It's not that we're worried about hardware backdoors. No one's gonna slip a backdoor into your resistor. The few parts complex enough to hold a backdoor get made in the US.
What we are worried about is that the resistors, line drivers, relays, etc. aren't actually spec'd for the environment they'll be used in. Consumer grade electronics, for example, are generally made to work from around 0 to 70 degrees C. Military grade is something like -55 to 125 degC. If you design a plane in which your circuit will need to operate at 100 degC, and you buy parts that can handle that stress, and some cheap Chinese manufacturer gives you consumer grade parts instead, then your circuit could fail at a very inopportune time.
Who the hell lets this shit through? The new bomber is designed to counter new strategies. That doesn't mean it's "aimed at China". That's a needlessly belligerent phrase -- either warmongering or scaremongering over the prospects of war. If England develops bullets that can pierce American body armor, will we hear about new "British Guns Aimed at America!"?
Sorry chickenhawks, but America and China won't go to war. Our economies are far too interdependent.
So three trillion doesn't make a dent in fifteen trillion? Maybe we have different definitions of "dent". I'll tell you what... take a 20% pay cut and tell me it's not a dent.
And it's funny that you completely ignored the other half of the equation: the massive tax cuts. Whatsamatter? Don't like the conclusion they lead you to?
Bullshit. The Dems wasted a lot of time trying to reach out to the Republicans by supporting their ideas. The individual mandate, end of life counseling (now called death panels), cap and trade, the DREAM act... all of those were Republican ideas that they turned violently against as soon as the Democrats supported them.
The whole reason NASA is even being cut is because the GOP took the country hostage last summer over the debt ceiling. Nevermind that most of the debt comes from the wars they supported and the tax cuts they demanded.
If you think you can properly govern a country in "a few moments" of your time, well that's just hubris talking. Governing is a full time job. Indeed, leaders have scores of aides because even working full time is insufficient.
To take your garden analogy further, a large country is more like a massive farm. If you try to micromanage, you'll be overwhelmed and get burnt out. Should the income tax bracket start at $225k or $235k? Should this highway be three lanes or four? How many garbagemen does this town need? How about that one? It is absolutely impossible to make all these decisions while simultaneously working a job, having a family, and enjoying life.
People need to do a better job picking "gardeners", and we need better laws to keep them honest, but direct democracy is an overreaction.
More democratic, yes, but democratic isn't a synonym for good.
Representative governments (huge caveat: when working properly) are superior to direct democracy because the average voter doesn't have enough time to become informed on every issue. Instead, they find someone they trust, and give that person a full time job investigating issues and voting appropriately. It's a great system, except that in practice whoever we hire ends up getting bought off. The way to fix it is through draconian regulations on campaign finance and public/private sector crossover. For example, if you hold public office, you're banned from private sector employment for at least X years. We'd need to pay them pensions, but that's a small price compared to the amount of money wasted on kickbacks.
Abandoning the system altogether and instituting a direct democracy would just hand more power than ever to the demagogues who have already mastered the art of manipulating public opinion.
I wish the Democrats would yank the window around. The sad fact is that they don't.
Twenty years ago, the Republicans supported cap & trade as a free market alternative to the Democrats' policies. Today, they've renamed it "cap & tax" and it's politically toxic. Their new alternative is to do nothing because they don't even acknowledge the scientific truths that they did years ago.
Twenty years ago, the Republicans supported the individual mandate as a free market alternative to the Democrats' policies. Today, it's a "government takeover of health care" that will institute "death panels". Their new alternative is to sell state insurance across state lines, meaning that all insurance companies would move to the state with the most lax regulations, meaning the quality of care would drop like a stone.
Twenty years ago, Medicare was a beloved program and considered untouchable. Today, the Republicans, including their presidential nominee, have announced their intention to end the program, replace it with one that covers only a fraction of seniors' medical costs, and give the savings to the super rich in the form of the largest tax cut in decades.
