I haven't heard of it rising by 50% in two years despite a recession.
The net worth of the Top 400, basically all of our billionaires, is $1.27 trillion. If you confiscate all of their wealth you don't even pay off the deficit for the last year, much less any of the debt.
We do have 10 million millionaires, but as you go towards the bottom it more and more includes wealth due to homes, retirement accounts and personal business assets.
Did you know the British massacred American prisoners of war at Dartmoor Prison after the War of 1812? I really don't hold that against them these days, and don't equate it with modern British policy.
Like when we recently got Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the #2 man in Al Qaeda, an organization sworn to our destruction and constantly threatening us.
I like such strikes better than anything else. They don't endanger our troops. They are highly targeted, killing positively identified known enemies and those around them. Yes, those around them. If you're hanging around with Al Qaeda's #2, you're fair game. If it's his wife and kids, it's his fault for using them as human shields, not ours.
Obama's increased use of such strikes is one of the few things I actually like about his presidency.
The US almost completely complies with the treaty, yet will not sign due to reasons of the DMZ where the whole point of the treaty (civilian injuries) is irrelevant. We were willing to join the treaty had that exception been granted, but it wasn't. Even though we still technically have mines, we haven't used them in over 20 years, and likely won't in the future except in extremely specialized cases*. In this case, our not joining the treaty is pretty much a non-issue in a practical sense.
Phosphorus and cluster bombs are not covered by the Ottawa treaty, yet you bring them in. First, the US never purposely targets civilians. Unfortunately, during war, and especially war with people who think it's okay to use civilian human shields, civilians do get hit. Accidents and any unauthorized use aside, we abide by the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons on the use of WP.
* For example, the Special Forces have an anti-pursuit mine. It's the same as the scatterable mine, but it's used more as a delayed grenade against the people in pursuit. Pull a pin, throw it out behind you, it deploys the trip wires and arms a minute later. It self-destructs after four hours if not tripped, becoming inert in a week or two if that fails.
In this sense it's no different than a claymore with a trip wire. Claymores aren't covered under the Ottawa treaty since they are primarily triggered devices, although their use with a trip wire would. So we could make as many claymores as we want, and the soldiers can improvise their own trip wires. The sad part, and one place where the Ottawa treaty fails, is that the purpose-built mine has safety systems against civilian casualties that the claymore does not, yet we would not be allowed to manufacture and deploy the mine.
People wonder why we don't sign onto treaties. Sometimes it's because the treaties are useless or even counter-productive. This is a good example of that.
If the mines were self-deactivating, Vietnam would not have 300 years and $10 billion dollars in clean up costs.
Many mines, not all. And that is aside from the grossly inflated anti-mine activist cost you quote.
What's the difference between unexploded ordnance and a mine to a child playing on the ground?
1. Because we're talking about mines in context of the Ottawa Treaty, not UXO.
2. Because an old-style mine still has a trigger ready to go, while UXO is hit and miss as to whether it'll go off when handled despite warnings not to do so. I know of a guy who stupidly carried unexploded cluster munitions in his HMMWV's passenger footwell for miles before one went off.
3. Because you brought up drones, which fire missiles that blow up or are destroyed on impact, and don't drop bombs.
Killing people automatically is the problem.
Then we have no problem, because we don't do that.
Well, really the problem is killing people.
Good point. Convince those people to stop trying to kill us, and we'll stop killing them. Otherwise, it's obvious you have a larger objection, and will say anything, true or false, against the use of any ordnance to further your goal of total disarmament.
And the measured, not theoretical, MTBF of these devices is?
Failure is built into the design even after one active and one passive failsafes fail. The battery WILL die, unless you know of a battery that lasts forever while powering an active electrical circuit. That battery power is the only thing that will actuate the fuse.
Think of it in terms of a nuclear warhead (or not, because it'll probably send you into a panic). A nuclear explosion is very difficult to achieve, everything has to go right. Failure of a part of the denotation system results in the lack of a nuclear explosion.
What's the independent observer actual measurement versus the proposed 100% clean up? If Vietnam is an example of policy, the policy is a lie.
The policy is post-Vietnam. More recent policy is post-Desert Storm after we had experience with scatterable mines. Even then, policy says to not use them indiscriminately as in Vietnam, but for specific targets with specific tactical goals just as we would use artillery. We only shot about a thousand groups of these in Desert Storm, and none since.
