Canuckistanian here. We've got two programs; Employment Insurance, into which all working people pay, and which the unemployed can temporarily draw from (but it's just the general fund, there's no actual EI account), and Welfare, which people can continue to draw from over a long period of time. I've been on EI, when I got canned and was looking for work. In Canada, at least, they give you money based on how long you worked (up to a year, and ignore contributions before that) and how much money you made. Compensation peaks at $2500 a month (we're just under par with USD at the moment), but decreases as time goes on, and you have to submit (falsifiable, self-generated, self-checked) reports about the time you've spent looking for work each week. I've never seen and never will see as much money back as I've already paid in. This program, while not ideal, does keep seasonal workers and their families fed, in such regions as the Maritimes when fishing only happens once a year.
Welfare, on the other hand, is socially and economically toxic. It provides a dribble of money, but if you're willing to live in a slum and eat "food" that's barely better than garbage, you can live without working. If you have dependents, you get more money. The horrifying result is that, while some single moms who can't find work do get some needed money for feeding and clothing their kids, there are a growing number of women (and their children) who see the system as a free ride. It's been going on for more than a generation now, and some low-income girls in high school seek to get pregnant and become single mothers because it ensures their income. Now, there's obviously social pressures here, with these women thinking they can't make it on their own and not trusting anyone else to provide for them, but the problem has become self-perpetuating across generations. It's not determinative, but kids who grow up with one mom, welfare checks, many kids, and usually substance abuse, think that's normal unless they learn otherwise. Welfare- or at least our welfare system, run as it is- ends up providing motivation to not only not work, but to perform self-destructive behaviours. Between 82 and 92, people collecting "social assistance" went up in all but two provinces; -47%, -1%. The rest were... +8%, +22%, +82%, even +143% in Ontario. I don't know about 92-02, but 04-08 has seen more increases again, about 25% on average.
I realize this all didn't directly answer your question, but here's the upshot; there are similar abuses in the states, and similar systems. It is possible, if you're willing to live poorly, to sit on your ass and watch TV all day, and let the government pay for it. It's not that the benefits are radically better, it's that the effort required to attain them is zero.
there are already 6 billion of us here, and that number will only increase, and there are only so many mouths we can feed & bodies we can clothe,
I think it's kind of important that we keep in mind the following phrase;
this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators.
Pope Urban II, 1095, calling the First Crusade. In other words, friend, humans have had a perception of "too many people and not enough food" for at least a thousand years, and since our population was approximately 1/10th what it is today (Europe had 70-100MM in 11th c., 800MM today). Which isn't to say that sustainability concerns aren't valid, but it's a small step from a perception of overpopulation to a policy of leibensraum, and such claims have in the past turned out to be laughably incorrect. In point of fact, the last five decades have seen remarkable increases in food production in North America, at the same time that there's been remarkable decreases in fertility- save for immigration, we're in a population decline already, due to social rather than resource reasons. I think there's less cause to worry than you suggest, since at least regionally it's false that "that number will only increase," and historically it's false that "there are only so many mouths we can feed."
I did, however, finally turn on a secured SOCKS proxy this morning, when I discovered my ISP's been doing DPI for over a year. No such thing as paranoia, I guess.:T
Evidently you didn't read the report. Click the link I posted to the abstract, follow the link to the actual report. Page 5 has the ISP claims, summarized on page 8. Financial commitments on page 9. Incentive regulation information on 11 and 14, outcomes on 15. Page 31 mentions NY's 2.3B tax deduction in exchange for NYNEX's 1B upgrade commitment, which was never fulfilled. Et cetera. Every other sentence, every claim of fact, is footnoted. It goes state by state, company by company, through the whole history of 1990-2004. There are over 230 citations.
I immediately thought of Masamune Shirow's Dominion Tank Police. Bacteria that can grow between cracks in concrete = bacteria that will grow over a lattice. Lash together a frame soaked in bacteria-food, seed the base, come back in a couple of weeks.
Now, where're my sexy android catgirls?
Right, TSA agents are innocent of groping children because they're "just following orders." Where have I heard that one before? Godwin's law doesn't apply nearly so much when you're talking about state abuses of power. "Hitler was a vegetarian too" is a Godwin. "The Nazi moral defense, that they were just following orders, is unconvincing for the same reasons now as then" is not.
I agree that stringing up the first TSA grunt that gropes someone is ridiculous. But only because Americans didn't string up the people writing these policies in the first place. "I'll lose my job otherwise" is an adequate defense for something like wearing a tight shirt, not sleeping with the boss or groping children. Someone who decides it's okay is participating in an abusive system. String 'em up legally, and if that doesn't work, get rope.
