Of course anything is possible; but "people talk". Yes, people get away with things. When this comes up in casual conversation with one person I know, either one of us will turn to the other and say, "karma". I know we've Westernized that word beyond recognition probably. In our vernacular it means, "yes you can get away with things for a while; but it usually catches up with you". LOL, and I'm going to click "no karma bonus" on this one...
You guys always act like the USA is the coolest, nothing can harm you, and you dare to go further, higher, deeper, and all that.
It's true. It's just that some of those people are trial lawyers and they have gone further, higher and deeper than we thought they would.
Case on point, the US also has abalone divers. If you've never thought about abalone divers, you need to think about what it means: cold, dark, shark-infested waters, heavy currents, kelp that you can get tangled in, 50 feet down in that just so somebody can have some weird shellfish for dinner.
If the trial lawyers ever meet the abalone divers, all hell will break loose... and frequently has.
New! From China, it's little Clara Cadmium. Lick her tummy and hear her giggle. Feed her led pellets and watch her gain weight. Realistic BPA-based skin is soft to the touch. Just $9.99. Turn the price upside down and learn little Clara's secret.
I keep waiting for Time to appear on its own cover. Who here reads Time? If you do, I bet there's a strong correlation with how often you visit the dentist.
If there's an EMP, you've got bigger problems, like whether your neighbor's hide will taste better with garlic or pepper.:)
I didn't really want to go down a rabbit hole of hair splitting detail on this. I thought it was pretty obvious what I meant by "modern electronics".
Spark ignition has been around as long as gasoline powered cars (at least as long as the model-T) so I don't consider it "modern".
It's like pornography. You know it when you see it. When I say "go zap", I mean, for example, a chip going bad in the computer. Now there are a lot of possibilities here but let's just cover two. Either your engine can run without the computer or it can't.
If it can run without the computer, without damaging itself, I'd like it to do that. The best analogy here is the stealth fighter. It can't fly without the fly-by-wire tech. It's inherently unstable without the computer. The pilot's inputs are to the computer, which computes the correct positions for the control surfaces. If your engine is like that, then of course it should shut down if the computer fails. OTOH, if your engine is a basicly stable ICE that just happens to have a computer there to fine tune the emissions and economy, then the console should flash a light when the computer is out but it should let you keep driving.
Also, other things I consider "modern" such as instrument controls that are not vital to the basic function of running a car, these should not cause you to shut down. If your guages are on an LCD, and you lose that, you should still be able to drive.
Long story short, maybe a better way for me to put it would have been, "separate the mission critical electronics from the non-mission critical electronics", where the "mission" is being able to drive safely without destroying the mechanical systems.
Now since I've written even more text than before, I know there are 10X as many semantic nits for people to pick.... but... whatever.
I actually know somebody who thinks this way. They're not stupid. I think they're just ideologicly bent by hard-right elements in the Republican party. Note, I'm not painting the whole party with this brush. It's just that this element finds its home in the party, and once you start associating with people who think a certain way...
We geeks are not immune to this (Emacs, Ruby, etc... are the only true ways and all other ways should be suppressed).
It seems bloody obvious to a lot of us that if the US persued this course of action we would become the horror of the world, and a large portion of the world would unite to end the horror as it did with nazi Germany.
If you are immersed in hard-right culture, it's a lot less obvious. See also, the Milgram experiment.
1. I want the car to function in some capacity even if all the modern electronics go *zap*.
2. I want access to sensor data so I can turn the built-in screen into... wait for it.. a REAL GUAGE PACKAGE instead of "idiot guages".
3. I don't want access to certain control systems. Passive readouts only. If my *job* were writing control systems for autos I think I could do it well. I'd still want several engineers reviewing my code, and I pray that's how the professionals at the car companies do it. I certainly don't want to program engine, transmission, or braking systems as a hobby. I don't want to be on the road with cars where those systems were programmed as a hobby.
4. I do want access to less vital control systems such as wipers, headlights, and for cryin' out loud I want some way to disable the "cryin' out loud" of those damn alarmed systems they build into cars these days.