Twenty years ago, waterboarding was an evil torture technique used against American servicemen in WWII. Today it's a useful "enhanced interrogation" technique.
Twenty years ago, a ban on assault weapons was a reasonable compromise in gun control. Today, even after the near assassination of a Representative and murder of several bystanders, we can't manage to pass a law against extended magazines -- weapons that have no purpose other than mass murder.
The only area in which the Democrats have gained any ground is gay rights. Sorry, but truth doesn't get through to people. The average American is way too stupid to recognize a logical fallacy when he hears one. You can either lose every argument and watch the country go down the shitter, or you can fight fire with fire.
He doesn't need to have reviewed the evidence himself. The scientific community has, and they've reached their conclusion. Have you, personally, measured the relationship between voltage and current to determine the truth of Ohm's law? Of course not. You trust in the experts.
It only the people who are going against the scientific consensus that need to back up their claims with hard evidence.
So what would you have us do? Never trust anyone, even if we know they're right, out of fear that everyone on the planet is secretly plotting to do us harm? That's silly.
If Mr. Panetta proposes DoD hit squads go around killing people who don't sort their recycling, then yeah, oppose that. But don't shout him down when he's telling the truth just because you're afraid he might have ulterior motives.
Have you spent a week or two among [Republicans], away from your friends of a similar mindset and comfort zone, where you are forced to interact with them on a minute by minute basis?
Yup, a week, two weeks, my entire childhood, every single holiday since then. Try listening to your aunt talk about how the Jews are using Hollywood to brainwash society, while your Jewish mother sits awkwardly in the corner. Try watching your supposedly devout Christian father argue that torture is good. Try arguing with your uncle that his daughter, your cousin, is not a "race traitor" just because she's dating a black man. Do all that for decade after decade, and then come back to me and say that these people can be reasoned with.
Sometimes people really are just too far gone, and society's only option is to move on without them.
"It's okay when people agree with me, but it's not when they don't."
Strawman. What I said was that if you agree with the experts, you don't need proof of your own. It's only when you go against the scientific consensus that you need supporting evidence. I can say "evolution is real" even though I really don't understand it beyond a superficial level, because I know that the scientific consensus supports that position. If I were to say "evolution is a lie, God made the world in seven days", I better have some damn good evidence to back that statement up.
Really, this is super easy stuff. A child could understand it. The only reason it's "controversial" is because one side benefits from muddying the waters.
Of course it was voted down. No one ever passes the President's budget untouched. All the congresscritters want to insert their own modifications. But the fact remains that the administration is pushing for cuts to defense spending.
Don't you see how they're manipulating you? "Truth in the middle" doesn't work when one side is sprinting full tilt to the right. Read up on the Overton window.
I know it sucks that we have to sink to their level to beat them, but it's true. We have tried the high minded approach for decades, and it doesn't work. We're making negative progress. Their methods work. We have to adopt them, or die. I'm sorry, I really am, but it's true. High minded, rational debate doesn't work. Dragging the overton window around with lies and hyperbole does. So hold your nose and spew bullshit just as they do, or watch them win time after time.
Seriously, in your earlier post you basically said that everyone who disagrees with you is lying for political gain, and everyone who agrees with you is a sincere communicator.
That's a very misleading way to phrase it. You're implying that I believe that the liars are lying because they disagree with me. That is false. I believe that they're lying because all of the evidence shows that they are. I disagree with them as a consequence of that fact.
I'm quite happy to admit when I'm wrong. Example: I voted for Bush, twice. I believed Iraq had WMDs. I believed that the United States wasn't torturing detainees. Go back to my pre-college years, and I was even a creationist! By 2006, the evidence of torture and lack of evidence of WMDs was such that I had to admit that I had been wrong, so I abandoned the GOP that had misled me so. And I was wrong about another thing: I thought at the time that a lot of other people would follow me, and that the GOP would collapse under the enormity of their lies. O, how wrong I was. Most of my former peers simply blinded themselves to the truth. Others rationalized by deciding, "Well, sure, I supported the bad guys, but the other guys are just as bad, so it's okay!" That's a defense mechanism, used by a brain that doesn't want to face its former mistakes.
you are rather simpleminded and frozen in your political outlook if you think the D party doesnt covent defense spending nearly as much as the R party. Two sides of the same coin.