TFA shows him breaking 3X 1" boards clamped together on one edge.
Typical board-breaking is a matter of physics, not strength. a six-year-old can snap boards. In fact, here's a 5 year old doing 1" boards.
Scenario 1: Wait for some people to shag. Wait 18 years for their sprog to grow. Spend tens or hundreds of thousands to train them. Send them off to the sandbox. They break their knee 3 months in. Oh well, it was worth a shot. Next!
Scenario 2: Spend hundreds of thousands, get suit in a few months or less. Send it to the sandbox. Reduce the support-to-combat staff ratio from 8:1 to 3:1. The knee breaks. The knee gets replaced and it goes back to work.
In TFA, the guy suggests a single-stroke diesel could work. Lots of military stuff already runs on diesel, so the support infrastructure exists. Or, when the replacement for diesel rolls around, it'll benefit from the same upgrade program.
If you used no more force on the burglar to stop him than the police would have, then you would face charges for assault because of the laws in Canada.
If the police determine that you used force against the burglar rather than leaving your house, you would face charges for assault because of the laws in Canada.
And so is 3b, where he knifes you because he can. Removing the option for self-defense against home invasion, which is what the law does, harms the law-abiding citizen and does not hinder the criminal.
Also, that's what guns are for. But since law-abiding citizens in Canada are prevented from possessing them in a state that makes them useful for home defense, it's unlikely a home invasion victim is going to have that option open anyway. Our government, making things easier for violent sociopaths!:D
Also you're not a millionaire or super-powered mutant.
Some of the lines from TFA had me wincing. "Photonic devices?" Seriously? It's a flashlight.
That said, I know of some local guys that do something kind of similar. Not with stupid-ass toys, though. They just wander around some local parks on the weekends. Since the city has some drug problems, and the parks have had some dealers and prostitutes in them in the past, these dudes make a point of showing up and telling them to go somewhere else. Once dealers and prostitutes realized cops were going to show up a few minutes after they do, they stopped coming to the park. But it's not some delusional superhero thing with "Laser Wands" and "Nightmare Canes," it's just being active in the community.
Right. Which means that if you don't retreat from the person invading your home, you can be facing charges of assault. Which means that a criminal can walk into your house, threaten you, and order you out the door. Since you can leave safely, you're legally obliged to do so rather than defending your home.
Scenario 1: You fight back and lose. Enjoy your knife/gun wounds.
Scenario 2: You fight back and win. Enjoy your assault charges.
Scenario 3: You meekly leave your house, call 911, and watch someone else violate your home and leave with your possessions while the cops take at least 5 minutes to respond. Enjoy your psychological trauma and financial loss- and since criminals aren't required to honour bargains, possibly also your knife/gun wounds as they leave.
Sure, people can't be replaced. But laws that constrain law-abiding citizens from maintaining their own security of property are a terrible disservice to them. It's pretty hard to replace peace of mind once someone's been in your house.
I agree that the problem was in the system, but I think you underestimate the impact of a random and therefore unpredictable number of people with guns willing to shoot back. A.22 derringer will do the job just as well as a.45 ACP, which is the whole point of guns. Buying more or better guns wouldn't increase the terrorist's chances of success against armed passengers, and the presence of armed passengers would certainly have hampered terrorist's efforts to seize control by force.
Just fyi, the "assault" weapons the Democrats have been agitating against in the states have involved scary-looking, rather than lethally effective, tools. Barrel shrouds (a safety feature), and grips were some of the more notable things. I applaud you for pointing out that they've been the ones doing this, but they haven't restricted their activities to the fully-automatic rifles like the AR-15.
No, we're saying that since all art is theft (literally all, even the greatest; Michelangelo copied Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" for the Sistine Chapel), "copyright infringement" is a necessary element of the process of creating art, and thus laws against it are pointless and evil. However, plagiarism is distinct from derivation, and reselling the original work as your own is, distinct from the law, unethical.
"Piracy" has changed meaning, from something like "selling knockoffs" or "misappropriating others' work as your own" to a disgustingly broad "use of someone else's work." Piracy-as-knockoff-purses is wrong, piracy-as-inclusion-of-other-work-in-a-new-expression is not only right but necessary, piracy-as-acquiring-creative-works-without-payment is another thing altogether. Conflating the three has been the life's work of some real scummy companies seeking rent, and the lawyers that work for them. Please stop perpetuating the mistake.
I agree that her religious explanations of why don't affect the how. In fact, that was my point; it seems to me much more a question of philosophy. There have been raging asshat stoics and subtle, brilliant stoics. Why blame stoicism for either?