Yeah, but if corporations are people then machines are people. It follows that the machines could just sue eachother. In the future, the economy will be driven by the need to pit more and more powerful machines against eachother in legal contests. There is no need for the machines to sue people, or for people to sue the machines. They can just sit in the corner and hum, reporting defeat or victory back to their owners.
Eventually, it will dawn on somebody that they are just a waste of electricity. First things first though. We need to transfer the jobs of people who are a waste of food and air into jobs done by machines that are a waste of electricity.
I got thirsty. My doctor asked me a few questions and told me to drink water from a sterilized vessel sold by this company, Corning I believe. It worked. Unbeknownst to us there was this patent for "method of detecting and correcting dihydrogen monoxide deficiency". We're in big trouble now.
It really is that ridiculous, unless Slashdot is just being sensationalistic which I don't think they are. Also, another way DHM can get you in big trouble. That stuff's deadly. Stay away from it.
First, you can't stop geeks from geeking the TV. That's the free market. Secondly, the fact that they're geeking the TV, the content sucks, and the Internet is fragmenting the audience leads me to a conclusion. There is no longer the same critical mass of viewers that there once was. Thus, TV won't be the same cultural touchstone that it was when we were all watching Happy Days on Tuesday nights back in the 70s.
A few months ago a friend comes out and he's like, "there's this show called Breaking Bad..." and he proceeds to tell me about this and that, and the other; but it's a dead-end conversation because I refuse to pay for TV. That's one division right there--those of us who pay for premium content and those who don't. Then there's those of us who have broadband and watch YouTube vids (that'd be me). I'd probably not connect as well with somebody who has satellite TV and dial-up Internet.
Anyway, the "fragmented audience show" must go on. You pop the popcorn...
Short term gain at a tremendous long term expense. That expense is distributed out so that you don't see it right away; but the damage is huge going forward. Both parties--the issuer and the purchaser, enterred into the contract. Bondholders know that Chapter 11 is a possibility, and they plan for it. They plan for it with the expectation that they'll be standing at a particular place in line, receiving payment at some fraction of face value in lieu of the anticipated principal and interest.
The rules were based on bankruptcy laws, which both sides read and understood beforehand. Now that's all out the window. Bond buyers have to factor in the political aspect of who they're purchasing the bonds from. It's not spelled out anywhere. It's totally unpredictable. Managing a portfolio of corporate bonds is now that much more difficult. Instead of just looking at balance sheets, the bond fund manager has to ask himself questions like, "which party is likely to be in power, and is this company and/or their unions in good graces with that party?".
Overseas investors can no longer rely on the rule of law in the US. The US's reputation as a country with sound financial markets governed by fair laws is something that's difficult to price. The list just goes on and on.
How many more people will NOT get jobs, or will get less in their pensions because the law was thrown out the window, and they are not politically connected?
Fascism is the merger of corporation and state. Check. What is the merger of union and state? What was the status of labor unions under regimes historicly regarded as fascist? That's not a rhetorical question. I'm really not sure. AFAIK the nazis didn't have any use for unions; although perhaps guilds were tolerated as historical remnants. The archetypal fascist regime is WW2 Italy... ok, let's do some quick googling...
The Wiki on CISL has no record of it existing prior to 1950.
To me, fascism implies a merger of corporation and state combined with an absolute suppression of anything consider "leftist". I don't think the US qualifies unless you hold fascism to be a subset of cronyism that can combine with it (plausible) or if you classify our unions as corporations.
My opinion is unchanged. While we have elements of fascism, we're not strictly fascist in the way that WW2 italy or Spain under Franco were.
What's in a name anyway? A turd by any other name...
Can you site any other regimes generally regarded as "fascist" that simultaneosly institutionalized unions and corporations? In some states you can't even practice certain occupations unless you join the union (teachers and nurses in California for example) and then on the other end of the spectrum we have our familiar laundry list of corporate abuses.
I think American cronyism is pretty unique in this regard. Government owned by the B-Ark people from both sides of the aisle! Quite an accomplishment.
