You can use software to map a key to some character other than what is printed upon it. This isn't quite as nice as having it printed on but if you can remember then it's better than dealing with a glossy screen outdoors. Next problem?
Airlines should probably be treated like public utilities
They once were; look up the Civil Aeronautics Board and the Airline Deregulation Act. From 1938-1978 airlines were told between where at what times to fly and how much to charge by a government oversight board.
I still feel glad whenever I feel any form of anxiety
Does that worry you? If you can get worked up about anxiety inducing gladness, here comes the total bliss feedback loop! Just watch your heart rate, please.
If they (performers, pop "music") do not make money, how is it that so many of them are obscenely rich?
The cash that gets thrown around by new acts is all part of the front money that needs to be repaid. Imagine if you were given a loan of your annual salary for the next couple of years right now and then need to work it off plus loan shark level interest and fees.
Here in.au we have campus security and all other matters are handled by the local police force
A large state university can have a larger population than a town large enough for a police force, so why not have their own police force? I'd rather deal with real cops any day than self important security goons who aren't even clever enough to graduate from police academy.
they start DEMANDING cleaner environments and standards
Here's the tricky part: both the environmental and workplace conditions in the photographs of the Chinese sitesare all already against the law in China because Chinese people have demanded that this kind of thing not be allowed. What is not pictured is the recycling center owners in their Benzes and the local party bosses in their Audis (bought with bribes from the owners). Enforcing the demands for better conditions will require not different market choices or even new elections but a complete political revolution. The situation is too far out of control for normal market forces to correct when the government utterly fails to enforce laws or contracts.
And while I'm at it, why do buses have to stop right BEFORE an intersection? Why do they have to hold up people who want to turn? Drive another 25 feet, you bastard, and stop on the other side
Two reasons: 1. a bus stopping just after the intersection would leave all the cars trying to go straight blocking up the intersection when the light changes. 2. while it disables you from turning (not everyone turns, see #1) it enables a person waiting to turn right from the cross street.
Reason 1 is the most important and reason 2 balances out the karma in the grand scheme of things; sometimes you get to turn because a stopped bus has blocked cross traffic and sometimes you get stopped because the bus has blocked you.
I think that what really has to change here is to make it so that scalpers can't get a large number of tickets. I'm not sure of the exact mechanism which could accomplish this
An auction for the tickets. Scalpers are only in business because enough people would be happy to pay X more than the face value. If the prices were run up X due to an auctioning mechanism then who would pay more than the highest bidder when they have a chance to outbid during the auction? Presto, scalpers out of business. The only customers for a high bidding scalper would be the few people who had a cash windfall between the end of the auction and the start of the concert.
Something like: seating section A has 50 seats and 100 bids from $20 to $100. Of the top 50 bids, the current low bid is $50 do you want to bid $55? If you bid 55 for 2 tickets then 2 people who bid only 50 get bumped off the bottom. If 50 stays as the lowest bid for section A then everyone pays 50. Auction ends in 2 weeks; if you miss section A the auction for next best seats in section B ends in 2 1/2 weeks.
In this scenario, the person who bid 100 will pay 50 but since he got his seat(s), he's just happy to pay less. If anyone really wants to sit in section A then they'll have to bid more than 50. If a scalper wants to gobble up the tickets then he'd have to pay more than the other bidders and then where's his profit? If people were willing to pay more then they'd bid it.
Some people say anonymity on the internet has lead to a breakdown in civility but you really showed them up!
The post office is an 'independent entity' by charter. Whatever the technical legal term, it isn't owned by anything but itself. Sorry, a.gov website is not the arbiter of ownership. If that were the case you'd think the Federal Reserve was owned by the government because they only use a.gov and don't even bother with a.com version like the USPS.
As a side note, have you ever tried www.usps.gov? It redirects to www.usps.com.
Anyway, URLs are not the issue here - read the article in the first place and the clues of the particular light rail system's non-government status are in several places.
You've hit upon the exact source of what has all the posters upset with the police. City light rail systems do NOT belong to the government in most cases (in the usa). They are commissioned like the post office - given government seed money to start (and usually ongoing funding) and made a monopoly, but they don't belong to the local government the same way as, for example, the mayor's office building or the courthouse. When the police defer to the local security goons, it's because the police know the metro station is just public accessible, like a mall. The owners (represented in this story by the guy who warned the photographers they may be questioned) are ultimately responsible for hiring and authorized the security company to throw people out for BS reasons, not the police. If the security goons told the photographers to leave, and the photographers refused, then the police would arrest them for *tresspassing*, not taking pictures. The police didn't care about the pictures, they just enforced the owner's representatives wish that these people leave. It's 100% on the management of the transit company for hiring lousy security and/or not seeing to it they're trained properly. But the fault of the local government or the police.
