I grew up in Northwest Montana (I.e. born, raised until 24). I hunted there, camped there, saw a few bears and mountain lions there, and saw the aftermath of a grizzly getting into a cabin there. I own a weapon, and I wished I owned more. I agree whole hearted that firearms are necessary for more reasons that just homesteading. It was a counter-point of sarcasm, which you would know if you read the first part of my post and the one I was responding to.
It's common for 25 year olds (the top of the classes from Harvard/Yale law)
Precisely the problem. What percentage of Harvard and Yale students also come from wealthy or semi-wealthy backgrounds? Do they have a concept of how severe a punishment such as the aforementioned is for a lower/middle class person? Do the professors who teach these students at Harvard and Yale have anything in common with a lower/middle class?
Perhaps the last question is a bit of a stretch, but as far as justice is concerned : This woman should be able to make a case she is an "innocent infringer" simply because back when she did this alleged infringement, it was not uncommon for people to not realize the consequences of their action. I understand ignorance of the law is no excuse, but if you are allowed to copy tapes for your friends what exactly is wrong with doing it over the internet?
I interpolate that the second amendment is no longer relevant. You can buy steaks at the store. Predator species are no longer a threat to humans, and criminals can be taken care of by the police. Furthermore, you would not stand a chance against the modern military with semi-automatic firearms and no explosives. Thus, you have no reason and thus no right to own firearms.
It was a politically-charged joke. However, counter-point: Why are some laws still taken so seriously after 50-200 years and others simply re-evaluated because "(some new thing) happened"? New things happen all the time. We recognize that firearms are no longer needed for 1. Hunting because you can just get a steak at the store, 2. Protection from animal attacks because we have simply killed off or made irrelevant most predator species, and 3. Protection from criminals because we have a standing police force. So why bother with it? Furthermore, owning firearms wouldn't amount to diddly squat against the modern military. Lets just repeal the second amendment. Its clearly no longer valid.
Point is, the "Innocent Infringer" defense does apply in this case. Its too easy to share a file on the internet, and its feasible a younger person or a immature/naive adult would think that sharing a song is OK since it was and continues to be so popular and is easy to do.
I understand the finer details. I was mainly making a joke. I think what it really is, is that the RIAA/MPAA has succeeded in its propaganda effort geared towards those in government. The Judge may in fact believe it causes significant damage to share a song, he also probably makes quite a bit of money so 27750 dollars seems like an adequate punishment to him, but its clearly excessive for any person that makes less than 60,000 a year. He is mistaken simply because he hasn't heard the whole truth and is not this woman's peer. He cannot understand how excessive this punishment truly is.
Google stock hasnt been subdivided into more manageable chunks. Frequently stock gets split, so if you had 1 share at 20 dollars you will be given 2 shares each at 10.
Problem is that you will have half-brained executives thinking they want "the cloud" without fully understanding the ramifications of it. Then these executives can go brag to their buddies about how modern their business is in a cocktail lounge.
The heat death of the universe is a suggested fate of the universe, its final thermodynamic state in which it has diminished to a state of no thermodynamic free energy to sustain motion or life
Key word : Suggested. I just read an article the other day that hints at prior big bangs in this Universe which suggests a cyclic nature in spite of the evidence of expansion http://www.physorg.com/news89399974.html. Furthermore, heat death is proposed to happen after 10^100 years. Our sun will have ballooned and scorched the earth before then, and we have billions of years before that happens. Nope, we will go extinct either through our own weapons, some kind of impact, or a super volcano eruption on Earth or something.
You realize that space doesn't have to be a fantasy. Arbitrarily assigning the word "fantasy" to something doesn't discredit the idea. People probably told Leif Erickson it was a fantasy to look for other lands, or Columbus that its a fantasy that there exists lands the opposite way of India. All it will take is a handful of people with the means for reasonably safe space travel that want what I want and there will be an attempt at space colonization. Maybe it will be unsuccessful but Im sure someone will eventually try again. One day this earth will be uninhabitable by modern humans. Whether it happens in a billion years or a million or thousands of years. It doesn't matter, the point is that we have an obligation for the survival of our species as we may in fact be one of the rare or the only intelligent species capable of understanding how the universe works and passing knowledge on to our subsequent generations. We are guaranteed to survive for a longer period of time if we set up more than one planetary colony. If there were enough people like me in the world we already would be well on our way, unfortunately there are more people like you.
Possible, sure. We could go back to the moon with a big enough budget. Economically viable, though?
Solar microwave satellites were fun in SimCity 2000, and I'd still like to see them operational, but I've not seen even any proof of concept devices yet.
Further out, the big question about asteroid mining I've never seen plausibly answered is: how do you make mining bulk metal in space cheaper than mining it on Earth?
