I'm pretty sure that people who demonized gays, blacks, Jews, etc also demonized pedophiles and people who fit the functional definition of terrorist ("kills innocent civilians to pursue political agenda") in whatever time period they lived in.
The implication of your post indicates that as we progress we will advance our thinking such that we no longer demonize grown men who cornhole little boys or people that blow up things in public in order to scare people.
I'm fairly certain that this is not an advancement of humanity but instead a sure sign of its decline.
There's a lot of 3 to 5 year old iDevices out there that are still perfectly suited to what their owners actually need,
You are either that guy with the latest of everything who thinks he knows what everyone else needs (and it is always less than what you "need") or you are that guy with a prepaid flip-phone who sends emails to webmasters because there aren't enough ALT tags to keep Lynx usable.
Speaking as someone with every iPhone since the 3G still running at home, this statement can only be true for very limited definitions of "actually need".
We use the iPhone 4 as our home phone and streaming source in the kitchen. Updating InstaCast on my iPhone 5 or my wife's 4S is pretty seamless (more so on the 5). On the 4 it works but gets really sluggish and non-responsive and the overall UI experience is much slower than the 4S or 5.
The 3GS is usable as a basic phone but the entire experience is sluggish and slow. It's basically usable as a video watching toy for airplane rides.
The 3G is kind of dead-ended. Many apps won't run on it at all due to the lack of a modern iOS release. I use it for testing email access once in a while but basically it's not usable.
I think there are (and always have been) meaningful performance differences between Apple phones -- it's not just new tail lights and fenders. Now, that being said, I think Apple could do something more interesting than they have over their product iterations, but they have delivered meaningful performance boosts.
Sometimes it seems that SDN is just a new dress on an old pig, sometimes it starts to make sense.
When I'm feeling enlightened or charitable about the concept I envision it as an encapsulation system for layer 2 on layer 3, allowing layer 2 networks to be created independent of the physical constraints of actual layer 1/2 topologies.
I imagine the goal is to define a layer 2 switching domain (ports, VLANs, etc) and connect systems to it regardless of how the systems are physically connected or even located. This all seems fine and dandy -- draw a network diagram, connect systems, voila!, you have a SDN.
But when you start to actually think about it seems kind of problematic...
It seems hard to separate SDN implementation from virtualization, though. If I have a SDN, how do I connect VMs to it if the SDN isn't part of the virtualization environment? Do you install a virtual network adapter in your OS to configure SDN network membership?
Or is it a switch-level system? I feel somewhat less enthusiastic about this as a concept as it just seems like more configuration for the same basic product (VLAN or VLAN trunk membership), with benefits only to really the largest and most complex networks with maximum bandwidth trying to re-solve problems sort of already solved other ways (like LAN bridging over WAN links).
Since encapsulation appears to me to be an inherent part of it, I also worry about performance but I suppose everyone in the SDN world are go-fast, low drag operators on fully meshed, aggregated 10 gig ethernet end-to-end and doesn't care about encapsulation penalties.
And then there's my inherent skepticism about the value payoff relative to the level of complexity added, as well as asking isn't that why we have layer 3 protocols? To define networks above and beyond their layer 2 memberships?
Yes, utilities are monopolies in the sense that there's generally no way to pick and choose among different utilities at a specific address (with the exception of rare addresses on the edge of two different grid segments served by different utilities).
But no, in the sense that utilities don't have a monopoly on power generation. Nothing is preventing someone from generating their own electricity. Sure, at many scales it isn't competitive with the cost of utility power.
My guess is that in the right location, self-generation is viable at small scales where renewables like wind and solar could power small setups. At the large scale, natural gas generaiton may be competitive with utility power.
I think there have been a number of articles on slashdot highlighting private data centers trumpeting their use of fuel cells or other "green" power generation on site.
I think that we'll probably see an increase in self-generation of power both at home and commercially as the grid gets less stable, prices increase and conservation-driven efficiency grows.
Close your eyes and imagine its around 13 years ago. There are no smart phones and no SMS services. You have a magic device called a Blackberry that sends and recieves email.
You keep using this device for a while and it develops the ability to send short messages to other Blackberry users. You keep using this service, even as others get SMS and smartphones and the capability of BBM is essentially duplicated.
The only "advantage" this provides is a touchstone to long-time Blackberry users who don't understand that other phones have a short message system, chat apps, etc and who think they can't communicate with other Blackberry users withouth BBM. And maybe they can't.
AFAICT, the entire Blackberry universe still pretends its 1999 and carriers don't offer mobile IP service and the only way to send data wirelessly is with this cumbersome Canadian network.
And the bad part about more arrests is that it dilutes the stigmatization effect of drunk driving arrests. When half or more of the people you know have a DUI, it's only a hassle, it's not embarrassing and carries no social stigma causing you to be less likely to avoid it in the future.
It's similar to the problem when people want the police to "get tough" in poor neighborhoods. It's nice rhetoric, but so many of those people have already been arrested before they just don't care outside of the headache. And for many it's a badge of courage for standing up to the man.
With the deterrence effect of stigmatizing DUIs diluted, all they can turn to are draconian laws -- soon we'd probably have a 3 strikes law for driving. Then we'd have a new problem of people driving without licenses, insurance, an increase in stolen plates (because you can't get your tabs without a license...).
