By "open door" I wasn't referring to immigration. I meant open the door to economic advancement.
The Muslim countries that the US is currently sanctioning: Iran, Syria, Sudan, Lebanon, and Somalia. (that I know of). Economically hurting those countries just servers to sustain pockets of radicalism which hurts surrounding countries trying to modernize themselves. Take Jordan for instance.
I just think that restricting trade in general only hurts the general population, prevents a free exchange of information, and does nothing to stop that countries leaders from pursuing dangerous/immoral paths (genocide, nukes, etc...).
"That sounds all well and good, but those societies need to do that for themselves"
I think they'd have a much better chance of doing it themselves if we opened their country to the world's free'ish trade.
No, of course you can't force a society to change, but you can open a door that allows that society, one individual at a time, to change.
Read this section on the rise of capitalism creating a new "public sphere" of influence, which in turn created a demand for the free flow of trade and information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment#Social_and_cultural_interpretation
How long have we had trade barriers erected with the majority of Middle Eastern countries? How long have we been actively involved in government overthrows and pressuring oil rich countries into unfavorable trade positions? A long time.
If we just would allow capitalism to do its work, individuals would start making money, opening businesses, trading, and with that comes an exchange of ideas, and a free flow of information, which is vital for any sort of "enlightenment".
Why does one crazy lawyer make the entire Islamic world guilty? I'm working next to a Muslim sys admin who thinks the lawyer is nuts, does that balance things back out?
Or is it two sys admins for one lawyer?:D
Granted, the Islamic world as a whole appears to have more radicals than the Christian world as a whole, but that is easily attributed to economics rather than inherent in the religion itself.
Christianity had/has many factions that have warred in the past. Catholics and Protestants for example.
The enlightenment was allowed to happen primarily because of the ever increasing wealth of the individual and society as a whole. If Europe had few resources, dry desert climates unsuitable to growing crops, little to no access to shipping, the enlightenment would not have happened.
Look around the world. The more economically depressed a society is, the more conservative/religious they become. It is a defense mechanism against hopelessness.
If we want Islam to go through a reformation/enlightenment, we need to bolster the economies of those countries first. People often point to Saudi Arabia as a counter-example that economy is everything in moderating belief, but to me, all that points to is that a country surrounded by conservative/radical Islamic countries, has a hard time becoming moderate on its own.
There already exists tons of plans on the internet for making simple home wind generators. Many of them use very cheap parts, such as old DC tape drive motors, or washing machine motors, do it yourself blades by cutting a pvc pipe lengthwise in a spiral, etc...
http://www.thebackshed.com/windmill/FPRewire.asp has some good tips on using the Fisher Paykel washing machine motors as your generator. You can get those cheap for 40-50 bucks on ebay. Or even cheaper if you drive around town and see if a washing machine repair place will sell you an old one.
If your more ambitious, and want to create a generator by hand, from magnets and coils of wire, you can get a ton more power. 1000watt http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-1000-watt-wind-turbine/
But none wind generator is going to be very efficient unless it is mounted pretty high, 25+ feet at least. And that isn't often feasible in cities. And as others have pointed out, it is much more efficient to have huge wind machines, as the efficiency goes up greatly with size. Thats why commercial companies favor fewer massive ones vs a lot of smaller ones. http://blog.oregonlive.com/news_impact/2009/03/wind3.JPG
In and around the windy Columbia Gorge in Washington/Oregon, you can see those huge white wind generators in farmers fields everywhere. It looks pretty cool:)
Many from resources never goes to a Government. It will go to whatever corporation is leased the rights to mine it.
And any corporation that is big enough/well connected enough to work over there is going to be multinational, and have its headquarters in some place in the bahamas to avoid paying much tax anyways.
It isn't that its a benefit to have foreign corps come in and give you taxes, it is that the ratio of return is horrible.
1 trillion in possible metals, and I bet Afg. sees less than 50 billion in taxes. And you know that the corporation isn't going to be paying a fair wage.
Afg. would be much better off if they asked for loans to do it themselves, hiring consultants, and actually building up a working class.
Hopefully the US can help that process while they are there providing some sort of stabilizing effect. I doubt it...but one can hope.
