And somehow, Obama thought he could bluff the people who were willing to spend *lives* to advance their national aims. Bottom line, Putin is playing chess, and Obama is playing connect 4.
When Great Britain stopped being a world power, and vied for "peace in our time" with Chamberlain, the average UK citizen's standard of living was dramatically affected by the aggression of Germany in WW2.
When the US finally became the world police, drawn into the conflict by the Japanese, and won the war for the allies, and took over the bulk of the military responsibilities of European allies, *that's* when UK citizens living standards went up.
Once you appear weak, and unwilling to stand for your "red lines", your competition simply won't take you seriously anymore.
Nothing Obama (or the international community for that matter) is willing to do will aver Russia from its course. At this point, the questions to be settled will be around just how much of Ukraine manages to stay independent at all.
While people may have been all pissy about Bush, unilateral wars, and Team America World Police, the fact of the matter is that it was better than the alternative. "America, Fuck Yeah" sure looks better than "America, Fuck No" at this point.
Infant mortality had more to do with low average lifespans in the past - you can have a vast majority of people who make it to adulthood live into their 80s, and still have an average lifespan of 30 years, if 10 children die before they make a year old for every 1 that makes it past.
We tend to make the assumption that an average lifespan of 30 means that nobody lives past 35 years old - but that's simply not the case.
"Consider this: If we accept as a given that the average life expectancy of the Middle Ages was 25, then life expectancy has tripled, right? Since we know from both historical and archaeological records that some people lived to 80+ years in the Middle Ages, wouldn't that mean that people are living three times as long? Shouldn't there be some 240 year olds running around, grousing that things just aren't the same since Thomas Jefferson died?
And therein lies the problem. Even if the statistic is accurate, people hear something very different than the statistic is saying. A stat talking about life expectance tripling is about the average tripling, but the way it is popularly perceived is that the length of time people live has tripled. And, of course, it isn't. If you're old enough to read this, a century from now you'll be dead, no matter how much life expectancy rises."
...but man, it sucks. Messed up git repositories. Requiring a complete download of all content if you restore to another disk (yes, boys and girls, gdrive actually decided to track files by what fucking inode they were on, instead of doing something rational like checksumming). Self-DOS attack on large uploads, literally sucking up all the bandwidth you have going up, causing all other traffic to stall.
I'm waiting for Yosemite and iCloud Drive - hopefully they'll do a better job with reasonable rates.
FYI, for those using OSX and gdrive, you can stop it from self-DOSing on large uploads by using ipfw to limit https up bandwidth:
sudo ipfw pipe 1 config bw 400KByte/s sudo ipfw add 1 pipe 1 ip from me to any dat-port 443
...for establishing a system of competition based on government regulation rather than quality of goods and services. I'm sure harassing 124 small time hosts will help the big players, who line the pockets of politicians with contributions, scare off hundreds more. And of course, since New York has no other crimes to look into, this is a perfectly prioritized use of limited prosecutorial resources./sarc
First we had the #warondrugs, now we have the #waronunlicensedhotels?
...we'll have a kid arrested for "loving pet dinosaur" because of zero tolerance of bestiality.
This reminds me of south park's "Sarcastaball" - at a certain point, we're going to have to realize that scary crap will be said, and sometimes scary crap will happen, but that's no reason to ban books, or words, or thoughts.
...means $30B less they need to charge consumers. Or $30B more they can spend on their workers. Or $30B more they can provide to their shareholders.
In fact, thinking about it, the only way the government really gets screwed is if they charge consumers less, since that's also less tax revenue - both giving more money to their employees, or their shareholders, will end up triggering more taxes.
Taxes may be necessary, but they should be as minimal as possible.
When it comes to getting free stuff on the net, I'm not too sympathetic.
When it comes to getting service you're paying for, then I'm a little more perturbed.
I've made personal choices to avoid companies that have dissatisfied me in the past - Bank of America and AT&T, for example, will not get one red cent from me as long as I live. But Facebook and twitter? You get what you pay for.