Neither myself nor any of the other gun owners I know have ever had a problem dealing with the factory on defect issues (and for me this includes ammunition manufacturers, too).
Rule #1 is a gun is always loaded.
Rule #2 is not to point at a gun at something you don't want to shoot.
It's not "...if you think the safety is off" or "if you think it is unloaded" or "if you get wasted and wave it around" or "if you are depressed" or any of the other excuses people make.
The liability tack is *always* used to claim that gunmakers are avoiding making guns "safe" and that somehow people are getting shot for reasons other than the fact that someone pointed one at them and pulled the trigger. And it's always about a back door route to gun control.
I've had a very wide exposure to many, many guns and a lot of experience at gun ranges and I'm only aware of one way to innocently get injured by a gun defect and it's tied to ammunition deficiencies -- overcharged cartridge or excessive bullet setback, creating pressures beyond the chamber's ability to contain it.
Usually this is a result of bad handloading, but I've bought ammo with excessive bullet setback (caused by inadequate crimping). This can result in catestrophic failure, but it's not going to kill you and at worst might maim your hand. Gun barrels, though, are proofed usually at 2-3x normal pressures, so it takes something unusual to blow them up.
It is impossible to separate the benefits to gun makers from the benefits to gun owners; they are all mutually self-reinforcing. Gun makers are lost without gun buyers and even gun makers who have long been major suppliers to the military have begun selling to the consumer -- seldom does a gun magazine these days not have an ad from Fabrique National, for example, and they are a major military contractor who could afford to just ignore consumer sales and keep making light machine guns and FALs for the military.
Consumers also benefit from a healthy gun marketplace -- more guns, more gun designs, better competition from makers which results in better products at lower prices.
The immunity laws were passed because gun control advocates, unable to achieve their goals in the legislature, planned to try to bankrupt the gun makers with nuisance tort claims. Families of suicide victims, accidental shootings, etc. would all be trotted out in sympathetic jurisdictions to claim that guns are "defective" because they can kill if you point them at people and pull the trigger.
Between lengthy lawsuits, jury verdicts and class action claims they hoped to drive gun makers out of business. It's no better than patent trolling and in many ways an extremely cynical and deceptive misuse of the legal system.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with whether or not a gun is actually "safe" to fire in a responsible manner. All gun makers I've dealt with have stood behind their products and fixed them for free if there were defects in materials or workmanship. Gun accidents can occur because of defects, but gun makers aren't trying to escape that responsibility.
Of all the bullshit propagated in the most recent drive for gun control the one thing that always strikes me as the most outrageous and unproven is the claim that the NRA is a "gun manufacturer's rights organization."
I'm sure this started out the way that most left wing propaganda starts out, with some ideology theorist claiming that because the NRA isn't a "hunting" organization, they really only represent the evil capitalist gun manufacturers who make non-hunting guns.
While I reject that line of reasoning in totality, it's the only logical way that the claim they are only a "gun manufacturer's rights organization" even makes sense. Anything else just seem either totally illogical (ie, why support gun makers if no citizen can buy their product?) or just an attempt to paint gun makers as some kind of evil Wall street plot.
I think what pisses off gun control advocates is how well organized and vertically integrated gun rights support is among gun owners, sportsmen and businesses engaged in gun-related products. Gun owners support the NRA, gun makers support the NRA, ammo makers support them and retailers support them. In many cases, a gun maker will SUBSIDIZE an NRA membership if you aren't a member and buy their product. Many retailers support the "round up for the NRA" program making it easy for buyers to round-up their purchase price to the nearest dollar and send it to the NRA. And the businesses put their money where their mouth is and put millions of dollars into the NRA to keep our gun rights secure.
Nobody would say boo if, for example, all the PC makers made it easy to support the EFF the way that gun makers do for the NRA.
Why Doesn't Communism Have as Bad a Name as Nazism?
I like how hipsters can wear a Mao/Lenin/Che t-shirt and think there's some kind of cool irony involved, yet wearing a Hitler t-shirt would get you (rightly) labeled as some kind of drooling racist neanderthal.
The double standard employed is really remarkable.
Thereâ(TM)s two things the iPad is missing that would greatly extend its flexibility.
The first thing would be a central file system, a place similar to âoePhotosâ where apps could load and save documents of an arbitrary type and where other applications could open them. The current file sharing system of âoeOpen Inâ is unwieldy and creates a lot of copies. Appleâ(TM)s big on sandboxing, so there may be some requirement when saving a document to make the user explicitly save in the common store as opposed to an appâ(TM)s private store, as well as granting an application rights to access the common file store. Thatâ(TM)s the simple version; the more complex version might involve external storage but I doubt Apple will go there any time soon without extreme pressure.
The other thing would be Bluetooth mouse support. Some UI operations may not translate to a mouse, which is fine, but I donâ(TM)t think the touch screen interface is as precise or flexible as a mouse is. I have a bunch of drawing apps for my iPad that seemed promising, but the touch interface just makes it too hard to do much beyond the most basic drawings. The same is true of selecting text.
