Yeah, sure, unless the government doesn't like you, then it's called dumping.
It's not that arbitrary. It's only dumping if you're not profiting from it. If I sell a bunch of stuff below cost and lose money in process which can only be recovered by raising my prices back up once my competitor is out of business...that's dumping. If I sell something below cost, but that strategy is causing me to actually profit more because it encourages the customers to buy something else from me, that's a loss leader. In the case of the mobile providers, they're causing you to buy into an overpriced contract. The subsidized phones are completely worth it to them.
I don't have a problem with the subsidized phone model. I have a problem with the locked phone model. The contract is already keeping the customer with them for an agreed period of time. If they choose to leave earlier, they'd have to pay a contract cancellation fee in which the provider can recoup the cost of the phone subsidy. There's no valid justification for them to have any control over the hardware once I've purchased it.
And what about when the people doing this purchase a dozen subsidized phones, unlock them and resell them, and then simply refuse to pay the fee for breaching the contract?
What the hell? What about people who enter any contract, and then breach it? Contract law is a thing, go to the courts. If the problem is so widespread that this isn't cost effective, then that business model is broken, and I guess it's just not going to be worth it to you to offer subsidized phones. Try offering another incentive instead, like a lower monthly plan if under contract.
We the people don't owe you a law to make your business model work.
Do you know why their doing this?It's because of the problem of so many people getting cells/droids under a contarcted agreement then deciding they want to switch to a diferent carrier without having to pay a large fe to get out of the original contract so I can understand why the major company's want this law.The people themselves are the reason this is happening,it is not the fault of the providers whatsoever,it is the fault of the users
If you get out of your contract agreement, you're going to pay a fee which is dependent on how long you have to go on your contract, regardless of whether you can unlock your phone or not. The fee is for breaking the contract, not to unlock your phone.
Perhaps, but ignorance of events that will have absolutely zero effect on anyone living now, or any time into the foreseeable future? I'm fine with that.
That's your choice, but I'm not.
Meanwhile, millions of children the world over continue to struggle just for enough food to keep them alive, every day.
What's so special about human life? It's the fact that we're capable of understanding the universe we live in. Personally I think that we live for this understanding. The reason those millions of starving children are important is because they or their descendents may one day help to figure out something we don't yet know. If this weren't the case, they might as well die, why preserve that life?
So, pardon me if your "discoveries-of-shit-that-won't-happen-until-long-after-humanity-is-completely-extinct" don't excite folks such as myself as much as you might like... I'm certain there are many here who actually think we humans will still be around in 10,000,000,000 years. To those folks, I make the following request: Stop watching so much science fiction, and start talking to some evolutionary biologists. They'll set ya straight.
So if we're all going to be gone at some point, why should we waste any time protecting and helping anyone alive today? We're just a speck in the universe's time, that essentially appeared a moment ago, and will be gone a moment after. Under this scenario, who cares if anyone lives or dies? Why would you waste any of our resources helping anyone? Aren't these resources better spent discovering some cool information about the wondrous universe we live in? I'd like to spend our limited time here finding out something about those things which will last far more than we will. By definition, if it's going to be here long after humans are extinct, it's more important than humans.
Yeah, you don't agree with me. That's ok. But you're not going to convince me that there's anything more important than the work you consider unimportant, so you might as well give up, and devote your time to whatever you consider important. I promise I won't interfere.
You believe there are conditions where the minority should rule over the majority? Then you don't believe in democracy. End of story.
To be fair, pure democracies are indeed understood to be a horrible idea, and I doubt there are many people who believe in them.
The US, for example, which many people like to call a democracy, was designed with very specific checks to prevent the majority from simply dictating the rules. It's the reason why the Senate was not a body that was directly elected until the 17th amendement, and why the electoral college exists. The idea behind a representative democracy is that the people's interest are to be represented, but that as a group, they're not smart or fair enough to make the decisions themselves, so we'll let smarter people do that.
It doesn't work out perfectly, as the people making the decisions aren't proving to be particularly smart or honorable, but I'll take it over a direct democracy any day.
It makes me think the process has either halted or is waiting for me to do something, especially because it's right at the start.