I think you've hit the nail on the head when you say that you don't see what positive contributions come from religion. Many of the modern church's positive social effects are not headline news, while of course every alarming thing a Christian (or gamer, or homosexual, or whatever) does is immediately reported by the media because it's entertaining. If you want to find positive religious contributions, you'll probably have to go a couple of churches and ask them directly. Most of the ones I know, for example, have benificient funds used to secure housing, utilities, and food for single-parent and low-income families, and many churches I know of actually build housing for the same. Most send missions to Mexico to dig wells and build houses or schools. They're not perfect- lots of people in the same churches are mean, or bitter, or small-minded- but they're not evil.
You will rarely, if ever, hear "Church digs well, provides fresh water to community of 500" on the news. You will often hear "Christian psychotic shoots up abortion clinic," for the same reason that you'll hear "gamer shoots up high school" rather than "PAX raises $x0,000 for Child's Play." You have to either be involved, or do some digging, to discover the everyday, positive things that any organization or community is involved in.
iirc, the experiment 5 years ago had a 2X2 pixel resolution that allowed the patient to distinguish between light and dark. This is a considerable improvement. So yes, it will make it into clinical practice. Eventually.
Implying the religious wouldn't consider this a miracle.
Implying the religious think human ingenuity and its results aren't miraculous.
Implying the religious subscribe to the same mutual exclusivity between faith and science that you do.
There are some religious people who see miracles in toast and wonder how magnets work, sure. There's some religious people who perform neurosurgery, too, and subscribe to a scientific view of the world. Evidently being religious doesn't actually require the surrender of all mental faculties. I know Christian doctors who describe successful childbirth as simultaneously miraculous and the result of good science. The same doctors contribute money to soup kitchens or the education of African orphans, which they ascribe to both their own action and to religion as a motivator. They have a different view of the why than you, while maintaining an even better understanding of the how; maybe accusing all religion and its adherents of stupidity and lies is too broad a brush to paint with.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a thought. Cubesat with a broadcast antenna + Wikileaks = deny access to this, suckers.
I think I speak for all of us when I say "EEEEEEEEE!" and do a little dance.
Canuckistanian here. We've got two programs; Employment Insurance, into which all working people pay, and which the unemployed can temporarily draw from (but it's just the general fund, there's no actual EI account), and Welfare, which people can continue to draw from over a long period of time. I've been on EI, when I got canned and was looking for work. In Canada, at least, they give you money based on how long you worked (up to a year, and ignore contributions before that) and how much money you made. Compensation peaks at $2500 a month (we're just under par with USD at the moment), but decreases as time goes on, and you have to submit (falsifiable, self-generated, self-checked) reports about the time you've spent looking for work each week. I've never seen and never will see as much money back as I've already paid in. This program, while not ideal, does keep seasonal workers and their families fed, in such regions as the Maritimes when fishing only happens once a year.
Welfare, on the other hand, is socially and economically toxic. It provides a dribble of money, but if you're willing to live in a slum and eat "food" that's barely better than garbage, you can live without working. If you have dependents, you get more money. The horrifying result is that, while some single moms who can't find work do get some needed money for feeding and clothing their kids, there are a growing number of women (and their children) who see the system as a free ride. It's been going on for more than a generation now, and some low-income girls in high school seek to get pregnant and become single mothers because it ensures their income. Now, there's obviously social pressures here, with these women thinking they can't make it on their own and not trusting anyone else to provide for them, but the problem has become self-perpetuating across generations. It's not determinative, but kids who grow up with one mom, welfare checks, many kids, and usually substance abuse, think that's normal unless they learn otherwise. Welfare- or at least our welfare system, run as it is- ends up providing motivation to not only not work, but to perform self-destructive behaviours. Between 82 and 92, people collecting "social assistance" went up in all but two provinces; -47%, -1%. The rest were... +8%, +22%, +82%, even +143% in Ontario. I don't know about 92-02, but 04-08 has seen more increases again, about 25% on average.
I realize this all didn't directly answer your question, but here's the upshot; there are similar abuses in the states, and similar systems. It is possible, if you're willing to live poorly, to sit on your ass and watch TV all day, and let the government pay for it. It's not that the benefits are radically better, it's that the effort required to attain them is zero.
I think he was just considering the relative weaknesses of two systems, and using terrorists as a foil, not trying to spread FUD about terrorism.
That said, s/tubes/roads/g and I don't see any difference.
there are already 6 billion of us here, and that number will only increase, and there are only so many mouths we can feed & bodies we can clothe,
I think it's kind of important that we keep in mind the following phrase;
this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators.
