Sorry, the history of world civilization IS more important than a new subway station in the present. The past NEEDS to take precedence over the present there.
Bullshit. If it was really about efficiency, we'd have secured the cabin doors on our aircraft, investigated and implemented other simple non-invasive methods to prevent similar attacks on air travel infrastructure, shown the terrorists our collective middle finger, and got on with our lives.
# And if you are willing to do so, are you willing to face a lifetime of condemnation and excommunication from everything you hold dear?
Hell yes. You make the hard decisions, even if they will ruin your career and your reputation, because you know that became your responsibility when you accepted the office and took the oath.
People offer it as an example of the limits of free speech, all the while completely unaware of the saying's origin.
I suspect because people expect common sense sayings to have common sense origins. It is a good example after all - it's not the saying's fault that Holmes used it in Schenk outside of its proper scope (e.g. from Wikipedia, "Chafee argued in Free Speech in the United States that a better analogy in Schenk might be a man who stands in a theatre and warns the audience that there are not enough fire exits").
Strip away all the genocide and war crimes and your left with very socialist ideals.
Except reality doesn't work that way. Strip away all the genocide and war crimes and you're no longer describing Nazis, you're describing some fictional organization with only a superficial resemblance to Nazis. I'd make an allusion to spherical cows, but the "you have two cows" joke works as well.
People can claim whatever lofty ideals they want, but history judges by the results.
#1. "Skynet" - a military system, the ultimate in control freak micromanagement software, built by control freaks with the goal of total world domination by military force.
#2. "Googlenet" - a civilian system, the ultimate in information search/catalog software, built by fun-loving nerds with the goal "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" with a helping of "don't be evil".
I'd suspect a combined Cultural/Economic Takeover route rather than Skynet's Military Xenocide route, assuming it doesn't get sidetracked by something shiny.
Doesn't matter if the disks do that internally, AC. When your entire business plan revolves around "keeping data safe" you don't create single points of failure. If the onboard ECC can catch n bit errors but n+1 bit errors are happening, it'd suck to find out the hard way.
Last time I checked, the known false positive ratio for death sentences in the USA was 8% (based on the courts' own records of exonerations on appeal, 2001-2010).
Or in other words: statistically, out of every 13 people the US sentences to death, at least 1 is innocent.
Thoroughly debunked? You mean there has actually been a peer-reviewed independent study, involving MRI or at least EEG recordings taken continuously before, during and after decapitation, of a statistically valid sample size of conscious participatory test subjects under controlled conditions? Do you have a citation for this?
Because I sure as hell wouldn't trust the statements of a bunch of medieval medicos from a country where, at the time, saying anything the State disagreed with would result in your head being chopped off.
Which is why I like New Zealand's approach (presuming it hasn't changed in the years since I read about it): You can wire your own home so long as you get it inspected, AND the government provides the information you need to know to do it right. Only if you want to do it for a profit (e.g. by wiring other people's homes) do you have to be a licensed electrician.
This is different to the Australian model, which is literally "if you want to replace even a broken light socket, even in your own home, you need to do an electrical apprenticeship with a registered authority, take a three year electrical course, obtain your electrician's license, and THEN you can replace the broken light socket in your own home as well as wiring homes and businesses for profit."
Guess which country had the higher electrical accident casualty rates? Hint: it wasn't the country they filmed Lord of the Rings in.
Hulfs' reply is a fantastic example of the old saying about missing the forest for the trees (and about winning a battle but losing the war).
Sure, most stuff is shipped internationally by cargo ships then domestically warehoused and trucked interstate, rather than flown by air.
Except saying it's all about ships and trucks, not planes, does the opposite of rebutting the GP's overall argument concerning supply chain advances - the ratio of people to tonnage for oceanic shipping is even less than that for air.
And since OP has been working in the logistics industry for about 10 years, OP might have noticed that shipping and warehousing is still being further automated too.
And as a slashdot reader, one might also noticed those articles about how self-driving cars (and trucks) are becoming less about "drawing boards and labs" and more about "real world testing and certifications".
