And are we facing overpopulation due to married people have kids or to unmarried people having kids?
Er, both. Most especially, in places like the Philippines, where poor married families have more kids than they can feed, since they follow the Catholic church's teachings on contraception seriously. (Whereas, I believe, most Catholics in the West take it with a pinch of salt).
only a homosexual or a pedophile would willingly choose a life that dictates you cannot have sex with a woman or marry one.
(My emphasis)
You weaken your argument by exaggerating. I'm sure there are lots of priests who are neither homosexual nor paedophiles. They may have lower sex drives than many of us. They may just get a lot of satisfaction from denying themselves certain pleasures (cf. fasting, spartan living)
OK, we can make an exception for Mein Kampf, perhaps, because anyone can put it in its historical context; but what if something similar were written today? Should Amazon not stock it? What if Amazon refused to stock material about some niche political view that you happened to agree with?
Sorry, that's all just bigotry with a load of after-the-fact bluster on top of it, as an attempt at justification.
I know people who consider themselves Catholics who are entirely comfortable with homosexuals practising their sexual preference (and, equivalently, heterosexuals using contraception).
You are allowed to disagree with the Pope, and you can still call yourself a Catholic if you like.
It hasn't been banned. It's been removed from the app store.
If I run a newsagent, and I decide not to stock the Daily Mail, I haven't banned it.
Now, admittedly, the app store is the only source of iPhone apps -- but if you wanted an unrestricted choice of apps, you shouldn't have bought an iPhone.
Suspending the licenses of those caught speeding would be cheaper, more effective, and in general saner than secret surveillance of all public ways.
I'm not advocating secret surveillance of all public ways; that would be expensive, as you say.
Have a similar number of speed cameras as we have today. Rather than have them bright yellow as they are in the UK today, camouflage them.
Advertise (truthfully) that:
- there could be a speed camera on any road
- that cameras do not take photos, except of vehicles measured to be exceeding the speed limit (this is important)
- the acceptable margin of error (possibly zero, but I accept that some speedometers aren't perfect)... and, as you point out, set the penalties such that they're a real deterrent.
There's no point having deterrents, when persistent speeders achieve it by being good at spotting bright yellow cameras, slamming on the brakes, and hence never getting caught.
Full employment runs contrary to capitalism. The more efficient capitalism gets, the less workable the socialist idea of full employment becomes.
With capitalism, growth is everything. So, if firms are streamlining and achieving the same production levels with less labour, traditional capitalism says the economy can grow, to produce more (and therefore also consume more), hence providing more employment and more wealth.
I certainly think more people would be happy, if we reached some kind of consensus whereby everybody worked less, earned less, consumed less, produced less. If everyone currently in a full-time job cut their hours in half, they'd have to spend less, but they'd have a lot of lovely free time, and someone currently unemployed could work those remaining hours.
But that utopian ideal is beset by problems. Lots of jobs aren't suited to sharing. So many people have a burning desire to earn as much as possible, that it would take draconian lawmaking to prevent them working full time. And, people love to consume. It seems to be innate.
We don't have DUI checks here in the UK. I've experienced one once, while on holiday in the US. Basically they narrow the road down with cones, put up signs telling you to slow down, flag your car down as you pass, ask you if you've been drinking, and assuming you say no, and they haven't a reason to think you're lying, they send you on your way.
Of course, that's my experience as a white man in a hire car, with the English accent of a tourist.
So it's quite different from speed traps. I personally think speed limits should be absolute and speed cameras should be covert. We shouldn't feel that it's only necessary to stick to the speed limit when there are overt cameras around. If people knew that 40MPH means 40MPH, and you could get caught anywhere, maybe speed limits could be increased in many places.
I'm not making a point about whether or not it's right to suppress (not ban) the app, here.
I'm just pointing out that if the police start doing what you suggest, an arms race is pretty much inevitable.
- public use app to avoid DUI checks - police reposition DUI checks to defeat the app - public leave bad app reviews since app is now giving inaccurate results - developers somehow improve accuracy of app - GOTO 10
Fair enough. I have genuinely met people IRL who where convinced that half a bitter turned you from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde. It wouldn't surprise me if such people held local government positions in some places.
Besides, how is a drunk person going to be able to use the app anyway. They'll break the phone first.
I see that your (perfectly valid) choice not to drink, leaves you ignorant of the basics of drunkenness.
After, say, 2 pints of beer, you can walk without swaying, talk without slurring, and certainly operate a phone. You'd be perfectly capable of driving a car, too, if you could guarantee there wouldn't be any surprises. It's when the car in front brakes suddenly, or there's a loose bit of tyre in your lane, etc. that you'd discover your reactions aren't as quick or accurate as you'd like them to be.
Almost everybody knows when they're hammered, and wouldn't dream of getting in a car. The danger nowadays is people driving after 2-4 beers, because they feel as if they're in control when they're not.
Unless you knew all that and were making a weak joke...
I don't think the hooker gimmick came in until GTA 3, which was almost a completely different kind of game. I was never offended by the part where you could take a hooker to a quiet place, whereupon your bank balance would fall a bit, your car would rock around a bit, then she'd get out of the car and walk off.