A lot of people are hung up on making a tablet too much like a PC or scream âoeI hate apple, the iPad is stupid, even you wish it was the laptop you should have bought.â I think this is silly â" I think a certain amount of convergence between laptops and tablets is inevitable, and it seems likely that in the future there will be more devices that look and act like tablets but transform into laptops, with hybrid UIs that can be touch based or mouse based, and way into the future it seems likely that phones will be our computers with how we use them dictated by what devices we have them connected to.
Electric fan motors are fine, but a "flying car" isn't supposed to be an ultralight aircraft. People are going to expect the carrying capacities of a car.
To get VTOL you have to start comparing powerplants with helicopters. Even the small ones used for medical transport use gas turbines. I guess that's great performance, but a propulsion package using gas turbines to generate power for electric fans sounds complex.
It seems to me that there is an implication that something called a "flying car" will have more in common with an automobile than it will an airplane (otherwise we might call it a driving plane).
This means that it will have the basic ease of use of a car, and I think to make something like that happen you DO have to move the goalposts pretty damn far down field.
While it might not necessarily imply antigravity, I think it does involve a type of propulsion and control we can't do right now with existing technology, especially considering the complexity of controls associated with airplanes or helicopters.
One of the primary problems with education in the U.S. is that the consumers of education have, principally, a vocational expectation from education. They believe that whatever education they get should enable them to get a job. The people providing this education, however, are not providing a vocational education; they are more interested in providing a âoegeneralâ education which includes a lot of things which are not of any specific vocational benefit.
Employers, however, want something else â" âoework readyâ employees who do not need additional training. They are not interested in the âoesuperfluousâ aspects of education.
So you have a student who wants a job getting education in something his employer doesnâ(TM)t really want.
None of this is an argument for or against either side â" Iâ(TM)m not saying a âoeliberal artsâ education has no value and everyone belongs in trade school.
I do think that the University/College system isnâ(TM)t the right configuration for the majority of students it services, most of whom are looking for vocationally oriented education. Weâ(TM)ve loaded up colleges with thousands of people who are just looking for the credentials and are for the most part not participating or really âoelearningâ the liberal arts aspects of their education, which is bad news for both people who WANT to liberal arts education and for people who spend literally tens of thousands of dollars on classes they skip.
Could you modify #2 in a way that uses cheaper electricity?
Say wind/solar/micro-scale hydroelectric?
Obviously if you have to build the power infrastructure from scratch, it's not worth it, but what if for some reason you had access to equipment that wasn't being used and you can generate a couple of kW for free?
If electricity is really the major input cost (and not computing infrastructure), then a variation of #2 could involve stealing electricity but using your own computer equipment.
I can almost see it now -- the feds busting the equivalent of a marijuana grow house where the interior has been stripped and stuffed full of PCs with power being stolen from the utility by bypassing the electric meter.
Pace of change is really the issue more than that change is happening.
It's one thing for a generation of people to go to work in a factory and then have their work disappear slowly over a generation; with a similar kind of timing, the people doing job A will die/retire/etc at the same pace that job A gets phased out and job B comes into demand, allowing the next generation to do job B.
But when the cycle is so much faster and job A gets phased out faster than jobs B, C, & D become available then you have a short-term problem with people who are trained/experienced to do job A and cannot easily switch into performing other jobs due to their age, training, etc that you have a problem.
I think the larger issue with the economy has been the pace of change -- 'new' jobs are being created but they require skills that are quite difficult to obtain, especially for people mid-career/mid-life.
The only safeties on most revolvers is between the ears of the person holding the gun and a heavy-ish double action trigger pull.
Some gun makers have included an internal lock on their revolvers (S&W and some Taurus) which has been controversial, although I've never had a problem with it (I don't use it, either and have never put it in the lock position).
However, it would also result in lower meat consumption, which is an important goal when considering health issues due to too much meat consumption.
This is where irony becomes fatal.
The very idea of "too much meat consumption" is a byproduct of the false paradigm of dietary fat being unhealthy.
There is both good scientific evidence and substantial anthropological evidence (Masai, Inuit) that not only is dietary fat and animal fat specifically good for you, it is likely the preferred food source for human beings. Google "Gary Taubes" for more reading than I can provide you in this posting.
Unfortunately, the medical field staked their careers and reputations on "low fat" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely causing or at least greatly compounding the obesity epidemic of today. This led to self-reinforcing array of rhetoric -- "meat is bad for you" and "meat is bad for the environment".
And this is where the irony of low fat/anti-meat positions becomes frightening -- meat is actually what we SHOULD be eating yet there are real ecological challenges to raising the volume of meat necessary to feed the world.
I think what makes kosher salt preferred in many gourmet applications isn't the fact that a rabbinical authority has ensured it met the standards for kosher labeling, but that it's got a flaked consistency that allows it to "melt" into the surface of foods and provide a more uniform coating than granular salt or ground salt.
I was exaggerating the point about them specifying the no-cash terms to eliminate the probably common situation where a restaurant has "no credit cards" or "no cash" in tiny, tiny print someplace on the back cover where it would legitimately be possible to not know their terms.
But you're right, they have to specify the terms of payment FIRST before you go into debt with them. If I walk into a restaurant and sit down, order a meal, but am never presented with terms of payment until they had me the bill they cannot refuse a cash payment and still claim I owe them money.
But if I DO go into debt with them without specified terms they CANNOT refuse payment in dollars.
