And how would you propose to disallow the radical left from running a country, when that country is a democracy and the people vote for it?
By not voting for the assholes — and by persecuting them wherever they appear with the same vigor as the other brand of collectivists is being persecuted already.
Plus you fail to acknowledge the outside provocateurs.
What sort of "provcateurs" can explain the quadrupling of murder rate there since 1998? And the supermarket shelves, which aren't just underwhelming, but outright empty?
Apartments are practically divorced from price competition
They aren't a good example, because they are the most massively-regulated thing out there (in the large illiberal cities).
they get more expensive when more middle class move to an area
That's perfectly natural — the price-rise is easily explained by the rise in "opportunity cost". The rental unit's continued existence as a rental needs to compete with the possibility of selling it for a nice lump sum and investing the money elsewhere.
Who still needs to eat? The billionaire owners of Uber?
If they did not need or want to make money — commonly referred to as "needing to eat" in business vernacular — they would've retired to a sunny place long ago.
Fortunately, unlike with taxis, we don't need to decide for them — they have ample motivation to keep fighting for our wallets, hearts and minds or else the competition will come in and eat their lunch. Econ 101.
They are only concerned with their own safety, and not of the safety of the public.
Actually, I've noticed the exact opposite... Maybe, we are talking of different things — use your own account and explain, if you wish to continue the conversation.
Legally they are not bound to protect anyone.
I was not talking about legalities — ethics, mostly.
Brown called the app a 'police stalker,' and said being able to identify where officers were located could put them at personal risk.
Huh?
Police are (or supposed to be) our first line of defense against criminals and other miscreants. Having eaten our bread and taken our shilling, they should be proud of drawing the fire on themselves to protect their masters (that's the rest of the citizenry), not whine the risks...
I tend to think, the whining is done by the pigs among them. The actual officers are fine with it. Right?
I wonder how lopsided the drone / antidrone equation really is.
According to this article, Western military drones cost $200K apiece (ballpark — I'm sure, the price-range is wide). Russian ones are, probably, half that. Ukrainians are making their own at $60K.
Whatever it is, the cost of a single military drone is tens of thousands.
Now, a hand-held Stinger — capable of bringing down a real aircraft with a pilot fighting for his life — is quoted on Wikipedia costing $38K (though it is unclear, which year dollars those are). That's decidedly less than a drone already.
Considering that a) the anti-drone missiles don't need to be as powerful and strong as Stingers; b) things made in Ukraine (or Russia for that matter) tend to cost a lot less, a usable missile can, probably, be produced for "only" several thousand dollars apiece.
But even if the US made them — and gave to Ukraine — it would still be good bang for the buck, achieving a valuable military objective without giving Russia too much to protest about, because this new weapon would be "non-lethal".
While they may not officially take orders from their superior, the reality is that they do.
Of course! And that's a perfectly normal — as long as the country remains at peace with itself.
Should another civil conflict unravel, however, these arsenals distributed nation-wide and under control of local authorities (each with his own agenda and loyalties) will be part of a problem for any usurper of central power, not part of his solution.
Ah, but there is. On this very board we went from the outrage at the government's unwarranted peeking (yet another manifestation of the already much-discussed spying on citizens) to defending the practice against the crazy Libertarians like myself, who laugh and sneer at the idea, that "taxes are good".
your tenuous grasp of logic
It is not about me, dearest. Shove your ad hominems up, where they'll do more good — such for treating your hemorrhoids.
And 99% of hamas missiles fall down to some farm field, wilderness, and do not do any damage at all.
A bold-faced lie — by an anonymous asshole, no less. The statistics of Iron Dome's effectiveness are being discussed all over the net. The site of consensus cites the following numbers:
In November 2012, during Operation Pillar of Defense, the Iron Dome's effectiveness was estimated by Israeli officials at between 75 and 95 percent. According to Israeli officials, of the approximately 1,000 missiles and rockets fired into Israel by Hamas from the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense up to 17 November 2012, Iron Dome identified two thirds as not posing a threat and intercepted 90 percent of the remaining 300. During this period the only Israeli casualties were three individuals killed in missile attacks after a malfunction of the Iron Dome system.
So, 2/3rds — not 99% — were deemed not worth intercepting. 270 of the remaining 300 were intercepted. If the thirty rockets, that did get through managed to kill 3 Israelis between them, it is fair to extrapolate, that — without the system in place — the 30 would've been killed.
But good at one thing - defence industry pork money.
Yeah, yeah. Unable to defeat Israel on the battlefields of real wars, the whining Arab pussies have switched to terrorism and propaganda. Trying to convince American taxpayers, their monetary help to Israel is being wasted, is part of the latter.
The problem with fighting $500 drones with $100,000 missiles
You got the equation wrong. Your numbers may be in the ballpark for the IDF vs. Arabs situation — where the cheap but fast-traveling unguided missiles require expensive and sophisticated interception.
