I think you are looking at this with a too modern perspective. Consider the scale of death in WWII: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
Now if you compare Russian and German casualties you have a relation of 23.1 million (Soviet Union) to 7.2 million (Germany) deaths. And Russia had an army, you shouldn't expect a disorganized group, untrained and lightly armed, to have the same effect.
Considering morale: Germany lost more than 10% of their population in the course of the war. The Waffen SS (it's not fair to compare them to the real SS, but just to get a feel for the scale) lost 35% of their troops.
Looking at these numbers, it appears rather unlikely that armed Jewish resistance would have ended the war, or that it would have caused a mutiny in the SS. Nevertheless - I concur that if it had been possible to organize this resistance, it would have made a difference to the course of the war.
Regardless of whether paintball is combat training or not: Germany has a draft. Combat training is not only readily available to every young male - it is actually compulsory.
Ok, it's certainly possible to get out of military service by serving in other functions, not every position in the army is actually combat-related (though some cooks might belong to the chemical warfare units) driving a tank doesn't do much to prepare you to go on a rampage in a school etc.
However assuming someone wanted to get combat training - it's accessible. And assuming that playing with fake weapons would actually have the potential to corrupt your mind - how would it be possible that training with real weapons didn't? How can you pass a law against "training with fake weapons" and allow anyone to serve their military service? Wouldn't you have to restrict this to the most stable and balanced individuals, strictly screened with psychological tests, and constantly psychologically monitored?
Maybe it's not a novel idea, but I'm very much in favour of this patent. If it holds up, it means that anyone implementing server-side DRM needs to pay a license fee. The more DRM patents there are (and the more general they are) the more difficult it becomes to implement it.
This is exactly what the patent system is designed to accomplish: to prevent innovation in a specific field of technology. I think in this case the field was chosen well.
I think once you tell people something like: "we just tricked you into eating something which is related to X" - people are just wary of you. It doesn't really matter what X was, just that apparently you tried to gross them out and messed with their food.
The electoral college in it's current form is an absurdity. Originally the idea was that the population would chose highly qualified electors, and they would debate among themselves and chose a president. As it is today, nobody knows who the electors are, and their only qualifications are to be somewhere in the party machine. The only criteria they are chosen for - is that they support the popular vote. It's kinda sad to see that the US is unable to rid itself of this outdated institution.
The distinction between people and businesses is artificial and usually does not exist.
Do you change a new-born business' diapers? Do you celebrate it's birthday? Do you give it christmas presents? Do you ask it out on a date? How about polar bears - do they have free speech rights? Or what about houses? There is nothing in the bill of rights which restricts it to humans or even living things. Corporations are artificial, people are natural.
Your correspondent owns his own Corporation -- [is he] a business or a person?
Does he use corporation property to distribute his speech? Does he receive a salary by the corporation to say or do certain things? Does he sign with his company title, or otherwise indicate that he is speaking for the company? Then it's commercial speech. If he has established a corporation, he has established an independent legal entity. This entity separates his private property from company property and usually also company debts from private debts. It is treated in many ways as if it was another person. It is however not a human and does not have human rights.
Are you talking about generic employer/employee relationships, or the specific relationship you (and maybe a handful of other highly qualified and independent people) have with your employer? I applaud your successful efforts to retain your skillset and your independence, but it strikes me that your situation is the exception rather than the rule.
Reminds me of a friend's daughter. Once her mother asked her: "Why do you have to act so childish?" Her answer? "Because I'm a child!"
Measuring a child's behaviour with adult criteria is inappropriate. When you bring up children you need to teach them to become responsible adults, they are not born with these skills and it's normal for them not having them yet. Also the parent-child relationship is nothing like being married - it is not and should not be equal. It's a lot more similar to the relationship of an adult to their employer than their relationship to a spouse.
What strikes me is this: shoes are ancient technology, we've been making and using them for thousands of years. The Roman army equipped their soldiers with sandals, and all the successful civilizations have been wearing shoes. They can't have been all that bad for us. Maybe we are overusing them today, or maybe we are not using the right type of shoes anymore. Which reminds me: my grandfather was a shoemaker - for his generation shoes were still individually fit for each customer, in the countryside children would often still go barefoot (would have been to expensive to make them shoes they'd outgrow quickly).