That's what spinners are for. It's perfectly reasonable to give the user some indication that you're still working. You should also tell them what you're working on, if possible. The difference between a spinner and a progress bar is exactly the information on the progress, and when you start at 10%, you're lying to them. Because the reasonable assumption is that however long it took to get to 10%, I can estimate that 9x that and the whole thing will be done.
I agree with everyone on this thread that you can't create a perfect progress bar that gives you a perfect picture of how much has been done and therefore how long it will be before it's finished. But it's our job to make it as accurate as possible. That includes profiling actions to determine how long they take relative to each other, so if you're doing action A and action B, and action B takes twice as long as action A, you're not at 50% when you finish action A.
The public opinion of the Progress Bar would be considerably more favorable if programmers would simply treat 100% as if it were 75%.
In other words, do all the stuff you have to do, measuring progress and whatnot, but when you're actually at 80%, report yourself at 60%. Likewise, when you're at 95%, say you're at 70%.
Then, only when you really are completely finished, you jump from 75% to 100% in under a second.
Complaints gone.
Hell no.
The most important thing in a progress bar is to be accurate. It's not to make the user feel good, it's to tell the user how much has been done.
I threw a goddamn fit when I saw that Microsoft recommended in the msdn documentation to start progress bars at 10% "so the user can feel something has happened right when you start out."
How can anyone say, with a straight face, that you need to run AV software on a goddamn phone? A PHONE! What manner of circumstances lead to this being considered something that is perfectly normal?
The circumstances of these phones effectively being general purpose computers.
Yeah, but honestly, needing to run AV software on general purpose computers is also an insane thing to be considered perfectly normal. We've all just came to accept insecure operating systems, but that's not a good thing.
how many times did your girlfriend need "untrusted apps"?
you're complaining about a "Feature" but when 99% of your userbase doesn't need it, then turn it off. that is, unless you still have telnet enabled on your system because "FEATURE!@$"
Disabled by default? Sure, that's both reasonable and prudent Locked from being enabled? That's like saying I can't install telnet on my system, which is a completely different situation than enabling it by default. The fact that most people have no use for telnet, and enabling it by default would be a huge security issue doesn't say shit about whether or not I might need to enable it, and by doing so would take responsibility for securing my own system.
Verified by Visa is like this with the added hassle of asking for three specific letters from the password. This is bloody annoying...
Much more worrying that being annoying, it indicates they store your actual password, not a hash of it. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to verify individual letters.
You're really going to state that I'm wrong in a matter of entirely subjective opinion without so much as a reason? Really?
Well, your statement was pretty subjective as well, as all manners of taste are.
However, if you must know, I hated it because the pseudoscience was so bad the show might as well be centered around astrology. And I have a high tolerance for technobabble. Hell, I enjoy Star Trek.
Couldn't get past the utter crap that passed for science fiction in that show to actually pay attention to any of the characters.
I don't think I've ever recommended to anyone that they should watch more TV, but in your case, I don't think there's any harm, since you obviously don't watch much. Have you, in fact, watched any other shows?
If you ignore reality TV, there's not much of anything worse than Fringe.
But about anything we have to ask, what are the alternatives and their respective outcomes.? I compare this to the drone program. It's not perfect, but it's what we have now and our hand has been forced into action. We have to use the tools we have, not wait for advent of hypothetical tools which have no unwanted side effects and about which we can all feel good.
Some of us believe that if only certain abhorrent actions can save us from certain death, then we should choose death. After all, what the hell is the point of living if we can't be the people we wish to become? By that reasoning, is it not implied that the type of people who would choose the abhorrent action do not deserve to live?
Sometimes a no-win scenario means you don't win. There's no shame in that, but there is certainly shame in abandoning your principles every time a crisis is looming.
Did you even read my post? Specifically the part that said, "If American citizens are collateral damage as a result of a strike on another target, that's a completely different story"?
This isn't about Americans who are killed as part of attacks on non-american targets. This is about targeting an American for the strike. It's about someone saying, "I want John Smith killed" and setting the military after him, before John Smith gets a trial.
Back in the days of Cowboys and Indians, your only defense against "aiding the enemy" was to be as far away as possible. The US Army killed plenty of American citizens that lived with Natives...