The military drones cost a lot more than $500 — they require avionics, reliable remote control, cameras with decent optics, etc. They are also flying a lot slower and so can be intercepted much easier — by a much cheaper missile. Oh, and you can launch many of such missiles at a single drone with relative impunity, whereas Iron Dome must carefully consider, where the fragments will fall in both cases of successful and failed interception.
Ukrainian troops fighting in the East of the country suffer a great deal from the separatists' Russia-provided drones — those transmit signals to Russian artillery right across the border, which then targets Ukrainians with devastating precision. If they could kick those drones out of the sky, life would become much easier.
It would seem, any counter-measure America can help with could be field-tested right away — all without hurting a single human enemy.
How to do it? I used to think, small rockets could be used. Miniaturized copies of the early SAMs, created by the long declassified designs — current generation of drones aren't really made for evading such a thing...
police chiefs and mayors take their orders from governors
No, they don't. There is no chain-of-command in civil government of different levels (such as between state governors and mayors). Mayors are locally elected, not appointed by governors — their authority is derived from the voters. As is the Governors' and the President's too.
There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.
I am well aware of — and generally agree with — the sentiment, but, in my opinion, the current concerns are misplaced.
Until these civilian police are also placed under the same command as the military, the police — along with their advanced weapons — will remain a counterbalance against some future Hugo Chavez...
Yes, the police agencies discussed in TFA are, largely, federal — and thus already under the Commander in Chief's authority. But the local police departments, that are "militarized" nationwide are not.
Let's see you track me when the phone cannot transmit or receive
Let's see you use it as a navigation device in such a state... Google, at least, gives you some value in exchange for your privacy — the navigation instructions you get from Google Maps will consider the actual current driving conditions (as much as Google knows them, of course). To get that information, you must tell Google, where you are — and where you are going...
the issue is that the police in this country have shown that they cannot be trusted
No police anywhere in the world can be "trusted" to stick to legal methods in doing their jobs.
Such is their job:
they must have severe powers over us to do it at all;
those powers often go into their heads — and they are hardly the only government employees, who are convinced, they "know better" than their subjects ever will;
they deal with the worst among us quite often (shielding the rest of us from it), which further shapes their opinions and default course of actions.
If anything, American police are, probably, well above your average bribe-taking empty uniform...
I didn't realize we took the worst reported use as the standard use.
You must be new here...
And even then, when used with a warrant, I see this as preferable to a bunch of cops rounding corners, getting scared and shooting.
The problem, of course, is not the warranted use of such devices — it is the routine unwarranted (as in "without a warrant") usage, which gives me creeps.
But nice to see Illiberals confounded by the dilemma of "taxes are good" vs. "government surveillance is bad"...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if it has been a problem for 500 years, please quadrupling of the homicide rate in the country since 1998. And the 23-fold increase in kidnappings over the same period... Are you going to blame the CIA for it?
Chile's Pinochet, upon stepping down (show me one Left-dictator to have done that!), has left his country as the top Latin American economy. And their homicide-rate today is 3.7 per 100K people — compare that to Venezuela's 67!
By not voting for the assholes — and by persecuting them wherever they appear with the same vigor as the other brand of collectivists is being persecuted already.
And with Eastasia...
What sort of "provcateurs" can explain the quadrupling of murder rate there since 1998? And the supermarket shelves, which aren't just underwhelming, but outright empty?
What can possibly go wrong?
Or thanks to the valiant efforts to fight it?
They aren't a good example, because they are the most massively-regulated thing out there (in the large illiberal cities).
That's perfectly natural — the price-rise is easily explained by the rise in "opportunity cost". The rental unit's continued existence as a rental needs to compete with the possibility of selling it for a nice lump sum and investing the money elsewhere.
If they did not need or want to make money — commonly referred to as "needing to eat" in business vernacular — they would've retired to a sunny place long ago.
Fortunately, unlike with taxis, we don't need to decide for them — they have ample motivation to keep fighting for our wallets, hearts and minds or else the competition will come in and eat their lunch. Econ 101.
Actually, I've noticed the exact opposite... Maybe, we are talking of different things — use your own account and explain, if you wish to continue the conversation.
I was not talking about legalities — ethics, mostly.
Huh?
Police are (or supposed to be) our first line of defense against criminals and other miscreants. Having eaten our bread and taken our shilling, they should be proud of drawing the fire on themselves to protect their masters (that's the rest of the citizenry), not whine the risks...
I tend to think, the whining is done by the pigs among them. The actual officers are fine with it. Right?
So, you offer a single anecdote — whatever its merits — to back up the claim that started with "In most cases ...".
I've seen more cases of well-cleaned private parking lots next to snow-boggled public streets than that.
According to this article, Western military drones cost $200K apiece (ballpark — I'm sure, the price-range is wide). Russian ones are, probably, half that. Ukrainians are making their own at $60K.