Pope Urban II, 1095, calling the First Crusade. In other words, friend, humans have had a perception of "too many people and not enough food" for at least a thousand years, and since our population was approximately 1/10th what it is today (Europe had 70-100MM in 11th c., 800MM today). Which isn't to say that sustainability concerns aren't valid, but it's a small step from a perception of overpopulation to a policy of leibensraum, and such claims have in the past turned out to be laughably incorrect. In point of fact, the last five decades have seen remarkable increases in food production in North America, at the same time that there's been remarkable decreases in fertility- save for immigration, we're in a population decline already, due to social rather than resource reasons. I think there's less cause to worry than you suggest, since at least regionally it's false that "that number will only increase," and historically it's false that "there are only so many mouths we can feed."
Many of the sites I run already have HTTPS.
I did, however, finally turn on a secured SOCKS proxy this morning, when I discovered my ISP's been doing DPI for over a year. No such thing as paranoia, I guess. :T
Evidently you didn't read the report. Click the link I posted to the abstract, follow the link to the actual report. Page 5 has the ISP claims, summarized on page 8. Financial commitments on page 9. Incentive regulation information on 11 and 14, outcomes on 15. Page 31 mentions NY's 2.3B tax deduction in exchange for NYNEX's 1B upgrade commitment, which was never fulfilled. Et cetera. Every other sentence, every claim of fact, is footnoted. It goes state by state, company by company, through the whole history of 1990-2004. There are over 230 citations.
http://www.newnetworks.com/FCCCITIbroadband.htm
I immediately thought of Masamune Shirow's Dominion Tank Police. Bacteria that can grow between cracks in concrete = bacteria that will grow over a lattice. Lash together a frame soaked in bacteria-food, seed the base, come back in a couple of weeks.
Now, where're my sexy android catgirls?
Right, TSA agents are innocent of groping children because they're "just following orders." Where have I heard that one before? Godwin's law doesn't apply nearly so much when you're talking about state abuses of power. "Hitler was a vegetarian too" is a Godwin. "The Nazi moral defense, that they were just following orders, is unconvincing for the same reasons now as then" is not.
I agree that stringing up the first TSA grunt that gropes someone is ridiculous. But only because Americans didn't string up the people writing these policies in the first place. "I'll lose my job otherwise" is an adequate defense for something like wearing a tight shirt, not sleeping with the boss or groping children. Someone who decides it's okay is participating in an abusive system. String 'em up legally, and if that doesn't work, get rope.
TFA shows him breaking 3X 1" boards clamped together on one edge.
Typical board-breaking is a matter of physics, not strength. a six-year-old can snap boards. In fact, here's a 5 year old doing 1" boards.
Scenario 1: Wait for some people to shag. Wait 18 years for their sprog to grow. Spend tens or hundreds of thousands to train them. Send them off to the sandbox. They break their knee 3 months in. Oh well, it was worth a shot. Next!
Scenario 2: Spend hundreds of thousands, get suit in a few months or less. Send it to the sandbox. Reduce the support-to-combat staff ratio from 8:1 to 3:1. The knee breaks. The knee gets replaced and it goes back to work.
As many as it takes.
"Here, what's this command labeled Morph Ball?"
"DON'T TOUCH THA-"
*crunch crunch crunch*
You know, I think I figured out why the Morph Ball is an upgrade.
In TFA, the guy suggests a single-stroke diesel could work. Lots of military stuff already runs on diesel, so the support infrastructure exists. Or, when the replacement for diesel rolls around, it'll benefit from the same upgrade program.
If you used no more force on the burglar to stop him than the police would have, then you would face charges for assault because of the laws in Canada.
If the police determine that you used force against the burglar rather than leaving your house, you would face charges for assault because of the laws in Canada.
FTFY.
And so is 3b, where he knifes you because he can. Removing the option for self-defense against home invasion, which is what the law does, harms the law-abiding citizen and does not hinder the criminal. :D
Also, that's what guns are for. But since law-abiding citizens in Canada are prevented from possessing them in a state that makes them useful for home defense, it's unlikely a home invasion victim is going to have that option open anyway. Our government, making things easier for violent sociopaths!
Also you're not a millionaire or super-powered mutant.
Some of the lines from TFA had me wincing. "Photonic devices?" Seriously? It's a flashlight.
That said, I know of some local guys that do something kind of similar. Not with stupid-ass toys, though. They just wander around some local parks on the weekends. Since the city has some drug problems, and the parks have had some dealers and prostitutes in them in the past, these dudes make a point of showing up and telling them to go somewhere else. Once dealers and prostitutes realized cops were going to show up a few minutes after they do, they stopped coming to the park. But it's not some delusional superhero thing with "Laser Wands" and "Nightmare Canes," it's just being active in the community.