Thus, I remain skeptical -- not a denier, but not jumping on the bandwagon either. Why are the AGW people here so insistent that everyone must *believe*, or be branded a heretic?
Because polarisation. For example, your initial post was confrontational - just like the posts of those you called "bigots". If someone takes an extreme position, there's a tendency to either agree or to take an extreme opposite position. And extreme positions, regardless of "side", are much more noticeable than all the other intermediate positions combined. And most people like being noticed.
Hmm. Whether it's "hundreds of thousands" or "thousands" - I too would probably just call them "chemicals" and be done with it. This is slashdot, not a PhD thesis. Seems to me that if one's response is to pick out the portion of his argument that contains some hyperbole, you've not really tackled his argument.
Are you generally agreeing with him but wanting him not to use hyperbole because of the "with friends like these" problem?:)
I would think "manufactured products made of bamboo" would be an even more appropriate fit. I don't know of any breeds that naturally grow their own carved finger-holes and mouth-pieces.
And if we follow the actual APHIS manual cited and linked by that CBP webpage, it turns out the CBP webpage incorrectly cites Table 3-22, which applies to broomcorn and broomstraw, rather than Table 3-57, which applies to bamboo.
As I commented in another post, sufficiently advanced incompetence can be indistinguishable from malice in its consequence to the victim. It's not like customs hasn't screwed up like this before.
(checks McGruber's comment) It's a mistake either way. Either it's not bamboo, and they applied the wrong rule, or it is bamboo - but a handicraft, see http://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/plants/manuals/ports/downloads/miscellaneous.pdf - and they applied the wrong rule (also, the CBP website cites the wrong table; table 3-22 is broomcorn and broomstraw, it should be citing table 3-57 instead).
Re "power corrupts", that's why I added "It doesn't even have to be intentional, that just speeds things up". Corruption occurs at both the individual and organisational level, the latter doesn't actually require malice on the part of the former (incompetence and/or unaccountability can accomplish it too), and there is a feedback loop.
Or to put it another way, "sufficiently advanced incompetence can be indistinguishable from malice in its consequence to the victim". And this sort of thing has happened before (e.g. a concert pianist travelling to the US had their piano destroyed because it smelled funny according to the agents involved).
An important sentence was left out of the summary, which explained that customs mistook the instruments for pieces of bamboo.
[...]
The moral of the story is to verify that the stuff that you're taking across the border is actually legal for import or export.
Do you see your mistake? The stuff in question _was_ "actually legal". Customs made a _mistake_. One, apparently, with no checks or balances to prevent it.
No, the moral of the story is "power corrupts". It doesn't even have to be intentional, that just speeds things up.
After all, it could have been much worse for this man. I would imagine that charges could have been pressed if they so desired.
Again, no. Because if they were going to charge him with a crime, they would have had to preserve the "evidence" rather than simply destroy his means of livelihood without chance of appeal.
Well, in theory, once upon a time, anyway. These days, with all the revelations about what the US government does in the dark, I'm not so sure.
Doesn't mention contract lock-ins; does describe how the foundation invests in the very companies which are the source of the problems its charitable works are meant to reduce.
I'm reminded of the old medieval practice of buying forgiveness for your sins.
The initial attack on the armed enemy combatants was justifiable considering the circumstances. The Apache crew didn't know about the embedded journalists, and in any case those journalists were accompanying enemy soldiers in a hot zone. Wrong place, wrong time, war sucks.
But the subsequent post-firefight attack on unknown samaritans?
That was simply obscene. That was "man's inhumanity to man" - in other words, a war crime (both by the Apache crew and their base controller for authorising their request to fire). Or are you advocating that the next time _American_ combatants are injured and/or dying, that the enemy _should_ fire upon people trying to aid them post-firefight?
This is the sort of "we can't do wrong, we're the good guys" and "it's only evil when the enemy does it" denial that eventually leads to places like Auschwitz.
And then there's your comment, "but if you lack the constitution you may want to avoid watching real combat action videos as they can be disturbing and possibly personally distressing"?