The usual space-booster response is "we won't be building stuff on earth, we'll be building stuff in space, and space mining is cheaper for that". But that begs the question: why will we be building megastructures in space in the first place? Not just to build space mining camps so we can build more space mining camps, I assume.
One day the earth will run out of easily accessible resources. It may be a thousand years, but it will eventually happen at our current rate of use. What happens then? We have to recycle or go off planet. Extracting materials from a trash heap may one day be harder than just going and mining an asteroid. Our political systems may change, our economy may change, ect. If you factor in the inevitability of a catastrophe that will literally wipe the planet clean of life beyond rudimentary microbes it makes sense as an extremely long term investment to move off planet.
You are a nut job. You fail to recognize that propulsion technology may render "rockets" obsolete, i.e. you assume that we only have chemical rockets for all eternity, and you overestimate the length our current economic system will last, i.e. you assume indefinitely. Either humanity will eventually colonize other places (at least in our own solar system) or we will go extinct. Its a natural progression. I bet people like you complained when one of their tribesmen built a slightly bigger ship more suitable for travel between islands. You would be the person saying "Nope. The ocean is endless, all that exists is the land behind us." or "There is no reason to go look for new lands over the ocean because its economically unfeasible to bring goods back from whatever lands may exist over the sea." Funny thing about that is, technology eventually developed to make overseas travel a matter of months (wind powered ships), then a matter of hours or days (airplanes). The next progression was space flight which brought us to the moon and sent probes past Jupiter. Basically, you assume no new technology will ever be developed as far as space travel is concerned and so far history has proven your stance wrong. The only way you could ever be right is if we all are brought back to the stone age or human beings become extinct.
As a disclaimer, I have no knowledge of genetics, however I do know a thing or two about data representation because we've had to use it as part of our research in facial recognition. There are techniques of compression that are quite extraordinary. An example is Wavelets, a Code Book (Bag of Words), PCA ect. How much you can compress the genomic data depends on its statistics. I.e. distributions, patterns, ect., and how much precision you are willing to lose. If you represent an image as simply color values for each pixel, it requires a crap-load of disk space. If you however use something akin to JPEG-2000 (which uses wavelets) you can compress it and retain a reasonable amount of information. However, If genetic data is essentially white noise there is minimal hope using humanities' current knowledge (or perhaps anything I am aware of).
You failed to notice a few personal stories. You obviously failed to read other peoples posts before going off on a pro-police rant. No-one is saying the Police aren't necessary or appreciated. They are saying frequently the Police do not do their job. Perhaps you lived in a couple good states? Perhaps you had good experiences because of your income level? I lived in Montana for most of my life, the Police are very courteous there, and do not abuse their power short of going through an occasional red light. I moved to Houston. Guess what? I have called the cops on numerous occasions for noise violations, gun shots in the street, drunk drivers and shit getting stolen from my car. What did they do? They put me on hold 50 percent of the time, and had an average response time of 45 minutes. Awesome.
I understand this. Hence the reason they need to either make laws governing civil suits more strict against frivolity, and increase the protections that police provide or they need to allow me to legally purchase whatever firearm I deem would make me safest in my area. I don't care if I need to pass a psychological examination or obtain a license, and I admit I would not need any explosive. Point remains is that government and extremists like PETA/Anti-abortion/Gun control/etc rarely offer solutions for problems posed by their position, and instead just don't want you to be allowed to do whatever it is they have a problem regardless of how it affects you personally.
But then again..... Whatever the courts say doesn't mean squat as far as what is right. Whoever is supplying the under-the-table benefits to people in government office get to make the rules.
I did actually read your whole post. Either way you swing it its the rich/powerful controlling the lesser classes. In China, the higher-ups in the party want to control the workers otherwise they lose their status and benefits. In China, I would bet career politicians have opulent lifestyles far surpassing the average worker. Here in the US you have huge disparities in wealth whereby 10 percent of the population controls 70 percent of the wealth. Furthermore, In the US you have career politicians that get handouts from lobby groups (controlled by the rich) and essentially have a revolving door with executive positions in industry and media. Perhaps in the US we live better than the average Chinese worker, but the sad fact remains, no matter where you are, the wealthy have greater access to government as well as greater influence in government and thus bias 90 percent of the benefits of their society for themselves.
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I was speaking sarcastically to make a point. If you criminalize guns only criminals will have 'em, partner.
I grew up in Northwest Montana (I.e. born, raised until 24). I hunted there, camped there, saw a few bears and mountain lions there, and saw the aftermath of a grizzly getting into a cabin there. I own a weapon, and I wished I owned more. I agree whole hearted that firearms are necessary for more reasons that just homesteading. It was a counter-point of sarcasm, which you would know if you read the first part of my post and the one I was responding to.