You're the one who's "frozen in your political outlook". Obama's budget proposal would cut military spending. By quite a bit, in fact. See for yourself. Click the department totals tab.
Higher taxes + more bureaucracy = bigger government = more power. How do you not see how this helps them? Good Republicans are for smaller, less powerful government.
I'm going to ignore your lies about the science. It's settled, and it doesn't matter that you choose to ignore it. But I will respond to the quoted bit, because it's an oft repeated bit of bad logic.
How, exactly does big government help the Democrats?
Republicans benefit from cutting spending because it gives them an excuse to cut taxes, and those tax cuts go to the 1%, who then return the favor by giving enormous kickbacks, er, donations to the GOP. And at the same time, they get to gain the clear electoral advantage that comes with cutting taxes, ensuring that they get to keep their nice, cushy jobs.
But how does bigger government help the Democrats? When they raise taxes, it decreases their chance of getting reelected, and doesn't put any money in their pockets. Why would they do it, if they didn't really believe it was necessary?
They'll never be receptive, because they've already made up their minds. It's been shown in several studies that if you show a conservative evidence that they're wrong, it just makes them hold that belief even stronger. You cannot debate with these people in a rational manner. And this milquetoast, always-compromise approach doesn't work. The thugs will walk all over us every time. They have to be beaten down, shoved aside, and ignored. We can never convince them of truth, because they don't believe in it. We can never compromise with them, because they don't believe in that either. All we can do is work around them, and hope they don't kill us in the process.
Great post, but completely irrelevant, as there are mountains of evidence for climate change. That you refuse to acknowledge them reflects on you, not on the science.
If Panetta wanted more money for his department, he would deny climate change and support the Republicans, who are always happy to give more money to the DoD. How exactly does acknowledging the truth of climate change get him more money? Do you think we're going to buy some fighter jets to go bomb the atmosphere?
That's a bullshit comparison. When a denier who has no experience in climatology starts lying about the science, they rightfully get torn down, just as a creationist with no experience in biology gets torn down when they start talking about "irreducibly complex" organisms.
When someone not in the field of climatology acknowledges the fields conclusions, then that's perfectly acceptable, just as it is perfectly acceptable when a person with no experience in biology accepts the existence of evolution.
It's okay to trust the consensus of experts. You do it every time you drive over a bridge, after all. It is not okay to dispute science that you know nothing about.
Which side is the one lying about it for political gain?
The side that is LYING!! Truth is REAL. I know that it's trendy to deny it these days, but there are such things as objective facts. All of the science proves that global warming is a fact. You don't like it? Too fucking bad, go cry me a river. Your opinions hold absolutely no sway over fact. You can disbelieve climate change, you can disbelieve evolution, you can disbelieve the moon landing, you can disbelieve that passenger jets brought down the Twin Towers, you can disbelieve gravity. But none of that fucking matters. Because truth is true whether you believe it or not.
And tell me, how is there "political gain" for the Democrats in raising taxes and creating regulations? How does it help them? Cause from where I stand, they'd be able to win a lot more power if, like the Republicans, they simply denied objective fact and promised tax cuts for everyone. They don't do that. Instead they accept the truth and try to deal with it.
Fuck you for waging this war on objective truth. We cannot survive without science, and we cannot have science without objective truth.
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It's ambient, but it depends on the components. The numbers I gave are for things like resistors, and occasionally small ICs.
No, you misunderstand the counterfeit part issue.