And more than likely to make it stick they have to be clear and unambiguous about their payment terms. It's not enough to have 6 point type on the back of the menu announcing you only accept uncut stones or gold bullion.
I think the difference is the terms of the "contract" --
If I go to the movies and the box office says "Nothing larger than $20" they can refuse to sell me a ticket if I only have a $100 because the size of the currency is part of the "contract" for admission to the movie. They can refuse to enter into a contract with me for a seat at the movie unless I meet their terms, and one of their terms is payment in a suitably small denomination.
They aren't refusing payment for a debt because no debt has been created because they will not even enter into a contract with me unless I meet their terms.
Now, in the case of the OP's restaurant example, you go into a restaurant and sit down and order a meal and you eat it you have now created a debt -- the contract terms were you getting to order and be served the food we sell. In this case, the nature of the contract (sitting, ordering and eating) causes you and the restaurant to enter into a contract which assumes you will pay after the meal.
In this case, the restaurant can't claim non payment if you offer them cash. They CAN post signs that say "NO CASH ACCEPTED", write it on their menu and have the wait staff ask how you plan to pay the meal and reinforce their terms -- even ask for your credit card up front-- but unless they do this and get verbal agreement from you that you agree to not pay in cash, those contract terms don't count. They can't refuse a cash payment after entering into a contract to serve you food after you have been served the food.
Once you order and are served the food you have created a debt. They can ASK you to pay in chickens, beads or some other non-cash form of payment but if you offer them cash they cannot refuse payment simply because they don't want cash and claim you didn't pay them since those terms of payment weren't spelled out before the debt was created.
That's what always drives me crazy. There's a lot of times where a DVD or BluRay isn't viable (ie, traveling with a tablet or ultrabook) and streaming away from a solid connection is only really viable IMHO if you don't care about your cellular data consumption or you're in a place with awesome wireless, which almost never means a hotel, airplane or in a car.
I would think that Netflix could somehow implement a secure checkout system like Apple iTunes or Amazon instant, possibly even integrating it into your disc queue so that it counted as a physical disc.
It seems pointless to send humans to do something a machine can do better.
I think this somehow ties into nerd personality -- dehumanizing things because they can't relate to the human element of it. Nerds have weak social skills and just can't relate to things which have a social value.
Part of the reason for sending humans into space is because exploration of the unknown is part of the human experience. You can rationalize the practical end of it as advances in engineering and science (life support systems, etc) but the real reason to do is the human experience.
A lot of nerds don't get this -- all they think about is in terms of "data" and "gathering data" -- and they just don't understand the human component of this.
I was at the Kennedy Space Center with my dad last week and in the building dedicated to the early days of space flight I asked my dad if he remembered the early days of space flight and landing the man on the moon (I was too young to remember).
Dad said it was a pretty amazing moment -- people stopped what they were doing and watched TV or listened to the radio, en masse. Something incredible was happening and the world stopped.
We've taken that out of space flight, partly with so much focus on ISS and the shuttle, but mostly by so much focus on robotic hard science. And correspondingly, people have stopped caring and budgets aren't what they used to be.
I question, though, how usable Russia's air force would be. I'm sure they have a couple of bomber wings and a fighter wing that are operational, but I'd be surprised if they could fly even half their fighter and interceptor fleet on less than 24 hours notice. I'd question all aspects of their readiness, from pilots, ground crew, ATC, equipment state of repair, etc.
Even if they could operate a usable air fleet, they would have to fly all their missions out of Vladivostok which PRK could make difficult by taking out landing strips and runways (Kamikaze-style if necessary) and I would imagine that even PRK's brain trust has thought about what might be necessary to significantly degrade Vladivostok as a base of operations.
If Russia can't fly out of Vladivostok they are in trouble in maintaining air superiority -- they would never get overflight rights from China and they don't have the in-air refueling capability to fly out of places further West in Siberia, even if they could manage to get ground facilities in cold war era, run-down airbases up and running. Chavarobsk to Pyongyang is 2000 km and it only gets worse from there.
Without air superiority, the Russians options get a lot worse from there. Even though the PRK is largely a paper tiger, I would imagine the Red Army would be in for a slugfest trying to take on the PRK on their home turf.
Is brinksmanship with someone other than the United States.
An attack by North Korea would pretty much demand a Russian response, but the problem the Russians have is that they don't really have a well-oiled and high tech military to respond with.
They have creaky, Soviet-era military technologies, a military brass probably about as corrupt as the civilian leadership and likely more skilled in sucking up to Putin's circle than combat -- they probably have few officers left with combat experience from Afghanistan and almost no combat troops or pilots with front line experience unless you want to count Chechnya or their "invasion" of Georgia, which is kind of like saying you're an expert hunter because you shot a dog in fenced yard.
So they are at a major tactical disadvantage from a hardware and people perspective. Now, they could use the brute-force method, but I doubt they even have the wherewithal to mount an invasion of PRK despite actually having a small shared border and their air force likely doesn't have what it takes to mount a strategic bombing campaign.
And none of this includes the risks they might take facing off with China, with whom they share a long border and a history of hostility and a growing trade deficit along their border.
The Russians would likely "win" a war with PRK but it would be a significant effort for them, would probably end up with Vladivostok getting leveled, which would be a huge economic problem.