Sad to say, but you've hit the nail on the head. If someone can do the same amount of work for less, then that's a benefit to both the employer, as well as the customers of the business, because it means higher productivity, and ultimately lower prices.
That being said, there's a *huge* range in capability in the tech industry that simply isn't effectively accounted for by salary scales - there are literally some people who can do things twenty times as fast as someone else, but no company I've ever been in has a salary range that varies by that much, even considering junior programmers compared to senior consultant/specialists.
I'm sure that anyone in tech has had the general experience that the vast majority of the work funnels through a small minority of the workforce - the distribution of talent is hugely imbalanced, but the salary scales don't reflect that.
D&D was essentially window dressing to allow for crunchy combat with the same characters over and over again - miniature wargaming linked with a thin story line.
If you're interested in actual role playing, try Fate Core, or Fate Accelerated Edition by Evil Hat (http://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-core/). They got a lot of accolades at the 2014 Ennies (http://www.ennie-awards.com/blog/announcing-the-2014-ennie-award-winners/), and frankly, the game system *rocks*. The best part of any D&D I've ever played was when it *wasn't* just a combat sim, and was more about the *story* than the dice. Fate Core essentially takes that truism, and bakes an entire game system around *that*, rather than just hoping it gets tacked on by GMs and players.
Okay. Doesn't that justify mass surveillance of innocents?
You can ascertain whether or not your citizens are lying, or telling the truth. You can prevent surprise attacks, and you can use it to explain your citizens' behavior.
Would you be willing to expose the data of your life, including your real name, address, tax information, and spending information for the past 5 years, so we can tell if you're lying, telling the truth, planning a surprise attack, or help us explain your behavior?
In democracy they are not meant to rule, they are meant to lead, they are meant represent the voice of the people.
It's funny - proponents of democracy seem to believe that the masses cannot possibly be mistaken in their choices of leaders, but once those leaders are chosen, the masses cannot possibly be trusted to their own devices and must have policies and rules and regulations dictated to them by their infallible leaders.
I guess I've got no problem with the voice of the people as long as it's not imposed on individuals who may dissent.
...nation states are always a bunch of hypocritical jerks.
Color me incredibly unsurprised here - every nation state is built upon a foundation of distrust. Distrust of other nation states, and distrust of even their own citizens.
Hell, if people could actually trust each other, we wouldn't *need* nation states in the first place.
Frankly, if the terrorists were at all organized, they could shut down traffic in a major city like los angeles just by doing one high speed kamikaze ram into a starbucks every hour for a day.
24 one day rentals, 24 jihadis, and maybe another 48 jihadis to video tape and youtube the carnage, and you'd have a city in utter panic for less than a few thousand bucks.
"On Friday, Fort, a Wisconsin state senator, a Phonesavanh's family spokesperson and the child's attorney provided an update on the boy's legal fight and condition. "His face still bares from scars that are going to take a number of reconstructive surgeries," said family spokesman Marcus Coleman. "We have been informed by the family that every single night, every single night, this child wakes up screaming and holding his face," said Coleman."
All because some hyped up macho SWAT team wanted to bust some low level dealer.
Slashdot Mirror
The USSR doesn't even call it "World War 2" - it's "The Great Patriotic War". And yes, the USSR was tremendously important.
But who was arming (and feeding) them?
Yup, America, World Police -
http://englishrussia.com/2008/...
http://www.historynet.com/russ...
And somehow, Obama thought he could bluff the people who were willing to spend *lives* to advance their national aims. Bottom line, Putin is playing chess, and Obama is playing connect 4.
When Great Britain stopped being a world power, and vied for "peace in our time" with Chamberlain, the average UK citizen's standard of living was dramatically affected by the aggression of Germany in WW2.
When the US finally became the world police, drawn into the conflict by the Japanese, and won the war for the allies, and took over the bulk of the military responsibilities of European allies, *that's* when UK citizens living standards went up.
Chew on that :)
Once you appear weak, and unwilling to stand for your "red lines", your competition simply won't take you seriously anymore.
Nothing Obama (or the international community for that matter) is willing to do will aver Russia from its course. At this point, the questions to be settled will be around just how much of Ukraine manages to stay independent at all.