Right. Which means that if you don't retreat from the person invading your home, you can be facing charges of assault. Which means that a criminal can walk into your house, threaten you, and order you out the door. Since you can leave safely, you're legally obliged to do so rather than defending your home.
Scenario 1: You fight back and lose. Enjoy your knife/gun wounds.
Scenario 2: You fight back and win. Enjoy your assault charges.
Scenario 3: You meekly leave your house, call 911, and watch someone else violate your home and leave with your possessions while the cops take at least 5 minutes to respond. Enjoy your psychological trauma and financial loss- and since criminals aren't required to honour bargains, possibly also your knife/gun wounds as they leave.
Sure, people can't be replaced. But laws that constrain law-abiding citizens from maintaining their own security of property are a terrible disservice to them. It's pretty hard to replace peace of mind once someone's been in your house.
I agree that the problem was in the system, but I think you underestimate the impact of a random and therefore unpredictable number of people with guns willing to shoot back. A .22 derringer will do the job just as well as a .45 ACP, which is the whole point of guns. Buying more or better guns wouldn't increase the terrorist's chances of success against armed passengers, and the presence of armed passengers would certainly have hampered terrorist's efforts to seize control by force.
Just fyi, the "assault" weapons the Democrats have been agitating against in the states have involved scary-looking, rather than lethally effective, tools. Barrel shrouds (a safety feature), and grips were some of the more notable things. I applaud you for pointing out that they've been the ones doing this, but they haven't restricted their activities to the fully-automatic rifles like the AR-15.
No, we're saying that since all art is theft (literally all, even the greatest; Michelangelo copied Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" for the Sistine Chapel), "copyright infringement" is a necessary element of the process of creating art, and thus laws against it are pointless and evil. However, plagiarism is distinct from derivation, and reselling the original work as your own is, distinct from the law, unethical.
"Piracy" has changed meaning, from something like "selling knockoffs" or "misappropriating others' work as your own" to a disgustingly broad "use of someone else's work." Piracy-as-knockoff-purses is wrong, piracy-as-inclusion-of-other-work-in-a-new-expression is not only right but necessary, piracy-as-acquiring-creative-works-without-payment is another thing altogether. Conflating the three has been the life's work of some real scummy companies seeking rent, and the lawyers that work for them. Please stop perpetuating the mistake.
Your tempered response is gratifying.
I agree that her religious explanations of why don't affect the how. In fact, that was my point; it seems to me much more a question of philosophy. There have been raging asshat stoics and subtle, brilliant stoics. Why blame stoicism for either?
I think you've hit the nail on the head when you say that you don't see what positive contributions come from religion. Many of the modern church's positive social effects are not headline news, while of course every alarming thing a Christian (or gamer, or homosexual, or whatever) does is immediately reported by the media because it's entertaining. If you want to find positive religious contributions, you'll probably have to go a couple of churches and ask them directly. Most of the ones I know, for example, have benificient funds used to secure housing, utilities, and food for single-parent and low-income families, and many churches I know of actually build housing for the same. Most send missions to Mexico to dig wells and build houses or schools. They're not perfect- lots of people in the same churches are mean, or bitter, or small-minded- but they're not evil.
You will rarely, if ever, hear "Church digs well, provides fresh water to community of 500" on the news. You will often hear "Christian psychotic shoots up abortion clinic," for the same reason that you'll hear "gamer shoots up high school" rather than "PAX raises $x0,000 for Child's Play." You have to either be involved, or do some digging, to discover the everyday, positive things that any organization or community is involved in.
iirc, the experiment 5 years ago had a 2X2 pixel resolution that allowed the patient to distinguish between light and dark. This is a considerable improvement. So yes, it will make it into clinical practice. Eventually.
Sorry to use a 4chanism here, but;
Implying the religious wouldn't consider this a miracle.
Implying the religious think human ingenuity and its results aren't miraculous.
Implying the religious subscribe to the same mutual exclusivity between faith and science that you do.
There are some religious people who see miracles in toast and wonder how magnets work, sure. There's some religious people who perform neurosurgery, too, and subscribe to a scientific view of the world. Evidently being religious doesn't actually require the surrender of all mental faculties. I know Christian doctors who describe successful childbirth as simultaneously miraculous and the result of good science. The same doctors contribute money to soup kitchens or the education of African orphans, which they ascribe to both their own action and to religion as a motivator. They have a different view of the why than you, while maintaining an even better understanding of the how; maybe accusing all religion and its adherents of stupidity and lies is too broad a brush to paint with.
u mad, bro?