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I'm pretty sure that people who demonized gays, blacks, Jews, etc also demonized pedophiles and people who fit the functional definition of terrorist ("kills innocent civilians to pursue political agenda") in whatever time period they lived in.
The implication of your post indicates that as we progress we will advance our thinking such that we no longer demonize grown men who cornhole little boys or people that blow up things in public in order to scare people.
I'm fairly certain that this is not an advancement of humanity but instead a sure sign of its decline.
There's a lot of 3 to 5 year old iDevices out there that are still perfectly suited to what their owners actually need,
You are either that guy with the latest of everything who thinks he knows what everyone else needs (and it is always less than what you "need") or you are that guy with a prepaid flip-phone who sends emails to webmasters because there aren't enough ALT tags to keep Lynx usable.
Speaking as someone with every iPhone since the 3G still running at home, this statement can only be true for very limited definitions of "actually need".
We use the iPhone 4 as our home phone and streaming source in the kitchen. Updating InstaCast on my iPhone 5 or my wife's 4S is pretty seamless (more so on the 5). On the 4 it works but gets really sluggish and non-responsive and the overall UI experience is much slower than the 4S or 5.
The 3GS is usable as a basic phone but the entire experience is sluggish and slow. It's basically usable as a video watching toy for airplane rides.
The 3G is kind of dead-ended. Many apps won't run on it at all due to the lack of a modern iOS release. I use it for testing email access once in a while but basically it's not usable.
I think there are (and always have been) meaningful performance differences between Apple phones -- it's not just new tail lights and fenders. Now, that being said, I think Apple could do something more interesting than they have over their product iterations, but they have delivered meaningful performance boosts.
Sometimes it seems that SDN is just a new dress on an old pig, sometimes it starts to make sense.
When I'm feeling enlightened or charitable about the concept I envision it as an encapsulation system for layer 2 on layer 3, allowing layer 2 networks to be created independent of the physical constraints of actual layer 1/2 topologies.
I imagine the goal is to define a layer 2 switching domain (ports, VLANs, etc) and connect systems to it regardless of how the systems are physically connected or even located. This all seems fine and dandy -- draw a network diagram, connect systems, voila!, you have a SDN.
But when you start to actually think about it seems kind of problematic...
It seems hard to separate SDN implementation from virtualization, though. If I have a SDN, how do I connect VMs to it if the SDN isn't part of the virtualization environment? Do you install a virtual network adapter in your OS to configure SDN network membership?
Or is it a switch-level system? I feel somewhat less enthusiastic about this as a concept as it just seems like more configuration for the same basic product (VLAN or VLAN trunk membership), with benefits only to really the largest and most complex networks with maximum bandwidth trying to re-solve problems sort of already solved other ways (like LAN bridging over WAN links).
Since encapsulation appears to me to be an inherent part of it, I also worry about performance but I suppose everyone in the SDN world are go-fast, low drag operators on fully meshed, aggregated 10 gig ethernet end-to-end and doesn't care about encapsulation penalties.
And then there's my inherent skepticism about the value payoff relative to the level of complexity added, as well as asking isn't that why we have layer 3 protocols? To define networks above and beyond their layer 2 memberships?
Yes, utilities are monopolies in the sense that there's generally no way to pick and choose among different utilities at a specific address (with the exception of rare addresses on the edge of two different grid segments served by different utilities).
But no, in the sense that utilities don't have a monopoly on power generation. Nothing is preventing someone from generating their own electricity. Sure, at many scales it isn't competitive with the cost of utility power.
My guess is that in the right location, self-generation is viable at small scales where renewables like wind and solar could power small setups. At the large scale, natural gas generaiton may be competitive with utility power.
I think there have been a number of articles on slashdot highlighting private data centers trumpeting their use of fuel cells or other "green" power generation on site.
I think that we'll probably see an increase in self-generation of power both at home and commercially as the grid gets less stable, prices increase and conservation-driven efficiency grows.
Close your eyes and imagine its around 13 years ago. There are no smart phones and no SMS services. You have a magic device called a Blackberry that sends and recieves email.
You keep using this device for a while and it develops the ability to send short messages to other Blackberry users. You keep using this service, even as others get SMS and smartphones and the capability of BBM is essentially duplicated.
The only "advantage" this provides is a touchstone to long-time Blackberry users who don't understand that other phones have a short message system, chat apps, etc and who think they can't communicate with other Blackberry users withouth BBM. And maybe they can't.
AFAICT, the entire Blackberry universe still pretends its 1999 and carriers don't offer mobile IP service and the only way to send data wirelessly is with this cumbersome Canadian network.
And the bad part about more arrests is that it dilutes the stigmatization effect of drunk driving arrests. When half or more of the people you know have a DUI, it's only a hassle, it's not embarrassing and carries no social stigma causing you to be less likely to avoid it in the future.
It's similar to the problem when people want the police to "get tough" in poor neighborhoods. It's nice rhetoric, but so many of those people have already been arrested before they just don't care outside of the headache. And for many it's a badge of courage for standing up to the man.
With the deterrence effect of stigmatizing DUIs diluted, all they can turn to are draconian laws -- soon we'd probably have a 3 strikes law for driving. Then we'd have a new problem of people driving without licenses, insurance, an increase in stolen plates (because you can't get your tabs without a license...).