What was more unpleasant was that you could then beat her up, to get your money back plus a bit more. Yet, having included the (implied) car sex part, how could they avoid this without breaking the sandbox element? You have an attack button. You have a weapon in your hand. The only thing they could do would be to create classes of NPC who were magically immune to your attacks, which would really break immersion.
The defence I can offer is that the game doesn't require you to kill prostitutes. It doesn't really reward it (the money they drop is hardly significant). It must give you the ability to do so in order that the world is consistent. If you choose to do it, that reflects more on you than on the game designer.
I don't recall any child murder from GTA3 onwards. GTA 1/2 may have had children, but since they were tiny cartoony sprites, it's a fairly different prospect.
Mind you, I don't really see why murdering adults is less objectionable than murdering children.
It's not a fit because once they have a Mac, they don't need the iPad. Sure, it's a fun thing to have, but they can already do the basic things they want to on their Mac.
And in fact, they already have a Windows laptop. So the Mac would be an expensive way of getting the same capabilities they already have.
Surely the approach should be to keep a float of charged batteries at the "gas station". Pull up there, your flat battery is removed, and a full one is inserted in its place. Your flat battery goes to the back of the charging queue. The charging queue absorbs the peaks in demand.
Actually with the keyboard dock, I could quite easily imagine someone using an iPad to write a novel.
Coding, less so, because IDEs (Or the vi/gcc warrior's xterm layout) tend to take up a lot of screen estate.
There's a class of users I'd recommend an iPad to in a heartbeat -- people who want to use a computer for "ordinary" things like word processing, managing digital photos, etc., who don't want to worry too much about technical stuff, are willing to lose flexibility in exchange for simplicity, and are not already locked into some other software infrastructure. Basically I'm talking about my parents, if they hadn't locked themselves into MS Office. They'd need the keyboard. They'd need some Internet services to provide storage.
Except - it needs a "real" computer with iTunes to keep the thing up to date, which wrecks the whole plan.
Slashdot Mirror
And are we facing overpopulation due to married people have kids or to unmarried people having kids?
Er, both. Most especially, in places like the Philippines, where poor married families have more kids than they can feed, since they follow the Catholic church's teachings on contraception seriously. (Whereas, I believe, most Catholics in the West take it with a pinch of salt).
only a homosexual or a pedophile would willingly choose a life that dictates you cannot have sex with a woman or marry one.
(My emphasis)
You weaken your argument by exaggerating. I'm sure there are lots of priests who are neither homosexual nor paedophiles. They may have lower sex drives than many of us. They may just get a lot of satisfaction from denying themselves certain pleasures (cf. fasting, spartan living)
Do you therefore thing Amazon should remove Mein Kampf from its book store? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mein-Kampf-Uncensored-Adolf-Hitler/dp/0984536132/
OK, we can make an exception for Mein Kampf, perhaps, because anyone can put it in its historical context; but what if something similar were written today? Should Amazon not stock it? What if Amazon refused to stock material about some niche political view that you happened to agree with?
Sorry, if you think homosexuality is "deviancy", you are pretty much by definition a homophobe.
Nature (and God) made us to be one way and one way only
What made homosexuals, if it wasn't nature?
Sorry, that's all just bigotry with a load of after-the-fact bluster on top of it, as an attempt at justification.
I know people who consider themselves Catholics who are entirely comfortable with homosexuals practising their sexual preference (and, equivalently, heterosexuals using contraception).
You are allowed to disagree with the Pope, and you can still call yourself a Catholic if you like.
I cannot understand why Apple should remove apps just because they are offensive.
Because they want to?
It hasn't been banned. It's been removed from the app store.
If I run a newsagent, and I decide not to stock the Daily Mail, I haven't banned it.
Now, admittedly, the app store is the only source of iPhone apps -- but if you wanted an unrestricted choice of apps, you shouldn't have bought an iPhone.
jazz music isn't gay. but the modern jazz lifestyle has very homo tendancies.
Spending all day practising the vibraphone, then in the evening going to a club to play it in front of an audience?
"If you've ever been antique shopping during a big football game, you're either gay, or married."
Hmm, I never used to watch football, until I had a girlfriend who insisted upon it.
Suspending the licenses of those caught speeding would be cheaper, more effective, and in general saner than secret surveillance of all public ways.
I'm not advocating secret surveillance of all public ways; that would be expensive, as you say.
Have a similar number of speed cameras as we have today. Rather than have them bright yellow as they are in the UK today, camouflage them.
Advertise (truthfully) that: ... and, as you point out, set the penalties such that they're a real deterrent.
- there could be a speed camera on any road
- that cameras do not take photos, except of vehicles measured to be exceeding the speed limit (this is important)
- the acceptable margin of error (possibly zero, but I accept that some speedometers aren't perfect)
There's no point having deterrents, when persistent speeders achieve it by being good at spotting bright yellow cameras, slamming on the brakes, and hence never getting caught.
Full employment runs contrary to capitalism. The more efficient capitalism gets, the less workable the socialist idea of full employment becomes.