So while we've been using shoes for a long time - the way we are using them has changed a lot, in just a few generations. Maybe our problem is that our shoes just don't really fit? Or that we are wearing them almost exclusively now?
I mean, think about how much your government cares about anti-Chinese pages.
Or think about how much your government (applies to pretty much any western government) is prepared to bend over backwards for the Chinese government. The Chinese government already feels it has a right to complain and "be offended" by western governments meeting with the Dalai Lama or the right to ask western governments to support their "one China" policy. (What business do western governments have to support China's policy to colonize Taiwan, I wonder?)
As censorship becomes more wide-spread in the west, it's only a matter of time until the Chinese will be "offended" by anti-Chinese websites and request a ban.
Well you need a halfway decent connection to download the game in the first place. The upload is slower, but would it really matter if you get the extra level in a week's time, while the torrent client runs in the background? Some torrents are very fast - that just depends on the number of seeders.
Like you, I was somewhat shocked to discover that some slashdotters not only don't know the Second Law, they dont even know the First Law of Thermodynamics...
I wonder whether it could be interesting to distribute via torrent. Instead of putting the game on a server you'd put the torrent file there and run a private tracker. Those of your customers who are prepared to seed at least twice the download size would get a small compensation - maybe a slightly reduced price, access to a mini game, or an additional level for the game.
Good point. However those are just the installation costs - the nuclear plant will also have operating costs (fuel, labour, waste disposal, maintenance etc).
Sure, but the costs for distributing the stuff online can not be higher than what allofmp3.com was charging. Furthermore their commercial success proves that people are prepared to pay for the convenience of having the data supplied in a convenient location, in good quality and in the formats they desire.
Anyway, kinda a moot point now that people can (and quite apparently do) buy mp3s from Amazon. The same thing would likely work for movies too - but of course the industry can leave the field to the filesharers for a few more years while they waste court time and play around with useless DRM schemes, it's their money.
Well I was able to access the site via google cache, but it's merely a website of opponents of the Dalai Lama. There is nothing there which would help us assess the credibility of this source. Even the "international press" section seems to provide no information in that respect - it's just a collection of reports about protests, letters to the editor etc, but no confirmation of their claims. Can you provide us with something verifiable or backed-up by a credible news agency or the like?
Presidential elections are the wrong place to try and achieve that. If you want an alternative to the two party system then you need to build it from the ground up. Get an organization in place, win local elections, win seats in the house, in the senate, win governorships. Something like voting reform can not be accomplished by an independent president having to work with a Democratic (or Republican) house and senate. People are not willing to trust an unproven organization with the keys to the white house either. That very likely will never change, and it's actually a reasonable position, too.
Should we allow the police to deal drugs and execute people without trial because organized criminals are doing it? The thing is - if you want to be the good guy you have to be... you know... good.
This doesn't solve all the problems, though. Imagine some illegal immigrant's kid is born in the US, goes to school there, graduates, marries (I assume here his parents somehow "fixed" the paperwork problem). Now at age 30 the INS catches up with him determining that he really is a citizen of Mexico and must "return" there. What happens to *his* kid, btw - is it a citizen of the US or of Mexico? (Assuming that his wife is also illegal or descended of illegals.) If the kid is Mexican, for how many generations would this propagate? Could someone be a third generation illegal immigrant?
I like the principle of your proposal, but there needs to be some cut-off point and we shouldn't expect the result to be free from moral dilemmas.
According to this: http://www.babcockranchflorida.com/innovationvideo.aspBy consuming less KW hours than the solar facilities located on the property will produce, Babcock Ranch will become the first city in the world powered by clean, renewable solar energy.
I interpret this to mean: while on average they produce more than they need - they trade their surplus when they have excess production for energy from the grid when they don't have enough. So they'll have a normal grid connection for the trading.