You're living in an era that has already benefited from past labor union work. I assume you enjoy weekends and 8 hour days right? Thank unions.
A business constantly pushes for more profit, and if left uncheck, say goodbye to weekends, 8 hour days, and good wages. Unions are the only source pushing back.
Do unions sometimes make unreasonable requests and push back too hard? Of course. But without their existence, we'd be back to 10-12-14 hour days, no weekends, and slave wages.
They should never ever change even the OS without user interaction and consent. People running windows servers or huge desktop install bases have to test updates before applying them in a business setting.
. If an icon changes or a button gets moved, they don't try to intuit where it might have gone or look in menus that sound like they're related to the function they're looking for. Instead they react as if their world has been turned upside down, and they just give up and call for help.
Only because it means that they can sit around doing nothing for awhile.
Some may, but they would be the minority. Most people do truly get confused when things change. And even minor changes can have larger than expected impacts.
For instance, I know a person that works at one of the big search engines. They mentioned that some behind the scenes changes to the main start page had inadvertently moved the search box by 1 pixel. Visibility, a user would not have noticed, but for some reason, ad revenue dropped by a few million dollars.
Moving the search box back 1 pixel, the revenue came back.
People are by natural habitual creatures, who easily get locked into repetitive tasks. These tasks are start being performed on autopilot. A person creating a painting, or writing a letter, or any other task, isn't focusing on the tools used to complete the task, they are focusing on what they are creating.
Change the tools even slightly, and it can be very confusing. And try as IT folks might, the average person is not going to change. Not ever. The sooner you learn this, the easier it becomes to work in any IT related field.
They should be using 100% of their profit to clean this up imo. And after thats done, they should be sued in civil court for the economic loss to the gulf, hopefully large enough that the company has to sell off assets. You know, actually loose some real value, not just illusionary stock market losses.
And then after investigation, whoever (whomever) was responsible for cutting corners, like pre drilling relief wells, acoustic cut off switches like other countries require, etc.. should be jailed for cutting those corners, including charges of manslaughter for the 11 dead workers.
Did the Feds have 5 million feet of boom sitting in a warehouse?
It was my understanding, from listening to an NPR story, that the companies that make booms are working overtime 24/7 to try to make enough boom to meet demand caused by the spill.
Your first paragraph was great. The rest of it was complete bullshit.
BP makes 24 billion "real" dollars per year. The stock drop/marketing cap is illusionary money. No workers are going to be losing their jobs because of a stock drop. The CEO might though.
BP hasn't paid out any real damage money at all yet. Small checks to people who file a claim. That isn't even remotely approaching punishment, nor is it setting things right. At most, you could consider it a bare minimum act that at least is in the realm of decency.
What needs to happen, is actually determine who is directly at fault, and that person or people need to go to jail. And concurrent with that, civil lawyers should be suing for damages (they already are, 100's of them).
If I, as a private person, intentionally or accidently dumped tons of waste into a river, I'd be in jail, and fined. Just because its a corporation doesn't mean it gets to avoid any culpability.
"It will be the worst human rights atrocity in recorded history but I'm damned if I see a better solution"
Help their economies until they are ravenous consumers and become pacified by fast food and stupid TV shows?
The religion of Islam isn't driving the bad behavior, it is used as the justification for it. The driving factors are the same factors that have driven radical "conservative" behavior in all societies in all times: economy, natural resources, education, cultural tradition, isolation and or suppression, etc...
Just watch the (albeit) slow transformation of China as it gets hooked on the flow of money and consumerism. China will be 'westernized' over time, purely due to economic incentive. On the other side, look at the Muslim community inside a wealthy, opportunity rich country, like the US. The Muslims there are very moderate, educated, and liberal.
But it isn't the religion. The strictness/backwardness of those countries is just being expressed in terms of religion.
It is primarily an education, economic, and historical suppression/isolation issue.
If you look at a modern Islamic state, that is relatively well off, and has worked to retain relations with other western states, you see a much more modern/lenient version of Islam being practice. Turkey for example.
Poverty, low education, continual isolation, etc.. creates a vicious feedback loop that keeps populations clinging to the baser ideas of humanity.