I don't understand. Typically we remember the mistakes of the past to avoid repeating them, not to justify making them again.
I have less of a problem with the government killing confirmed traitors while ENGAGED in plotting against the USA, in a foreign country, with other enemies. That's open and shut...
How does one confirm traitors? Is it not through due process? In fact, the US Constitution names very specific requirements for due process regarding treason. Article 3, Section 3: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
The military KILLS PEOPLE...
The US military KILLS PEOPLE...who are not American citizens. Unless, of course, they've been engaged by said citizen.
.. They don't arrest people.
They are, in fact, required to take prisoners if their enemy surrenders. Article 3 of the fourth Geneva convention specifies that you cannot harm anyone who has laid down their arms and surrendered.
This nonsense of picking up US Citizens, on US soil for things that may have happened, then shipping them OUT of the USA without trial was a much larger affront to the Constitution than this new procedure is.
That would also be unacceptable, what's your point?
You don't want to get blowed up, don't stand with the enemy. American citizenship has no bearing if you are actively engaged in planning WAR against the USA.
If American citizens are collateral damage as a result of a strike on another target, that's a completely different story, and it would cover this situation. For you to specifically target an American citizen would require a trial. If, through due process, the citizen is found to be committing treason, Congress has the ability to define the punishment, which could be death through military strike. You can't skip the due process part, though.
Just because there are millions of foreigners willing to do your job for less than what you expect to be paid doesn't make it slavery. It does make your personal standard of living difficult to maintain though. Sucks to be you.
It's slavery if the reason they're willing to do that job for less is because they'll get kicked out of the country if they don't have a job. Employers have a slight advantage at the bargaining table there.
Sure they will not do AP right away if they lack basic arithmetic but without the bad apples of the other school the teachers can then teach rather than deal with inner city telling them to fuck off every day.
But what happens when you take every one of the inner city schools and put them in the rich kids school? Now all those bad apples are at the rich kids' school.
The point you're making is exactly the one I was making. The problem isn't the school, and it isn't the teachers. The lack of a culture that values knowledge and education at home breeds the so-called "bad apples." Why do you think there aren't as many of them in the richer schools?
Working to increase the quality of life of these people and bring them out of poverty will do wonders to improve the education stats. Part of this strategy is absolutely the opportunity for a good education, but we need to focus on other factors too, including the parents of these kids. Night schools for adults, lowering unemployment among the unskilled, etc. It's a complex problem, and there is no one silver bullet.
Einstein hated Quantum Mechanics and invented a Cosmological Constant simply because he didn't like the way things were shaping up.
I agree with your point 100%. I'm not saying scientists are immune to this problem. They're human. I'm also not saying that you need to be a scientist in order to make good decisions. I'm saying that people should, whether they're scientists or not, learn to take a more evidence-based approach in their decision-making process, especially when it comes to politicians.
The fact that he eventually called it his biggest mistake doesn't mean that he didn't, at one point, use more of a "feeling" about how things should work out to influence his calculations.
No, it doesn't. Einstein was human, after all. However, when Einstein was shown evidence that the universe was expanding, his reaction was to say he made a mistake and to remove the cosmological constant from the equations. On the other hand, Christopher Columbus kept insisting he reached Asia to the day he died, despite all the evidence that it was a new continent. Some people will just completely disregard any evidence that goes against their beliefs. It's not about being a scientist or not, and there are scientists who will dogmatically cling to their biases, but we point at scientists because at least they have a culture of testing their hypotheses through observation and replication of experiments.
This just means that the US has extremely rich kids, who are smart. And extremely poor kids, who are dumb.
No, it means the US has rich kids receiving a good education, and poor kids receiving a poor education.
It's more complicated than that. You can't just put the poor kids in the same school as the rich kids and expect them to suddenly do a lot better. I went to a really good high school, and while I was taking the AP and honors classes, the poor kids in the same school were, for the most part, not.
