When some admits they're naive, but acts like they're an authority, they're not just "rude". They're a jerk. Telling them they're naive, and why, gives them a chance to learn. And is exceedingly polite. Ignoring jerky behavior isn't polite: it's denial, and rude to enable the jerk to abuse the rest of the people.
But I've been around the country and around the world already, in my extensive life experience. I know that nonconfrontation passes for politeness in most cultures. But I also know how to be rude. I learned my manners in NYC, California, Canada and Louisiana, and exercised them in most points between. I know what "rude" is like, and what "denial" is like.
Clutching naivete while spouting balderdash is rude. Telling them they're doing so isn't. Vive la difference.
What I make of it is that you can't tell the difference between telling someone they're naive and being rude. That you think posting naive comments as if they're authoritative is some kind of favor. As if a disclaimer that they don't know what they're talking about entitles them to then act like they know better.
I don't care what your UID is, or how often you post. If you haven't learned from your life experience how to tell that they were a typical Slashdotter shooting off their mouth an an authority when they know well - even admit - that they have no basis for authority, then, well, you're a typical Slashdotter. Who thinks posting insults claiming to teach about politeness makes their recipient lucky. Who thinks a dozen + mods means anything, and a couple dozen never getting downmod'ded means nothing when commenting on the flaws in Slashdot's downmod'ding system.
What I make of your post is absolute confirmation of everything I said. In that post, and probably to you while you posted similar "quality" as AC.
Actually, Google has released their core tech fileystem. They might have released other tech/source, too.
But I'm not talking about them sharing the tech IP content. I'm talking about them sharing their datacenter distribution outside Silicon Valley. The construction and operation of their datacenters. Their money and jobs. Their power demand, distributed among the wider grid. Which also would drive development of better power supplies and Internet bandwidth/resources.
Instead of keeping it all pent up in Silicon Valley. Where it's delivering decreasing marginal returns on infrastructure investment, and running into resource caps. Instead of having the reverse effect, the "network effect" of increasing marginal returns on investment and driving an increase in resource availability. For the rest of the country/world that's paying for their growth.
Like maybe evidence of custom apps for such a densely networked supercomputer? Especially a parallel OS/SW installer optimized for a mesh. Maybe some work by/with Sun's ancient JavaSpaces architecture group?
What's happening at a rate of "b:s:Hz"? "b:s", or bps, is a rate of data transmission. "b:Hz" is a rate of data processing, like the typical 0.5b:Hz CPU performance on a fixed clock. b:s:Hz sounds like the acceleration of bits on a clock, as if the last bit travels faster than the first after the system runs a while.
Does this fiber have to warm up like my old B&W TV?
So Google has more money than it has electricity. And it's HQ'd in some of the most expensive real estate in the country. And its servers are remote to practically every user in the world.
That sounds like a perfect reason for nearly all of Google's servers to live distributed around the US, and the globe. With local operators for physical access, and global remote admins for most normal operations.
The past year or so we've heard all kinds of wild rumors about "googled in a box": supercomputers in a shipping container for rapid deployment around the world. How about just a briefcase of money dropped on the local economies to build datacenters in-place, the old fashioned way, without the alien assault tech strategy?
Cheaper, more redundant, more energy efficient (at least not overloaded). Sufficiently distributed, they could use lower-density energy generation, like solar/wind/environmental.
Google should force manufacturers and designers to make all our power consumption more efficient, using their buying power to improve the tech. Then they should use that tech in the more economical, reliable, power efficient way. Share the wealth and power with the rest of us who are keeping them hot.
I didn't mistake the type of the study. As we seem to agree, any scientific study cannot "prove" anything. It can only disprove, or fail to disprove a negative ("null") hypothesis. As I said, proof that they're safe would require disproving each way in which they could be unsafe. Not going to happen, not in the lifetime of our planet.
Science doesn't work the way this article claims. The Danish study doesn't show that cellphones are safe. It can't, unless it demonstrates exhaustively every mechanism by which cellphones interact with human biochemistry, which no study will.
What it shows is that their study did not prove cellphones dangerous in the way that it studied. Which means their test failed to prove that it's dangerous. Which doesn't mean that it's safe.
When science returns some useful results, which are then perverted into lies, then it's even harder to take the liars seriously. When it's the cellphone industry, with nothing to gain from finding risk in their products, then their abuse of the science just makes it harder to believe their claims.
Ah, you're Norwegian. I couldn't tell at first, because your English is so impeccable. Though your extreme politeness in legitimately complaining seemed a little weird - though we do have plenty of Scandinavians in the Upper Midwest:).