If the west really wanted to modernize and change the more barbaric Islamic states, they would repair relations, help build up infrastructure and get their economies going, and then 'westernize' those countries via the dependence on 'free trade'.
It takes time, but it works. Look at China now compared to before it form relationships and trade agreements with the west.
And I just heard this morning that China has officially disallowed statements obtained via torture from being used as evidence in court. Baby steps, but they are getting there.
"God of the gaps" results when religious folks attempt to answer questions about the natural world with their religion.
Religion can exist alongside science just fine, so long as it only addresses moral or spiritual issues. "What is my purpose in life?" "What does it mean to be a good person?" "What are the consequences of being a bad person?", etc..
And of course realizing that all religious scripture/writings are allegories, fables, very old interpretations, etc... and should not in any way be taken literally.
"and even among the third who are atheists, many consider themselves 'spiritual.'"
What does the word "even" mean in this sentence? Spirituality is a part of the human psyche. Although we often connect the two, spirituality has little to do with faith. In fact, science is a great source of awe and wonder, feelings that we might call "spiritual" feelings.
"even" means that typically an Atheist would not associate feelings of wonder or awe with a spiritual experience. And that many people who do not subscribe to a particular religion, but consider themselves Spiritual, would say that spirituality is not just a phenomenon produced from the human psyche, but is an observed effect of something beyond oneself.
For example, someone meditates every day and experiences an extreme calm state, that leads to clear creative thought. This person attributes the gaining of these insightful thoughts by a connection with what they guess is some collective conscious http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_consciousness I would call that a spiritual person.
Most Atheists I know would instead attribute gaining clear creative thoughts via meditation, just a biologically explainable effect, caused by exercising and focusing the mind.
Or, you know, instead of taking thousands of people to court, they could recognize that easy DRM free downloads are being demanded and attempt to offer a supply to meet that demand.
What would you suggest they do to monetize their films?
By creating a supply to meet the demand of easily downloadable movies and TV shows in an open format of your choice?
Netflix and iTunes are somewhat OK, but they are DRM laden (can't being a show I bought over to a friends house to watch), not high quality, and are very incomplete libraries.
The first company that manages to wrangle the studios into allowing all their content to be downloaded is going to make a killing in profit. You could even start prices higher and age them down. But it has to be better than bittorrent to work, and that means: 1. No DRM. 2. High Quality 3. Prices that start at DVD prices, and then degrade to say, 5-10 bucks after a few weeks. 4. Fast downloads. 5. Very complete library of content. 6. No region coding/staggered releases.
Take this for instance. I decided that I wanted to start watching the TV show 24. The only method available to me was buying the discs. http://www.amazon.com/24-Season-One-Kiefer-Sutherland/dp/B000NDEXK2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1275176990&sr=8-1
33 dollars for the first season, and its was released in 2001 ! Nine years old, and still full price. Plus the annoyance of of ordering and waiting a week for it to show up. No way to preview it either.
I finally broke down and bought the first season from iTunes (was really bored one night). And yet despite paying full price for it, and legally owning it, I can't watch it at a friends house due to DRM.
The studios are missing out on a huge number of sales by sticking to their old model of artificial scarcity.
A highly accurate show, if the reviews are correct.
But sure, lets ignore the show and just use some logic. I'll also assume that you can get a warrant in 2 hours, and I'll also assume that it is trivial to isolate 1 pre-paid cell phone in an inner city when there are probably 100's in use 24 hours a day per tower.
Lets assume I'm a drug dealer. Wouldn't it make sense to have 10 prepaid phones on me at all times? Each used at random for a different purpose? Now which one are you going to get a warrant for?
Even if that show is inaccurate, it is a really good show and you should watch it:) The cleverness of the drug dealers was pretty amazing.
At any rate, I agree that requiring ID is dumb. It won't solve anything. But I still believe the prepaids are harder for law enforcement to deal with than regular cell phones.
Just googling prepaid drugs crime etc.. leads to dozens of articles of law enforcement complaining about them. So probably most police offices don't have the equipment or training or knowledge to easy isolate 1 prepaid (which I still contend isn't easy, but I'll push that aside for the sake of argument).