But I have a feeling all of these facts will fall on deaf ears/blind eyes. You've made up your mind that all of this is EEEEEEVILLLLL! and no facts will get in the way of that.
So I didn't think about a spam button that would logically be on such a service. Thanks.
Speaking of which I still can't find anything that actually says what these protests are trying to accomplish besides saying they hate corporations.
I guess it would be based on individual motive. I can understanding rallying against their bailout at the expense of the general public. I can understand rallying against their constant buying of politicians to enact policy contrary to the good of the general public. I can see a few specific grievances.
Otherwise, hate of the corporations and the rich is quite often simply overly-broad, blind, ignorant venting of frustration. Admittedly, that probably described the majority of protesters.
For decades we have have not used any of the old-style mines you are talking about. But even back then, many of our mines were chemically self-deactivating.
You mention Yugoslavia, where we didn't use mines. Don't let the facts get in your way.
What's the difference to the enemy between a drone and an airstrike? Nothing. Both strike a target from the air. It has nothing to do with the issue of mines. But thanks for trying to drag it in.
The mine issue is related to cluster munitions, but drones don't use those. Drones use missiles, which are not a problem in the way old-style mines and cluster munitions are. In any case, this is about the Ottawa treaty, which doesn't cover cluster munitions.
"...by now they should be converted to self-destructing or self-dearming anyway." is a PR phrase of no value.
No, it's the technical design of the mines. After a specified time (a few hours or two days) the mine explodes on its own. If the mine finds its battery power dropping below a set level for proper operation, it explodes. Should both safety mechanisms fail, the mine becomes inert when the battery eventually dies after several days (no power to trigger the battery-activated fuse).
These mines deploy on top of the ground and are intentionally easily detectable. They're designed to keep an enemy from entering an area when he sees the mines, or to slow him down due to the need to clear the mines. It is not designed to be hidden so a person accidentally steps on one.
And that's aside from the fact that policy dictates the mapping and recovery of ALL mines.
As usual, don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant.
Our scatterable mines are a serious tactical advantage, and we should be allowed to use them. For example, we used them in Desert Storm to divert attacking Iraqi units to entry points easier for us to defend and counterattack.
I just looked up our latest tech. They're fired from a howitzer into an area, where they deploy. They have a battery-powered fuse that will self-detonate between 2-48 hours (set in advance) if it's not already tripped by the enemy. After several days the battery runs out, rendering it inoperable. Couple that with a requirement to record location and retrieve after a conflict, and that doctrine is to not use them in populated areas, I'd say they're pretty safe.
First, Apple never denied it owed Nokia RAND royalties from the beginning. The problem was that Nokia singled-out Apple for higher rates, violating the "ND" part of "RAND."
Apple settled for what Apple was supposed to pay in the first place if Nokia had honored the RAND terms. The cash payment to Nokia was back RAND royalties.
It was a complete win for Apple and a loss for Nokia, which had to pay all those lawyers and still only got the same RAND rate Apple was already prepared to pay before the suit.
I think you're confusing critical decision making with run of the mill things.
Piloting an aircraft can be done on autopilot according to human-programmed parameters, so the decisions are still with the human, who will take manual control in a critical situation. Humans still approve critical financial decisions. Identifying targets isn't a critical decision, the decision to fire is, which makes this a support system. The others aren't critical.
"It is well that war is so terrible - otherwise we would grow too fond of it." -- Robert E. Lee
Things like drones and missiles make war less terrible, at least for one side, increasing the likelihood we will not be so averse to war as we should be.
Just politically correct. The US already has policies in place that effectively meet and exceed the goals of the Ottawa treaty.
We stopped selling mines, we destroyed old stockpiles. we have spent over a billion dollars clearing mines and helping victims (usually not our mines). Our new mines are self-destructing or self-disarming, and policy is to not place one without its position being recorded, and that it be removed from any battlefield after its need has passed.
Even with that, the only place we actually use them is in the Korean DMZ. The last time we used them in combat was the Gulf War, in limited use. These were scatterable mines, fired or dropped to a specific grid coordinate to deny use of that small area to the enemy. Since this was their first use we did make mistakes, as apparently not every shot was recorded and reported for later easy cleanup. Rules for their use have since been changed, and by now they should be converted to self-destructing or self-dearming anyway.
I've been in and around the military for years. I can't see them giving up critical decision making to machines.
I can see a system like this being used to present potential targets to an operator who will touch on the screen each one he wants destroyed.
