabilities:
mathematical co-processor,
FPU exceptions reporting,
wp,
virtual mode extensions,
debugging extensions,
page size extensions,
time stamp counter,
model-specific registers,
4GB+ memory addressing (Physical Address Extension),
machine check exceptions,
compare and exchange 8-byte,
on-chip advanced programmable interrupt controller (APIC),
fast system calls,
memory type range registers,
page global enable,
machine check architecture,
conditional move instruction,
page attribute table,
36-bit page size extensions,
clflush,
multimedia extensions (MMX),
fast floating point save/restore,
streaming SIMD extensions (SSE),
streaming SIMD extensions (SSE2),
HyperThreading,
fast system calls,
no-execute bit (NX),
multimedia extensions (MMXExt),
fxsr_opt,
64bits extensions (x86-64),
multimedia extensions (3DNow!Ext),
multimedia extensions (3DNow!),
rep_good,
nopl,
pni,
lahf_lm,
cmp_legacy,
vmmcall
I can see that math isn't your strong suit. Five bits of data listed, and you only see four.
The more important thing is, you do not value your privacy. Other people do. It is no one's business who I saw on vacation. I may have met a KGB agent, or I may have met my mistress, or I may have talked to a "spiritual advisor", or I may have just basked in the solitude of the wilderness. And - it's no one's business.
You obviously didn't address me, but I'd like to answer your questions.
First - I believe that punishment for certain crimes should be swift and harsh. Truly heinous crimes should be met with harsh punishment, up to and including capital punishment. I'm talking about murder, kidnapping, brutal rape, maiming and disfigurement, slavery, sex traffiking minors - truly heinous crimes.
We should NOT be punishing people for petty bullshit. Caught smoking a joint, you go to jail for a year, or maybe even prison for five years? That is preposterous.
Stealing food because you're hungry? Again - that's preposterous. No civilized nation can justify that. In a civilized nation, no one is hungry. And, if someone is truly hungry, a civilized nation won't punish anyone for taking basic survival needs.
Second - punishment after getting out of the system. By now, you realize that NO ONE "gets out" of the system. You have become a statistic and a suspect, and you will remain both a statistic and a suspect for all of your life. End of story, here in America.
Let us suppose that I were caught shoplifting candy as a youth. And, let us suppose that some local neighborhood cop caught me shoplifting. That cop would give me a stern talking to, put the Fear of God into me, take me home to talk to my parents, and go his merry way. End of story. No judge, no jury, no YDC, no nothing. I don't shoplift anymore, and the problem is solved.
That doesn't happen anymore. Even children who commit such minor crimes are arrested, taken to a detention center, parents informed, lawyers appointed, and legal processes started. And, the kid has a record which never goes away completely. Sure, his COURT RECORDS might be expunged, but his POLICE RECORD remains forever. Police never expunge their arrest records, so a six year old arrested for running away from home because Mommy was unreasonable about some sweets will have a record until he dies at age 106.
That crap is all so wrong.
Oh - the cop who caught me shoplifting? He was a beat cop. That is, he actually walked a beat, on the south side of town, mostly up and down Long Avenue, through the business section. He LIVED there. He was known to all the kids, known to all the criminals, known to all the business owners. He was a neighbor. He CARED about the neighborhood. His kid went to a different elementary school than I did, but we went to the same Junior High and High school later. That is something that we have lost in the US - we don't have neighborhood cops anymore. No skin off a cop's nose to lock up some kid he has never met before, and will probably never see again.
I live right here, in the US. And, I agree with AC's post. There is no justifiable reason that the prison system should charge as much as $75 for a short conversation with a prisoner. None. That "service" only helps to justify the statement that the prison systems are run for profit.
The United States cannot justify it's huge prison population. The US cannot justify privatized prisons. The US cannot justify locking people away for decades for crimes in which no person was hurt. ESPECIALLY since murderers often walk free after 5 to 10 years.
Face it - our system is fucked. Money making slave holes sums it up nicely.
You need to get off the grass, AC. There were no telephones in jails when I was young. The prisoner was searched before being led into a room, and sat down on one side of a table. His visitors were already seated on the other side of the table. No materials were to be handed across the table. Photos, letters, and court documents could be laid on the table, and viewed, but nothing could cross the line painted down the middle of the table. If it did, the guard at the end of the table would declare that the visit was over, and the prisoner would be escorted out of the room, then the guests would leave. At no time would the exit door be opened while the prisoner was in the room. And, of course, the prisoner would be searched again after he left the visiting room.
I heard that the state prison permitted physical contact, so that a prisoner might have a hug and a kiss from wife and children, but I never had the opportunity to verify that.
No, I wasn't the prisoner, I was a visitor. I spent most of my time staring at the guard at the end of the table - he was a mean looking sumbitch!
Well, dcw3, I've not quite decided what I think about that statement. It doesn't quite fit into my view of things - but it sort of rings true. The customer has to have some want or need that I can provide for, or I'm out of business. Sure, there are lots of OTHER reasons for me to go out of business, but there has to be a customer. I'm still thinking about "Customers are the job creators". to be perfectly honest. They are, and they aren't.
I do know that today's common wisdom in the financial world bucks all the common wisdom learned WW1 and WW2. When I was learning about business, I was taught that "People are your most valuable asset." Today, people are as expendable as the supplies on the cleaning lady's cart.
Historically, small businesses create more jobs than any corporation does. Mom and pop businesses. Family businesses. Local cooperatives. Some individual who sticks his neck out - and entrepreneur. Young companies create jobs - older, more established businesses do not.
http://www.sbecouncil.org/abou...
http://smallbusiness.house.gov...
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/ar...
http://www.nber.org/digest/feb...
Of at least equal importance, is the question of WHEN do businesses create jobs?
Small businesses, new businesses, and startups create jobs all the time. Large corporations instead only "create" jobs in times of plenty. That is - they stand back, and watch the small players take the risks. When they see little guys making a go of it, then they either buy out the little guy, or go directly into competition with that little guy.
No, you can't. Go ahead, prove me wrong - but you won't.
You spent 100 years taking over US politics - yes, we're aware of that now. To bad "we the people" weren't aware of it twenty or more years ago. NAFTA should have been the real giveaway, but people had their heads in the sand.
It isn't exactly government's plan. It is Corporate America's plan, and the people in government are just the chumps carrying out orders. The backers of NAFTA went to Washington with untold millions of dollars in their pockets. They bought and paid for politicos, they issued orders, and the politicos simply followed those orders. Ditto with Cafta, and now the TPP. Your congress critter and mine aren't really privy to the secret plans, they just sell out to the highest bidders, then do what they are told to do.