As was mentioned above, if you watch the show "The Wire", you can clearly see why pre-paids are a problem for law enforcement. Yes they can get warrants, but usually not in time. The criminals were switching out pre-paids weekly and sometimes daily. And I'm not sure if this was just the show, or if it is true, but the cops had to witness the suspect doing something likely not legal, with that specific phone, and then request a tap on just that phone.
So they had to know A) where the phone was bought to get the serial/ID number B) watch is used in a crime/suspected crime, and C) then get a warrant. By that time, it was a new phone.
Don't get me wrong, this proposed solution of requiring ID isn't going to catch many criminals, but pre-paids are for sure a problem for law enforcement.
Personally, I'd rather see all drugs legal, taxed, and the strength regulated, with all the tax money from them going to fund rehabs and education about drugs.
It has been variable lately. I think if you view an article early, it seems to be modded to support libertarian views, but if you view the thread later, it is supporting more balanced views.
Probably a more accurate reflection of reality. "Reality has a well known liberal bias".
And look up the definition of socialism. It gets tossed around way to often as the opposite of liberal, or the opposite of progressive.
Every wonder why Libertarian and Liberal share the same root word?
Secondly, if dreams are like scenarios that our brain plays out to practice dealing with threats, does that mean that those who immerse themselves in worlds of fantasy in science fiction entertainment (either in the form of television, movies, or games) to the point that they seep into their dreams end up training their brain to practice running through scenarios that are in reality a waste of the brain's time to consider?
Well... a waste up until the zombie apocalypse actually occurs, of course.
My initial guess would be no, they are not a waste of time. I used to play Everquest quite a lot, and I did have dreams about it. However, what I noticed was that the dreams still involved practical problem solving, or basic fear/survival dreams, or leadership dreams, etc..
Despite the content being fantasy, the human/human interactions and social cooperation elements were based on what you'd find in other situations in the real world.
The brain doesn't really work on generating exact solutions for all probably future encounters. Moreso, it is a pattern generator. And those patterns can be applied to a variety of situations.
Slashdot Mirror
By "open door" I wasn't referring to immigration. I meant open the door to economic advancement.
The Muslim countries that the US is currently sanctioning: Iran, Syria, Sudan, Lebanon, and Somalia. (that I know of). Economically hurting those countries just servers to sustain pockets of radicalism which hurts surrounding countries trying to modernize themselves. Take Jordan for instance.
I just think that restricting trade in general only hurts the general population, prevents a free exchange of information, and does nothing to stop that countries leaders from pursuing dangerous/immoral paths (genocide, nukes, etc...).
"That sounds all well and good, but those societies need to do that for themselves"
I think they'd have a much better chance of doing it themselves if we opened their country to the world's free'ish trade.
No, of course you can't force a society to change, but you can open a door that allows that society, one individual at a time, to change.
Read this section on the rise of capitalism creating a new "public sphere" of influence, which in turn created a demand for the free flow of trade and information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment#Social_and_cultural_interpretation
How long have we had trade barriers erected with the majority of Middle Eastern countries? How long have we been actively involved in government overthrows and pressuring oil rich countries into unfavorable trade positions? A long time.
If we just would allow capitalism to do its work, individuals would start making money, opening businesses, trading, and with that comes an exchange of ideas, and a free flow of information, which is vital for any sort of "enlightenment".
Why does one crazy lawyer make the entire Islamic world guilty? I'm working next to a Muslim sys admin who thinks the lawyer is nuts, does that balance things back out?
Or is it two sys admins for one lawyer? :D
Granted, the Islamic world as a whole appears to have more radicals than the Christian world as a whole, but that is easily attributed to economics rather than inherent in the religion itself.
Christianity had/has many factions that have warred in the past. Catholics and Protestants for example.
The enlightenment was allowed to happen primarily because of the ever increasing wealth of the individual and society as a whole. If Europe had few resources, dry desert climates unsuitable to growing crops, little to no access to shipping, the enlightenment would not have happened.
Look around the world. The more economically depressed a society is, the more conservative/religious they become. It is a defense mechanism against hopelessness.
If we want Islam to go through a reformation/enlightenment, we need to bolster the economies of those countries first. People often point to Saudi Arabia as a counter-example that economy is everything in moderating belief, but to me, all that points to is that a country surrounded by conservative/radical Islamic countries, has a hard time becoming moderate on its own.