But I can understand your aversion to American neologisms, at least more than we Americans aver (pun to test your bilinguality;). Americans, especially here in NYC, prefer the fastest combination of words to express an idea. That's why we call it "NYC", instead of "New York City", because it saves a syllable, and a lot of typing (and modulating the shift key).
Personally, I think that value on abbreviation comes from our German immigrants towards the middle of the end of the 1800s. Many of whom became publishers, some of whom still dominate publishing, like at the NYT (NY Times) and other major periodicals. German efficiency, along with "neologisms" like the common German technique of combining words into very long ones, seems consistent with the abbreviations favored by New Yorkers, and the country we intellectually colonized here. Maybe Germans don't neologize in Europe (or verb nouns, as I just did). I don't really know where those long combinations of German words come from, or how they're "authorized", if at all. But in America, especially perhaps in old cities once English colonies, we like to have our own way with the Queen's English.
I explained my "simcurity" neologism precisely because it is so new. English etymology is mostly "simple when you know how", more a mnemonic technique than an actual generative system, except in science. So I explain it for a while, until it's conventional. Like the process by which hyphenation disappears as the neologism gains currency.
It does seem that we look at languages differently. I don't think our disagreement is due to your use of English as your second language. Because my second language is Spanish, in which I neologize and speak circuitously with my rusty facility and limited vocabulary. Maybe you're just a more precise speaker than am I, because you learned English from rigorous academics, while I learned to speak Spanish on the streets (after lots of ineffective academic training). I certainly love to neologize, and practice the art whenever I can get away with it.
In any event, this has been a most agreeable disagreement. TTYL.
The military already has ways to use disabled people. Because they are "differently abled", though not necessarily able in a way that is more able than those without any specific disability.
The US deploys troops abroad in a 6:1 ratio of "support" (everyone else) to "warfighter", at best. At worst, it's probably 10-20:1, like in Germany or Japan (or Canada, where it might be 50:1 or worse). Domestic deployment is much more "topheavy". Consider that 140K Iraq troops are probably 6-10:1, including National Guard (which has a much stronger warfighter ratio). That 100K troops, of whom maybe 20K are non-Guard warfighters, is draining the US warfighter pool to the breaking point (requiring all those Guard, and near-draft retention rules). Even though the total US military personnel is about 1 million people. That means that 2% of the military is Iraq warfighters, maybe 4-8% is global warfighters. Totally imprecise numbers, but those are the relative scales.
That leaves at least 900K people who talk on the phone, use the Internet, drive around in shipping, cook food, repair machines. But mostly bureaucrats who go to meetings. That is apparently necessary to the way our military works (though a separate policy I favor would reduce all of that, especially abroad). I'm sure that the disabled would be productively used in that huge bureaucracy and operations dump. There's probably even a case to make that people paid disability welfare could contribute some of their abilities to the military, saving money. In the "mandatory ROTC", the disabled would just get trained for those extra jobs that do not demand strong health/fitness. While socializing them, training (even forcing) them to work, and probably making them a lot more fit than those sadistic yet pointless gym classes.
"Misfits" like homicidal maniacs and pacifists (and just nonconformists all between) are a different story. There are lots of jobs as I just described that they could do without being near anything (or anyone) that goes "BANG". Many of those people, especially the homicidal maniacs, probably should go through some socializing program that helps them get over that just by seeing what it's really like to kill and die, watching those suited to do so. The military has a long history of figuring out which people are too dangerous to assign as killers, though it also gives us someplace "useful" to put those violent people.
Pacifists are another story. Pacifism is too easy a copout - and I'm a pacifist. "Conscientious objectors" are relatively easy: put them in jail, minimum security, with alternate training available, for the duration of their service. With only other COs, most likely, if just for their own protection. No punishment, just call them on their conscientious committment not to kill. To distinguish them from the rest of us less "moral" people who are committed mainly to "not dying", with "not killing" in second place. Real pacifists can't handle being part of a war machine any more than your blind friend can drive a car, so we have to put them somewhere that makes the same time and freedom sacrifices as the rest of us.
But there's a lot more national service than just the military. The National Guard is primarily for nonmilitary disasters. With Climate Change, we have a lot more work coming down the pipes. There's border control, which can be treated more as legitimate domestic labor protection than as racism, and is popular in pockets across the political spectrum. A national "tutor corps" would really improve education, the best national security. And would probably be popular with a disproportionate amount of people too smart to be willing to kill or die for our country, and are looking at careers that allow them to avoid living for our country, too. There's all kinds of community service that's too good for petty criminals to work. And of course the military itself has plenty of work demand indistinguishable from civilian work/study programs.
