Apples and oranges. People rob taxi drivers because you can just get into the taxi, and they carry cash. Uber drivers are picking up people who have registered with Uber and provided a valid credit card. Now, sure, you could register, give a throwaway email address, create, fund, and provide a throwaway credit card, and then try to rob an Uber driver who might not have a single dollar on them. That implies a criminal who at the same time (a) engages in some reasonably sophisticated planning, and (b) decides to go after a very low-yield target.
The Rainbow flag "offends" you? Once LGBT groups go beyond their current "agenda" calling for crazy things like equal rights, and start a 150+ year long tradition of murder, rape, and oppression of straight people, then your "offense" at the Rainbow flag will be roughly as justified as the "offense" the Confederate Battle Flag causes.
Yes, Dylann Roof is actually a secret agent of the Illuminati, and allied with the Trilateral Commission. Those nine people he murdered because of their race aren't actually dead, they're actually living on a very nice farm, upstate. They like the place, and their neighbors, the people who "died" on Flight 93, have brought over several nice casseroles to welcome them to the area.
THAT outrage should have been over 15 years ago, when the flag was moved from over the capitol building (where it was certainly inappropriate as a symbol of a defeated rebellion) to a war memorial honoring the dead of that state who fought on the side of the rebellion.
By that logic, the Neue Wache (closest thing Germany has to a memorial to its WWII dead) should have a Swastika banner flying above it.
Countless Wehrmacht soldiers fought and died honorably in WWII. That doesn't change the fact that the cause for which they fought (whether or not they truly believed in it) was reprehensible and depraved. We can remember soldiers who died fighting for the Confederacy without in any way honoring or respecting the cause for which they fought.
This is a free speech issue. If the Confederate Battle Flag is now a symbol of racism and must be banned, what about the gray soldier's uniform? Do we ban that, too? How about the General Lee, it's got a big flag on the roof? How about the Civil War computer games, ban those, too? Let's go a bit further with this: What about the Swastika? How about the NAZI flag? Stormtrooper uniforms? The German SS ones, not the Star Wars ones. Do I own or want to own any of these items? No. But if a museum wants to display these items, I think it should be allowed to, so long as we are not glorifying the murder of innocent lives. As for the Civil War, I'd argue that we need not to forget it, or we might end up repeating it.
Don't worry, people get to keep their SS uniforms, they can display them on the nice straw man you built.
Nobody is saying that museums wouldn't be able to display Confederate items, or that private collectors wouldn't be able to keep, own, display, wear, etc. them. Nobody's saying that bigots won't be able to wrap themselves in the "glory" of the Confederate Battle Flag. It's just private companies deciding they don't want to sell those flags to them.
All Apple, eBay, Amazon, etc. are saying is that, as private businesses, they don't want to be selling products that are considered to glorify the viciousness of the Confederacy, and that have been used historically as symbols by violent bigots.
While to many, the Confederate Flag represents states rights to have laws allowing slavery, and to force other territories to accept it against the wishes of their citizens, Southern heritage of owning slaves, the right to rebel (against a legitimately elected government which wouldn't commit to force the entire country, and any new territories, to fully support the owning of slaves),
Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, His name was not even on the ballot in 10 states. There were only 33 states at the time so close to 1/3 of the states did not have him on the ballot and he still won. That was the key that started the whole civil war! An election that even today would cause riots, to have a candidate win when he was not even on the ballot in 1/3 of the states!
The 10 states where Lincoln wasn't on the ballot combined to make up 543k votes in the election. John Breckenridge was the candidate of the Southern Democrats, who had split from the main Democratic party because the larger party wouldn't pass a resolution explicitly supporting the expansion of slavery into new territories even though the residents of that territory voted against it. Breckenridge wasn't on the ballot in four states. Combined, those states cast 1.3 million ballots. So, if we're using "not being on the ballot" as a proxy for "not legitimate," the Southern Democrats were far less legitimate than Lincoln.