You sort of beat me to it, but I think the best word for what we have is simply cronyism. That gets you down to one -ism that describes it all. It applies mostly to corporations, but if you use the word cronymism it covers union corruption too. Anybody who opposes cronyism should be just as upset about the way bondholders were screwed in favor of unions during the GM bankruptcy as they are about the way banks are profiting.
When you hire a painter, there's a contract. Copyright holders had a contract with ALL OF US. When one of us violates that contract it is indeed very much like not paying the painter.
Now notice that I used had. The past tense. That's because up until the late 90s I was fimly on the side of the content creators. Then Eldrid vs. Ashcroft and a number of other things convinced me that the contract was defective. It's part of the larger problem of corporate usurpation of our government in the US. Thus, the contract is abrogated on both sides.
If there are infinite universes, then there is a universe where engineers build random number generators, and they always produce this sequence. The scientists struggle to come up with some theory as to why random number generators can't be built. It's not because they aren't random, it's just that they happen to produce this sequence whenever they're built in that universe.
For extra grins and giggles, there is a universe next door where the 9,9,9... random number generator on display at the science museum in the capitol of Earth mysteriously produces a 6 one day, and the world is thrown into a panic that it portends the apocalypse.
You juice need to inner face sky to drag on naturally speaking or some other text two speach program. Then you can half a wreck gourd of everything they say.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying I'm not optimistic on this one working because high-energy living is just too popular.
Compare and contrast this with say... international whaling agreements. They work for the most part. Japan is the noteworthy exception because there's a strong culture of consuming whale. I would submit that high energy becomes very popular when it gets introduced to a country. One generation of TV and automobiles, and it's probably more popular than whale meat.
Slashdot Mirror
Eye don't no how ewe can automate proof reading. You still knead a human in the loupe.
Yes, but after the atmosphere has been vaporized, the only way to get any messages through is to rot-13 them twice.
A new Internet meme! Nice. Let me try.
North Korean State television Says Kim Jong Il died peacefully in his sleep while beating up Chuck Norris.
Lawsuits are just a way for lawyers to collect taxes without using the government as a middleman.
Of course anything is possible; but "people talk". Yes, people get away with things. When this comes up in casual conversation with one person I know, either one of us will turn to the other and say, "karma". I know we've Westernized that word beyond recognition probably. In our vernacular it means, "yes you can get away with things for a while; but it usually catches up with you". LOL, and I'm going to click "no karma bonus" on this one...
How do you know that the gift wasn't squandered?
They're still living there instead of the house being borded up with a sherrif's notice on the door.
You guys always act like the USA is the coolest, nothing can harm you, and you dare to go further, higher, deeper, and all that.
It's true. It's just that some of those people are trial lawyers and they have gone further, higher and deeper than we thought they would.
Case on point, the US also has abalone divers. If you've never thought about abalone divers, you need to think about what it means: cold, dark, shark-infested waters, heavy currents, kelp that you can get tangled in, 50 feet down in that just so somebody can have some weird shellfish for dinner.
If the trial lawyers ever meet the abalone divers, all hell will break loose... and frequently has.
New! From China, it's little Clara Cadmium. Lick her tummy and hear her giggle. Feed her led pellets and watch her gain weight. Realistic BPA-based skin is soft to the touch. Just $9.99. Turn the price upside down and learn little Clara's secret.
I keep waiting for Time to appear on its own cover. Who here reads Time? If you do, I bet there's a strong correlation with how often you visit the dentist.
If there's an EMP, you've got bigger problems, like whether your neighbor's hide will taste better with garlic or pepper. :)
I didn't really want to go down a rabbit hole of hair splitting detail on this. I thought it was pretty obvious what I meant by "modern electronics".
Spark ignition has been around as long as gasoline powered cars (at least as long as the model-T) so I don't consider it "modern".
It's like pornography. You know it when you see it. When I say "go zap", I mean, for example, a chip going bad in the computer. Now there are a lot of possibilities here but let's just cover two. Either your engine can run without the computer or it can't.