There already exists tons of plans on the internet for making simple home wind generators. Many of them use very cheap parts, such as old DC tape drive motors, or washing machine motors, do it yourself blades by cutting a pvc pipe lengthwise in a spiral, etc...
http://www.thebackshed.com/windmill/FPRewire.asp has some good tips on using the Fisher Paykel washing machine motors as your generator. You can get those cheap for 40-50 bucks on ebay. Or even cheaper if you drive around town and see if a washing machine repair place will sell you an old one.
If your more ambitious, and want to create a generator by hand, from magnets and coils of wire, you can get a ton more power. 1000watt http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-1000-watt-wind-turbine/
But none wind generator is going to be very efficient unless it is mounted pretty high, 25+ feet at least. And that isn't often feasible in cities. And as others have pointed out, it is much more efficient to have huge wind machines, as the efficiency goes up greatly with size. Thats why commercial companies favor fewer massive ones vs a lot of smaller ones. http://blog.oregonlive.com/news_impact/2009/03/wind3.JPG
In and around the windy Columbia Gorge in Washington/Oregon, you can see those huge white wind generators in farmers fields everywhere. It looks pretty cool:)
Many from resources never goes to a Government. It will go to whatever corporation is leased the rights to mine it.
And any corporation that is big enough/well connected enough to work over there is going to be multinational, and have its headquarters in some place in the bahamas to avoid paying much tax anyways.
It isn't that its a benefit to have foreign corps come in and give you taxes, it is that the ratio of return is horrible.
1 trillion in possible metals, and I bet Afg. sees less than 50 billion in taxes. And you know that the corporation isn't going to be paying a fair wage.
Afg. would be much better off if they asked for loans to do it themselves, hiring consultants, and actually building up a working class.
Hopefully the US can help that process while they are there providing some sort of stabilizing effect. I doubt it...but one can hope.
You're living in an era that has already benefited from past labor union work. I assume you enjoy weekends and 8 hour days right? Thank unions.
A business constantly pushes for more profit, and if left uncheck, say goodbye to weekends, 8 hour days, and good wages. Unions are the only source pushing back.
Do unions sometimes make unreasonable requests and push back too hard? Of course. But without their existence, we'd be back to 10-12-14 hour days, no weekends, and slave wages.
They should never ever change even the OS without user interaction and consent. People running windows servers or huge desktop install bases have to test updates before applying them in a business setting.
Except Android doesn't earn google any money. All they have are ad revenues.
. If an icon changes or a button gets moved, they don't try to intuit where it might have gone or look in menus that sound like they're related to the function they're looking for. Instead they react as if their world has been turned upside down, and they just give up and call for help.
Only because it means that they can sit around doing nothing for awhile.
Some may, but they would be the minority. Most people do truly get confused when things change. And even minor changes can have larger than expected impacts.
For instance, I know a person that works at one of the big search engines. They mentioned that some behind the scenes changes to the main start page had inadvertently moved the search box by 1 pixel. Visibility, a user would not have noticed, but for some reason, ad revenue dropped by a few million dollars.
Moving the search box back 1 pixel, the revenue came back.
People are by natural habitual creatures, who easily get locked into repetitive tasks. These tasks are start being performed on autopilot. A person creating a painting, or writing a letter, or any other task, isn't focusing on the tools used to complete the task, they are focusing on what they are creating.
Change the tools even slightly, and it can be very confusing. And try as IT folks might, the average person is not going to change. Not ever. The sooner you learn this, the easier it becomes to work in any IT related field.
They should be using 100% of their profit to clean this up imo. And after thats done, they should be sued in civil court for the economic loss to the gulf, hopefully large enough that the company has to sell off assets. You know, actually loose some real value, not just illusionary stock market losses.
And then after investigation, whoever (whomever) was responsible for cutting corners, like pre drilling relief wells, acoustic cut off switches like other countries require, etc.. should be jailed for cutting those corners, including charges of manslaughter for the 11 dead workers.
Did the Feds have 5 million feet of boom sitting in a warehouse?
