Driving without insurance is hardly a "new" category of crime.
If someone is going to operate lethal machinery on the public roads, forcing them to get insurance so they can pay for the damage they might cause to me is quite reasonable. I insure all my vehicles.
Those who refuse to insure their vehicles shouldn't drive them. Camera-assisted enforcement is a great idea that doesn't infringe on anyones rights. Refusal to insure is refusal to protect others. Carry insurance or get the fuck off the road.
"It's as likely to encourage people to cc everyone and their cousin, or other silly tactics to game the metrics."
It will demand, not encourage, such behavior. I have no problem with that since I have no moral obligation to care about stupid or malicious employers. This system needs to be compromised so people can best craft traffic to exploit it.
"Two questions spring to mind: first, how does this differ for officers and enlisted men, and secondly, isn't this skewed a bit by the fact that people with lower incomes are more likely to go into the military?"
I'm a 26-year enlisted retiree and I not only help skew the figures, I've met plenty of other happy retirees who do!
My income at retirement was cut roughly in half to 30K gross/year. This was not tragic because I had many years to plan for it. I don't need to get another job that brings my income back to the same rate, because my mortgage is paid off and all my tools and toys paid for.
I didn't go to work for a year, then took a part-time job at my local community college where I'd previously volunteered to help the welding program. When my (VEAP-victim) year group comes eligible for the Webb G.I.Bill, I'll go back to school for the fun of it. Many G.I.s do this, then move back into the workforce later if they wish.
I'm not rich, but I live in an affordable rural area. (Most bases are in rural areas, facilitating buying a home cheaply before retirement.)
If I'd been a civilian, I'd have to stay in the workforce to survive, but my overall income would be larger.
Uncle Sam needs a young force, so we get put out to pasture earlier than a civilian might. While there are many _individual_ stories to the contrary, most people in their forties or later can't be in shape for sustained military activity because of bad backs, knees, shoulders, and general wear and tear.
"Wouldn't more energy be saved by taxing long haul trucking out of existence and putting the money into a resurgence of rail freight?"
Long-haul trucking and rail freight do not substitute for each other, and attempting to duplicate the highway system with trackage would run into many and obvious obstacles. Rail freight is also usually much slower.
I can call a freight broker, have a truck show up, load it, and it will go direct to my desired destination. I can have that truck drop off an ISO container with my stuff so I can unload it at leisure. Even inter-modal freight can't do that with the same flexibility and speed.
"China works on 'giant slingshots' armed with darts to combat the US spying mission."
That First Generation War stuff isn't the only game in town...
Observation doesn't necessarily require being directly over enemy territory. Such airships would be excellent for covering borders and providing 25/7 situational awareness over areas of Iraq and Afghanistan. They can also observe large marine areas, which is why blimps never totally went out of US service. They aren't sexy, and the general public keeps confusing them with the Hindenburg, but they are useful pieces of gear. UAV don't have near the loiter time of a blimp/airship, but they can plug gaps when the blimp is out of service. Working together they could make for excellent surveillance/interdiction systems.
" people severely hurt by an unregulated financial industry."
That's rather like banging a hooker then being "hurt" by getting the crabs.
I had the chance to get ARMs on my houses. That's fucking stupid, so I didn't do it. I had the chance to borrow far more than I could afford to pay. That's fucking stupid, so I didn't do it. I had the chance to get second mortgages. That's fucking stupid, so I didn't do it.
I will regurgitate the classic rant I heard from Depression survivors in my youth. I listened.
"How DARE you buy shit you don't need or cannot afford! Buy CHEAP, because you need shelter, you don't need luxury. How dare you waste money. Buy quality, not crap, even if you have to wait for it. Pay off your mortgage early."
Just because industries give you the opportunity to do stupid shit doesn't mean that is a Good Idea.
Due to regional recruiting, where the Bible Belt and rural areas are heavily represented, the military gets a lot of motivated-but-not-well-rounded people.
No fucking way I'd join for any non-aircraft computer-related job. Those fields are full of folks doing administrative jobs combined with basic shitwork desktop maintenance and the like. The further away from actual aircraft you are the more your job will (usually) suck.
Of course, almost total immunity to recessions during your career and after retirement (yay for retiring before fifty!) is worth consideration nowadays, and the work isn't hard.