Were there other issues that divided the South and North in 1860? Certainly. Would the states that made up the Confederacy have attempted to secede if they had had agricultural economics based on non-slave labor? No way. They seceded because they thought it the only way to, over time, protect their "right" to own other human beings as property.
1. "If the original purchaser sold the gun but didn't keep a record of who they sold it to their in hot water too." No, they're not, since they're not required (in most states) to do a background check or keep any records of a private party sale.
2. While the 4473 records in theory allow for tracing, the way the system is set up makes it both incredibly manual (looking at scanned paper records, in many cases), and is explicitly prohibited from being used to actually track the sources of more than one gun at a time. So, while there's no technical barrier to doing this, ATF is prohibited by law from being able to say "1% of guns sold last year were recovered at crime scenes, but 38% of the guns sold by Joe's Guns were recovered at crime scenes, we need to take a close look at Joe's Guns, since there's something going on there."
The first problem could be easily solved by removing the private sale loophole for background checks, or at least require submission of a scan of the buyer's ID, along with a photo of the buyer. Could be done in an app, would take all of two minutes to do. Zero inconvenience for legit gun owners.
The second problem could also be easily solved, by ending the practice of forcing the ATF to delete the 4473 data, allowing for it to be obtained instantly, and allowing law enforcement to use the data to determine patterns that will allow law enforcement to target the small percentage of dealers who present the biggest problem.
Agreed. So how about we crack down on NON-law abiding gun owners, i.e. those owners and dealers who funnel guns to criminals? Require firearm registration, and we could easily trace back weapons used in crimes to the people who supplied them. I understand why the gun industry (and their mouthpiece, the NRA) objects to this, since from their perspective a sale is a sale, and guns that are funneled to criminals increase sales both directly and indirectly (by creating concerns about violence and driving law-abiding people to purchase guns). It makes no sense that the rest of us have to accept it, though.
He went on to say "I'm very skeptical, since the background in a lot of those moon photos looks just like the set we used to film those attacks on defenseless Russians by Ukrainian thugs...uh...um...I mean...nevermind."
The gov't guarantees the loan? You mean the loan the gov't issues? Kind of hard to guarantee a loan that you yourself issue.
As to the "going after the person," you can't get blood from a stone. Default rates for federal student loans are high, and a lot of those $ never get paid back. Further, "going after" someone costs money, plus you've got the time value of money factor.
Except that: (a) the Federal Gov't is the one issuing the loans in the vast majority of the cases (b) the default rates are 10-15% (compares to 3-4% rate for auto loans, where, again, you can repo the car)
"That's the problem. Interest rates on student loans are usury. Higher than most mortgages and auto loans"
Of course they're higher! Student loans are:
(a) unsecured (you can foreclose on a house or repossess a car, you can't take back a diploma and resell it) (b) not based on creditworthiness/ability to pay (it's not like the Feds say "we'll lend to people getting CompSci degrees at Stanford, but not to people getting French literature degrees at second-tier state schools")
It does happen, but it's not common. They end up on opposite sides of the judgment about 5% of the time. If you exclude unanimous cases, it's about 16% of the time.
The quick data I could find on this is a couple of years old, but as of 2011, 93% of people who made less than $16k/year paid zero federal income tax. Heck, 60% of people making $17-33k pay zero income tax. So it's definitely not true that "everyone" making over $14k pays federal income tax.
Advertising isn't big $ for cable companies. For every $10 in video subscription revenue they generate, they get about another $1 in advertising revenue, of which they keep around 75 cents.
On their conference call, they said that, since they were essentially tied at the end of 1Q, it's reasonable to assume that, by now, they have more Internet than TV customers.
Internet is a MUCH more profitable business than cable television. For every dollar a customer pays for TV, Comcast pays ~60 cents right out the door to the content guys (Disney, Time Warner, Viacom, etc.).
That's the FireTV _box_, not the stick. The Stick is 35 pounds. You give up the voice remote and a bit of processing horsepower, but unless you really want to use it for gaming, it shouldn't make a difference.