It's not that we're worried about hardware backdoors. No one's gonna slip a backdoor into your resistor. The few parts complex enough to hold a backdoor get made in the US.
What we are worried about is that the resistors, line drivers, relays, etc. aren't actually spec'd for the environment they'll be used in. Consumer grade electronics, for example, are generally made to work from around 0 to 70 degrees C. Military grade is something like -55 to 125 degC. If you design a plane in which your circuit will need to operate at 100 degC, and you buy parts that can handle that stress, and some cheap Chinese manufacturer gives you consumer grade parts instead, then your circuit could fail at a very inopportune time.
Who the hell lets this shit through? The new bomber is designed to counter new strategies. That doesn't mean it's "aimed at China". That's a needlessly belligerent phrase -- either warmongering or scaremongering over the prospects of war. If England develops bullets that can pierce American body armor, will we hear about new "British Guns Aimed at America!"?
Sorry chickenhawks, but America and China won't go to war. Our economies are far too interdependent.
So three trillion doesn't make a dent in fifteen trillion? Maybe we have different definitions of "dent". I'll tell you what... take a 20% pay cut and tell me it's not a dent.
And it's funny that you completely ignored the other half of the equation: the massive tax cuts. Whatsamatter? Don't like the conclusion they lead you to?
Bullshit. The Dems wasted a lot of time trying to reach out to the Republicans by supporting their ideas. The individual mandate, end of life counseling (now called death panels), cap and trade, the DREAM act... all of those were Republican ideas that they turned violently against as soon as the Democrats supported them.
The whole reason NASA is even being cut is because the GOP took the country hostage last summer over the debt ceiling. Nevermind that most of the debt comes from the wars they supported and the tax cuts they demanded.
If you think you can properly govern a country in "a few moments" of your time, well that's just hubris talking. Governing is a full time job. Indeed, leaders have scores of aides because even working full time is insufficient.
To take your garden analogy further, a large country is more like a massive farm. If you try to micromanage, you'll be overwhelmed and get burnt out. Should the income tax bracket start at $225k or $235k? Should this highway be three lanes or four? How many garbagemen does this town need? How about that one? It is absolutely impossible to make all these decisions while simultaneously working a job, having a family, and enjoying life.
People need to do a better job picking "gardeners", and we need better laws to keep them honest, but direct democracy is an overreaction.
More democratic, yes, but democratic isn't a synonym for good.
Representative governments (huge caveat: when working properly) are superior to direct democracy because the average voter doesn't have enough time to become informed on every issue. Instead, they find someone they trust, and give that person a full time job investigating issues and voting appropriately. It's a great system, except that in practice whoever we hire ends up getting bought off. The way to fix it is through draconian regulations on campaign finance and public/private sector crossover. For example, if you hold public office, you're banned from private sector employment for at least X years. We'd need to pay them pensions, but that's a small price compared to the amount of money wasted on kickbacks.
Abandoning the system altogether and instituting a direct democracy would just hand more power than ever to the demagogues who have already mastered the art of manipulating public opinion.
Good math, bad conclusion. This proves that CO2 doesn't exist! Just wait till Fox catches wind of this!
I wish the Democrats would yank the window around. The sad fact is that they don't.
Twenty years ago, the Republicans supported cap & trade as a free market alternative to the Democrats' policies. Today, they've renamed it "cap & tax" and it's politically toxic. Their new alternative is to do nothing because they don't even acknowledge the scientific truths that they did years ago.
Twenty years ago, the Republicans supported the individual mandate as a free market alternative to the Democrats' policies. Today, it's a "government takeover of health care" that will institute "death panels". Their new alternative is to sell state insurance across state lines, meaning that all insurance companies would move to the state with the most lax regulations, meaning the quality of care would drop like a stone.
Twenty years ago, Medicare was a beloved program and considered untouchable. Today, the Republicans, including their presidential nominee, have announced their intention to end the program, replace it with one that covers only a fraction of seniors' medical costs, and give the savings to the super rich in the form of the largest tax cut in decades.