Maybe we just make the nonmilitary service last longer, like 1
It's etymologically correct (sim + cure + ity), sounds like it means, is easy to spell, and has few syllables/letters.
Which word do you prefer to "simcurity"?
FWIW, I like guesstimate and edutainment/infotainment. I also like "infotainvert". Which perfectly good expressions that aren't inane mean exactly what those words say?
I've never heard anyone suggest 6-12mo mandatory military training, with only volunteer military enlistment. Like mandatory ROTC. It's a very interesting idea.
There's about 1.2M highschool graduates this year, and supposedly 7.5M US citizens enrolled in the ROTC (though that seems high, and is uncited). It seems that the ROTC is already serving the right scale of enrollees. I'd favor replacing mandatory HS gym classes with ROTC for at least a year or two, required for HS graduation. Perhaps even mandatory service - but what do you do with AWOL HS dropouts, jail them? Force them into the program? In separate units?
The problem I have is that militarizing the youth rebalances America's existing warmonger culture more towards the military mindset. Actual military experience can go a long way to disabusing the notion of blind authority obedience, but does a year of ROTC? Or does it just present the best face of the military: integration, opportunity, discipline, expensive toys, mayhem, fraternity (& sorority), a bad influence on American voters?
I probably totally disagree with you about the necessity of obstacles to citizens getting guns, regardless of their "good character". But we'd probably agree that teaching everyone how to handle a gun would make those who get one for private use a lot more safe. And possibly make criminals expect more of their targets to not only have one, but to be able to use one, and to actually use it in an emergency.
This is a compelling idea. Did you think of it, or did you hear it somewhere? Is anyone else talking about it?
The TSA will not bring any real charges against Soghoian. This entire exercise is pure simcurity, simulated security. The TSA runs a hollywood show for its political stakeholders, in Congress, the White House and in the media, to generate PR showing they're "tough on terrorists, strong on security". Without making us safer. In fact, putting us in danger, by ignoring real security requirements, creating security holes, suppressing serious research, and wasting time on this whole charade, when there isn't enough time, money, people, or actual resources to work on the real security work.
Soghoian is being sacrificed to this simcurity charade. As is the confidence of the public, ironically the only worthwhile product of simcurity.
The whole fake, yet lethal Bush simcurity apparatus has to be ripped out by the roots. We need more security than on 9/10/2001, not less. Congress should grab hold of the BS TSA next year and remake it according to our ranks of real security experts. Along with the rest of the leviathan Homeland Security Department, with its flagship FEMA. When Bush stands in the way, that will be even more reason to rip that terrorist incompetent, and his designated successors, out of the path of securing America.
False memories are a consequence of insufficient feedback to the mind. Anyone who ever went into an isolation tank (think Altered States, but without the apemen leaving the tank) will tell you. The mind compensates for excluded experience when it's used to experience being included by creating that experience, often indistinguishable from "real" experience of real reality.
Feedback is the return loop of interactivity, after the "sensitive" send loop.. VR is usually (some would say theoretically certainly, as in lesser degrees of infinitude) less interactive than reality. So the mind compensates. Perhaps there is a threshold of interactivity or just feedback (in which we can get a measure of sensitivity) below which the mind starts compensating. Or perhaps it's always a complement, as we remember a continuum of sense images, not the digital representations we actually experienced. From "perfect" VR presentation with no "help" from our minds or in our memories, or down to total hallucinations when the VR is really shoddy, or just perfectly minimalist, like pulling a rorschach trigger.
For an extreme case of these memory tricks, try nemory: What you don't remember, that never happened.
No, Google gets quite a lot of value just building its brand, and keeping you stuck in Google's searches. Which they can see, associated with your ID, history, and social network (including other GMail users and their histories). So they can still target ads by your searches inside your emails.
Google's "do no evil" motto is the same "goodwill value" that any company wants to project. When there's a scandal about privacy invasion at Google, like the Bush admin tried to force on the pretext of "catching kiddie porners" this year, that value will decreased drastically, when everyone realizes just how we've put our balls in their hands. Protecting our email from their datamining protects our privacy from even unauthorized invasions at their servers. While leaving the searching that needs sharing with them open to use, and even abuse, without the PR cost when there's a scandal about its abuse.
That makes perfect sense to anyone with real business sense.
I want my car to snap pix of all the things that come close to it, including cars and people. All the time - while I'm driving, while I'm parked. And stream them to my server over the 3G airwaves and the Internet. Why should these attackers escape me when I'm least able to look at their license plate and memorize their digits/features?