While people may have been all pissy about Bush, unilateral wars, and Team America World Police, the fact of the matter is that it was better than the alternative. "America, Fuck Yeah" sure looks better than "America, Fuck No" at this point.
Actually, the CBO report is a lot more rosy than the GAO report (GAO being generally more reliable):
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
I wonder if the CBO report counts as astroturfing? :)
So, if the ACA reduces the deficit, but we build programs that spend that extra money and *more*, are we really reducing the deficit? :)
Compare the GAO report to the CBO report:
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
Spend a million dollars, and astroturf the meme "evil republican congress people are trying to influence you with memes".
Back in reality-world:
http://www.freedomworks.org/co...‘one-nation’-just-liberal-astroturfing
http://mashable.com/2008/08/08...
http://lonelyconservative.com/...
http://dailycaller.com/2013/02...
Actually, it *is* compensating for the amount we're releasing...and more.
http://theresilientearth.com/?...
Infant mortality had more to do with low average lifespans in the past - you can have a vast majority of people who make it to adulthood live into their 80s, and still have an average lifespan of 30 years, if 10 children die before they make a year old for every 1 that makes it past.
We tend to make the assumption that an average lifespan of 30 means that nobody lives past 35 years old - but that's simply not the case.
http://unlocked-wordhoard.blog...
"Consider this: If we accept as a given that the average life expectancy of the Middle Ages was 25, then life expectancy has tripled, right? Since we know from both historical and archaeological records that some people lived to 80+ years in the Middle Ages, wouldn't that mean that people are living three times as long? Shouldn't there be some 240 year olds running around, grousing that things just aren't the same since Thomas Jefferson died?
And therein lies the problem. Even if the statistic is accurate, people hear something very different than the statistic is saying. A stat talking about life expectance tripling is about the average tripling, but the way it is popularly perceived is that the length of time people live has tripled. And, of course, it isn't. If you're old enough to read this, a century from now you'll be dead, no matter how much life expectancy rises."
...but man, it sucks. Messed up git repositories. Requiring a complete download of all content if you restore to another disk (yes, boys and girls, gdrive actually decided to track files by what fucking inode they were on, instead of doing something rational like checksumming). Self-DOS attack on large uploads, literally sucking up all the bandwidth you have going up, causing all other traffic to stall.
I'm waiting for Yosemite and iCloud Drive - hopefully they'll do a better job with reasonable rates.
FYI, for those using OSX and gdrive, you can stop it from self-DOSing on large uploads by using ipfw to limit https up bandwidth:
sudo ipfw pipe 1 config bw 400KByte/s
sudo ipfw add 1 pipe 1 ip from me to any dat-port 443
...for establishing a system of competition based on government regulation rather than quality of goods and services. I'm sure harassing 124 small time hosts will help the big players, who line the pockets of politicians with contributions, scare off hundreds more. And of course, since New York has no other crimes to look into, this is a perfectly prioritized use of limited prosecutorial resources. /sarc
First we had the #warondrugs, now we have the #waronunlicensedhotels?
...we'll have a kid arrested for "loving pet dinosaur" because of zero tolerance of bestiality.
This reminds me of south park's "Sarcastaball" - at a certain point, we're going to have to realize that scary crap will be said, and sometimes scary crap will happen, but that's no reason to ban books, or words, or thoughts.
...means $30B less they need to charge consumers. Or $30B more they can spend on their workers. Or $30B more they can provide to their shareholders.
In fact, thinking about it, the only way the government really gets screwed is if they charge consumers less, since that's also less tax revenue - both giving more money to their employees, or their shareholders, will end up triggering more taxes.
Taxes may be necessary, but they should be as minimal as possible.
When it comes to getting free stuff on the net, I'm not too sympathetic.
When it comes to getting service you're paying for, then I'm a little more perturbed.
I've made personal choices to avoid companies that have dissatisfied me in the past - Bank of America and AT&T, for example, will not get one red cent from me as long as I live. But Facebook and twitter? You get what you pay for.