Twenty years ago, waterboarding was an evil torture technique used against American servicemen in WWII. Today it's a useful "enhanced interrogation" technique.
Twenty years ago, a ban on assault weapons was a reasonable compromise in gun control. Today, even after the near assassination of a Representative and murder of several bystanders, we can't manage to pass a law against extended magazines -- weapons that have no purpose other than mass murder.
The only area in which the Democrats have gained any ground is gay rights. Sorry, but truth doesn't get through to people. The average American is way too stupid to recognize a logical fallacy when he hears one. You can either lose every argument and watch the country go down the shitter, or you can fight fire with fire.
If you gonna criticize someone for screwing up their units, you ought to be careful of the difference between kW/h and kW*h.
He doesn't need to have reviewed the evidence himself. The scientific community has, and they've reached their conclusion. Have you, personally, measured the relationship between voltage and current to determine the truth of Ohm's law? Of course not. You trust in the experts.
It only the people who are going against the scientific consensus that need to back up their claims with hard evidence.
So what would you have us do? Never trust anyone, even if we know they're right, out of fear that everyone on the planet is secretly plotting to do us harm? That's silly.
If Mr. Panetta proposes DoD hit squads go around killing people who don't sort their recycling, then yeah, oppose that. But don't shout him down when he's telling the truth just because you're afraid he might have ulterior motives.
This sounds like the perfect application for a big ass table!
Have you spent a week or two among [Republicans], away from your friends of a similar mindset and comfort zone, where you are forced to interact with them on a minute by minute basis?
Yup, a week, two weeks, my entire childhood, every single holiday since then. Try listening to your aunt talk about how the Jews are using Hollywood to brainwash society, while your Jewish mother sits awkwardly in the corner. Try watching your supposedly devout Christian father argue that torture is good. Try arguing with your uncle that his daughter, your cousin, is not a "race traitor" just because she's dating a black man. Do all that for decade after decade, and then come back to me and say that these people can be reasoned with.
Sometimes people really are just too far gone, and society's only option is to move on without them.
"It's okay when people agree with me, but it's not when they don't."
Strawman. What I said was that if you agree with the experts, you don't need proof of your own. It's only when you go against the scientific consensus that you need supporting evidence. I can say "evolution is real" even though I really don't understand it beyond a superficial level, because I know that the scientific consensus supports that position. If I were to say "evolution is a lie, God made the world in seven days", I better have some damn good evidence to back that statement up.
Really, this is super easy stuff. A child could understand it. The only reason it's "controversial" is because one side benefits from muddying the waters.
Of course it was voted down. No one ever passes the President's budget untouched. All the congresscritters want to insert their own modifications. But the fact remains that the administration is pushing for cuts to defense spending.
Don't you see how they're manipulating you? "Truth in the middle" doesn't work when one side is sprinting full tilt to the right. Read up on the Overton window.
I know it sucks that we have to sink to their level to beat them, but it's true. We have tried the high minded approach for decades, and it doesn't work. We're making negative progress. Their methods work. We have to adopt them, or die. I'm sorry, I really am, but it's true. High minded, rational debate doesn't work. Dragging the overton window around with lies and hyperbole does. So hold your nose and spew bullshit just as they do, or watch them win time after time.
Seriously, in your earlier post you basically said that everyone who disagrees with you is lying for political gain, and everyone who agrees with you is a sincere communicator.
That's a very misleading way to phrase it. You're implying that I believe that the liars are lying because they disagree with me. That is false. I believe that they're lying because all of the evidence shows that they are. I disagree with them as a consequence of that fact.