There's a whole lot of built-in advantages that come from having educated parents. Before you even go to school, they've generally taken the time to teach you a great deal of things, which gives you a leg up against your classmates. When you first start taking math, and you have problems understanding basic arithmetic, they're going to be able to help you with that homework, whereas other kids go home, and their parents don't have the knowledge to help them. Your parents might take the time to involve you in their electronic hobbies where you get to learn something they don't teach at the schools, while the other kids' parents don't have any hobbies other than watching TV, because buying random electronic parts to build something doesn't really fit in their budget...
Basically, the problem needs to be approached from a socioeconomic perspective, not just a quality of schools perspective.
Hmm, is the study arguing then that these students should be excluded? If so, what is the basis? Are they not really in the country?
No, I think they're arguing the problem isn't the educational system, but instead that we have a larger proportion of the population that is a member of disadvantaged social groups than the countries we're being compared to.
FA says: "As part of the study, Carnoy and Rothstein calculated how international rankings on the most recent PISA might change if the United States had a social class composition similar to that of top-ranking nations"
And the point is???
That instead of focusing on improving education purely by looking at schools through programs like No Children Left Behind, we should focus on the economy, how to lower unemployment in the blue-collar section and other strategies to improve the economic status of a large portion of our population, because that's where the problem is.
Criticizing politicians for having an ideology is absurd.
The criticism is when they ignore evidence against their particular ideology.
Political questions are not like engineering questions - 'how much should we spend on bridges' is not at all the same category of question as 'estimate the ultimate load-bearing capacity of this bridge'.
Although there certainly are decisions that cannot be made objectively, your example is not one of them. We can certainly do cost-benefit analyses to decide whether building a bridge somewhere is worth the amount of money that will be spent building it.
Sometimes it is subjective. For example, most of us are not anarchists and believe that the government should establish certain laws, even though every law is a restriction on your freedom. We do, however, disagree on where that line is between order and safety and freedom. This is purely ideological. However, even if you lean towards sacrificing more freedom for increased safety, we can empirically determine whether a piece of legislation would actually make people safer or not, whereas right now we don't bother with that.
Why is this modded insightful? His question was NOT answered and still isn't. We have postulated that Mars lost it's water because it no longer had a functioning magnetosphere. However, we have absolutely no clue why it lost it's magnetosphere or how to prevent the same from happening to earth.
Describing a process does not mean you understand why the process started in the first place.
We know exactly how Mars lost its magnetosphere, and we sure as hell can't prevent the same thing from happening to Earth (despite what a really bad movie might have told you). Eventually, the Earth will lose it's magnetosphere the same way that Mars did: the mantle core will cool down, and you're no longer going to have a bunch of molten iron moving at the center of the planet.
Try it, call the police up sometime and report that your car was broken into... or your house... they may show up sometime in the next 12 to 48hrs... maybe... in my city you get to file a report over the phone to an answering machine.
I have. Somebody broke the window of my car with a rock, stole some stuff that I had left in the seat. I knew I couldn't get the stuff back, but needed to file a report so my car insurance would pay for a replacement window.
Police officer was there within 10 minutes of my call. Got a detailed list of everything that was stolen. They later called me to give me the case number and to keep me informed that they had sent a list the objects to pawn shops and would inform me if anything turned up (it didn't, but hey, what else can they do?)
My point isn't to say you're wrong about talking to the cops. Don't say anything unless you have a lawyer present advising you, ever. However, that's to cover your ass against the asshole cops, it's not to mean that every single cop is an asshole, you just can't tell who is and who isn't by just looking at them. Most of them probably are interested in helping out.
He didn't die for what he believed in. He died to escape.
I'm not sure there's really a difference. Nobody wants to go to prison, but that may be a consequence of actions you take in support of your beliefs. He changed the consequences, which pretty much means he took control.
If anything, this actually does more for his cause than going to prison. If he had gone to prison, the government would use that as an example that nobody is above the law, and how they showed they're going to be tough on people who did what he did. Now instead we're finally having the conservation on how prosecutors are pushing for too hard a punishment for non-violent crimes. The way I see it, he turned a loss into a win.
Slashdot Mirror
In business, it's called a loss leader.
Yeah, sure, unless the government doesn't like you, then it's called dumping.