Slashdot Mirror
Apples and oranges. People rob taxi drivers because you can just get into the taxi, and they carry cash. Uber drivers are picking up people who have registered with Uber and provided a valid credit card. Now, sure, you could register, give a throwaway email address, create, fund, and provide a throwaway credit card, and then try to rob an Uber driver who might not have a single dollar on them. That implies a criminal who at the same time (a) engages in some reasonably sophisticated planning, and (b) decides to go after a very low-yield target.
"I like the convenience of knowing how much my ride will cost beforehand."
How does this work? Every place I've used Uber, it's been like a taxi, the fare is a combination of distance and time.
The Rainbow flag "offends" you? Once LGBT groups go beyond their current "agenda" calling for crazy things like equal rights, and start a 150+ year long tradition of murder, rape, and oppression of straight people, then your "offense" at the Rainbow flag will be roughly as justified as the "offense" the Confederate Battle Flag causes.
Yes, Dylann Roof is actually a secret agent of the Illuminati, and allied with the Trilateral Commission. Those nine people he murdered because of their race aren't actually dead, they're actually living on a very nice farm, upstate. They like the place, and their neighbors, the people who "died" on Flight 93, have brought over several nice casseroles to welcome them to the area.
THAT outrage should have been over 15 years ago, when the flag was moved from over the capitol building (where it was certainly inappropriate as a symbol of a defeated rebellion) to a war memorial honoring the dead of that state who fought on the side of the rebellion.
By that logic, the Neue Wache (closest thing Germany has to a memorial to its WWII dead) should have a Swastika banner flying above it.
Countless Wehrmacht soldiers fought and died honorably in WWII. That doesn't change the fact that the cause for which they fought (whether or not they truly believed in it) was reprehensible and depraved. We can remember soldiers who died fighting for the Confederacy without in any way honoring or respecting the cause for which they fought.
Out of curiosity, what makes you believe that the TPP would be in any way a violation of the Constitution?
This is a free speech issue. If the Confederate Battle Flag is now a symbol of racism and must be banned, what about the gray soldier's uniform? Do we ban that, too? How about the General Lee, it's got a big flag on the roof? How about the Civil War computer games, ban those, too? Let's go a bit further with this: What about the Swastika? How about the NAZI flag? Stormtrooper uniforms? The German SS ones, not the Star Wars ones. Do I own or want to own any of these items? No. But if a museum wants to display these items, I think it should be allowed to, so long as we are not glorifying the murder of innocent lives. As for the Civil War, I'd argue that we need not to forget it, or we might end up repeating it.
Don't worry, people get to keep their SS uniforms, they can display them on the nice straw man you built.
Nobody is saying that museums wouldn't be able to display Confederate items, or that private collectors wouldn't be able to keep, own, display, wear, etc. them. Nobody's saying that bigots won't be able to wrap themselves in the "glory" of the Confederate Battle Flag. It's just private companies deciding they don't want to sell those flags to them.
All Apple, eBay, Amazon, etc. are saying is that, as private businesses, they don't want to be selling products that are considered to glorify the viciousness of the Confederacy, and that have been used historically as symbols by violent bigots.
While to many, the Confederate Flag represents states rights to have laws allowing slavery, and to force other territories to accept it against the wishes of their citizens, Southern heritage of owning slaves, the right to rebel (against a legitimately elected government which wouldn't commit to force the entire country, and any new territories, to fully support the owning of slaves),
FTFY.
Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, His name was not even on the ballot in 10 states. There were only 33 states at the time so close to 1/3 of the states did not have him on the ballot and he still won. That was the key that started the whole civil war! An election that even today would cause riots, to have a candidate win when he was not even on the ballot in 1/3 of the states!