I'm quite happy to admit when I'm wrong. Example: I voted for Bush, twice. I believed Iraq had WMDs. I believed that the United States wasn't torturing detainees. Go back to my pre-college years, and I was even a creationist! By 2006, the evidence of torture and lack of evidence of WMDs was such that I had to admit that I had been wrong, so I abandoned the GOP that had misled me so. And I was wrong about another thing: I thought at the time that a lot of other people would follow me, and that the GOP would collapse under the enormity of their lies. O, how wrong I was. Most of my former peers simply blinded themselves to the truth. Others rationalized by deciding, "Well, sure, I supported the bad guys, but the other guys are just as bad, so it's okay!" That's a defense mechanism, used by a brain that doesn't want to face its former mistakes.
you are rather simpleminded and frozen in your political outlook if you think the D party doesnt covent defense spending nearly as much as the R party. Two sides of the same coin.
You're the one who's "frozen in your political outlook". Obama's budget proposal would cut military spending. By quite a bit, in fact. See for yourself. Click the department totals tab.
Higher taxes + more bureaucracy = bigger government = more power. How do you not see how this helps them? Good Republicans are for smaller, less powerful government.
I'm going to ignore your lies about the science. It's settled, and it doesn't matter that you choose to ignore it. But I will respond to the quoted bit, because it's an oft repeated bit of bad logic.
How, exactly does big government help the Democrats?
Republicans benefit from cutting spending because it gives them an excuse to cut taxes, and those tax cuts go to the 1%, who then return the favor by giving enormous kickbacks, er, donations to the GOP. And at the same time, they get to gain the clear electoral advantage that comes with cutting taxes, ensuring that they get to keep their nice, cushy jobs.
But how does bigger government help the Democrats? When they raise taxes, it decreases their chance of getting reelected, and doesn't put any money in their pockets. Why would they do it, if they didn't really believe it was necessary?
They'll never be receptive, because they've already made up their minds. It's been shown in several studies that if you show a conservative evidence that they're wrong, it just makes them hold that belief even stronger. You cannot debate with these people in a rational manner. And this milquetoast, always-compromise approach doesn't work. The thugs will walk all over us every time. They have to be beaten down, shoved aside, and ignored. We can never convince them of truth, because they don't believe in it. We can never compromise with them, because they don't believe in that either. All we can do is work around them, and hope they don't kill us in the process.
Great post, but completely irrelevant, as there are mountains of evidence for climate change. That you refuse to acknowledge them reflects on you, not on the science.
If Panetta wanted more money for his department, he would deny climate change and support the Republicans, who are always happy to give more money to the DoD. How exactly does acknowledging the truth of climate change get him more money? Do you think we're going to buy some fighter jets to go bomb the atmosphere?
That's a bullshit comparison. When a denier who has no experience in climatology starts lying about the science, they rightfully get torn down, just as a creationist with no experience in biology gets torn down when they start talking about "irreducibly complex" organisms.
When someone not in the field of climatology acknowledges the fields conclusions, then that's perfectly acceptable, just as it is perfectly acceptable when a person with no experience in biology accepts the existence of evolution.
It's okay to trust the consensus of experts. You do it every time you drive over a bridge, after all. It is not okay to dispute science that you know nothing about.
Which side is the one lying about it for political gain?
The side that is LYING!! Truth is REAL. I know that it's trendy to deny it these days, but there are such things as objective facts. All of the science proves that global warming is a fact. You don't like it? Too fucking bad, go cry me a river. Your opinions hold absolutely no sway over fact. You can disbelieve climate change, you can disbelieve evolution, you can disbelieve the moon landing, you can disbelieve that passenger jets brought down the Twin Towers, you can disbelieve gravity. But none of that fucking matters. Because truth is true whether you believe it or not.
And tell me, how is there "political gain" for the Democrats in raising taxes and creating regulations? How does it help them? Cause from where I stand, they'd be able to win a lot more power if, like the Republicans, they simply denied objective fact and promised tax cuts for everyone. They don't do that. Instead they accept the truth and try to deal with it.
Fuck you for waging this war on objective truth. We cannot survive without science, and we cannot have science without objective truth.