The problem with Americans is that we confuse what we see on TV with reality, and ignore reality when it is presented in the form of scientific data. Every time you switch channels, someone is shooting someone. People think that TV is real and think, "gee, with so much shooting going on I'd better have a gun to protect myself". People ignore the numerous studies that have shown you are more likely to be killed by a gun if you have a gun in your home. "Oh, that happens to other people, not to me".
Reality is that more guns don't make anyone safer, and unless you are a cop or soldier, your chances of being involved in a shoot-out or even witnessing one in your lifetime is nearly zero. You don't need a gun to defend yourself.
Gun rights advocates favor a literal interpretation of the constitution when it comes to guns, but are the same people who support "corporation are people" mentality that has destroyed the ability of citizens to get any real representation by elected officials. Last time I looked, the Constitution starts with the phrase "We the people", not "We the corporations"...
I've traveled to many 3rd world countries where this is exactly what goes on. Armed guards everywhere. It does not make anyone feel more secure except the person who is paying the armed guard. Is that really what we want to US to become? The NRA seems to think so.
I'll store it in climate controlled, above ground storage. I'll return it to you by fedex overnight or 2 day shipping if you need it back to restore a borked computer. I'll charge $100 per year which includes up to 2 shipping cycles sending the drive back to you.
You think it might happen because it would be good for the economy in general? Did you learn nothing from the recent government shutdown and threats to limit the debt ceiling? Our "representatives" in congress don't give a shit about the economy at large, only their own personal economies.
The only way this could happen is if there was a huge financial player interested in it happening. Why would one of those guys spend money and political capital to push something like this through congress if they aren't going to make a decent financial return on it? It can't/won't happen until someone figures out how to make a boat-load of money from the change. Until then, forget it.
Actually, speed limits are set based on safe driving conditions. That takes into account weather conditions, road construction/condition- curves, hills, etc., driver abilities, car condition, etc.
It comes down to this. Americans are dumb. We don't drive properly, we don't keep our cars maintained properly, we bitch about paying taxes to keep roads maintained to say nothing of building them right in the first place. Solve these problems and we can have faster speed limits.
High speed limits work in the countries that have them for two reasons.
1) people learn how to drive properly there - if you're not passing anyone you stay the hell out of the fast lane. That alone makes such high speed driving impossible in the US where people are too stubborn or stupid to stay out of the way of faster drivers. Also, trailer trucks are allowed in all the lanes. That's nuts. They should be kept in the far right lane only.
2) Road condition on those roads with high speed limits such as the autobahn are much better than most of the roads in the US. You can't drive 150mph on a road with potholes. The freeways in the US are falling apart. That's why everyone drives trucks (which includes SUVs) here. They are the only vehicles that can stand up to the punishment of driving on our crappy roads.
They have "floaty" old cars and slow, tiny engine cars in Europe, too. The difference is that over there they generally have sense enough not to try to take them onto the autobahn. There is no such common sense in the US. Stupidity rules here, like no where else on earth.
hits and injures or kills a pedestrian, and a multi million $ suit follows, they will disappear.
Imagine the questioning in court: "so officer, tell us how you aimed the projectile" "uh, you don't aim, you just point your car where you want the projectile to go" "would you consider that a safe way to operate your handgun? "no"
I too packed, moved across country, and unpacked literally a ton of books (I am an engineer and dentist, my wife is an engineer and physician) multiple times over a 10 year period and finally decided to start getting rid of them a few moves ago. The books that remain are still in boxes having never been unpacked from 2 or 3 moves ago.
When I think of the energy I have wasted- not fuel, but personal muscle power- to move all those books all those times in all those years, to say nothing of the energy expended and discomfort suffered in carrying some of them back and forth to and from school for so many years, I could kick my mother for bearing me in an age before all books were available electronically.
How many cell phones have you had in the last 5 years and how many will you have in the next? Why is it so unproblematic to get a new phone but so difficult to change software or even hardware for reading ebooks? The last time I checked, ebook reading hardware cost a lot less than a new smart-phone. In fact, you can read ebooks on your smart-phone, though the experience is somewhat less than optimal.