What responsibility are they evading?
Neither myself nor any of the other gun owners I know have ever had a problem dealing with the factory on defect issues (and for me this includes ammunition manufacturers, too).
Rule #1 is a gun is always loaded.
Rule #2 is not to point at a gun at something you don't want to shoot.
It's not "...if you think the safety is off" or "if you think it is unloaded" or "if you get wasted and wave it around" or "if you are depressed" or any of the other excuses people make.
The liability tack is *always* used to claim that gunmakers are avoiding making guns "safe" and that somehow people are getting shot for reasons other than the fact that someone pointed one at them and pulled the trigger. And it's always about a back door route to gun control.
I've had a very wide exposure to many, many guns and a lot of experience at gun ranges and I'm only aware of one way to innocently get injured by a gun defect and it's tied to ammunition deficiencies -- overcharged cartridge or excessive bullet setback, creating pressures beyond the chamber's ability to contain it.
Usually this is a result of bad handloading, but I've bought ammo with excessive bullet setback (caused by inadequate crimping). This can result in catestrophic failure, but it's not going to kill you and at worst might maim your hand. Gun barrels, though, are proofed usually at 2-3x normal pressures, so it takes something unusual to blow them up.
It is impossible to separate the benefits to gun makers from the benefits to gun owners; they are all mutually self-reinforcing. Gun makers are lost without gun buyers and even gun makers who have long been major suppliers to the military have begun selling to the consumer -- seldom does a gun magazine these days not have an ad from Fabrique National, for example, and they are a major military contractor who could afford to just ignore consumer sales and keep making light machine guns and FALs for the military.
Consumers also benefit from a healthy gun marketplace -- more guns, more gun designs, better competition from makers which results in better products at lower prices.
The immunity laws were passed because gun control advocates, unable to achieve their goals in the legislature, planned to try to bankrupt the gun makers with nuisance tort claims. Families of suicide victims, accidental shootings, etc. would all be trotted out in sympathetic jurisdictions to claim that guns are "defective" because they can kill if you point them at people and pull the trigger.
Between lengthy lawsuits, jury verdicts and class action claims they hoped to drive gun makers out of business. It's no better than patent trolling and in many ways an extremely cynical and deceptive misuse of the legal system.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with whether or not a gun is actually "safe" to fire in a responsible manner. All gun makers I've dealt with have stood behind their products and fixed them for free if there were defects in materials or workmanship. Gun accidents can occur because of defects, but gun makers aren't trying to escape that responsibility.
Of all the bullshit propagated in the most recent drive for gun control the one thing that always strikes me as the most outrageous and unproven is the claim that the NRA is a "gun manufacturer's rights organization."
I'm sure this started out the way that most left wing propaganda starts out, with some ideology theorist claiming that because the NRA isn't a "hunting" organization, they really only represent the evil capitalist gun manufacturers who make non-hunting guns.
While I reject that line of reasoning in totality, it's the only logical way that the claim they are only a "gun manufacturer's rights organization" even makes sense. Anything else just seem either totally illogical (ie, why support gun makers if no citizen can buy their product?) or just an attempt to paint gun makers as some kind of evil Wall street plot.
I think what pisses off gun control advocates is how well organized and vertically integrated gun rights support is among gun owners, sportsmen and businesses engaged in gun-related products. Gun owners support the NRA, gun makers support the NRA, ammo makers support them and retailers support them. In many cases, a gun maker will SUBSIDIZE an NRA membership if you aren't a member and buy their product. Many retailers support the "round up for the NRA" program making it easy for buyers to round-up their purchase price to the nearest dollar and send it to the NRA. And the businesses put their money where their mouth is and put millions of dollars into the NRA to keep our gun rights secure.
Nobody would say boo if, for example, all the PC makers made it easy to support the EFF the way that gun makers do for the NRA.
Why Doesn't Communism Have as Bad a Name as Nazism?
I like how hipsters can wear a Mao/Lenin/Che t-shirt and think there's some kind of cool irony involved, yet wearing a Hitler t-shirt would get you (rightly) labeled as some kind of drooling racist neanderthal.
The double standard employed is really remarkable.
Thereâ(TM)s two things the iPad is missing that would greatly extend its flexibility.
The first thing would be a central file system, a place similar to âoePhotosâ where apps could load and save documents of an arbitrary type and where other applications could open them. The current file sharing system of âoeOpen Inâ is unwieldy and creates a lot of copies. Appleâ(TM)s big on sandboxing, so there may be some requirement when saving a document to make the user explicitly save in the common store as opposed to an appâ(TM)s private store, as well as granting an application rights to access the common file store. Thatâ(TM)s the simple version; the more complex version might involve external storage but I doubt Apple will go there any time soon without extreme pressure.
The other thing would be Bluetooth mouse support. Some UI operations may not translate to a mouse, which is fine, but I donâ(TM)t think the touch screen interface is as precise or flexible as a mouse is. I have a bunch of drawing apps for my iPad that seemed promising, but the touch interface just makes it too hard to do much beyond the most basic drawings. The same is true of selecting text.