It's not that arbitrary. It's only dumping if you're not profiting from it. If I sell a bunch of stuff below cost and lose money in process which can only be recovered by raising my prices back up once my competitor is out of business...that's dumping. If I sell something below cost, but that strategy is causing me to actually profit more because it encourages the customers to buy something else from me, that's a loss leader. In the case of the mobile providers, they're causing you to buy into an overpriced contract. The subsidized phones are completely worth it to them.
I don't have a problem with the subsidized phone model. I have a problem with the locked phone model. The contract is already keeping the customer with them for an agreed period of time. If they choose to leave earlier, they'd have to pay a contract cancellation fee in which the provider can recoup the cost of the phone subsidy. There's no valid justification for them to have any control over the hardware once I've purchased it.
And what about when the people doing this purchase a dozen subsidized phones, unlock them and resell them, and then simply refuse to pay the fee for breaching the contract?
What the hell? What about people who enter any contract, and then breach it? Contract law is a thing, go to the courts. If the problem is so widespread that this isn't cost effective, then that business model is broken, and I guess it's just not going to be worth it to you to offer subsidized phones.
Try offering another incentive instead, like a lower monthly plan if under contract.
We the people don't owe you a law to make your business model work.
Do you know why their doing this?It's because of the problem of so many people getting cells/droids under a contarcted agreement then deciding they want to switch to a diferent carrier without having to pay a large fe to get out of the original contract so I can understand why the major company's want this law.The people themselves are the reason this is happening,it is not the fault of the providers whatsoever,it is the fault of the users
If you get out of your contract agreement, you're going to pay a fee which is dependent on how long you have to go on your contract, regardless of whether you can unlock your phone or not. The fee is for breaking the contract, not to unlock your phone.
Perhaps, but ignorance of events that will have absolutely zero effect on anyone living now, or any time into the foreseeable future? I'm fine with that.
That's your choice, but I'm not.
Meanwhile, millions of children the world over continue to struggle just for enough food to keep them alive, every day.
What's so special about human life? It's the fact that we're capable of understanding the universe we live in. Personally I think that we live for this understanding. The reason those millions of starving children are important is because they or their descendents may one day help to figure out something we don't yet know. If this weren't the case, they might as well die, why preserve that life?
So, pardon me if your "discoveries-of-shit-that-won't-happen-until-long-after-humanity-is-completely-extinct" don't excite folks such as myself as much as you might like... I'm certain there are many here who actually think we humans will still be around in 10,000,000,000 years. To those folks, I make the following request: Stop watching so much science fiction, and start talking to some evolutionary biologists. They'll set ya straight.
So if we're all going to be gone at some point, why should we waste any time protecting and helping anyone alive today? We're just a speck in the universe's time, that essentially appeared a moment ago, and will be gone a moment after. Under this scenario, who cares if anyone lives or dies? Why would you waste any of our resources helping anyone? Aren't these resources better spent discovering some cool information about the wondrous universe we live in? I'd like to spend our limited time here finding out something about those things which will last far more than we will. By definition, if it's going to be here long after humans are extinct, it's more important than humans.
Yeah, you don't agree with me. That's ok. But you're not going to convince me that there's anything more important than the work you consider unimportant, so you might as well give up, and devote your time to whatever you consider important. I promise I won't interfere.
You believe there are conditions where the minority should rule over the majority? Then you don't believe in democracy. End of story.
To be fair, pure democracies are indeed understood to be a horrible idea, and I doubt there are many people who believe in them.
The US, for example, which many people like to call a democracy, was designed with very specific checks to prevent the majority from simply dictating the rules. It's the reason why the Senate was not a body that was directly elected until the 17th amendement, and why the electoral college exists. The idea behind a representative democracy is that the people's interest are to be represented, but that as a group, they're not smart or fair enough to make the decisions themselves, so we'll let smarter people do that.
It doesn't work out perfectly, as the people making the decisions aren't proving to be particularly smart or honorable, but I'll take it over a direct democracy any day.
It makes me think the process has either halted or is waiting for me to do something, especially because it's right at the start.
That's what spinners are for. It's perfectly reasonable to give the user some indication that you're still working. You should also tell them what you're working on, if possible. The difference between a spinner and a progress bar is exactly the information on the progress, and when you start at 10%, you're lying to them. Because the reasonable assumption is that however long it took to get to 10%, I can estimate that 9x that and the whole thing will be done.