So are you playing the "end of the world" scenario here, where civilization has collapsed and it's up to you to rebuild civilization from books, or are we talking about everyday issues? If you're talking about the former, well, OK. You've got me there. Paper books are best in such a scenario, but then you'll probably have things other than books to worry about- roving gangs of cannibals, for instance. If you're talking about the latter, then here you go:
1) I can read them without electricity or a reading device. True, but the cost of electricity and a reading device is actually pretty small compared to the cost of moving large quantities of paper books every time you change domiciles. If you are a real collector, your domicile has to keep getting larger or your living space in it smaller to allow your collection to grow. That is another huge cost. 2) I can read them without requiring permission from a licensing agency. That's a non issue for most books. It is easy to strip off DRM in most formats. If you read and post to a forum like this you are sufficiently knowledgeable to locate and apply the appropriate software. Many books are available without any DRM. 3) I can resell them. If they don't cost anything in the first place there is no need to resell them. The stuff you can get for free and DRM-free would take multiple lifetimes to read. This includes most of the classic literature and poetry. 4) Most are still readable after decades or even centuries. Electronic book formats are and will be convertible from one format to another easily. Project Gutenberg books, for example, are mostly in.txt format and have been readable for decades. There is no reason to think this won't continue. Sure, your reader will require periodic replacement, but we are all used to replacing our electronics every couple years as new technology renders the old obsolete by doing things like increasing battery life, adding functionality, improving speed, higher resolution screens, etc. The cost of replacing a book reader every few years is small compared to the real cost of maintaining a physical library of paper books.
in cafes and parks here in the US. What is disappearing are paper books. people are reading on tablets, ebook readers, computers, even phones. I'd be concerned if there were some unique paper books that would never be put into electronic form, but even those books are being converted to electronic readable formats. Yeah, there are some antiques that have especially great artwork that loses something in translation to electronic form, but those books are kept in special collections in libraries and rarely open to public viewing/handling.
Meh. Paper books are heavy and take up a lot of space. Good riddance. Protecting paper book sellers is like protecting buggy whip makers when everyone is buying automobiles. How long can you try to hold off progress?
to create a "6 degrees" map of every US citizen to someone like OBL, or some other foreign target. By doing so they can justify continued eavesdropping on communications of US citizens by claiming their surveillance is targeting this foreign person, and look- "this us citizen is only 3 or 4 people away from the target! Looks like a possible connection there- we better keep listening!:"
I'll bet it isn't hard to link even the most tea-bagged, gun toting, bible thumping, hillbilly in 'merica to OBL if you have all the "metadata".
knowledge to get a good result. They are fine for doing 1-off custom parts where you can afford to wait for the result, but they don't make any sense at all in a disaster relief situation where you need many identical items quickly. Take umbilical cord clips as the example- there is no need for customization, no need to wait for a 3D printer to produce them. It is MUCH simpler to send a bunch of them in a bag.
Where is the printer going to get power in a disaster zone? Now you're talking about flying in people, printers, generators, etc.
Oh yeah, one more thing- if you use your imagination, that block of wood with a hole in it can used to smoke weed, so now you have not only made a weapon, you've also made drug paraphernalia.
I'll teach you how to make a better "gun" than you can with a 3D printer. 1) gather components: a bullet, a block of wood, a rock. 2) drill a hole through the block of wood that matches the diameter of your bullet. 3) place bullet in the hole in the block of wood. Congratulations, you're done. Fire the "gun" by hitting the back side of the bullet with the rock.
The "gun" described above doesn't require a 3D printer, knowledge of CAD software or metallurgy.
are interested in cybersecurity? And that's not enough? I think what they are saying is that they need more to be interested and to train for it so they can hire a few at really low wages, otherwise I guess they'll just have to start looking for H1B visa hires...
"They're simply parasitic middlemen who do nothing but add cost."
Duh! Thank god we don't have single payer healthcare! I'd much rather have someone who profits by not delivering healthcare, like an insurance person, standing between me and my doctor than some bureaucrat tasked with ensuring that money spent actually goes to healthcare. THAT would be BIG GOVERNMENT. Ugh!
It's been obvious for months to even the most internet-ignorant that there is no such thing as security on-line. The main concern with regard to health records security is that health insurance companies would deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions based on evidence in medical records. That's been fixed, at least in theory, by obamacare, if they ever manage to get it up and running.
Of course, the real fix would have been to get the insurance companies out of the health insurance business altogether with a single payer system, but we are too stupid to vote for something like that. Even if we did, the insurance lobby's votes mean much more than votes of citizens going to the polls, so even if the majority came to their senses and demanded a single-payer system, it would not happen.
OK, so we'll get more targeted spam about incontinence products, birth control, flatulence control, boner pills, etc. That will just make spam filters work a little harder.
When I lived in Plano a friend who worked in a grocery store told me that sales of Listerine went through the roof on Sundays because they couldn't sell booze on Sunday.
Slashdot Mirror
ads for guns and ammunition?
the NSA and other spy agencies aren't able to get at their traffic? Swiss privacy laws protect against legal attacks, not NSA attacks.