Taxes aren't for creating a desired behavior, they're for collecting funds. If you want to financially punish people for an undesired behavior you should fine them
What's this semantic game you're playing? Both of these actions, taxation and fining, are 100% interchangeable. A speeding ticket can be seen as a tax on driving too fast. An income tax bill can be seen as a fine on making wages. From a private individual's point of view there is no difference; the government has confiscated the money in response to the individual's actions. High rates of taxation have the same punishing effect on high levels of income as high fines do on speeders so even if the intention of high taxation is not to punish earnings, high earnings are undesirable.
one cannot simply find some nice, fertile spot of land to raise crops and lovestock these days
Amazingly enough, you can. Approximately 2% of the population of the USA does this. They are called "farmers". Incredible what people can think of to do these days!
it's essentially become meaningless now (not that it wasn't fairly poorly defined in the first place)
It was well defined in the first place: fascism is a political and economic system where privately owned means of production are subject to strict state control. The privately owned part is why communists and fascists don't get along but in practice it's almost impossible to tell a communist dictatorship from a fascist one. Life sucks for the average citizen in either. People who complain BHO is a fascist are complaining about how large companies are either being run by the government or shaken down for piles of cash. People who complain GWB was a fascist think his policies were dictatorial. Some people just say it as a general purpose pejorative and thus dillute its meaning.
this one is really stupid. Mostly because there is an easy solution to it. Release the full context so people can make up there own mind
Yes, because everyone who watched the 20 seconds of Rodney King being beaten by the police were suspicious and researched the full video of him beating the cops for 20 minutes prior. Good thing the full information being available prevented anything like riots breaking out.
I understand the need to keep things secret, and I understand that in war shit happens...but that doesn't mean when things go awry, we the people shouldn't know about it
Which is why in the US with the first amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press one had to find a professional journalist and convince him/her and the editor and publisher that breaking a secret story was worth the potential penalties. With Wikileaks this process is reduced to a snickering game of airing dirty laundry just for the sake of doing it. One day truly serious info will be released and cause the bad sort of trouble that will make the Rosenbergs look like common gossips.
One side on that argument thinks the other side shouldn't exist as an independent politican entity while one thinks the other should cease existing due to being killed off. Which attitude is lesser of evils?
Slashdot Mirror
we have our own very specific keyboard layout
You can use software to map a key to some character other than what is printed upon it. This isn't quite as nice as having it printed on but if you can remember then it's better than dealing with a glossy screen outdoors. Next problem?
Airlines should probably be treated like public utilities
They once were; look up the Civil Aeronautics Board and the Airline Deregulation Act. From 1938-1978 airlines were told between where at what times to fly and how much to charge by a government oversight board.
under which sovereignty would the island be?
Whichever country's citizens tossed the most trash in the ocean.
I still feel glad whenever I feel any form of anxiety
Does that worry you? If you can get worked up about anxiety inducing gladness, here comes the total bliss feedback loop! Just watch your heart rate, please.
If they (performers, pop "music") do not make money, how is it that so many of them are obscenely rich?
The cash that gets thrown around by new acts is all part of the front money that needs to be repaid. Imagine if you were given a loan of your annual salary for the next couple of years right now and then need to work it off plus loan shark level interest and fees.
They probably just don't fear the light anymore
I think that's anti-suicidal for a shrimp. Doesn't the dark mean a hungry baleen whale?
Here in .au we have campus security and all other matters are handled by the local police force
A large state university can have a larger population than a town large enough for a police force, so why not have their own police force? I'd rather deal with real cops any day than self important security goons who aren't even clever enough to graduate from police academy.
The Slashdot community frequently criticizes...
...Chinese policies and yet when I lived there last year I never had a problem getting it. YouTube, otoh, was never accessible.
they start DEMANDING cleaner environments and standards
Here's the tricky part: both the environmental and workplace conditions in the photographs of the Chinese sitesare all already against the law in China because Chinese people have demanded that this kind of thing not be allowed. What is not pictured is the recycling center owners in their Benzes and the local party bosses in their Audis (bought with bribes from the owners). Enforcing the demands for better conditions will require not different market choices or even new elections but a complete political revolution. The situation is too far out of control for normal market forces to correct when the government utterly fails to enforce laws or contracts.
And while I'm at it, why do buses have to stop right BEFORE an intersection? Why do they have to hold up people who want to turn? Drive another 25 feet, you bastard, and stop on the other side
Two reasons: 1. a bus stopping just after the intersection would leave all the cars trying to go straight blocking up the intersection when the light changes. 2. while it disables you from turning (not everyone turns, see #1) it enables a person waiting to turn right from the cross street.
Reason 1 is the most important and reason 2 balances out the karma in the grand scheme of things; sometimes you get to turn because a stopped bus has blocked cross traffic and sometimes you get stopped because the bus has blocked you.
How did they get them to fight?
The tricky part was getting the little gloves and silk shorts on them.
I think that what really has to change here is to make it so that scalpers can't get a large number of tickets. I'm not sure of the exact mechanism which could accomplish this
An auction for the tickets. Scalpers are only in business because enough people would be happy to pay X more than the face value. If the prices were run up X due to an auctioning mechanism then who would pay more than the highest bidder when they have a chance to outbid during the auction? Presto, scalpers out of business. The only customers for a high bidding scalper would be the few people who had a cash windfall between the end of the auction and the start of the concert.