But right now permission to hit these targets isn't even at the operator, but much higher, since they're so worried about the repercussions of hitting a civilian.
The government grants copyrights through the power of the Copyright Clause of the Constitution. That clause explicitly states the reason,
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"
Then "secure... exclusive Right" is only a means to this end, not an end in itself. Not profit, that's not guaranteed, only the exclusivity to increase the chance of profit in order to provide an incentive to create more works.
We'll never have real copyright reform until all of Congress and most of the public remember this very important distinction.
I would say the entire voire dire process in the US needs to be changed.
Dismiss a juror only for direct cause. Do you know the defendant and/or his close relatives/associates? Do you have any direct stake in the outcome? Have you already given an opinion on innocence or guilt? Everyone else is the luck of the draw, as it should be, a jury of your peers, not a jury of a few very carefully selected people.
Long ago a relative of mine had a DUI a few years before he was called to sit on a jury for a DUI. He voted guilty (he tells me the defendant obviously was), and the guy went to jail. These days the prosecution would kick him out on the possibility he might have sympathy for the defendant.
You write for it, and anybody else with that platform can use it. No worries about differing performance or hardware within a defined range (you can say needs Kinect or Move, and then you know exactly what extra hardware they have).
But that matters not. It's your stuff, you do with it as you will, no need to justify it to anyone. It's not about needs, it's about wants, and wants are all that are required when it comes to freedom.
Same with free speech. Why do you think you should be able to say that? None of your damn business. Why do you want to own a gun? None of your damn business. Why won't you let the police search your house without a warrant? None of your damn business.
Take the case of a mother cat and her perfectly adoptable young kittens at a vet's office in North Carolina. The PETA criminals showed up promising to find them homes, immediately killed them in the back of the van and dropped them in a dumpster behind a Piggly Wiggly. This was not an isolated incident.
They also just by default kill pit bulls. For the record, I met a very nice one this weekend, very gentle and playful with my kids, and perfectly obedient to his owner. The PETA would kill it if they got their hands on it. PETA encourages all shelters to enact this policy.
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I haven't heard of it rising by 50% in two years despite a recession.
The net worth of the Top 400, basically all of our billionaires, is $1.27 trillion. If you confiscate all of their wealth you don't even pay off the deficit for the last year, much less any of the debt.
We do have 10 million millionaires, but as you go towards the bottom it more and more includes wealth due to homes, retirement accounts and personal business assets.
Oh, yeah.
Did you know the British massacred American prisoners of war at Dartmoor Prison after the War of 1812? I really don't hold that against them these days, and don't equate it with modern British policy.
Like when we recently got Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the #2 man in Al Qaeda, an organization sworn to our destruction and constantly threatening us.
I like such strikes better than anything else. They don't endanger our troops. They are highly targeted, killing positively identified known enemies and those around them. Yes, those around them. If you're hanging around with Al Qaeda's #2, you're fair game. If it's his wife and kids, it's his fault for using them as human shields, not ours.
Obama's increased use of such strikes is one of the few things I actually like about his presidency.
The US almost completely complies with the treaty, yet will not sign due to reasons of the DMZ where the whole point of the treaty (civilian injuries) is irrelevant. We were willing to join the treaty had that exception been granted, but it wasn't. Even though we still technically have mines, we haven't used them in over 20 years, and likely won't in the future except in extremely specialized cases*. In this case, our not joining the treaty is pretty much a non-issue in a practical sense.
Phosphorus and cluster bombs are not covered by the Ottawa treaty, yet you bring them in. First, the US never purposely targets civilians. Unfortunately, during war, and especially war with people who think it's okay to use civilian human shields, civilians do get hit. Accidents and any unauthorized use aside, we abide by the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons on the use of WP.
* For example, the Special Forces have an anti-pursuit mine. It's the same as the scatterable mine, but it's used more as a delayed grenade against the people in pursuit. Pull a pin, throw it out behind you, it deploys the trip wires and arms a minute later. It self-destructs after four hours if not tripped, becoming inert in a week or two if that fails.
In this sense it's no different than a claymore with a trip wire. Claymores aren't covered under the Ottawa treaty since they are primarily triggered devices, although their use with a trip wire would. So we could make as many claymores as we want, and the soldiers can improvise their own trip wires. The sad part, and one place where the Ottawa treaty fails, is that the purpose-built mine has safety systems against civilian casualties that the claymore does not, yet we would not be allowed to manufacture and deploy the mine.