The problem with Americans is that we confuse what we see on TV with reality, and ignore reality when it is presented in the form of scientific data. Every time you switch channels, someone is shooting someone. People think that TV is real and think, "gee, with so much shooting going on I'd better have a gun to protect myself". People ignore the numerous studies that have shown you are more likely to be killed by a gun if you have a gun in your home. "Oh, that happens to other people, not to me".
Reality is that more guns don't make anyone safer, and unless you are a cop or soldier, your chances of being involved in a shoot-out or even witnessing one in your lifetime is nearly zero. You don't need a gun to defend yourself.
Gun rights advocates favor a literal interpretation of the constitution when it comes to guns, but are the same people who support "corporation are people" mentality that has destroyed the ability of citizens to get any real representation by elected officials. Last time I looked, the Constitution starts with the phrase "We the people", not "We the corporations"...
I've traveled to many 3rd world countries where this is exactly what goes on. Armed guards everywhere. It does not make anyone feel more secure except the person who is paying the armed guard. Is that really what we want to US to become? The NRA seems to think so.
what could a TSA agent possibly do that would be justification for shooting?
problems, personal, social, and scientific.
I'll store it in climate controlled, above ground storage. I'll return it to you by fedex overnight or 2 day shipping if you need it back to restore a borked computer. I'll charge $100 per year which includes up to 2 shipping cycles sending the drive back to you.
You think it might happen because it would be good for the economy in general? Did you learn nothing from the recent government shutdown and threats to limit the debt ceiling? Our "representatives" in congress don't give a shit about the economy at large, only their own personal economies.
The only way this could happen is if there was a huge financial player interested in it happening. Why would one of those guys spend money and political capital to push something like this through congress if they aren't going to make a decent financial return on it? It can't/won't happen until someone figures out how to make a boat-load of money from the change. Until then, forget it.
Actually, speed limits are set based on safe driving conditions. That takes into account weather conditions, road construction/condition- curves, hills, etc., driver abilities, car condition, etc.
It comes down to this. Americans are dumb. We don't drive properly, we don't keep our cars maintained properly, we bitch about paying taxes to keep roads maintained to say nothing of building them right in the first place. Solve these problems and we can have faster speed limits.
High speed limits work in the countries that have them for two reasons.
1) people learn how to drive properly there - if you're not passing anyone you stay the hell out of the fast lane. That alone makes such high speed driving impossible in the US where people are too stubborn or stupid to stay out of the way of faster drivers. Also, trailer trucks are allowed in all the lanes. That's nuts. They should be kept in the far right lane only.
2) Road condition on those roads with high speed limits such as the autobahn are much better than most of the roads in the US. You can't drive 150mph on a road with potholes. The freeways in the US are falling apart. That's why everyone drives trucks (which includes SUVs) here. They are the only vehicles that can stand up to the punishment of driving on our crappy roads.
They have "floaty" old cars and slow, tiny engine cars in Europe, too. The difference is that over there they generally have sense enough not to try to take them onto the autobahn. There is no such common sense in the US. Stupidity rules here, like no where else on earth.
hits and injures or kills a pedestrian, and a multi million $ suit follows, they will disappear.
Imagine the questioning in court: "so officer, tell us how you aimed the projectile"
"uh, you don't aim, you just point your car where you want the projectile to go"
"would you consider that a safe way to operate your handgun?
"no"
I too packed, moved across country, and unpacked literally a ton of books (I am an engineer and dentist, my wife is an engineer and physician) multiple times over a 10 year period and finally decided to start getting rid of them a few moves ago. The books that remain are still in boxes having never been unpacked from 2 or 3 moves ago.
When I think of the energy I have wasted- not fuel, but personal muscle power- to move all those books all those times in all those years, to say nothing of the energy expended and discomfort suffered in carrying some of them back and forth to and from school for so many years, I could kick my mother for bearing me in an age before all books were available electronically.
How many cell phones have you had in the last 5 years and how many will you have in the next? Why is it so unproblematic to get a new phone but so difficult to change software or even hardware for reading ebooks? The last time I checked, ebook reading hardware cost a lot less than a new smart-phone. In fact, you can read ebooks on your smart-phone, though the experience is somewhat less than optimal.
So are you playing the "end of the world" scenario here, where civilization has collapsed and it's up to you to rebuild civilization from books, or are we talking about everyday issues? If you're talking about the former, well, OK. You've got me there. Paper books are best in such a scenario, but then you'll probably have things other than books to worry about- roving gangs of cannibals, for instance. If you're talking about the latter, then here you go:
1) I can read them without electricity or a reading device. .txt format and have been readable for decades. There is no reason to think this won't continue. Sure, your reader will require periodic replacement, but we are all used to replacing our electronics every couple years as new technology renders the old obsolete by doing things like increasing battery life, adding functionality, improving speed, higher resolution screens, etc. The cost of replacing a book reader every few years is small compared to the real cost of maintaining a physical library of paper books.