I enjoyed my 26 years in the Air Force and would do it again, but I was variously an avionics weenie, engine troop, and crew chief. If working on and sometimes riding in military aircraft seems fun, give that a whirl by all means. Computers? Look into a civilian government job.
Gate Gumbies are a useful way to free up combat MPs for...combat. Plenty of them are retired vets too old for war but not for guarding gates. Perimeter presence doesn't require Rambo types, and the actual MPs can be dispatched if a bad guy zaps a gate guard. While outsourcing can be done badly, that does not mean that all outsourcing is bad. The Air Force freed up thousands of man-hours when it subbed out lawn maintenance. Using expensive troops for work that does not require them wastes manpower and has no training value.
In the real world, most bases in CONUS could be entered by jumping the fence. It is not and has never been practical to fully secure all perimeters 24/7 with military security forces alone. The response was to be able to react to intruders when detected while having manned security at high priority resources instead. Bases may have Gate Gumbies at the gates, but retain actual military forces for dispatch.
If you have an underpowered computer, just dual-boot instead. If you don't want to dual-boot on the same hard disk, use another hard disk in a swap tray.
These options have been common for more than a decade...
"No more joking on the internet because someone could take it seriously!"
For someone in a position of public trust, even having a MySpace account etc, is vain and stupid.
No one else gives a fuck about ones "mood", and IMO anyone dumb enough to post that shit deserves to have their integrity questioned just for being an idiot. You cannot mis-use what you don't use in the first place, and public "vanity" pages just drip with opportunities to exploit the vanity that drives them. They might makes sense for a teenage girl with a head full of feathers, but not someone supposedly worthy of respect.
"(Rhetorical question - you need not answer I've already prejudged you by reading the second amendment)."
The Second Amendment isn't militaristic. (Maybe the light isn't very good under your bridge.)
If you read it, it refers to an individual right. You are free to utterly trust your government and utterly trust your fellow citizens with your protection. We are also free to protect ourselves from both ordinary criminals and sufficiently toxic government, and the Second Amendment ensures the tools for revolution are in the hands of citizens.
Given the near-universal foreign loathing for the US government, you ought to be delighted that we have the power to revolt and kill our masters if they provoke us! The Founders, having just revolted and killed some of their masters, wisely kept the option open. We are too comfortable to breed revolutionaries at the moment, but that may change.
"Though we did have an amusing time wondering just what you planned to do with the several tubs of Vaseline in your last grocery bill and that mannekin of Sarah Palin you bought off eBay."
No speculation required.
They will go in my "man cave" along with my Realdoll collection, between the Golden Girls and Maggie Thatcher.
"Those of us who are afraid of Uncle Sam spying on all our credit card transactions are called paranoid."
My credit card purchases are not useful information for even the most toxic government. If anything they just add to the data burden such government would have to sift through.
If you decide to do things you don't wish government to be aware of, that same innocent activity becomes your smokescreen. You can manipulate the perception people have of you by what you reveal to them. You could even fake a persona by your choice of purchase, especially media. The way to hide FROM the system is to hide IN the system.
"I guess life isn't as important as scoring political points."
The Christian Taliban don't regard other life as sacred, and gleefully fund wars that kill actual children.
If you want some fun remind them that abortion disposes of far more NON-White potential citizens than it does of the potential tow-headed youngsters they mourn while envisioning an "abortuary".
"Googling someone to see if they're a Nazi child molester on the no-fly list is perfectly legal, and as a hiring manager, you can bet I'm going to keep doing it."
So would I.
I'm amazed that people destroy their own privacy then expect someone else to ignore the results.
Slashdot Mirror
"Solution: Create more laws for people to break."
Driving without insurance is hardly a "new" category of crime.
If someone is going to operate lethal machinery on the public roads, forcing them to get insurance so they can pay for the damage they might cause to me is quite reasonable. I insure all my vehicles.
Those who refuse to insure their vehicles shouldn't drive them. Camera-assisted enforcement is a great idea that doesn't infringe on anyones rights. Refusal to insure is refusal to protect others. Carry insurance or get the fuck off the road.
"it was a step above the random porn mags that seem to litter all the woods in this country!"
Where is it YOU go hiking?
"Who is the idiot who put the brits in charge of such critical infrastructure?"