And why should the cops be the only ones tracking license plates?
BTW, where's the webpage lookup for plate#s and VINs so I can find these assholes who cut me off, and send them a bill from my psychiatrist?
Income tax is inherently inappropriate, because its basis in income is an arbitrary reflection of the benefits that come from the payment of the taxes. And its complexity makes it worse than arbitrary: many parts are specifically designed to manipulate the economy, but are unpredictable in the intractably complex economy/tax system. So it winds up serving only to protect rich people from paying their share for the benefit they derive. It's hopelessly broken, and no tweaking can ever fix it. Because it's based on an arbitrary factor in the economy, with which it immediately interferes chaotically.
Sales tax is very simple. And my version delivers the benefits of a "progressive" tax that every honest person agrees: protecting the poor's survival. Without encouraging poverty through real subsidies beyond subsistence. Without preferring he poor over others, as it protects everyone, including the rich, at our smallest necessary consumption. By merely excluding vendors of the essentials I mentioned from having taxes collecting. While avoiding all the overhead and infrastructure of the IRS. Which keeps it from becoming a trap for the non-accountant, and from the system gaming that favors the rich, and encourages so many to evade taxes, while leaving the government underfunded, distrusted, and spending lots of time and money on that dysfunctional system. Administered in the existing "B2B" system between the government and vendors. Incidentally, with the side benefit that vendors holding the sales taxes momentarily before collection by the government would have the benefit of the interest and interim investment power to further strengthen the economy, at least 3x more than currently (gross; net after taxation expenses could be 10x or more the current net useable amounts). A simple system, consistent across every person, engaged by discretionary purchasing decisions, more efficiently worked by the existing system, that would fund the government without debt while saving taxpayers money and protecting the poor. How can income tax compete with any of those benefits, or compare with those lower costs?
There might be a case to be made for a special higher rate on "luxury" items, that would reflect the American self image of a three class society: rich/middle/poor. That anyone with enough dollars in hand can live like, not really a class system at all (in our self image). But since we can replace a 40-50% income tax on all individuals with a more effective 20-30% sales tax customized by those people's discretionary consumption, why bother making it complicated? Perhaps temporary luxury sales taxes could be used to raise extra money in emergencies, without stressing the entire economy (including more sensitive and essential segments). But it's a solution in search of a problem. "Progressive" tax for its own sake is meaningless, and applies a solution to the income tax to the unrelated consumption tax. So I'll take the progress of "no tax on survival requirements, flat tax on everything else, except a very low rate on noncontrolling equity trades". A one line tax system that could be encoded in less that 100 pages of law, even at government efficiency.
Your socialism (state capitalism, really) seems totally unrelated to any of these taxation issues (except avoiding tax returns, which sales tax fixes), and I don't like it one bit. So I won't comment further on it.
Your first paragraph did not establish the unfairness of a sales tax, or even say anything about it.
Your second paragraph in turn said only what I said that justifies a sales tax, but never mentioned a sales tax. You merely asserted that an income tax is based on those values.
Your third basis goes further in applying the income tax model.
But I've explained several essential ways that income tax is an arbitrary model. And explained how a sales tax is a direct model of government cost:benefit. Which you reject by assertion, but never ever attempt to prove.
I don't know where you get the idea that our government owning the biggest corporations would make anything better, except your convenience in not preparing tax returns. As if such an extra twist to our current equity, government and tax systems would do anything but increase the costs and risks of bureaucracy. To say nothing of outright fascism. While just dropping that whole "menu" (like an Asian fusion restaurant in a Nebraskan prison, except choosing organs to donate) in favor of a simple sales tax with a few basic exceptions would solve all these problems, including the tax return overhead. And strip government of much of the excessive power it holds in monitoring everyone's personal economies every year, rather than turn over the big corporate power centers to the already bloated and overpowered government.
Slashdot Mirror
When some admits they're naive, but acts like they're an authority, they're not just "rude". They're a jerk. Telling them they're naive, and why, gives them a chance to learn. And is exceedingly polite. Ignoring jerky behavior isn't polite: it's denial, and rude to enable the jerk to abuse the rest of the people.
But I've been around the country and around the world already, in my extensive life experience. I know that nonconfrontation passes for politeness in most cultures. But I also know how to be rude. I learned my manners in NYC, California, Canada and Louisiana, and exercised them in most points between. I know what "rude" is like, and what "denial" is like.