True, but the cost of electricity and a reading device is actually pretty small compared to the cost of moving large quantities of paper books every time you change domiciles. If you are a real collector, your domicile has to keep getting larger or your living space in it smaller to allow your collection to grow. That is another huge cost.
2) I can read them without requiring permission from a licensing agency.
That's a non issue for most books. It is easy to strip off DRM in most formats. If you read and post to a forum like this you are sufficiently knowledgeable to locate and apply the appropriate software. Many books are available without any DRM.
3) I can resell them.
If they don't cost anything in the first place there is no need to resell them. The stuff you can get for free and DRM-free would take multiple lifetimes to read. This includes most of the classic literature and poetry.
4) Most are still readable after decades or even centuries.
Electronic book formats are and will be convertible from one format to another easily. Project Gutenberg books, for example, are mostly in
in cafes and parks here in the US. What is disappearing are paper books. people are reading on tablets, ebook readers, computers, even phones. I'd be concerned if there were some unique paper books that would never be put into electronic form, but even those books are being converted to electronic readable formats. Yeah, there are some antiques that have especially great artwork that loses something in translation to electronic form, but those books are kept in special collections in libraries and rarely open to public viewing/handling.
Meh. Paper books are heavy and take up a lot of space. Good riddance. Protecting paper book sellers is like protecting buggy whip makers when everyone is buying automobiles. How long can you try to hold off progress?
to create a "6 degrees" map of every US citizen to someone like OBL, or some other foreign target. By doing so they can justify continued eavesdropping on communications of US citizens by claiming their surveillance is targeting this foreign person, and look- "this us citizen is only 3 or 4 people away from the target! Looks like a possible connection there- we better keep listening!:"
I'll bet it isn't hard to link even the most tea-bagged, gun toting, bible thumping, hillbilly in 'merica to OBL if you have all the "metadata".
knowledge to get a good result. They are fine for doing 1-off custom parts where you can afford to wait for the result, but they don't make any sense at all in a disaster relief situation where you need many identical items quickly. Take umbilical cord clips as the example- there is no need for customization, no need to wait for a 3D printer to produce them. It is MUCH simpler to send a bunch of them in a bag.
Where is the printer going to get power in a disaster zone? Now you're talking about flying in people, printers, generators, etc.
Oh yeah, one more thing- if you use your imagination, that block of wood with a hole in it can used to smoke weed, so now you have not only made a weapon, you've also made drug paraphernalia.
Use with caution!
I'll teach you how to make a better "gun" than you can with a 3D printer.
1) gather components: a bullet, a block of wood, a rock.
2) drill a hole through the block of wood that matches the diameter of your bullet.
3) place bullet in the hole in the block of wood. Congratulations, you're done.
Fire the "gun" by hitting the back side of the bullet with the rock.
The "gun" described above doesn't require a 3D printer, knowledge of CAD software or metallurgy.
If the accountants tell the CEO they can save a buck, they'll call their bought-and-paid-for politicians to arrange a way to get clearances.
are interested in cybersecurity? And that's not enough? I think what they are saying is that they need more to be interested and to train for it so they can hire a few at really low wages, otherwise I guess they'll just have to start looking for H1B visa hires...
That sounds like a SS number problem to me.
"They're simply parasitic middlemen who do nothing but add cost."
Duh! Thank god we don't have single payer healthcare! I'd much rather have someone who profits by not delivering healthcare, like an insurance person, standing between me and my doctor than some bureaucrat tasked with ensuring that money spent actually goes to healthcare. THAT would be BIG GOVERNMENT. Ugh!
It's been obvious for months to even the most internet-ignorant that there is no such thing as security on-line. The main concern with regard to health records security is that health insurance companies would deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions based on evidence in medical records. That's been fixed, at least in theory, by obamacare, if they ever manage to get it up and running.
Of course, the real fix would have been to get the insurance companies out of the health insurance business altogether with a single payer system, but we are too stupid to vote for something like that. Even if we did, the insurance lobby's votes mean much more than votes of citizens going to the polls, so even if the majority came to their senses and demanded a single-payer system, it would not happen.
OK, so we'll get more targeted spam about incontinence products, birth control, flatulence control, boner pills, etc. That will just make spam filters work a little harder.
When I lived in Plano a friend who worked in a grocery store told me that sales of Listerine went through the roof on Sundays because they couldn't sell booze on Sunday.