If it can run without the computer, without damaging itself, I'd like it to do that. The best analogy here is the stealth fighter. It can't fly without the fly-by-wire tech. It's inherently unstable without the computer. The pilot's inputs are to the computer, which computes the correct positions for the control surfaces. If your engine is like that, then of course it should shut down if the computer fails. OTOH, if your engine is a basicly stable ICE that just happens to have a computer there to fine tune the emissions and economy, then the console should flash a light when the computer is out but it should let you keep driving.
Also, other things I consider "modern" such as instrument controls that are not vital to the basic function of running a car, these should not cause you to shut down. If your guages are on an LCD, and you lose that, you should still be able to drive.
Long story short, maybe a better way for me to put it would have been, "separate the mission critical electronics from the non-mission critical electronics", where the "mission" is being able to drive safely without destroying the mechanical systems.
Now since I've written even more text than before, I know there are 10X as many semantic nits for people to pick.... but... whatever.
No.
I actually know somebody who thinks this way. They're not stupid. I think they're just ideologicly bent by hard-right elements in the Republican party. Note, I'm not painting the whole party with this brush. It's just that this element finds its home in the party, and once you start associating with people who think a certain way...
We geeks are not immune to this (Emacs, Ruby, etc... are the only true ways and all other ways should be suppressed).
It seems bloody obvious to a lot of us that if the US persued this course of action we would become the horror of the world, and a large portion of the world would unite to end the horror as it did with nazi Germany.
If you are immersed in hard-right culture, it's a lot less obvious. See also, the Milgram experiment.
1. I want the car to function in some capacity even if all the modern electronics go *zap*.
2. I want access to sensor data so I can turn the built-in screen into... wait for it.. a REAL GUAGE PACKAGE instead of "idiot guages".
3. I don't want access to certain control systems. Passive readouts only. If my *job* were writing control systems for autos I think I could do it well. I'd still want several engineers reviewing my code, and I pray that's how the professionals at the car companies do it. I certainly don't want to program engine, transmission, or braking systems as a hobby. I don't want to be on the road with cars where those systems were programmed as a hobby.
4. I do want access to less vital control systems such as wipers, headlights, and for cryin' out loud I want some way to disable the "cryin' out loud" of those damn alarmed systems they build into cars these days.
Yeah, but if corporations are people then machines are people. It follows that the machines could just sue eachother. In the future, the economy will be driven by the need to pit more and more powerful machines against eachother in legal contests. There is no need for the machines to sue people, or for people to sue the machines. They can just sit in the corner and hum, reporting defeat or victory back to their owners.
Eventually, it will dawn on somebody that they are just a waste of electricity. First things first though. We need to transfer the jobs of people who are a waste of food and air into jobs done by machines that are a waste of electricity.
I got thirsty. My doctor asked me a few questions and told me to drink water from a sterilized vessel sold by this company, Corning I believe. It worked. Unbeknownst to us there was this patent for "method of detecting and correcting dihydrogen monoxide deficiency". We're in big trouble now.
It really is that ridiculous, unless Slashdot is just being sensationalistic which I don't think they are. Also, another way DHM can get you in big trouble. That stuff's deadly. Stay away from it.
First, you can't stop geeks from geeking the TV. That's the free market. Secondly, the fact that they're geeking the TV, the content sucks, and the Internet is fragmenting the audience leads me to a conclusion. There is no longer the same critical mass of viewers that there once was. Thus, TV won't be the same cultural touchstone that it was when we were all watching Happy Days on Tuesday nights back in the 70s.
A few months ago a friend comes out and he's like, "there's this show called Breaking Bad..." and he proceeds to tell me about this and that, and the other; but it's a dead-end conversation because I refuse to pay for TV. That's one division right there--those of us who pay for premium content and those who don't. Then there's those of us who have broadband and watch YouTube vids (that'd be me). I'd probably not connect as well with somebody who has satellite TV and dial-up Internet.
Anyway, the "fragmented audience show" must go on. You pop the popcorn...