Clutching naivete while spouting balderdash is rude. Telling them they're doing so isn't. Vive la difference.
What I make of it is that you can't tell the difference between telling someone they're naive and being rude. That you think posting naive comments as if they're authoritative is some kind of favor. As if a disclaimer that they don't know what they're talking about entitles them to then act like they know better.
I don't care what your UID is, or how often you post. If you haven't learned from your life experience how to tell that they were a typical Slashdotter shooting off their mouth an an authority when they know well - even admit - that they have no basis for authority, then, well, you're a typical Slashdotter. Who thinks posting insults claiming to teach about politeness makes their recipient lucky. Who thinks a dozen + mods means anything, and a couple dozen never getting downmod'ded means nothing when commenting on the flaws in Slashdot's downmod'ding system.
What I make of your post is absolute confirmation of everything I said. In that post, and probably to you while you posted similar "quality" as AC.
Ah, it's not Hz of actual cycles, it's Hz of literal bandwidth, simultaneously transmitted on multiple frequencies.
Too bad. I'd love to see a physical example of bits per second per second, data acceleration. Especially traveling at the constant speed of light.
If they just lost the right 9/10, then I would get only about 100 spams a day.
Actually, Google has released their core tech fileystem. They might have released other tech/source, too.
But I'm not talking about them sharing the tech IP content. I'm talking about them sharing their datacenter distribution outside Silicon Valley. The construction and operation of their datacenters. Their money and jobs. Their power demand, distributed among the wider grid. Which also would drive development of better power supplies and Internet bandwidth/resources.
Instead of keeping it all pent up in Silicon Valley. Where it's delivering decreasing marginal returns on infrastructure investment, and running into resource caps. Instead of having the reverse effect, the "network effect" of increasing marginal returns on investment and driving an increase in resource availability. For the rest of the country/world that's paying for their growth.
Any sign of any customers for these things?
Like maybe evidence of custom apps for such a densely networked supercomputer? Especially a parallel OS/SW installer optimized for a mesh. Maybe some work by/with Sun's ancient JavaSpaces architecture group?
What's happening at a rate of "b:s:Hz"? "b:s", or bps, is a rate of data transmission. "b:Hz" is a rate of data processing, like the typical 0.5b:Hz CPU performance on a fixed clock. b:s:Hz sounds like the acceleration of bits on a clock, as if the last bit travels faster than the first after the system runs a while.
Does this fiber have to warm up like my old B&W TV?
So Google has more money than it has electricity. And it's HQ'd in some of the most expensive real estate in the country. And its servers are remote to practically every user in the world.
That sounds like a perfect reason for nearly all of Google's servers to live distributed around the US, and the globe. With local operators for physical access, and global remote admins for most normal operations.
The past year or so we've heard all kinds of wild rumors about "googled in a box": supercomputers in a shipping container for rapid deployment around the world. How about just a briefcase of money dropped on the local economies to build datacenters in-place, the old fashioned way, without the alien assault tech strategy?
Cheaper, more redundant, more energy efficient (at least not overloaded). Sufficiently distributed, they could use lower-density energy generation, like solar/wind/environmental.
Google should force manufacturers and designers to make all our power consumption more efficient, using their buying power to improve the tech. Then they should use that tech in the more economical, reliable, power efficient way. Share the wealth and power with the rest of us who are keeping them hot.
Yes.
I didn't mistake the type of the study. As we seem to agree, any scientific study cannot "prove" anything. It can only disprove, or fail to disprove a negative ("null") hypothesis. As I said, proof that they're safe would require disproving each way in which they could be unsafe. Not going to happen, not in the lifetime of our planet.
Science doesn't work the way this article claims. The Danish study doesn't show that cellphones are safe. It can't, unless it demonstrates exhaustively every mechanism by which cellphones interact with human biochemistry, which no study will.
What it shows is that their study did not prove cellphones dangerous in the way that it studied. Which means their test failed to prove that it's dangerous. Which doesn't mean that it's safe.
When science returns some useful results, which are then perverted into lies, then it's even harder to take the liars seriously. When it's the cellphone industry, with nothing to gain from finding risk in their products, then their abuse of the science just makes it harder to believe their claims.
Ah, you're Norwegian. I couldn't tell at first, because your English is so impeccable. Though your extreme politeness in legitimately complaining seemed a little weird - though we do have plenty of Scandinavians in the Upper Midwest :).
;). Americans, especially here in NYC, prefer the fastest combination of words to express an idea. That's why we call it "NYC", instead of "New York City", because it saves a syllable, and a lot of typing (and modulating the shift key).