Sad to say, but you've hit the nail on the head. If someone can do the same amount of work for less, then that's a benefit to both the employer, as well as the customers of the business, because it means higher productivity, and ultimately lower prices.
That being said, there's a *huge* range in capability in the tech industry that simply isn't effectively accounted for by salary scales - there are literally some people who can do things twenty times as fast as someone else, but no company I've ever been in has a salary range that varies by that much, even considering junior programmers compared to senior consultant/specialists.
I'm sure that anyone in tech has had the general experience that the vast majority of the work funnels through a small minority of the workforce - the distribution of talent is hugely imbalanced, but the salary scales don't reflect that.
Actually, chickens can fly - just not particularly long distances:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I believe the technical term is "spurt flying".
http://dailydeadbirds.com/
According to their notes, 6,147 dead birds over the course of a year after the BP spill.
The low estimate is ivanpah is killing 1000 birds per year, upwards of 28,000 birds per year.
...aren't birds renewable resources too? :) ...and desert tortoises? :)
Frankly, the bigger problem is the possible impact to airplanes: http://energy.sandia.gov/?p=19...
You scale this stuff up enough, and pretty soon there isn't anywhere to fly planes safely.
D&D was essentially window dressing to allow for crunchy combat with the same characters over and over again - miniature wargaming linked with a thin story line.
If you're interested in actual role playing, try Fate Core, or Fate Accelerated Edition by Evil Hat (http://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-core/). They got a lot of accolades at the 2014 Ennies (http://www.ennie-awards.com/blog/announcing-the-2014-ennie-award-winners/), and frankly, the game system *rocks*. The best part of any D&D I've ever played was when it *wasn't* just a combat sim, and was more about the *story* than the dice. Fate Core essentially takes that truism, and bakes an entire game system around *that*, rather than just hoping it gets tacked on by GMs and players.
Okay. Doesn't that justify mass surveillance of innocents?
You can ascertain whether or not your citizens are lying, or telling the truth. You can prevent surprise attacks, and you can use it to explain your citizens' behavior.
Would you be willing to expose the data of your life, including your real name, address, tax information, and spending information for the past 5 years, so we can tell if you're lying, telling the truth, planning a surprise attack, or help us explain your behavior?
Nice :)
Although, since men (and women) aren't angels, and government is made up of men (and women), it seems that you could also write it this way:
"If (x) were angels, no (entity to control x) would be necessary"
Eventually, you need a government for the government for the government for the government...etc, etc, etc.
It's funny - proponents of democracy seem to believe that the masses cannot possibly be mistaken in their choices of leaders, but once those leaders are chosen, the masses cannot possibly be trusted to their own devices and must have policies and rules and regulations dictated to them by their infallible leaders.
I guess I've got no problem with the voice of the people as long as it's not imposed on individuals who may dissent.
...nation states are always a bunch of hypocritical jerks.
Color me incredibly unsurprised here - every nation state is built upon a foundation of distrust. Distrust of other nation states, and distrust of even their own citizens.
Hell, if people could actually trust each other, we wouldn't *need* nation states in the first place.
Frankly, if the terrorists were at all organized, they could shut down traffic in a major city like los angeles just by doing one high speed kamikaze ram into a starbucks every hour for a day.
24 one day rentals, 24 jihadis, and maybe another 48 jihadis to video tape and youtube the carnage, and you'd have a city in utter panic for less than a few thousand bucks.
Terror is *easy*.
From this year: http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news...
"On Friday, Fort, a Wisconsin state senator, a Phonesavanh's family spokesperson and the child's attorney provided an update on the boy's legal fight and condition.
"His face still bares from scars that are going to take a number of reconstructive surgeries," said family spokesman Marcus Coleman.
"We have been informed by the family that every single night, every single night, this child wakes up screaming and holding his face," said Coleman."
All because some hyped up macho SWAT team wanted to bust some low level dealer.
http://www.cato.org/publicatio...
Radley Balko has been writing about the militarization of our police for years.
This map of botched police raids is especially scary:
http://www.cato.org/raidmap
Frankly, I'd rather have my law abiding neighbors armed than the cops.