A lot of people are hung up on making a tablet too much like a PC or scream âoeI hate apple, the iPad is stupid, even you wish it was the laptop you should have bought.â I think this is silly â" I think a certain amount of convergence between laptops and tablets is inevitable, and it seems likely that in the future there will be more devices that look and act like tablets but transform into laptops, with hybrid UIs that can be touch based or mouse based, and way into the future it seems likely that phones will be our computers with how we use them dictated by what devices we have them connected to.
Propulsion is solvable by what power source?
Electric fan motors are fine, but a "flying car" isn't supposed to be an ultralight aircraft. People are going to expect the carrying capacities of a car.
To get VTOL you have to start comparing powerplants with helicopters. Even the small ones used for medical transport use gas turbines. I guess that's great performance, but a propulsion package using gas turbines to generate power for electric fans sounds complex.
It seems to me that there is an implication that something called a "flying car" will have more in common with an automobile than it will an airplane (otherwise we might call it a driving plane).
This means that it will have the basic ease of use of a car, and I think to make something like that happen you DO have to move the goalposts pretty damn far down field.
While it might not necessarily imply antigravity, I think it does involve a type of propulsion and control we can't do right now with existing technology, especially considering the complexity of controls associated with airplanes or helicopters.
One of the primary problems with education in the U.S. is that the consumers of education have, principally, a vocational expectation from education. They believe that whatever education they get should enable them to get a job. The people providing this education, however, are not providing a vocational education; they are more interested in providing a âoegeneralâ education which includes a lot of things which are not of any specific vocational benefit.
Employers, however, want something else â" âoework readyâ employees who do not need additional training. They are not interested in the âoesuperfluousâ aspects of education.
So you have a student who wants a job getting education in something his employer doesnâ(TM)t really want.
None of this is an argument for or against either side â" Iâ(TM)m not saying a âoeliberal artsâ education has no value and everyone belongs in trade school.
I do think that the University/College system isnâ(TM)t the right configuration for the majority of students it services, most of whom are looking for vocationally oriented education. Weâ(TM)ve loaded up colleges with thousands of people who are just looking for the credentials and are for the most part not participating or really âoelearningâ the liberal arts aspects of their education, which is bad news for both people who WANT to liberal arts education and for people who spend literally tens of thousands of dollars on classes they skip.
Could you modify #2 in a way that uses cheaper electricity?
Say wind/solar/micro-scale hydroelectric?
Obviously if you have to build the power infrastructure from scratch, it's not worth it, but what if for some reason you had access to equipment that wasn't being used and you can generate a couple of kW for free?
If electricity is really the major input cost (and not computing infrastructure), then a variation of #2 could involve stealing electricity but using your own computer equipment.
I can almost see it now -- the feds busting the equivalent of a marijuana grow house where the interior has been stripped and stuffed full of PCs with power being stolen from the utility by bypassing the electric meter.
Pace of change is really the issue more than that change is happening.
It's one thing for a generation of people to go to work in a factory and then have their work disappear slowly over a generation; with a similar kind of timing, the people doing job A will die/retire/etc at the same pace that job A gets phased out and job B comes into demand, allowing the next generation to do job B.
But when the cycle is so much faster and job A gets phased out faster than jobs B, C, & D become available then you have a short-term problem with people who are trained/experienced to do job A and cannot easily switch into performing other jobs due to their age, training, etc that you have a problem.
I think the larger issue with the economy has been the pace of change -- 'new' jobs are being created but they require skills that are quite difficult to obtain, especially for people mid-career/mid-life.
The only safeties on most revolvers is between the ears of the person holding the gun and a heavy-ish double action trigger pull.
Some gun makers have included an internal lock on their revolvers (S&W and some Taurus) which has been controversial, although I've never had a problem with it (I don't use it, either and have never put it in the lock position).
However, it would also result in lower meat consumption, which is an important goal when considering health issues due to too much meat consumption.
This is where irony becomes fatal.
The very idea of "too much meat consumption" is a byproduct of the false paradigm of dietary fat being unhealthy.
There is both good scientific evidence and substantial anthropological evidence (Masai, Inuit) that not only is dietary fat and animal fat specifically good for you, it is likely the preferred food source for human beings. Google "Gary Taubes" for more reading than I can provide you in this posting.
Unfortunately, the medical field staked their careers and reputations on "low fat" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely causing or at least greatly compounding the obesity epidemic of today. This led to self-reinforcing array of rhetoric -- "meat is bad for you" and "meat is bad for the environment".
And this is where the irony of low fat/anti-meat positions becomes frightening -- meat is actually what we SHOULD be eating yet there are real ecological challenges to raising the volume of meat necessary to feed the world.
I think what makes kosher salt preferred in many gourmet applications isn't the fact that a rabbinical authority has ensured it met the standards for kosher labeling, but that it's got a flaked consistency that allows it to "melt" into the surface of foods and provide a more uniform coating than granular salt or ground salt.
I was exaggerating the point about them specifying the no-cash terms to eliminate the probably common situation where a restaurant has "no credit cards" or "no cash" in tiny, tiny print someplace on the back cover where it would legitimately be possible to not know their terms.
But you're right, they have to specify the terms of payment FIRST before you go into debt with them. If I walk into a restaurant and sit down, order a meal, but am never presented with terms of payment until they had me the bill they cannot refuse a cash payment and still claim I owe them money.
But if I DO go into debt with them without specified terms they CANNOT refuse payment in dollars.