You used the wrong word. It's not "constitution". It's "empathy". And if you lack any empathy with those of your own species being injured, maimed or killed, we have two other words that define that: "conditioned" or "sociopath".
Yes, it's still nominally a democratic republic, but it IS authoritarian and it IS plutocratic. Don't blind yourself to your country's faults - because the enemy sure as hell won't. What you can't see, you can't see being exploited by the enemy.
Authoritarian: highest incarceration rate on Earth (exceeding China and Russia combined), militarization of police (armored cars, military weapons, systemic use of no-knock entries, etc), tough-on-crime feedback loop, death penalty (with approx 8% known false positive rate according to the states' own judicial records), mandatory sentencing, three-strikes laws, weaponization of plea bargaining, asset seizure feedback loops, free speech zones, secret orders, secret courts, warrant-less mass surveillance, suspensions of habeas corpus, etc, etc.
Plutocratic: extreme wealth inequality, increasing population below poverty line, increasing corporate subsidization, byzantine economic system, high-level revolving-door positions in the corporate and government sectors, electoral and judicial outcomes extremely and highly dependent on private wealth respectively.
Is a gun a deadly weapon? After all, guns don't kill, it's the bullets they fire that does it. No, wait, bullets don't kill, it's the trauma they inflict that does it. No, wait, trauma doesn't always kill, it's the subsequent blood loss and oxygen deprivation of the brain.
Etc. Methinks thou art being pedantic.:)
(and I had no objections to the rest of your argument, which I suppose makes me pedantic/picky too)
I live in Australia. I'm not a gun advocate. But if I lived in the US, I would be, because in that country the horse hasn't just left the barn, it came back with a bulldozer and made damn sure that barn wasn't going to hold any horses ever again.
You want to reduce gun violence in the US? You do it the same way you reduce violence in general. You address the root causes. In the US, I'd start with the feudal levels of income inequality, the obscene incarceration rate, and the abysmal lack of universal healthcare, education and suffrage.
Slashdot Mirror
Bullshit. If it was really about efficiency, we'd have secured the cabin doors on our aircraft, investigated and implemented other simple non-invasive methods to prevent similar attacks on air travel infrastructure, shown the terrorists our collective middle finger, and got on with our lives.
# And if you are willing to do so, are you willing to face a lifetime of condemnation and excommunication from everything you hold dear?
Hell yes. You make the hard decisions, even if they will ruin your career and your reputation, because you know that became your responsibility when you accepted the office and took the oath.
I suspect because people expect common sense sayings to have common sense origins. It is a good example after all - it's not the saying's fault that Holmes used it in Schenk outside of its proper scope (e.g. from Wikipedia, "Chafee argued in Free Speech in the United States that a better analogy in Schenk might be a man who stands in a theatre and warns the audience that there are not enough fire exits").
Except reality doesn't work that way. Strip away all the genocide and war crimes and you're no longer describing Nazis, you're describing some fictional organization with only a superficial resemblance to Nazis. I'd make an allusion to spherical cows, but the "you have two cows" joke works as well.
People can claim whatever lofty ideals they want, but history judges by the results.
Let's see:
#1. "Skynet" - a military system, the ultimate in control freak micromanagement software, built by control freaks with the goal of total world domination by military force.
#2. "Googlenet" - a civilian system, the ultimate in information search/catalog software, built by fun-loving nerds with the goal "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" with a helping of "don't be evil".
I'd suspect a combined Cultural/Economic Takeover route rather than Skynet's Military Xenocide route, assuming it doesn't get sidetracked by something shiny.
Doesn't matter if the disks do that internally, AC. When your entire business plan revolves around "keeping data safe" you don't create single points of failure. If the onboard ECC can catch n bit errors but n+1 bit errors are happening, it'd suck to find out the hard way.
Last time I checked, the known false positive ratio for death sentences in the USA was 8% (based on the courts' own records of exonerations on appeal, 2001-2010).
Or in other words: statistically, out of every 13 people the US sentences to death, at least 1 is innocent.