Most newspapers currently buy content from AP and other similar organizations, and repackage it - maybe with some local news added. There is really no need for multiple repackagers anymore because there is no need to deliver physical copies anymore. There is also no need for hundreds of newspaper websites repacking the same content. The most likely effect is concentration. That's painful for those involved, but there is really nothing anyone can do to prevent that.
How would you implement that? As long as government has any task to fulfill at all, they'll have to get money for it (i.e. some form of tax) and they'll have to spend some money on doing it. If you have tax, then you have an incentive to bribe politicians in order to help you evade taxes. If you have spending, then you have an incentive to bribe politicians in order to direct that spending your way. Be it policemen's uniforms, guns for the army, or even fuel for the tanks. Even if that wasn't the case there'd still be incentive to bribe politicians e.g. to have changes in corporate law, contractual law or tax law. The only way you have no opportunity for corruption in government, is to have no government. Of course whoever would take over the tasks government is handling now would then be a target for bribes, too. Companies have a lot of problems with corruption, too.
He could accomplish the same thing by standing on bridges and throwing stones at cars, or shooting out cars' headlights. Things like that have happened before unfortunately, and it's not going to be possible to prevent someone from endangering people in that way. However it's quite possible to find that person and lock him up for murder or attempted murder.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, sure: Hitler wanted the Germans to be peaceful, non-violent people. That makes so much sense.
Considering morale: Germany lost more than 10% of their population in the course of the war. The Waffen SS (it's not fair to compare them to the real SS, but just to get a feel for the scale) lost 35% of their troops.
Looking at these numbers, it appears rather unlikely that armed Jewish resistance would have ended the war, or that it would have caused a mutiny in the SS. Nevertheless - I concur that if it had been possible to organize this resistance, it would have made a difference to the course of the war.
Ok, it's certainly possible to get out of military service by serving in other functions, not every position in the army is actually combat-related (though some cooks might belong to the chemical warfare units) driving a tank doesn't do much to prepare you to go on a rampage in a school etc.
However assuming someone wanted to get combat training - it's accessible. And assuming that playing with fake weapons would actually have the potential to corrupt your mind - how would it be possible that training with real weapons didn't? How can you pass a law against "training with fake weapons" and allow anyone to serve their military service? Wouldn't you have to restrict this to the most stable and balanced individuals, strictly screened with psychological tests, and constantly psychologically monitored?
This is exactly what the patent system is designed to accomplish: to prevent innovation in a specific field of technology. I think in this case the field was chosen well.
I think once you tell people something like: "we just tricked you into eating something which is related to X" - people are just wary of you. It doesn't really matter what X was, just that apparently you tried to gross them out and messed with their food.
The electoral college in it's current form is an absurdity. Originally the idea was that the population would chose highly qualified electors, and they would debate among themselves and chose a president. As it is today, nobody knows who the electors are, and their only qualifications are to be somewhere in the party machine. The only criteria they are chosen for - is that they support the popular vote. It's kinda sad to see that the US is unable to rid itself of this outdated institution.
Do you change a new-born business' diapers? Do you celebrate it's birthday? Do you give it christmas presents? Do you ask it out on a date? How about polar bears - do they have free speech rights? Or what about houses? There is nothing in the bill of rights which restricts it to humans or even living things. Corporations are artificial, people are natural.
Your correspondent owns his own Corporation -- [is he] a business or a person?
Does he use corporation property to distribute his speech? Does he receive a salary by the corporation to say or do certain things? Does he sign with his company title, or otherwise indicate that he is speaking for the company? Then it's commercial speech. If he has established a corporation, he has established an independent legal entity. This entity separates his private property from company property and usually also company debts from private debts. It is treated in many ways as if it was another person. It is however not a human and does not have human rights.
Are you talking about generic employer/employee relationships, or the specific relationship you (and maybe a handful of other highly qualified and independent people) have with your employer? I applaud your successful efforts to retain your skillset and your independence, but it strikes me that your situation is the exception rather than the rule.
Measuring a child's behaviour with adult criteria is inappropriate. When you bring up children you need to teach them to become responsible adults, they are not born with these skills and it's normal for them not having them yet. Also the parent-child relationship is nothing like being married - it is not and should not be equal. It's a lot more similar to the relationship of an adult to their employer than their relationship to a spouse.