Obviously not someone who drove a car with Lucas electrical systems...
"It's as likely to encourage people to cc everyone and their cousin, or other silly tactics to game the metrics."
It will demand, not encourage, such behavior. I have no problem with that since I have no moral obligation to care about stupid or malicious employers. This system needs to be compromised so people can best craft traffic to exploit it.
"Two questions spring to mind: first, how does this differ for officers and enlisted men, and secondly, isn't this skewed a bit by the fact that people with lower incomes are more likely to go into the military?"
I'm a 26-year enlisted retiree and I not only help skew the figures, I've met plenty of other happy retirees who do!
My income at retirement was cut roughly in half to 30K gross/year. This was not tragic because I had many years to plan for it. I don't need to get another job that brings my income back to the same rate, because my mortgage is paid off and all my tools and toys paid for.
I didn't go to work for a year, then took a part-time job at my local community college where I'd previously volunteered to help the welding program. When my (VEAP-victim) year group comes eligible for the Webb G.I.Bill, I'll go back to school for the fun of it. Many G.I.s do this, then move back into the workforce later if they wish.
I'm not rich, but I live in an affordable rural area. (Most bases are in rural areas, facilitating buying a home cheaply before retirement.)
If I'd been a civilian, I'd have to stay in the workforce to survive, but my overall income would be larger.
Uncle Sam needs a young force, so we get put out to pasture earlier than a civilian might. While there are many _individual_ stories to the contrary, most people in their forties or later can't be in shape for sustained military activity because of bad backs, knees, shoulders, and general wear and tear.
"Wouldn't more energy be saved by taxing long haul trucking out of existence and putting the money into a resurgence of rail freight?"
Long-haul trucking and rail freight do not substitute for each other, and attempting to duplicate the highway system with trackage would run into many and obvious obstacles. Rail freight is also usually much slower.
I can call a freight broker, have a truck show up, load it, and it will go direct to my desired destination.
I can have that truck drop off an ISO container with my stuff so I can unload it at leisure. Even inter-modal freight can't do that with the same flexibility and speed.
"I hope you enjoy "open-source" pharmaceuticals..."
Since Cheech and Chong were young. :-P
"China works on 'giant slingshots' armed with darts to combat the US spying mission."
That First Generation War stuff isn't the only game in town...
Observation doesn't necessarily require being directly over enemy territory. Such airships would be excellent for covering borders and providing 25/7 situational awareness over areas of Iraq and Afghanistan. They can also observe large marine areas, which is why blimps never totally went out of US service. They aren't sexy, and the general public keeps confusing them with the Hindenburg, but they are useful pieces of gear. UAV don't have near the loiter time of a blimp/airship, but they can plug gaps when the blimp is out of service. Working together they could make for excellent surveillance/interdiction systems.
" people severely hurt by an unregulated financial industry."
That's rather like banging a hooker then being "hurt" by getting the crabs.
I had the chance to get ARMs on my houses. That's fucking stupid, so I didn't do it.
I had the chance to borrow far more than I could afford to pay. That's fucking stupid, so I didn't do it.
I had the chance to get second mortgages. That's fucking stupid, so I didn't do it.
I will regurgitate the classic rant I heard from Depression survivors in my youth. I listened.
"How DARE you buy shit you don't need or cannot afford! Buy CHEAP, because you need shelter, you don't need luxury. How dare you waste money. Buy quality, not crap, even if you have to wait for it. Pay off your mortgage early."
Just because industries give you the opportunity to do stupid shit doesn't mean that is a Good Idea.
"it only took two hundred years to go from "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country," to, "eat my asshole." :( "
Don't think of it as poor speech, think of it as brevity!
Due to regional recruiting, where the Bible Belt and rural areas are heavily represented, the military gets a lot of motivated-but-not-well-rounded people.
No fucking way I'd join for any non-aircraft computer-related job.
Those fields are full of folks doing administrative jobs combined with basic shitwork desktop maintenance and the like. The further away from actual aircraft you are the more your job will (usually) suck.
Of course, almost total immunity to recessions during your career and after retirement (yay for retiring before fifty!) is worth consideration nowadays, and the work isn't hard.