It was my understanding, from listening to an NPR story, that the companies that make booms are working overtime 24/7 to try to make enough boom to meet demand caused by the spill.
Your first paragraph was great. The rest of it was complete bullshit.
BP makes 24 billion "real" dollars per year. The stock drop/marketing cap is illusionary money. No workers are going to be losing their jobs because of a stock drop. The CEO might though.
BP hasn't paid out any real damage money at all yet. Small checks to people who file a claim. That isn't even remotely approaching punishment, nor is it setting things right. At most, you could consider it a bare minimum act that at least is in the realm of decency.
What needs to happen, is actually determine who is directly at fault, and that person or people need to go to jail. And concurrent with that, civil lawyers should be suing for damages (they already are, 100's of them).
If I, as a private person, intentionally or accidently dumped tons of waste into a river, I'd be in jail, and fined. Just because its a corporation doesn't mean it gets to avoid any culpability.
"It will be the worst human rights atrocity in recorded history but I'm damned if I see a better solution"
Help their economies until they are ravenous consumers and become pacified by fast food and stupid TV shows?
The religion of Islam isn't driving the bad behavior, it is used as the justification for it. The driving factors are the same factors that have driven radical "conservative" behavior in all societies in all times: economy, natural resources, education, cultural tradition, isolation and or suppression, etc...
Just watch the (albeit) slow transformation of China as it gets hooked on the flow of money and consumerism. China will be 'westernized' over time, purely due to economic incentive. On the other side, look at the Muslim community inside a wealthy, opportunity rich country, like the US. The Muslims there are very moderate, educated, and liberal.
But it isn't the religion. The strictness/backwardness of those countries is just being expressed in terms of religion.
It is primarily an education, economic, and historical suppression/isolation issue.
If you look at a modern Islamic state, that is relatively well off, and has worked to retain relations with other western states, you see a much more modern/lenient version of Islam being practice. Turkey for example.
Poverty, low education, continual isolation, etc.. creates a vicious feedback loop that keeps populations clinging to the baser ideas of humanity.
If the west really wanted to modernize and change the more barbaric Islamic states, they would repair relations, help build up infrastructure and get their economies going, and then 'westernize' those countries via the dependence on 'free trade'.
It takes time, but it works. Look at China now compared to before it form relationships and trade agreements with the west.
And I just heard this morning that China has officially disallowed statements obtained via torture from being used as evidence in court. Baby steps, but they are getting there.
"God of the gaps" results when religious folks attempt to answer questions about the natural world with their religion.
Religion can exist alongside science just fine, so long as it only addresses moral or spiritual issues. "What is my purpose in life?" "What does it mean to be a good person?" "What are the consequences of being a bad person?", etc..
And of course realizing that all religious scripture/writings are allegories, fables, very old interpretations, etc... and should not in any way be taken literally.
"and even among the third who are atheists, many consider themselves 'spiritual.'"
What does the word "even" mean in this sentence? Spirituality is a part of the human psyche. Although we often connect the two, spirituality has little to do with faith. In fact, science is a great source of awe and wonder, feelings that we might call "spiritual" feelings.
"even" means that typically an Atheist would not associate feelings of wonder or awe with a spiritual experience. And that many people who do not subscribe to a particular religion, but consider themselves Spiritual, would say that spirituality is not just a phenomenon produced from the human psyche, but is an observed effect of something beyond oneself.
For example, someone meditates every day and experiences an extreme calm state, that leads to clear creative thought. This person attributes the gaining of these insightful thoughts by a connection with what they guess is some collective conscious http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_consciousness I would call that a spiritual person.
Most Atheists I know would instead attribute gaining clear creative thoughts via meditation, just a biologically explainable effect, caused by exercising and focusing the mind.
Or, you know, instead of taking thousands of people to court, they could recognize that easy DRM free downloads are being demanded and attempt to offer a supply to meet that demand.
What would you suggest they do to monetize their films?
By creating a supply to meet the demand of easily downloadable movies and TV shows in an open format of your choice?
Netflix and iTunes are somewhat OK, but they are DRM laden (can't being a show I bought over to a friends house to watch), not high quality, and are very incomplete libraries.