Thoroughly debunked? You mean there has actually been a peer-reviewed independent study, involving MRI or at least EEG recordings taken continuously before, during and after decapitation, of a statistically valid sample size of conscious participatory test subjects under controlled conditions? Do you have a citation for this?
Because I sure as hell wouldn't trust the statements of a bunch of medieval medicos from a country where, at the time, saying anything the State disagreed with would result in your head being chopped off.
Which is why I like New Zealand's approach (presuming it hasn't changed in the years since I read about it): You can wire your own home so long as you get it inspected, AND the government provides the information you need to know to do it right. Only if you want to do it for a profit (e.g. by wiring other people's homes) do you have to be a licensed electrician.
This is different to the Australian model, which is literally "if you want to replace even a broken light socket, even in your own home, you need to do an electrical apprenticeship with a registered authority, take a three year electrical course, obtain your electrician's license, and THEN you can replace the broken light socket in your own home as well as wiring homes and businesses for profit."
Guess which country had the higher electrical accident casualty rates? Hint: it wasn't the country they filmed Lord of the Rings in.
Nanny states have child citizens.
Fire!
Hulfs' reply is a fantastic example of the old saying about missing the forest for the trees (and about winning a battle but losing the war).
Sure, most stuff is shipped internationally by cargo ships then domestically warehoused and trucked interstate, rather than flown by air.
Except saying it's all about ships and trucks, not planes, does the opposite of rebutting the GP's overall argument concerning supply chain advances - the ratio of people to tonnage for oceanic shipping is even less than that for air.
And since OP has been working in the logistics industry for about 10 years, OP might have noticed that shipping and warehousing is still being further automated too.
And as a slashdot reader, one might also noticed those articles about how self-driving cars (and trucks) are becoming less about "drawing boards and labs" and more about "real world testing and certifications".
Because polarisation. For example, your initial post was confrontational - just like the posts of those you called "bigots". If someone takes an extreme position, there's a tendency to either agree or to take an extreme opposite position. And extreme positions, regardless of "side", are much more noticeable than all the other intermediate positions combined. And most people like being noticed.
Fair enough. Thankyou.
Hmm. Whether it's "hundreds of thousands" or "thousands" - I too would probably just call them "chemicals" and be done with it. This is slashdot, not a PhD thesis. Seems to me that if one's response is to pick out the portion of his argument that contains some hyperbole, you've not really tackled his argument.
Are you generally agreeing with him but wanting him not to use hyperbole because of the "with friends like these" problem? :)
I would think "manufactured products made of bamboo" would be an even more appropriate fit. I don't know of any breeds that naturally grow their own carved finger-holes and mouth-pieces.
And if we follow the actual APHIS manual cited and linked by that CBP webpage, it turns out the CBP webpage incorrectly cites Table 3-22, which applies to broomcorn and broomstraw, rather than Table 3-57, which applies to bamboo.
As I commented in another post, sufficiently advanced incompetence can be indistinguishable from malice in its consequence to the victim. It's not like customs hasn't screwed up like this before.
(checks McGruber's comment) It's a mistake either way. Either it's not bamboo, and they applied the wrong rule, or it is bamboo - but a handicraft, see http://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/plants/manuals/ports/downloads/miscellaneous.pdf - and they applied the wrong rule (also, the CBP website cites the wrong table; table 3-22 is broomcorn and broomstraw, it should be citing table 3-57 instead).
Re "power corrupts", that's why I added "It doesn't even have to be intentional, that just speeds things up". Corruption occurs at both the individual and organisational level, the latter doesn't actually require malice on the part of the former (incompetence and/or unaccountability can accomplish it too), and there is a feedback loop.
Or to put it another way, "sufficiently advanced incompetence can be indistinguishable from malice in its consequence to the victim". And this sort of thing has happened before (e.g. a concert pianist travelling to the US had their piano destroyed because it smelled funny according to the agents involved).
[...]
Do you see your mistake? The stuff in question _was_ "actually legal". Customs made a _mistake_. One, apparently, with no checks or balances to prevent it.