And more than likely to make it stick they have to be clear and unambiguous about their payment terms. It's not enough to have 6 point type on the back of the menu announcing you only accept uncut stones or gold bullion.
I think the difference is the terms of the "contract" --
If I go to the movies and the box office says "Nothing larger than $20" they can refuse to sell me a ticket if I only have a $100 because the size of the currency is part of the "contract" for admission to the movie. They can refuse to enter into a contract with me for a seat at the movie unless I meet their terms, and one of their terms is payment in a suitably small denomination.
They aren't refusing payment for a debt because no debt has been created because they will not even enter into a contract with me unless I meet their terms.
Now, in the case of the OP's restaurant example, you go into a restaurant and sit down and order a meal and you eat it you have now created a debt -- the contract terms were you getting to order and be served the food we sell. In this case, the nature of the contract (sitting, ordering and eating) causes you and the restaurant to enter into a contract which assumes you will pay after the meal.
In this case, the restaurant can't claim non payment if you offer them cash. They CAN post signs that say "NO CASH ACCEPTED", write it on their menu and have the wait staff ask how you plan to pay the meal and reinforce their terms -- even ask for your credit card up front-- but unless they do this and get verbal agreement from you that you agree to not pay in cash, those contract terms don't count. They can't refuse a cash payment after entering into a contract to serve you food after you have been served the food.
Once you order and are served the food you have created a debt. They can ASK you to pay in chickens, beads or some other non-cash form of payment but if you offer them cash they cannot refuse payment simply because they don't want cash and claim you didn't pay them since those terms of payment weren't spelled out before the debt was created.
That's what always drives me crazy. There's a lot of times where a DVD or BluRay isn't viable (ie, traveling with a tablet or ultrabook) and streaming away from a solid connection is only really viable IMHO if you don't care about your cellular data consumption or you're in a place with awesome wireless, which almost never means a hotel, airplane or in a car.
I would think that Netflix could somehow implement a secure checkout system like Apple iTunes or Amazon instant, possibly even integrating it into your disc queue so that it counted as a physical disc.
It seems pointless to send humans to do something a machine can do better.
I think this somehow ties into nerd personality -- dehumanizing things because they can't relate to the human element of it. Nerds have weak social skills and just can't relate to things which have a social value.
Part of the reason for sending humans into space is because exploration of the unknown is part of the human experience. You can rationalize the practical end of it as advances in engineering and science (life support systems, etc) but the real reason to do is the human experience.
A lot of nerds don't get this -- all they think about is in terms of "data" and "gathering data" -- and they just don't understand the human component of this.
I was at the Kennedy Space Center with my dad last week and in the building dedicated to the early days of space flight I asked my dad if he remembered the early days of space flight and landing the man on the moon (I was too young to remember).
Dad said it was a pretty amazing moment -- people stopped what they were doing and watched TV or listened to the radio, en masse. Something incredible was happening and the world stopped.
We've taken that out of space flight, partly with so much focus on ISS and the shuttle, but mostly by so much focus on robotic hard science. And correspondingly, people have stopped caring and budgets aren't what they used to be.
You seem well informed!
I question, though, how usable Russia's air force would be. I'm sure they have a couple of bomber wings and a fighter wing that are operational, but I'd be surprised if they could fly even half their fighter and interceptor fleet on less than 24 hours notice. I'd question all aspects of their readiness, from pilots, ground crew, ATC, equipment state of repair, etc.
Even if they could operate a usable air fleet, they would have to fly all their missions out of Vladivostok which PRK could make difficult by taking out landing strips and runways (Kamikaze-style if necessary) and I would imagine that even PRK's brain trust has thought about what might be necessary to significantly degrade Vladivostok as a base of operations.
If Russia can't fly out of Vladivostok they are in trouble in maintaining air superiority -- they would never get overflight rights from China and they don't have the in-air refueling capability to fly out of places further West in Siberia, even if they could manage to get ground facilities in cold war era, run-down airbases up and running. Chavarobsk to Pyongyang is 2000 km and it only gets worse from there.
Without air superiority, the Russians options get a lot worse from there. Even though the PRK is largely a paper tiger, I would imagine the Red Army would be in for a slugfest trying to take on the PRK on their home turf.
Is brinksmanship with someone other than the United States.
An attack by North Korea would pretty much demand a Russian response, but the problem the Russians have is that they don't really have a well-oiled and high tech military to respond with.
They have creaky, Soviet-era military technologies, a military brass probably about as corrupt as the civilian leadership and likely more skilled in sucking up to Putin's circle than combat -- they probably have few officers left with combat experience from Afghanistan and almost no combat troops or pilots with front line experience unless you want to count Chechnya or their "invasion" of Georgia, which is kind of like saying you're an expert hunter because you shot a dog in fenced yard.
So they are at a major tactical disadvantage from a hardware and people perspective. Now, they could use the brute-force method, but I doubt they even have the wherewithal to mount an invasion of PRK despite actually having a small shared border and their air force likely doesn't have what it takes to mount a strategic bombing campaign.
And none of this includes the risks they might take facing off with China, with whom they share a long border and a history of hostility and a growing trade deficit along their border.
The Russians would likely "win" a war with PRK but it would be a significant effort for them, would probably end up with Vladivostok getting leveled, which would be a huge economic problem.