With capitalism, growth is everything. So, if firms are streamlining and achieving the same production levels with less labour, traditional capitalism says the economy can grow, to produce more (and therefore also consume more), hence providing more employment and more wealth.
I certainly think more people would be happy, if we reached some kind of consensus whereby everybody worked less, earned less, consumed less, produced less. If everyone currently in a full-time job cut their hours in half, they'd have to spend less, but they'd have a lot of lovely free time, and someone currently unemployed could work those remaining hours.
But that utopian ideal is beset by problems. Lots of jobs aren't suited to sharing. So many people have a burning desire to earn as much as possible, that it would take draconian lawmaking to prevent them working full time. And, people love to consume. It seems to be innate.
We don't have DUI checks here in the UK. I've experienced one once, while on holiday in the US. Basically they narrow the road down with cones, put up signs telling you to slow down, flag your car down as you pass, ask you if you've been drinking, and assuming you say no, and they haven't a reason to think you're lying, they send you on your way.
Of course, that's my experience as a white man in a hire car, with the English accent of a tourist.
So it's quite different from speed traps. I personally think speed limits should be absolute and speed cameras should be covert. We shouldn't feel that it's only necessary to stick to the speed limit when there are overt cameras around. If people knew that 40MPH means 40MPH, and you could get caught anywhere, maybe speed limits could be increased in many places.
I'm not making a point about whether or not it's right to suppress (not ban) the app, here.
I'm just pointing out that if the police start doing what you suggest, an arms race is pretty much inevitable.
- public use app to avoid DUI checks
- police reposition DUI checks to defeat the app
- public leave bad app reviews since app is now giving inaccurate results
- developers somehow improve accuracy of app
- GOTO 10
Fair enough. I have genuinely met people IRL who where convinced that half a bitter turned you from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde. It wouldn't surprise me if such people held local government positions in some places.
Yay arms races. They always benefit society.
Besides, how is a drunk person going to be able to use the app anyway. They'll break the phone first.
I see that your (perfectly valid) choice not to drink, leaves you ignorant of the basics of drunkenness.
After, say, 2 pints of beer, you can walk without swaying, talk without slurring, and certainly operate a phone. You'd be perfectly capable of driving a car, too, if you could guarantee there wouldn't be any surprises. It's when the car in front brakes suddenly, or there's a loose bit of tyre in your lane, etc. that you'd discover your reactions aren't as quick or accurate as you'd like them to be.
Almost everybody knows when they're hammered, and wouldn't dream of getting in a car. The danger nowadays is people driving after 2-4 beers, because they feel as if they're in control when they're not.
Unless you knew all that and were making a weak joke...
I don't think the hooker gimmick came in until GTA 3, which was almost a completely different kind of game. I was never offended by the part where you could take a hooker to a quiet place, whereupon your bank balance would fall a bit, your car would rock around a bit, then she'd get out of the car and walk off.
What was more unpleasant was that you could then beat her up, to get your money back plus a bit more. Yet, having included the (implied) car sex part, how could they avoid this without breaking the sandbox element? You have an attack button. You have a weapon in your hand. The only thing they could do would be to create classes of NPC who were magically immune to your attacks, which would really break immersion.
The defence I can offer is that the game doesn't require you to kill prostitutes. It doesn't really reward it (the money they drop is hardly significant). It must give you the ability to do so in order that the world is consistent. If you choose to do it, that reflects more on you than on the game designer.
I don't recall any child murder from GTA3 onwards. GTA 1/2 may have had children, but since they were tiny cartoony sprites, it's a fairly different prospect.
Mind you, I don't really see why murdering adults is less objectionable than murdering children.
In some countries, we walk sometimes.
Don't cross the road if you have a pacemaker.
It's not a fit because once they have a Mac, they don't need the iPad. Sure, it's a fun thing to have, but they can already do the basic things they want to on their Mac.
And in fact, they already have a Windows laptop. So the Mac would be an expensive way of getting the same capabilities they already have.
Surely the approach should be to keep a float of charged batteries at the "gas station". Pull up there, your flat battery is removed, and a full one is inserted in its place. Your flat battery goes to the back of the charging queue. The charging queue absorbs the peaks in demand.
Don't you realise your crackpot flywheel plan could slow down the planet's rotation until we all FRY!?!
Think of the children.
I think the idea is probably that you'd charge (or swap out your battery) at somewhere analogous to a petrol station, rather than your home.
However that means those places will need a *lot* of power.
Well yes, but when you need the portability you undock. [shrug]
Actually with the keyboard dock, I could quite easily imagine someone using an iPad to write a novel.
Coding, less so, because IDEs (Or the vi/gcc warrior's xterm layout) tend to take up a lot of screen estate.
There's a class of users I'd recommend an iPad to in a heartbeat -- people who want to use a computer for "ordinary" things like word processing, managing digital photos, etc., who don't want to worry too much about technical stuff, are willing to lose flexibility in exchange for simplicity, and are not already locked into some other software infrastructure. Basically I'm talking about my parents, if they hadn't locked themselves into MS Office. They'd need the keyboard. They'd need some Internet services to provide storage.
Except - it needs a "real" computer with iTunes to keep the thing up to date, which wrecks the whole plan.