Whatever it is, the cost of a single military drone is tens of thousands.
Now, a hand-held Stinger — capable of bringing down a real aircraft with a pilot fighting for his life — is quoted on Wikipedia costing $38K (though it is unclear, which year dollars those are). That's decidedly less than a drone already.
Considering that a) the anti-drone missiles don't need to be as powerful and strong as Stingers; b) things made in Ukraine (or Russia for that matter) tend to cost a lot less, a usable missile can, probably, be produced for "only" several thousand dollars apiece.
But even if the US made them — and gave to Ukraine — it would still be good bang for the buck, achieving a valuable military objective without giving Russia too much to protest about, because this new weapon would be "non-lethal".
Of course! And that's a perfectly normal — as long as the country remains at peace with itself.
Should another civil conflict unravel, however, these arsenals distributed nation-wide and under control of local authorities (each with his own agenda and loyalties) will be part of a problem for any usurper of central power, not part of his solution.
Ah, but there is. On this very board we went from the outrage at the government's unwarranted peeking (yet another manifestation of the already much-discussed spying on citizens) to defending the practice against the crazy Libertarians like myself, who laugh and sneer at the idea, that "taxes are good".
It is not about me, dearest. Shove your ad hominems up, where they'll do more good — such for treating your hemorrhoids.
A bold-faced lie — by an anonymous asshole, no less. The statistics of Iron Dome's effectiveness are being discussed all over the net. The site of consensus cites the following numbers:
So, 2/3rds — not 99% — were deemed not worth intercepting. 270 of the remaining 300 were intercepted. If the thirty rockets, that did get through managed to kill 3 Israelis between them, it is fair to extrapolate, that — without the system in place — the 30 would've been killed.
Yeah, yeah. Unable to defeat Israel on the battlefields of real wars, the whining Arab pussies have switched to terrorism and propaganda. Trying to convince American taxpayers, their monetary help to Israel is being wasted, is part of the latter.
You got the equation wrong. Your numbers may be in the ballpark for the IDF vs. Arabs situation — where the cheap but fast-traveling unguided missiles require expensive and sophisticated interception.
The military drones cost a lot more than $500 — they require avionics, reliable remote control, cameras with decent optics, etc. They are also flying a lot slower and so can be intercepted much easier — by a much cheaper missile. Oh, and you can launch many of such missiles at a single drone with relative impunity, whereas Iron Dome must carefully consider, where the fragments will fall in both cases of successful and failed interception.
Ukrainian troops fighting in the East of the country suffer a great deal from the separatists' Russia-provided drones — those transmit signals to Russian artillery right across the border, which then targets Ukrainians with devastating precision. If they could kick those drones out of the sky, life would become much easier.
It would seem, any counter-measure America can help with could be field-tested right away — all without hurting a single human enemy.
How to do it? I used to think, small rockets could be used. Miniaturized copies of the early SAMs, created by the long declassified designs — current generation of drones aren't really made for evading such a thing...
No, they don't. There is no chain-of-command in civil government of different levels (such as between state governors and mayors). Mayors are locally elected, not appointed by governors — their authority is derived from the voters. As is the Governors' and the President's too.
Actually, President is Commander in Chief of all National Guard.
Nope, they do not. What a silly idea! Do you really need an immigrant to point out these glaring errors in your civics education?!
You mean, a "Worker's Revolution" made it likely to become USSR's 16th republic — fixed that for you.
Conspiracy theory nonsense.
I am well aware of — and generally agree with — the sentiment, but, in my opinion, the current concerns are misplaced.
Until these civilian police are also placed under the same command as the military, the police — along with their advanced weapons — will remain a counterbalance against some future Hugo Chavez...
Yes, the police agencies discussed in TFA are, largely, federal — and thus already under the Commander in Chief's authority. But the local police departments, that are "militarized" nationwide are not.
Let's see you use it as a navigation device in such a state... Google, at least, gives you some value in exchange for your privacy — the navigation instructions you get from Google Maps will consider the actual current driving conditions (as much as Google knows them, of course). To get that information, you must tell Google, where you are — and where you are going...
Google Maps — on every Android phone, and on many iPhones as well. If you use it — and many people do — here is, what Google knows about where you've been.
No police anywhere in the world can be "trusted" to stick to legal methods in doing their jobs.
Such is their job:
If anything, American police are, probably, well above your average bribe-taking empty uniform...
You must be new here...
The problem, of course, is not the warranted use of such devices — it is the routine unwarranted (as in "without a warrant") usage, which gives me creeps.
But nice to see Illiberals confounded by the dilemma of "taxes are good" vs. "government surveillance is bad"...
Is not it great, how much civilization you can buy with your taxes today?
Yes, if that ever happens, a corporation's bottom line will be affected, and it (and others) will begin fighting it.
But a principled stand? Don't count on it...