I enjoyed my 26 years in the Air Force and would do it again, but I was variously an avionics weenie, engine troop, and crew chief. If working on and sometimes riding in military aircraft seems fun, give that a whirl by all means. Computers? Look into a civilian government job.
Gate Gumbies are a useful way to free up combat MPs for...combat. Plenty of them are retired vets too old for war but not for guarding gates. Perimeter presence doesn't require Rambo types, and the actual MPs can be dispatched if a bad guy zaps a gate guard. While outsourcing can be done badly, that does not mean that all outsourcing is bad. The Air Force freed up thousands of man-hours when it subbed out lawn maintenance. Using expensive troops for work that does not require them wastes manpower and has no training value.
In the real world, most bases in CONUS could be entered by jumping the fence. It is not and has never been practical to fully secure all perimeters 24/7 with military security forces alone. The response was to be able to react to intruders when detected while having manned security at high priority resources instead. Bases may have Gate Gumbies at the gates, but retain actual military forces for dispatch.
If you have an underpowered computer, just dual-boot instead.
If you don't want to dual-boot on the same hard disk, use another hard disk in a swap tray.
These options have been common for more than a decade...
"No more joking on the internet because someone could take it seriously!"
For someone in a position of public trust, even having a MySpace account etc, is vain and stupid.
No one else gives a fuck about ones "mood", and IMO anyone dumb enough to post that shit deserves to have their integrity questioned just for being an idiot. You cannot mis-use what you don't use in the first place, and public "vanity" pages just drip with opportunities to exploit the vanity that drives them. They might makes sense for a teenage girl with a head full of feathers, but not someone supposedly worthy of respect.
"a stack of old hard drives, each was 10 megabytes"
Kickass shop magnet source. I'd just give them to mechanic buddies to skin out if I weren't a mechanic myself.
The older drives are easier to take apart, have large magnets, don't have glass platters, and the aluminum case can go in the scrap bin.
"(Rhetorical question - you need not answer I've already prejudged you by reading the second amendment)."
The Second Amendment isn't militaristic. (Maybe the light isn't very good under your bridge.)
If you read it, it refers to an individual right. You are free to utterly trust your government and utterly trust your fellow citizens with your protection. We are also free to protect ourselves from both ordinary criminals and sufficiently toxic government, and the Second Amendment ensures the tools for revolution are in the hands of citizens.
Given the near-universal foreign loathing for the US government, you ought to be delighted that we have the power to revolt and kill our masters if they provoke us! The Founders, having just revolted and killed some of their masters, wisely kept the option open. We are too comfortable to breed revolutionaries at the moment, but that may change.
" and play Snood."
Snoodling requires a computer?
"What you call barbarism I call self-defense."
Destroying ones enemies has a far better track record than titrated violence in "limited" war.
"Though we did have an amusing time wondering just what you planned to do with the several tubs of Vaseline in your last grocery bill and that mannekin of Sarah Palin you bought off eBay."
No speculation required.
They will go in my "man cave" along with my Realdoll collection, between the Golden Girls and Maggie Thatcher.
"Those of us who are afraid of Uncle Sam spying on all our credit card transactions are called paranoid."
My credit card purchases are not useful information for even the most toxic government. If anything they just add to the data burden such government would have to sift through.
If you decide to do things you don't wish government to be aware of, that same innocent activity becomes your smokescreen. You can manipulate the perception people have of you by what you reveal to them. You could even fake a persona by your choice of purchase, especially media. The way to hide FROM the system is to hide IN the system.
"the submarines sailing up and down the Clyde"
That certainly shoots down the "very large manatees" cover story.
"I guess life isn't as important as scoring political points."
The Christian Taliban don't regard other life as sacred, and gleefully fund wars that kill actual children.
If you want some fun remind them that abortion disposes of far more NON-White potential citizens than it does of the potential tow-headed youngsters they mourn while envisioning an "abortuary".
"If we just blurred all maps, the terrorists couldn't even find their targets!"
That's clearly insufficient, because old maps could still be used.
We should invalidate the maps by blurring the world instead.
"Googling someone to see if they're a Nazi child molester on the no-fly list is perfectly legal, and as a hiring manager, you can bet I'm going to keep doing it."
So would I.
I'm amazed that people destroy their own privacy then expect someone else to ignore the results.
"But don't Nazi children deserve to be molested?"
Josef Fritzl, is that you?