I agree with everyone on this thread that you can't create a perfect progress bar that gives you a perfect picture of how much has been done and therefore how long it will be before it's finished. But it's our job to make it as accurate as possible. That includes profiling actions to determine how long they take relative to each other, so if you're doing action A and action B, and action B takes twice as long as action A, you're not at 50% when you finish action A.
The public opinion of the Progress Bar would be considerably more favorable if programmers would simply treat 100% as if it were 75%.
In other words, do all the stuff you have to do, measuring progress and whatnot, but when you're actually at 80%, report yourself at 60%. Likewise, when you're at 95%, say you're at 70%.
Then, only when you really are completely finished, you jump from 75% to 100% in under a second.
Complaints gone.
Hell no.
The most important thing in a progress bar is to be accurate. It's not to make the user feel good, it's to tell the user how much has been done.
I threw a goddamn fit when I saw that Microsoft recommended in the msdn documentation to start progress bars at 10% "so the user can feel something has happened right when you start out."
Whenever my daughter and I log into our Khan Academy accounts, one or both of us will yell: "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN".
I imagine Sal probably rues the day that movie was made.
I'm sure he does. Right now he's wondering if you've heard the Klingon proverb that revenge is a dish best served cold. Soon you will feel his wrath.
How can anyone say, with a straight face, that you need to run AV software on a goddamn phone? A PHONE! What manner of circumstances lead to this being considered something that is perfectly normal?
The circumstances of these phones effectively being general purpose computers.
Yeah, but honestly, needing to run AV software on general purpose computers is also an insane thing to be considered perfectly normal. We've all just came to accept insecure operating systems, but that's not a good thing.
how many times did your girlfriend need "untrusted apps"?
you're complaining about a "Feature" but when 99% of your userbase doesn't need it, then turn it off. that is, unless you still have telnet enabled on your system because "FEATURE!@$"
Disabled by default? Sure, that's both reasonable and prudent Locked from being enabled? That's like saying I can't install telnet on my system, which is a completely different situation than enabling it by default. The fact that most people have no use for telnet, and enabling it by default would be a huge security issue doesn't say shit about whether or not I might need to enable it, and by doing so would take responsibility for securing my own system.
Verified by Visa is like this with the added hassle of asking for three specific letters from the password. This is bloody annoying...
Much more worrying that being annoying, it indicates they store your actual password, not a hash of it. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to verify individual letters.
You're really going to state that I'm wrong in a matter of entirely subjective opinion without so much as a reason? Really?
Well, your statement was pretty subjective as well, as all manners of taste are.
However, if you must know, I hated it because the pseudoscience was so bad the show might as well be centered around astrology. And I have a high tolerance for technobabble. Hell, I enjoy Star Trek.
Couldn't get past the utter crap that passed for science fiction in that show to actually pay attention to any of the characters.
Fringe is the best show I've ever watched.
I'm sorry.
I don't think I've ever recommended to anyone that they should watch more TV, but in your case, I don't think there's any harm, since you obviously don't watch much. Have you, in fact, watched any other shows?
If you ignore reality TV, there's not much of anything worse than Fringe.
But about anything we have to ask, what are the alternatives and their respective outcomes.? I compare this to the drone program. It's not perfect, but it's what we have now and our hand has been forced into action. We have to use the tools we have, not wait for advent of hypothetical tools which have no unwanted side effects and about which we can all feel good.
Some of us believe that if only certain abhorrent actions can save us from certain death, then we should choose death. After all, what the hell is the point of living if we can't be the people we wish to become? By that reasoning, is it not implied that the type of people who would choose the abhorrent action do not deserve to live?
Sometimes a no-win scenario means you don't win. There's no shame in that, but there is certainly shame in abandoning your principles every time a crisis is looming.
Did you even read my post? Specifically the part that said, "If American citizens are collateral damage as a result of a strike on another target, that's a completely different story"?
This isn't about Americans who are killed as part of attacks on non-american targets. This is about targeting an American for the strike. It's about someone saying, "I want John Smith killed" and setting the military after him, before John Smith gets a trial.