But I can understand your aversion to American neologisms, at least more than we Americans aver (pun to test your bilinguality
Personally, I think that value on abbreviation comes from our German immigrants towards the middle of the end of the 1800s. Many of whom became publishers, some of whom still dominate publishing, like at the NYT (NY Times) and other major periodicals. German efficiency, along with "neologisms" like the common German technique of combining words into very long ones, seems consistent with the abbreviations favored by New Yorkers, and the country we intellectually colonized here. Maybe Germans don't neologize in Europe (or verb nouns, as I just did). I don't really know where those long combinations of German words come from, or how they're "authorized", if at all. But in America, especially perhaps in old cities once English colonies, we like to have our own way with the Queen's English.
I explained my "simcurity" neologism precisely because it is so new. English etymology is mostly "simple when you know how", more a mnemonic technique than an actual generative system, except in science. So I explain it for a while, until it's conventional. Like the process by which hyphenation disappears as the neologism gains currency.
It does seem that we look at languages differently. I don't think our disagreement is due to your use of English as your second language. Because my second language is Spanish, in which I neologize and speak circuitously with my rusty facility and limited vocabulary. Maybe you're just a more precise speaker than am I, because you learned English from rigorous academics, while I learned to speak Spanish on the streets (after lots of ineffective academic training). I certainly love to neologize, and practice the art whenever I can get away with it.
In any event, this has been a most agreeable disagreement. TTYL.
Moderation -1
70% Overrated
30% Insightful
TrollMods can't stand hearing that Bush is a terrorist incompetent. So they will anonymously suppress any mention, rather than openly disagree.
Is it any wonder that the president they worship created the TSA that is suppressing Soghoian? Why do they hate America?
The military already has ways to use disabled people. Because they are "differently abled", though not necessarily able in a way that is more able than those without any specific disability.
The US deploys troops abroad in a 6:1 ratio of "support" (everyone else) to "warfighter", at best. At worst, it's probably 10-20:1, like in Germany or Japan (or Canada, where it might be 50:1 or worse). Domestic deployment is much more "topheavy". Consider that 140K Iraq troops are probably 6-10:1, including National Guard (which has a much stronger warfighter ratio). That 100K troops, of whom maybe 20K are non-Guard warfighters, is draining the US warfighter pool to the breaking point (requiring all those Guard, and near-draft retention rules). Even though the total US military personnel is about 1 million people. That means that 2% of the military is Iraq warfighters, maybe 4-8% is global warfighters. Totally imprecise numbers, but those are the relative scales.
That leaves at least 900K people who talk on the phone, use the Internet, drive around in shipping, cook food, repair machines. But mostly bureaucrats who go to meetings. That is apparently necessary to the way our military works (though a separate policy I favor would reduce all of that, especially abroad). I'm sure that the disabled would be productively used in that huge bureaucracy and operations dump. There's probably even a case to make that people paid disability welfare could contribute some of their abilities to the military, saving money. In the "mandatory ROTC", the disabled would just get trained for those extra jobs that do not demand strong health/fitness. While socializing them, training (even forcing) them to work, and probably making them a lot more fit than those sadistic yet pointless gym classes.
"Misfits" like homicidal maniacs and pacifists (and just nonconformists all between) are a different story. There are lots of jobs as I just described that they could do without being near anything (or anyone) that goes "BANG". Many of those people, especially the homicidal maniacs, probably should go through some socializing program that helps them get over that just by seeing what it's really like to kill and die, watching those suited to do so. The military has a long history of figuring out which people are too dangerous to assign as killers, though it also gives us someplace "useful" to put those violent people.
Pacifists are another story. Pacifism is too easy a copout - and I'm a pacifist. "Conscientious objectors" are relatively easy: put them in jail, minimum security, with alternate training available, for the duration of their service. With only other COs, most likely, if just for their own protection. No punishment, just call them on their conscientious committment not to kill. To distinguish them from the rest of us less "moral" people who are committed mainly to "not dying", with "not killing" in second place. Real pacifists can't handle being part of a war machine any more than your blind friend can drive a car, so we have to put them somewhere that makes the same time and freedom sacrifices as the rest of us.
But there's a lot more national service than just the military. The National Guard is primarily for nonmilitary disasters. With Climate Change, we have a lot more work coming down the pipes. There's border control, which can be treated more as legitimate domestic labor protection than as racism, and is popular in pockets across the political spectrum. A national "tutor corps" would really improve education, the best national security. And would probably be popular with a disproportionate amount of people too smart to be willing to kill or die for our country, and are looking at careers that allow them to avoid living for our country, too. There's all kinds of community service that's too good for petty criminals to work. And of course the military itself has plenty of work demand indistinguishable from civilian work/study programs.