The first company that manages to wrangle the studios into allowing all their content to be downloaded is going to make a killing in profit. You could even start prices higher and age them down. But it has to be better than bittorrent to work, and that means:
1. No DRM.
2. High Quality
3. Prices that start at DVD prices, and then degrade to say, 5-10 bucks after a few weeks.
4. Fast downloads.
5. Very complete library of content.
6. No region coding/staggered releases.
Take this for instance. I decided that I wanted to start watching the TV show 24. The only method available to me was buying the discs.
http://www.amazon.com/24-Season-One-Kiefer-Sutherland/dp/B000NDEXK2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1275176990&sr=8-1
33 dollars for the first season, and its was released in 2001 ! Nine years old, and still full price. Plus the annoyance of of ordering and waiting a week for it to show up. No way to preview it either.
I finally broke down and bought the first season from iTunes (was really bored one night). And yet despite paying full price for it, and legally owning it, I can't watch it at a friends house due to DRM.
The studios are missing out on a huge number of sales by sticking to their old model of artificial scarcity.
A highly accurate show, if the reviews are correct.
But sure, lets ignore the show and just use some logic. I'll also assume that you can get a warrant in 2 hours, and I'll also assume that it is trivial to isolate 1 pre-paid cell phone in an inner city when there are probably 100's in use 24 hours a day per tower.
http://www.prepaidreviews.com/blog/consumer-issues/why-wal-mart-will-refuse-to-sell-you-prepaid-cell-phones-34581/
Lets assume I'm a drug dealer. Wouldn't it make sense to have 10 prepaid phones on me at all times? Each used at random for a different purpose? Now which one are you going to get a warrant for?
Even if that show is inaccurate, it is a really good show and you should watch it:) The cleverness of the drug dealers was pretty amazing.
At any rate, I agree that requiring ID is dumb. It won't solve anything. But I still believe the prepaids are harder for law enforcement to deal with than regular cell phones.
Just googling prepaid drugs crime etc.. leads to dozens of articles of law enforcement complaining about them. So probably most police offices don't have the equipment or training or knowledge to easy isolate 1 prepaid (which I still contend isn't easy, but I'll push that aside for the sake of argument).
As was mentioned above, if you watch the show "The Wire", you can clearly see why pre-paids are a problem for law enforcement. Yes they can get warrants, but usually not in time. The criminals were switching out pre-paids weekly and sometimes daily. And I'm not sure if this was just the show, or if it is true, but the cops had to witness the suspect doing something likely not legal, with that specific phone, and then request a tap on just that phone.
So they had to know A) where the phone was bought to get the serial/ID number B) watch is used in a crime/suspected crime, and C) then get a warrant. By that time, it was a new phone.
Don't get me wrong, this proposed solution of requiring ID isn't going to catch many criminals, but pre-paids are for sure a problem for law enforcement.
Personally, I'd rather see all drugs legal, taxed, and the strength regulated, with all the tax money from them going to fund rehabs and education about drugs.
every=ever. I've never understood why you can't edit slashdot posts...
It has been variable lately. I think if you view an article early, it seems to be modded to support libertarian views, but if you view the thread later, it is supporting more balanced views.
Probably a more accurate reflection of reality. "Reality has a well known liberal bias".
And look up the definition of socialism. It gets tossed around way to often as the opposite of liberal, or the opposite of progressive.
Every wonder why Libertarian and Liberal share the same root word?
Secondly, if dreams are like scenarios that our brain plays out to practice dealing with threats, does that mean that those who immerse themselves in worlds of fantasy in science fiction entertainment (either in the form of television, movies, or games) to the point that they seep into their dreams end up training their brain to practice running through scenarios that are in reality a waste of the brain's time to consider?
Well... a waste up until the zombie apocalypse actually occurs, of course.
My initial guess would be no, they are not a waste of time. I used to play Everquest quite a lot, and I did have dreams about it. However, what I noticed was that the dreams still involved practical problem solving, or basic fear/survival dreams, or leadership dreams, etc..
Despite the content being fantasy, the human/human interactions and social cooperation elements were based on what you'd find in other situations in the real world.
The brain doesn't really work on generating exact solutions for all probably future encounters. Moreso, it is a pattern generator. And those patterns can be applied to a variety of situations.