Back in the days of Cowboys and Indians, your only defense against "aiding the enemy" was to be as far away as possible. The US Army killed plenty of American citizens that lived with Natives...
I don't understand. Typically we remember the mistakes of the past to avoid repeating them, not to justify making them again.
I have less of a problem with the government killing confirmed traitors while ENGAGED in plotting against the USA, in a foreign country, with other enemies. That's open and shut...
How does one confirm traitors? Is it not through due process? In fact, the US Constitution names very specific requirements for due process regarding treason. Article 3, Section 3: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
The military KILLS PEOPLE...
The US military KILLS PEOPLE...who are not American citizens. Unless, of course, they've been engaged by said citizen.
.. They don't arrest people.
They are, in fact, required to take prisoners if their enemy surrenders. Article 3 of the fourth Geneva convention specifies that you cannot harm anyone who has laid down their arms and surrendered.
This nonsense of picking up US Citizens, on US soil for things that may have happened, then shipping them OUT of the USA without trial was a much larger affront to the Constitution than this new procedure is.
That would also be unacceptable, what's your point?
You don't want to get blowed up, don't stand with the enemy. American citizenship has no bearing if you are actively engaged in planning WAR against the USA.
If American citizens are collateral damage as a result of a strike on another target, that's a completely different story, and it would cover this situation. For you to specifically target an American citizen would require a trial. If, through due process, the citizen is found to be committing treason, Congress has the ability to define the punishment, which could be death through military strike. You can't skip the due process part, though.
Just because there are millions of foreigners willing to do your job for less than what you expect to be paid doesn't make it slavery. It does make your personal standard of living difficult to maintain though. Sucks to be you.
It's slavery if the reason they're willing to do that job for less is because they'll get kicked out of the country if they don't have a job. Employers have a slight advantage at the bargaining table there.
Yes they do and statistics back that up.
Sure they will not do AP right away if they lack basic arithmetic but without the bad apples of the other school the teachers can then teach rather than deal with inner city telling them to fuck off every day.
But what happens when you take every one of the inner city schools and put them in the rich kids school? Now all those bad apples are at the rich kids' school.
The point you're making is exactly the one I was making. The problem isn't the school, and it isn't the teachers. The lack of a culture that values knowledge and education at home breeds the so-called "bad apples." Why do you think there aren't as many of them in the richer schools?
Working to increase the quality of life of these people and bring them out of poverty will do wonders to improve the education stats. Part of this strategy is absolutely the opportunity for a good education, but we need to focus on other factors too, including the parents of these kids. Night schools for adults, lowering unemployment among the unskilled, etc. It's a complex problem, and there is no one silver bullet.
Einstein hated Quantum Mechanics and invented a Cosmological Constant simply because he didn't like the way things were shaping up.
I agree with your point 100%. I'm not saying scientists are immune to this problem. They're human. I'm also not saying that you need to be a scientist in order to make good decisions. I'm saying that people should, whether they're scientists or not, learn to take a more evidence-based approach in their decision-making process, especially when it comes to politicians.
The fact that he eventually called it his biggest mistake doesn't mean that he didn't, at one point, use more of a "feeling" about how things should work out to influence his calculations.
No, it doesn't. Einstein was human, after all. However, when Einstein was shown evidence that the universe was expanding, his reaction was to say he made a mistake and to remove the cosmological constant from the equations. On the other hand, Christopher Columbus kept insisting he reached Asia to the day he died, despite all the evidence that it was a new continent. Some people will just completely disregard any evidence that goes against their beliefs. It's not about being a scientist or not, and there are scientists who will dogmatically cling to their biases, but we point at scientists because at least they have a culture of testing their hypotheses through observation and replication of experiments.
This just means that the US has extremely rich kids, who are smart. And extremely poor kids, who are dumb.
No, it means the US has rich kids receiving a good education, and poor kids receiving a poor education.
It's more complicated than that. You can't just put the poor kids in the same school as the rich kids and expect them to suddenly do a lot better. I went to a really good high school, and while I was taking the AP and honors classes, the poor kids in the same school were, for the most part, not.