Maybe we just make the nonmilitary service last longer, like 1
It's etymologically correct (sim + cure + ity), sounds like it means, is easy to spell, and has few syllables/letters.
Which word do you prefer to "simcurity"?
FWIW, I like guesstimate and edutainment/infotainment. I also like "infotainvert". Which perfectly good expressions that aren't inane mean exactly what those words say?
I've never heard anyone suggest 6-12mo mandatory military training, with only volunteer military enlistment. Like mandatory ROTC. It's a very interesting idea.
There's about 1.2M highschool graduates this year, and supposedly 7.5M US citizens enrolled in the ROTC (though that seems high, and is uncited). It seems that the ROTC is already serving the right scale of enrollees. I'd favor replacing mandatory HS gym classes with ROTC for at least a year or two, required for HS graduation. Perhaps even mandatory service - but what do you do with AWOL HS dropouts, jail them? Force them into the program? In separate units?
The problem I have is that militarizing the youth rebalances America's existing warmonger culture more towards the military mindset. Actual military experience can go a long way to disabusing the notion of blind authority obedience, but does a year of ROTC? Or does it just present the best face of the military: integration, opportunity, discipline, expensive toys, mayhem, fraternity (& sorority), a bad influence on American voters?
I probably totally disagree with you about the necessity of obstacles to citizens getting guns, regardless of their "good character". But we'd probably agree that teaching everyone how to handle a gun would make those who get one for private use a lot more safe. And possibly make criminals expect more of their targets to not only have one, but to be able to use one, and to actually use it in an emergency.
This is a compelling idea. Did you think of it, or did you hear it somewhere? Is anyone else talking about it?
The TSA will not bring any real charges against Soghoian. This entire exercise is pure simcurity, simulated security. The TSA runs a hollywood show for its political stakeholders, in Congress, the White House and in the media, to generate PR showing they're "tough on terrorists, strong on security". Without making us safer. In fact, putting us in danger, by ignoring real security requirements, creating security holes, suppressing serious research, and wasting time on this whole charade, when there isn't enough time, money, people, or actual resources to work on the real security work.
Soghoian is being sacrificed to this simcurity charade. As is the confidence of the public, ironically the only worthwhile product of simcurity.
The whole fake, yet lethal Bush simcurity apparatus has to be ripped out by the roots. We need more security than on 9/10/2001, not less. Congress should grab hold of the BS TSA next year and remake it according to our ranks of real security experts. Along with the rest of the leviathan Homeland Security Department, with its flagship FEMA. When Bush stands in the way, that will be even more reason to rip that terrorist incompetent, and his designated successors, out of the path of securing America.
False memories are a consequence of insufficient feedback to the mind. Anyone who ever went into an isolation tank (think Altered States, but without the apemen leaving the tank) will tell you. The mind compensates for excluded experience when it's used to experience being included by creating that experience, often indistinguishable from "real" experience of real reality.
Feedback is the return loop of interactivity, after the "sensitive" send loop.. VR is usually (some would say theoretically certainly, as in lesser degrees of infinitude) less interactive than reality. So the mind compensates. Perhaps there is a threshold of interactivity or just feedback (in which we can get a measure of sensitivity) below which the mind starts compensating. Or perhaps it's always a complement, as we remember a continuum of sense images, not the digital representations we actually experienced. From "perfect" VR presentation with no "help" from our minds or in our memories, or down to total hallucinations when the VR is really shoddy, or just perfectly minimalist, like pulling a rorschach trigger.
For an extreme case of these memory tricks, try nemory: What you don't remember, that never happened.
No, Google gets quite a lot of value just building its brand, and keeping you stuck in Google's searches. Which they can see, associated with your ID, history, and social network (including other GMail users and their histories). So they can still target ads by your searches inside your emails.
Google's "do no evil" motto is the same "goodwill value" that any company wants to project. When there's a scandal about privacy invasion at Google, like the Bush admin tried to force on the pretext of "catching kiddie porners" this year, that value will decreased drastically, when everyone realizes just how we've put our balls in their hands. Protecting our email from their datamining protects our privacy from even unauthorized invasions at their servers. While leaving the searching that needs sharing with them open to use, and even abuse, without the PR cost when there's a scandal about its abuse.
That makes perfect sense to anyone with real business sense.
"Active Denial " is the perfect name for Bush's entire Iraq "strategy" since the "beginning".