It's common for 25 year olds (the top of the classes from Harvard/Yale law)
Precisely the problem. What percentage of Harvard and Yale students also come from wealthy or semi-wealthy backgrounds? Do they have a concept of how severe a punishment such as the aforementioned is for a lower/middle class person? Do the professors who teach these students at Harvard and Yale have anything in common with a lower/middle class?
Perhaps the last question is a bit of a stretch, but as far as justice is concerned : This woman should be able to make a case she is an "innocent infringer" simply because back when she did this alleged infringement, it was not uncommon for people to not realize the consequences of their action. I understand ignorance of the law is no excuse, but if you are allowed to copy tapes for your friends what exactly is wrong with doing it over the internet?
He wishes to hear it on a precedent that does no justice to anything I have said.
I interpolate that the second amendment is no longer relevant. You can buy steaks at the store. Predator species are no longer a threat to humans, and criminals can be taken care of by the police. Furthermore, you would not stand a chance against the modern military with semi-automatic firearms and no explosives. Thus, you have no reason and thus no right to own firearms.
It was a politically-charged joke. However, counter-point: Why are some laws still taken so seriously after 50-200 years and others simply re-evaluated because "(some new thing) happened"? New things happen all the time. We recognize that firearms are no longer needed for 1. Hunting because you can just get a steak at the store, 2. Protection from animal attacks because we have simply killed off or made irrelevant most predator species, and 3. Protection from criminals because we have a standing police force. So why bother with it? Furthermore, owning firearms wouldn't amount to diddly squat against the modern military. Lets just repeal the second amendment. Its clearly no longer valid.
Point is, the "Innocent Infringer" defense does apply in this case. Its too easy to share a file on the internet, and its feasible a younger person or a immature/naive adult would think that sharing a song is OK since it was and continues to be so popular and is easy to do.
I understand the finer details. I was mainly making a joke. I think what it really is, is that the RIAA/MPAA has succeeded in its propaganda effort geared towards those in government. The Judge may in fact believe it causes significant damage to share a song, he also probably makes quite a bit of money so 27750 dollars seems like an adequate punishment to him, but its clearly excessive for any person that makes less than 60,000 a year. He is mistaken simply because he hasn't heard the whole truth and is not this woman's peer. He cannot understand how excessive this punishment truly is.
Its actually congress and the President's fault for what NASA doesn't end up doing.
They do seem rather Anti-US. Im sure there is a treasure trove of information on other countries that would be just as bad.
"This provision was adopted in 1988, well before digital music files became available on the Internet"
So in other words "We get to bend the law to suit our corporate overlord's desires."
Google stock hasnt been subdivided into more manageable chunks. Frequently stock gets split, so if you had 1 share at 20 dollars you will be given 2 shares each at 10.
Problem is that you will have half-brained executives thinking they want "the cloud" without fully understanding the ramifications of it. Then these executives can go brag to their buddies about how modern their business is in a cocktail lounge.
The heat death of the universe is a suggested fate of the universe, its final thermodynamic state in which it has diminished to a state of no thermodynamic free energy to sustain motion or life
Key word : Suggested. I just read an article the other day that hints at prior big bangs in this Universe which suggests a cyclic nature in spite of the evidence of expansion http://www.physorg.com/news89399974.html. Furthermore, heat death is proposed to happen after 10^100 years. Our sun will have ballooned and scorched the earth before then, and we have billions of years before that happens. Nope, we will go extinct either through our own weapons, some kind of impact, or a super volcano eruption on Earth or something.
You realize that space doesn't have to be a fantasy. Arbitrarily assigning the word "fantasy" to something doesn't discredit the idea. People probably told Leif Erickson it was a fantasy to look for other lands, or Columbus that its a fantasy that there exists lands the opposite way of India. All it will take is a handful of people with the means for reasonably safe space travel that want what I want and there will be an attempt at space colonization. Maybe it will be unsuccessful but Im sure someone will eventually try again. One day this earth will be uninhabitable by modern humans. Whether it happens in a billion years or a million or thousands of years. It doesn't matter, the point is that we have an obligation for the survival of our species as we may in fact be one of the rare or the only intelligent species capable of understanding how the universe works and passing knowledge on to our subsequent generations. We are guaranteed to survive for a longer period of time if we set up more than one planetary colony. If there were enough people like me in the world we already would be well on our way, unfortunately there are more people like you.