There's a whole lot of built-in advantages that come from having educated parents. Before you even go to school, they've generally taken the time to teach you a great deal of things, which gives you a leg up against your classmates. When you first start taking math, and you have problems understanding basic arithmetic, they're going to be able to help you with that homework, whereas other kids go home, and their parents don't have the knowledge to help them. Your parents might take the time to involve you in their electronic hobbies where you get to learn something they don't teach at the schools, while the other kids' parents don't have any hobbies other than watching TV, because buying random electronic parts to build something doesn't really fit in their budget...
Basically, the problem needs to be approached from a socioeconomic perspective, not just a quality of schools perspective.
Hmm, is the study arguing then that these students should be excluded? If so, what is the basis? Are they not really in the country?
No, I think they're arguing the problem isn't the educational system, but instead that we have a larger proportion of the population that is a member of disadvantaged social groups than the countries we're being compared to.
FA says: "As part of the study, Carnoy and Rothstein calculated how international rankings on the most recent PISA might change if the United States had a social class composition similar to that of top-ranking nations"
And the point is???
That instead of focusing on improving education purely by looking at schools through programs like No Children Left Behind, we should focus on the economy, how to lower unemployment in the blue-collar section and other strategies to improve the economic status of a large portion of our population, because that's where the problem is.
Criticizing politicians for having an ideology is absurd.
The criticism is when they ignore evidence against their particular ideology.
Political questions are not like engineering questions - 'how much should we spend on bridges' is not at all the same category of question as 'estimate the ultimate load-bearing capacity of this bridge'.
Although there certainly are decisions that cannot be made objectively, your example is not one of them. We can certainly do cost-benefit analyses to decide whether building a bridge somewhere is worth the amount of money that will be spent building it.
Sometimes it is subjective. For example, most of us are not anarchists and believe that the government should establish certain laws, even though every law is a restriction on your freedom. We do, however, disagree on where that line is between order and safety and freedom. This is purely ideological. However, even if you lean towards sacrificing more freedom for increased safety, we can empirically determine whether a piece of legislation would actually make people safer or not, whereas right now we don't bother with that.
Why is this modded insightful? His question was NOT answered and still isn't. We have postulated that Mars lost it's water because it no longer had a functioning magnetosphere. However, we have absolutely no clue why it lost it's magnetosphere or how to prevent the same from happening to earth.
Describing a process does not mean you understand why the process started in the first place.
We know exactly how Mars lost its magnetosphere, and we sure as hell can't prevent the same thing from happening to Earth (despite what a really bad movie might have told you). Eventually, the Earth will lose it's magnetosphere the same way that Mars did: the mantle core will cool down, and you're no longer going to have a bunch of molten iron moving at the center of the planet.
Try it, call the police up sometime and report that your car was broken into... or your house... they may show up sometime in the next 12 to 48hrs... maybe... in my city you get to file a report over the phone to an answering machine.
I have. Somebody broke the window of my car with a rock, stole some stuff that I had left in the seat. I knew I couldn't get the stuff back, but needed to file a report so my car insurance would pay for a replacement window.
Police officer was there within 10 minutes of my call. Got a detailed list of everything that was stolen. They later called me to give me the case number and to keep me informed that they had sent a list the objects to pawn shops and would inform me if anything turned up (it didn't, but hey, what else can they do?)
My point isn't to say you're wrong about talking to the cops. Don't say anything unless you have a lawyer present advising you, ever. However, that's to cover your ass against the asshole cops, it's not to mean that every single cop is an asshole, you just can't tell who is and who isn't by just looking at them. Most of them probably are interested in helping out.
He didn't die for what he believed in. He died to escape.
I'm not sure there's really a difference. Nobody wants to go to prison, but that may be a consequence of actions you take in support of your beliefs. He changed the consequences, which pretty much means he took control.
If anything, this actually does more for his cause than going to prison. If he had gone to prison, the government would use that as an example that nobody is above the law, and how they showed they're going to be tough on people who did what he did. Now instead we're finally having the conservation on how prosecutors are pushing for too hard a punishment for non-violent crimes. The way I see it, he turned a loss into a win.