People wonder why we don't sign onto treaties. Sometimes it's because the treaties are useless or even counter-productive. This is a good example of that.
Many mines, not all. And that is aside from the grossly inflated anti-mine activist cost you quote.
1. Because we're talking about mines in context of the Ottawa Treaty, not UXO.
2. Because an old-style mine still has a trigger ready to go, while UXO is hit and miss as to whether it'll go off when handled despite warnings not to do so. I know of a guy who stupidly carried unexploded cluster munitions in his HMMWV's passenger footwell for miles before one went off.
3. Because you brought up drones, which fire missiles that blow up or are destroyed on impact, and don't drop bombs.
Then we have no problem, because we don't do that.
Good point. Convince those people to stop trying to kill us, and we'll stop killing them. Otherwise, it's obvious you have a larger objection, and will say anything, true or false, against the use of any ordnance to further your goal of total disarmament.
Failure is built into the design even after one active and one passive failsafes fail. The battery WILL die, unless you know of a battery that lasts forever while powering an active electrical circuit. That battery power is the only thing that will actuate the fuse.
Think of it in terms of a nuclear warhead (or not, because it'll probably send you into a panic). A nuclear explosion is very difficult to achieve, everything has to go right. Failure of a part of the denotation system results in the lack of a nuclear explosion.
The policy is post-Vietnam. More recent policy is post-Desert Storm after we had experience with scatterable mines. Even then, policy says to not use them indiscriminately as in Vietnam, but for specific targets with specific tactical goals just as we would use artillery. We only shot about a thousand groups of these in Desert Storm, and none since.
But I have a feeling all of these facts will fall on deaf ears/blind eyes. You've made up your mind that all of this is EEEEEEVILLLLL! and no facts will get in the way of that.
So I didn't think about a spam button that would logically be on such a service. Thanks.
I guess it would be based on individual motive. I can understanding rallying against their bailout at the expense of the general public. I can understand rallying against their constant buying of politicians to enact policy contrary to the good of the general public. I can see a few specific grievances.
Otherwise, hate of the corporations and the rich is quite often simply overly-broad, blind, ignorant venting of frustration. Admittedly, that probably described the majority of protesters.
But we still make the final decision on whether they actually do the killing.
The UAV operator can still say "Hell no, I'm not doing it."
And I hope it stays that way.
For decades we have have not used any of the old-style mines you are talking about. But even back then, many of our mines were chemically self-deactivating.
You mention Yugoslavia, where we didn't use mines. Don't let the facts get in your way.
What's the difference to the enemy between a drone and an airstrike? Nothing. Both strike a target from the air. It has nothing to do with the issue of mines. But thanks for trying to drag it in.
The mine issue is related to cluster munitions, but drones don't use those. Drones use missiles, which are not a problem in the way old-style mines and cluster munitions are. In any case, this is about the Ottawa treaty, which doesn't cover cluster munitions.
No, it's the technical design of the mines. After a specified time (a few hours or two days) the mine explodes on its own. If the mine finds its battery power dropping below a set level for proper operation, it explodes. Should both safety mechanisms fail, the mine becomes inert when the battery eventually dies after several days (no power to trigger the battery-activated fuse).
These mines deploy on top of the ground and are intentionally easily detectable. They're designed to keep an enemy from entering an area when he sees the mines, or to slow him down due to the need to clear the mines. It is not designed to be hidden so a person accidentally steps on one.
And that's aside from the fact that policy dictates the mapping and recovery of ALL mines.
As usual, don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant.
What was there to fix? They put up a block, got caught, and then stopped the block.
Am I to believe some filter on emails was innocently blocking any mention of the recently created "OccupyWallSt.org"?
Why did you bring a boat to go up river? Why would you have a boat to go over land?
From the beginning you should have planned the path of least resistance, working with nature instead of against it to achieve your goal.
It's just the general concept of Taoism.
Our scatterable mines are a serious tactical advantage, and we should be allowed to use them. For example, we used them in Desert Storm to divert attacking Iraqi units to entry points easier for us to defend and counterattack.
I just looked up our latest tech. They're fired from a howitzer into an area, where they deploy. They have a battery-powered fuse that will self-detonate between 2-48 hours (set in advance) if it's not already tripped by the enemy. After several days the battery runs out, rendering it inoperable. Couple that with a requirement to record location and retrieve after a conflict, and that doctrine is to not use them in populated areas, I'd say they're pretty safe.