Possible, sure. We could go back to the moon with a big enough budget. Economically viable, though? Solar microwave satellites were fun in SimCity 2000, and I'd still like to see them operational, but I've not seen even any proof of concept devices yet. Further out, the big question about asteroid mining I've never seen plausibly answered is: how do you make mining bulk metal in space cheaper than mining it on Earth? The usual space-booster response is "we won't be building stuff on earth, we'll be building stuff in space, and space mining is cheaper for that". But that begs the question: why will we be building megastructures in space in the first place? Not just to build space mining camps so we can build more space mining camps, I assume.
One day the earth will run out of easily accessible resources. It may be a thousand years, but it will eventually happen at our current rate of use. What happens then? We have to recycle or go off planet. Extracting materials from a trash heap may one day be harder than just going and mining an asteroid. Our political systems may change, our economy may change, ect. If you factor in the inevitability of a catastrophe that will literally wipe the planet clean of life beyond rudimentary microbes it makes sense as an extremely long term investment to move off planet.
You are a nut job. You fail to recognize that propulsion technology may render "rockets" obsolete, i.e. you assume that we only have chemical rockets for all eternity, and you overestimate the length our current economic system will last, i.e. you assume indefinitely. Either humanity will eventually colonize other places (at least in our own solar system) or we will go extinct. Its a natural progression. I bet people like you complained when one of their tribesmen built a slightly bigger ship more suitable for travel between islands. You would be the person saying "Nope. The ocean is endless, all that exists is the land behind us." or "There is no reason to go look for new lands over the ocean because its economically unfeasible to bring goods back from whatever lands may exist over the sea." Funny thing about that is, technology eventually developed to make overseas travel a matter of months (wind powered ships), then a matter of hours or days (airplanes). The next progression was space flight which brought us to the moon and sent probes past Jupiter. Basically, you assume no new technology will ever be developed as far as space travel is concerned and so far history has proven your stance wrong. The only way you could ever be right is if we all are brought back to the stone age or human beings become extinct.
As a disclaimer, I have no knowledge of genetics, however I do know a thing or two about data representation because we've had to use it as part of our research in facial recognition. There are techniques of compression that are quite extraordinary. An example is Wavelets, a Code Book (Bag of Words), PCA ect. How much you can compress the genomic data depends on its statistics. I.e. distributions, patterns, ect., and how much precision you are willing to lose. If you represent an image as simply color values for each pixel, it requires a crap-load of disk space. If you however use something akin to JPEG-2000 (which uses wavelets) you can compress it and retain a reasonable amount of information. However, If genetic data is essentially white noise there is minimal hope using humanities' current knowledge (or perhaps anything I am aware of).
You failed to notice a few personal stories. You obviously failed to read other peoples posts before going off on a pro-police rant. No-one is saying the Police aren't necessary or appreciated. They are saying frequently the Police do not do their job. Perhaps you lived in a couple good states? Perhaps you had good experiences because of your income level? I lived in Montana for most of my life, the Police are very courteous there, and do not abuse their power short of going through an occasional red light. I moved to Houston. Guess what? I have called the cops on numerous occasions for noise violations, gun shots in the street, drunk drivers and shit getting stolen from my car. What did they do? They put me on hold 50 percent of the time, and had an average response time of 45 minutes. Awesome.
I understand this. Hence the reason they need to either make laws governing civil suits more strict against frivolity, and increase the protections that police provide or they need to allow me to legally purchase whatever firearm I deem would make me safest in my area. I don't care if I need to pass a psychological examination or obtain a license, and I admit I would not need any explosive. Point remains is that government and extremists like PETA/Anti-abortion/Gun control/etc rarely offer solutions for problems posed by their position, and instead just don't want you to be allowed to do whatever it is they have a problem regardless of how it affects you personally.
I wouldn't call the US fascist. Its more of an Oligarchy.
Yes. Another argument against is that the social conservatives probably already have their own mistresses they don't have to publicly acknowledge.
But then again..... Whatever the courts say doesn't mean squat as far as what is right. Whoever is supplying the under-the-table benefits to people in government office get to make the rules.
I did actually read your whole post. Either way you swing it its the rich/powerful controlling the lesser classes. In China, the higher-ups in the party want to control the workers otherwise they lose their status and benefits. In China, I would bet career politicians have opulent lifestyles far surpassing the average worker. Here in the US you have huge disparities in wealth whereby 10 percent of the population controls 70 percent of the wealth. Furthermore, In the US you have career politicians that get handouts from lobby groups (controlled by the rich) and essentially have a revolving door with executive positions in industry and media. Perhaps in the US we live better than the average Chinese worker, but the sad fact remains, no matter where you are, the wealthy have greater access to government as well as greater influence in government and thus bias 90 percent of the benefits of their society for themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html
Or just make it a requirement that TSA agents must be attractive and scantily clad and you pick your preferred sex.