Short term gain at a tremendous long term expense. That expense is distributed out so that you don't see it right away; but the damage is huge going forward. Both parties--the issuer and the purchaser, enterred into the contract. Bondholders know that Chapter 11 is a possibility, and they plan for it. They plan for it with the expectation that they'll be standing at a particular place in line, receiving payment at some fraction of face value in lieu of the anticipated principal and interest.
The rules were based on bankruptcy laws, which both sides read and understood beforehand. Now that's all out the window. Bond buyers have to factor in the political aspect of who they're purchasing the bonds from. It's not spelled out anywhere. It's totally unpredictable. Managing a portfolio of corporate bonds is now that much more difficult. Instead of just looking at balance sheets, the bond fund manager has to ask himself questions like, "which party is likely to be in power, and is this company and/or their unions in good graces with that party?".
Overseas investors can no longer rely on the rule of law in the US. The US's reputation as a country with sound financial markets governed by fair laws is something that's difficult to price. The list just goes on and on.
How many more people will NOT get jobs, or will get less in their pensions because the law was thrown out the window, and they are not politically connected?
Fascism is the merger of corporation and state. Check. What is the merger of union and state? What was the status of labor unions under regimes historicly regarded as fascist? That's not a rhetorical question. I'm really not sure. AFAIK the nazis didn't have any use for unions; although perhaps guilds were tolerated as historical remnants. The archetypal fascist regime is WW2 Italy... ok, let's do some quick googling...
The Wiki on CISL has no record of it existing prior to 1950.
To me, fascism implies a merger of corporation and state combined with an absolute suppression of anything consider "leftist". I don't think the US qualifies unless you hold fascism to be a subset of cronyism that can combine with it (plausible) or if you classify our unions as corporations.
My opinion is unchanged. While we have elements of fascism, we're not strictly fascist in the way that WW2 italy or Spain under Franco were.
What's in a name anyway? A turd by any other name...
Can you site any other regimes generally regarded as "fascist" that simultaneosly institutionalized unions and corporations? In some states you can't even practice certain occupations unless you join the union (teachers and nurses in California for example) and then on the other end of the spectrum we have our familiar laundry list of corporate abuses.
I think American cronyism is pretty unique in this regard. Government owned by the B-Ark people from both sides of the aisle! Quite an accomplishment.
You sort of beat me to it, but I think the best word for what we have is simply cronyism. That gets you down to one -ism that describes it all. It applies mostly to corporations, but if you use the word cronymism it covers union corruption too. Anybody who opposes cronyism should be just as upset about the way bondholders were screwed in favor of unions during the GM bankruptcy as they are about the way banks are profiting.
When you hire a painter, there's a contract. Copyright holders had a contract with ALL OF US. When one of us violates that contract it is indeed very much like not paying the painter.
Now notice that I used had. The past tense. That's because up until the late 90s I was fimly on the side of the content creators. Then Eldrid vs. Ashcroft and a number of other things convinced me that the contract was defective. It's part of the larger problem of corporate usurpation of our government in the US. Thus, the contract is abrogated on both sides.
If there are infinite universes, then there is a universe where engineers build random number generators, and they always produce this sequence. The scientists struggle to come up with some theory as to why random number generators can't be built. It's not because they aren't random, it's just that they happen to produce this sequence whenever they're built in that universe.
For extra grins and giggles, there is a universe next door where the 9,9,9... random number generator on display at the science museum in the capitol of Earth mysteriously produces a 6 one day, and the world is thrown into a panic that it portends the apocalypse.
We could pirate intellectual property there.
You juice need to inner face sky to drag on naturally speaking or some other text two speach program. Then you can half a wreck gourd of everything they say.
Let's just roll over and die.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying I'm not optimistic on this one working because high-energy living is just too popular.
Compare and contrast this with say... international whaling agreements. They work for the most part. Japan is the noteworthy exception because there's a strong culture of consuming whale. I would submit that high energy becomes very popular when it gets introduced to a country. One generation of TV and automobiles, and it's probably more popular than whale meat.
I almost immediately thought that it looked like the cops were fertilizing the tree of liberty.
There's a good idea there for a political cartoon, if it hasn't been done already.
At least, we hope it's the tree of liberty and not just weeds; but it's certainly something.