Something like: seating section A has 50 seats and 100 bids from $20 to $100. Of the top 50 bids, the current low bid is $50 do you want to bid $55? If you bid 55 for 2 tickets then 2 people who bid only 50 get bumped off the bottom. If 50 stays as the lowest bid for section A then everyone pays 50. Auction ends in 2 weeks; if you miss section A the auction for next best seats in section B ends in 2 1/2 weeks.
In this scenario, the person who bid 100 will pay 50 but since he got his seat(s), he's just happy to pay less. If anyone really wants to sit in section A then they'll have to bid more than 50. If a scalper wants to gobble up the tickets then he'd have to pay more than the other bidders and then where's his profit? If people were willing to pay more then they'd bid it.
What's truly amazing is that some marxist took such offense to my derision of income tax that he's come back 2 days later to mod it down.
You stupid twit
.gov website is not the arbiter of ownership. If that were the case you'd think the Federal Reserve was owned by the government because they only use a .gov and don't even bother with a .com version like the USPS.
Some people say anonymity on the internet has lead to a breakdown in civility but you really showed them up!
The post office is an 'independent entity' by charter. Whatever the technical legal term, it isn't owned by anything but itself. Sorry, a
As a side note, have you ever tried www.usps.gov? It redirects to www.usps.com.
Anyway, URLs are not the issue here - read the article in the first place and the clues of the particular light rail system's non-government status are in several places.
The metrorail belongs to the government
You've hit upon the exact source of what has all the posters upset with the police. City light rail systems do NOT belong to the government in most cases (in the usa). They are commissioned like the post office - given government seed money to start (and usually ongoing funding) and made a monopoly, but they don't belong to the local government the same way as, for example, the mayor's office building or the courthouse. When the police defer to the local security goons, it's because the police know the metro station is just public accessible, like a mall. The owners (represented in this story by the guy who warned the photographers they may be questioned) are ultimately responsible for hiring and authorized the security company to throw people out for BS reasons, not the police. If the security goons told the photographers to leave, and the photographers refused, then the police would arrest them for *tresspassing*, not taking pictures. The police didn't care about the pictures, they just enforced the owner's representatives wish that these people leave. It's 100% on the management of the transit company for hiring lousy security and/or not seeing to it they're trained properly. But the fault of the local government or the police.
Taxes aren't for creating a desired behavior, they're for collecting funds. If you want to financially punish people for an undesired behavior you should fine them
What's this semantic game you're playing? Both of these actions, taxation and fining, are 100% interchangeable. A speeding ticket can be seen as a tax on driving too fast. An income tax bill can be seen as a fine on making wages. From a private individual's point of view there is no difference; the government has confiscated the money in response to the individual's actions. High rates of taxation have the same punishing effect on high levels of income as high fines do on speeders so even if the intention of high taxation is not to punish earnings, high earnings are undesirable.
Or the Numa Numa guy
His CPUs had to access memory in different banks?
Stuff like this is part of why one should never, ever, invest in Chinese stocks even if they are ADRs on the US exchanges.
one cannot simply find some nice, fertile spot of land to raise crops and lovestock these days
Amazingly enough, you can. Approximately 2% of the population of the USA does this. They are called "farmers". Incredible what people can think of to do these days!
it's essentially become meaningless now (not that it wasn't fairly poorly defined in the first place)
It was well defined in the first place: fascism is a political and economic system where privately owned means of production are subject to strict state control. The privately owned part is why communists and fascists don't get along but in practice it's almost impossible to tell a communist dictatorship from a fascist one. Life sucks for the average citizen in either. People who complain BHO is a fascist are complaining about how large companies are either being run by the government or shaken down for piles of cash. People who complain GWB was a fascist think his policies were dictatorial. Some people just say it as a general purpose pejorative and thus dillute its meaning.
this one is really stupid. Mostly because there is an easy solution to it. Release the full context so people can make up there own mind
Yes, because everyone who watched the 20 seconds of Rodney King being beaten by the police were suspicious and researched the full video of him beating the cops for 20 minutes prior. Good thing the full information being available prevented anything like riots breaking out.
I understand the need to keep things secret, and I understand that in war shit happens...but that doesn't mean when things go awry, we the people shouldn't know about it
Which is why in the US with the first amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press one had to find a professional journalist and convince him/her and the editor and publisher that breaking a secret story was worth the potential penalties. With Wikileaks this process is reduced to a snickering game of airing dirty laundry just for the sake of doing it. One day truly serious info will be released and cause the bad sort of trouble that will make the Rosenbergs look like common gossips.
So what is the cost of a human life?
Any insurance actuary can calculate this for you. Net present value of (annual income * career lifespan).
One side on that argument thinks the other side shouldn't exist as an independent politican entity while one thinks the other should cease existing due to being killed off. Which attitude is lesser of evils?
As for myself, without all those extended training sessions playing Carmageddon I'd never be able to jump from rooftop to rooftop safely.