So while we've been using shoes for a long time - the way we are using them has changed a lot, in just a few generations. Maybe our problem is that our shoes just don't really fit? Or that we are wearing them almost exclusively now?
Or think about how much your government (applies to pretty much any western government) is prepared to bend over backwards for the Chinese government. The Chinese government already feels it has a right to complain and "be offended" by western governments meeting with the Dalai Lama or the right to ask western governments to support their "one China" policy. (What business do western governments have to support China's policy to colonize Taiwan, I wonder?)
As censorship becomes more wide-spread in the west, it's only a matter of time until the Chinese will be "offended" by anti-Chinese websites and request a ban.
Well you need a halfway decent connection to download the game in the first place. The upload is slower, but would it really matter if you get the extra level in a week's time, while the torrent client runs in the background? Some torrents are very fast - that just depends on the number of seeders.
Michael Flanders has a good explanation here.
I wonder whether it could be interesting to distribute via torrent. Instead of putting the game on a server you'd put the torrent file there and run a private tracker. Those of your customers who are prepared to seed at least twice the download size would get a small compensation - maybe a slightly reduced price, access to a mini game, or an additional level for the game.
Good point. However those are just the installation costs - the nuclear plant will also have operating costs (fuel, labour, waste disposal, maintenance etc).
Anyway, kinda a moot point now that people can (and quite apparently do) buy mp3s from Amazon. The same thing would likely work for movies too - but of course the industry can leave the field to the filesharers for a few more years while they waste court time and play around with useless DRM schemes, it's their money.
Well I was able to access the site via google cache, but it's merely a website of opponents of the Dalai Lama. There is nothing there which would help us assess the credibility of this source. Even the "international press" section seems to provide no information in that respect - it's just a collection of reports about protests, letters to the editor etc, but no confirmation of their claims. Can you provide us with something verifiable or backed-up by a credible news agency or the like?
Presidential elections are the wrong place to try and achieve that. If you want an alternative to the two party system then you need to build it from the ground up. Get an organization in place, win local elections, win seats in the house, in the senate, win governorships. Something like voting reform can not be accomplished by an independent president having to work with a Democratic (or Republican) house and senate. People are not willing to trust an unproven organization with the keys to the white house either. That very likely will never change, and it's actually a reasonable position, too.
Should we allow the police to deal drugs and execute people without trial because organized criminals are doing it? The thing is - if you want to be the good guy you have to be ... you know ... good.
I like the principle of your proposal, but there needs to be some cut-off point and we shouldn't expect the result to be free from moral dilemmas.
I interpret this to mean: while on average they produce more than they need - they trade their surplus when they have excess production for energy from the grid when they don't have enough. So they'll have a normal grid connection for the trading.
Most newspapers currently buy content from AP and other similar organizations, and repackage it - maybe with some local news added. There is really no need for multiple repackagers anymore because there is no need to deliver physical copies anymore. There is also no need for hundreds of newspaper websites repacking the same content. The most likely effect is concentration. That's painful for those involved, but there is really nothing anyone can do to prevent that.
How would you implement that? As long as government has any task to fulfill at all, they'll have to get money for it (i.e. some form of tax) and they'll have to spend some money on doing it. If you have tax, then you have an incentive to bribe politicians in order to help you evade taxes. If you have spending, then you have an incentive to bribe politicians in order to direct that spending your way. Be it policemen's uniforms, guns for the army, or even fuel for the tanks. Even if that wasn't the case there'd still be incentive to bribe politicians e.g. to have changes in corporate law, contractual law or tax law. The only way you have no opportunity for corruption in government, is to have no government. Of course whoever would take over the tasks government is handling now would then be a target for bribes, too. Companies have a lot of problems with corruption, too.
GM claims they've been working on this for 18 months.
He could accomplish the same thing by standing on bridges and throwing stones at cars, or shooting out cars' headlights. Things like that have happened before unfortunately, and it's not going to be possible to prevent someone from endangering people in that way. However it's quite possible to find that person and lock him up for murder or attempted murder.