No, the moral of the story is "power corrupts". It doesn't even have to be intentional, that just speeds things up.
Again, no. Because if they were going to charge him with a crime, they would have had to preserve the "evidence" rather than simply destroy his means of livelihood without chance of appeal.
Well, in theory, once upon a time, anyway. These days, with all the revelations about what the US government does in the dark, I'm not so sure.
An AC posted this elsewhere in this thread: http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,290910,full.story
Doesn't mention contract lock-ins; does describe how the foundation invests in the very companies which are the source of the problems its charitable works are meant to reduce.
I'm reminded of the old medieval practice of buying forgiveness for your sins.
I watched the video. I read the transcripts.
The initial attack on the armed enemy combatants was justifiable considering the circumstances. The Apache crew didn't know about the embedded journalists, and in any case those journalists were accompanying enemy soldiers in a hot zone. Wrong place, wrong time, war sucks.
But the subsequent post-firefight attack on unknown samaritans?
That was simply obscene. That was "man's inhumanity to man" - in other words, a war crime (both by the Apache crew and their base controller for authorising their request to fire). Or are you advocating that the next time _American_ combatants are injured and/or dying, that the enemy _should_ fire upon people trying to aid them post-firefight?
This is the sort of "we can't do wrong, we're the good guys" and "it's only evil when the enemy does it" denial that eventually leads to places like Auschwitz.
And then there's your comment, "but if you lack the constitution you may want to avoid watching real combat action videos as they can be disturbing and possibly personally distressing"?
You used the wrong word. It's not "constitution". It's "empathy". And if you lack any empathy with those of your own species being injured, maimed or killed, we have two other words that define that: "conditioned" or "sociopath".
Yes, it's still nominally a democratic republic, but it IS authoritarian and it IS plutocratic. Don't blind yourself to your country's faults - because the enemy sure as hell won't. What you can't see, you can't see being exploited by the enemy.
Authoritarian: highest incarceration rate on Earth (exceeding China and Russia combined), militarization of police (armored cars, military weapons, systemic use of no-knock entries, etc), tough-on-crime feedback loop, death penalty (with approx 8% known false positive rate according to the states' own judicial records), mandatory sentencing, three-strikes laws, weaponization of plea bargaining, asset seizure feedback loops, free speech zones, secret orders, secret courts, warrant-less mass surveillance, suspensions of habeas corpus, etc, etc.
Plutocratic: extreme wealth inequality, increasing population below poverty line, increasing corporate subsidization, byzantine economic system, high-level revolving-door positions in the corporate and government sectors, electoral and judicial outcomes extremely and highly dependent on private wealth respectively.
Is a gun a deadly weapon? After all, guns don't kill, it's the bullets they fire that does it. No, wait, bullets don't kill, it's the trauma they inflict that does it. No, wait, trauma doesn't always kill, it's the subsequent blood loss and oxygen deprivation of the brain.
Etc. Methinks thou art being pedantic. :)
(and I had no objections to the rest of your argument, which I suppose makes me pedantic/picky too)
I live in Australia. I'm not a gun advocate. But if I lived in the US, I would be, because in that country the horse hasn't just left the barn, it came back with a bulldozer and made damn sure that barn wasn't going to hold any horses ever again.
You want to reduce gun violence in the US? You do it the same way you reduce violence in general. You address the root causes. In the US, I'd start with the feudal levels of income inequality, the obscene incarceration rate, and the abysmal lack of universal healthcare, education and suffrage.
Memetic Warfare (military orientation)
Survival of the Fittest Ideas: The New Style of War -- a Struggle Among Memes (academic orientation)
http://everything2.com/title/Meme+Warfare (the "I fell asleep after five minutes, can you summarise the lecture for me" orientation)
So, sometimes? Yes.
... No, you're right, he didn't win.
Instead of an Islamic caliphate, we're up to our waist in an authoritarian plutocracy. If that is victory, one more such might undo us.
So your guess on humanity's reaction to discovering a stellar engine, ringworld or similar megastructure would be...?