First, Apple never denied it owed Nokia RAND royalties from the beginning. The problem was that Nokia singled-out Apple for higher rates, violating the "ND" part of "RAND."
Apple settled for what Apple was supposed to pay in the first place if Nokia had honored the RAND terms. The cash payment to Nokia was back RAND royalties.
It was a complete win for Apple and a loss for Nokia, which had to pay all those lawyers and still only got the same RAND rate Apple was already prepared to pay before the suit.
I think you're confusing critical decision making with run of the mill things.
Piloting an aircraft can be done on autopilot according to human-programmed parameters, so the decisions are still with the human, who will take manual control in a critical situation. Humans still approve critical financial decisions. Identifying targets isn't a critical decision, the decision to fire is, which makes this a support system. The others aren't critical.
"It is well that war is so terrible - otherwise we would grow too fond of it." -- Robert E. Lee
Things like drones and missiles make war less terrible, at least for one side, increasing the likelihood we will not be so averse to war as we should be.
Just politically correct. The US already has policies in place that effectively meet and exceed the goals of the Ottawa treaty.
We stopped selling mines, we destroyed old stockpiles. we have spent over a billion dollars clearing mines and helping victims (usually not our mines). Our new mines are self-destructing or self-disarming, and policy is to not place one without its position being recorded, and that it be removed from any battlefield after its need has passed.
Even with that, the only place we actually use them is in the Korean DMZ. The last time we used them in combat was the Gulf War, in limited use. These were scatterable mines, fired or dropped to a specific grid coordinate to deny use of that small area to the enemy. Since this was their first use we did make mistakes, as apparently not every shot was recorded and reported for later easy cleanup. Rules for their use have since been changed, and by now they should be converted to self-destructing or self-dearming anyway.
I've been in and around the military for years. I can't see them giving up critical decision making to machines.
I can see a system like this being used to present potential targets to an operator who will touch on the screen each one he wants destroyed.
But right now permission to hit these targets isn't even at the operator, but much higher, since they're so worried about the repercussions of hitting a civilian.
If these are core cell patents, they would be RAND, and I can't see why Apple wouldn't have already licensed them.
Unless Samsung is trying to pull another Nokia, and that didn't work.
To him, the prosecution had easily overcome the burden of proof in that case, so he voted guilty.
He had no desire to use jury nullification. He admits he screwed up with his own DUI and had no objection to the law.
The government grants copyrights through the power of the Copyright Clause of the Constitution. That clause explicitly states the reason,
Then "secure ... exclusive Right" is only a means to this end, not an end in itself. Not profit, that's not guaranteed, only the exclusivity to increase the chance of profit in order to provide an incentive to create more works.
We'll never have real copyright reform until all of Congress and most of the public remember this very important distinction.
I would say the entire voire dire process in the US needs to be changed.
Dismiss a juror only for direct cause. Do you know the defendant and/or his close relatives/associates? Do you have any direct stake in the outcome? Have you already given an opinion on innocence or guilt? Everyone else is the luck of the draw, as it should be, a jury of your peers, not a jury of a few very carefully selected people.
Long ago a relative of mine had a DUI a few years before he was called to sit on a jury for a DUI. He voted guilty (he tells me the defendant obviously was), and the guy went to jail. These days the prosecution would kick him out on the possibility he might have sympathy for the defendant.
You write for it, and anybody else with that platform can use it. No worries about differing performance or hardware within a defined range (you can say needs Kinect or Move, and then you know exactly what extra hardware they have).
But that matters not. It's your stuff, you do with it as you will, no need to justify it to anyone. It's not about needs, it's about wants, and wants are all that are required when it comes to freedom.
Same with free speech. Why do you think you should be able to say that? None of your damn business. Why do you want to own a gun? None of your damn business. Why won't you let the police search your house without a warrant? None of your damn business.
No use fighting the river.
Don't fight against the current, use the current to achieve your goals, effortless doing.
Take the case of a mother cat and her perfectly adoptable young kittens at a vet's office in North Carolina. The PETA criminals showed up promising to find them homes, immediately killed them in the back of the van and dropped them in a dumpster behind a Piggly Wiggly. This was not an isolated incident.
They also just by default kill pit bulls. For the record, I met a very nice one this weekend, very gentle and playful with my kids, and perfectly obedient to his owner. The PETA would kill it if they got their hands on it. PETA encourages all shelters to enact this policy.
They don't love animals, they just hate people.