Have they been using a projection device from DC, Texas or Kennebunkport all along?
You know that the Constitution doesn't mandate that the government count your vote in presidential elections, either, right?
I want my car to snap pix of all the things that come close to it, including cars and people. All the time - while I'm driving, while I'm parked. And stream them to my server over the 3G airwaves and the Internet. Why should these attackers escape me when I'm least able to look at their license plate and memorize their digits/features?
And why should the cops be the only ones tracking license plates?
BTW, where's the webpage lookup for plate#s and VINs so I can find these assholes who cut me off, and send them a bill from my psychiatrist?
If I could sue my weather reporter for malpractice, I'd be rich enough to live somewhere there's no weather, only climate.
I should trust my cancer diagnosis to become as reliable as the rain forecast for the weekend?
So can a MythTV install now send shows recorded by TiVo to other MythTV or TiVo players across the Internet? Do you even need MythTV to do this?
Income tax is inherently inappropriate, because its basis in income is an arbitrary reflection of the benefits that come from the payment of the taxes. And its complexity makes it worse than arbitrary: many parts are specifically designed to manipulate the economy, but are unpredictable in the intractably complex economy/tax system. So it winds up serving only to protect rich people from paying their share for the benefit they derive. It's hopelessly broken, and no tweaking can ever fix it. Because it's based on an arbitrary factor in the economy, with which it immediately interferes chaotically.
Sales tax is very simple. And my version delivers the benefits of a "progressive" tax that every honest person agrees: protecting the poor's survival. Without encouraging poverty through real subsidies beyond subsistence. Without preferring he poor over others, as it protects everyone, including the rich, at our smallest necessary consumption. By merely excluding vendors of the essentials I mentioned from having taxes collecting. While avoiding all the overhead and infrastructure of the IRS. Which keeps it from becoming a trap for the non-accountant, and from the system gaming that favors the rich, and encourages so many to evade taxes, while leaving the government underfunded, distrusted, and spending lots of time and money on that dysfunctional system. Administered in the existing "B2B" system between the government and vendors. Incidentally, with the side benefit that vendors holding the sales taxes momentarily before collection by the government would have the benefit of the interest and interim investment power to further strengthen the economy, at least 3x more than currently (gross; net after taxation expenses could be 10x or more the current net useable amounts). A simple system, consistent across every person, engaged by discretionary purchasing decisions, more efficiently worked by the existing system, that would fund the government without debt while saving taxpayers money and protecting the poor. How can income tax compete with any of those benefits, or compare with those lower costs?
There might be a case to be made for a special higher rate on "luxury" items, that would reflect the American self image of a three class society: rich/middle/poor. That anyone with enough dollars in hand can live like, not really a class system at all (in our self image). But since we can replace a 40-50% income tax on all individuals with a more effective 20-30% sales tax customized by those people's discretionary consumption, why bother making it complicated? Perhaps temporary luxury sales taxes could be used to raise extra money in emergencies, without stressing the entire economy (including more sensitive and essential segments). But it's a solution in search of a problem. "Progressive" tax for its own sake is meaningless, and applies a solution to the income tax to the unrelated consumption tax. So I'll take the progress of "no tax on survival requirements, flat tax on everything else, except a very low rate on noncontrolling equity trades". A one line tax system that could be encoded in less that 100 pages of law, even at government efficiency.
Your socialism (state capitalism, really) seems totally unrelated to any of these taxation issues (except avoiding tax returns, which sales tax fixes), and I don't like it one bit. So I won't comment further on it.
Your first paragraph did not establish the unfairness of a sales tax, or even say anything about it.
Your second paragraph in turn said only what I said that justifies a sales tax, but never mentioned a sales tax. You merely asserted that an income tax is based on those values.
Your third basis goes further in applying the income tax model.
But I've explained several essential ways that income tax is an arbitrary model. And explained how a sales tax is a direct model of government cost:benefit. Which you reject by assertion, but never ever attempt to prove.
I don't know where you get the idea that our government owning the biggest corporations would make anything better, except your convenience in not preparing tax returns. As if such an extra twist to our current equity, government and tax systems would do anything but increase the costs and risks of bureaucracy. To say nothing of outright fascism. While just dropping that whole "menu" (like an Asian fusion restaurant in a Nebraskan prison, except choosing organs to donate) in favor of a simple sales tax with a few basic exceptions would solve all these problems, including the tax return overhead. And strip government of much of the excessive power it holds in monitoring everyone's personal economies every year, rather than turn over the big corporate power centers to the already bloated and overpowered government.