The 10 states where Lincoln wasn't on the ballot combined to make up 543k votes in the election. John Breckenridge was the candidate of the Southern Democrats, who had split from the main Democratic party because the larger party wouldn't pass a resolution explicitly supporting the expansion of slavery into new territories even though the residents of that territory voted against it. Breckenridge wasn't on the ballot in four states. Combined, those states cast 1.3 million ballots. So, if we're using "not being on the ballot" as a proxy for "not legitimate," the Southern Democrats were far less legitimate than Lincoln.
Were there other issues that divided the South and North in 1860? Certainly. Would the states that made up the Confederacy have attempted to secede if they had had agricultural economics based on non-slave labor? No way. They seceded because they thought it the only way to, over time, protect their "right" to own other human beings as property.
1. "If the original purchaser sold the gun but didn't keep a record of who they sold it to their in hot water too." No, they're not, since they're not required (in most states) to do a background check or keep any records of a private party sale.
2. While the 4473 records in theory allow for tracing, the way the system is set up makes it both incredibly manual (looking at scanned paper records, in many cases), and is explicitly prohibited from being used to actually track the sources of more than one gun at a time. So, while there's no technical barrier to doing this, ATF is prohibited by law from being able to say "1% of guns sold last year were recovered at crime scenes, but 38% of the guns sold by Joe's Guns were recovered at crime scenes, we need to take a close look at Joe's Guns, since there's something going on there."
The first problem could be easily solved by removing the private sale loophole for background checks, or at least require submission of a scan of the buyer's ID, along with a photo of the buyer. Could be done in an app, would take all of two minutes to do. Zero inconvenience for legit gun owners.
The second problem could also be easily solved, by ending the practice of forcing the ATF to delete the 4473 data, allowing for it to be obtained instantly, and allowing law enforcement to use the data to determine patterns that will allow law enforcement to target the small percentage of dealers who present the biggest problem.
Law abiding gun owners have never been a problem.
Agreed. So how about we crack down on NON-law abiding gun owners, i.e. those owners and dealers who funnel guns to criminals? Require firearm registration, and we could easily trace back weapons used in crimes to the people who supplied them. I understand why the gun industry (and their mouthpiece, the NRA) objects to this, since from their perspective a sale is a sale, and guns that are funneled to criminals increase sales both directly and indirectly (by creating concerns about violence and driving law-abiding people to purchase guns). It makes no sense that the rest of us have to accept it, though.
He went on to say "I'm very skeptical, since the background in a lot of those moon photos looks just like the set we used to film those attacks on defenseless Russians by Ukrainian thugs...uh...um...I mean...nevermind."
The gov't guarantees the loan? You mean the loan the gov't issues? Kind of hard to guarantee a loan that you yourself issue.
As to the "going after the person," you can't get blood from a stone. Default rates for federal student loans are high, and a lot of those $ never get paid back. Further, "going after" someone costs money, plus you've got the time value of money factor.
Except that:
(a) the Federal Gov't is the one issuing the loans in the vast majority of the cases
(b) the default rates are 10-15% (compares to 3-4% rate for auto loans, where, again, you can repo the car)
"That's the problem. Interest rates on student loans are usury. Higher than most mortgages and auto loans"
Of course they're higher! Student loans are:
(a) unsecured (you can foreclose on a house or repossess a car, you can't take back a diploma and resell it)
(b) not based on creditworthiness/ability to pay (it's not like the Feds say "we'll lend to people getting CompSci degrees at Stanford, but not to people getting French literature degrees at second-tier state schools")
What service are they forcing anyone to provide, really?
For another example, open a lunch counter and try to refuse to provide food to African-Americans. See how the courts view that.
It does happen, but it's not common. They end up on opposite sides of the judgment about 5% of the time. If you exclude unanimous cases, it's about 16% of the time.
http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/...
The quick data I could find on this is a couple of years old, but as of 2011, 93% of people who made less than $16k/year paid zero federal income tax. Heck, 60% of people making $17-33k pay zero income tax. So it's definitely not true that "everyone" making over $14k pays federal income tax.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes....
Advertising isn't big $ for cable companies. For every $10 in video subscription revenue they generate, they get about another $1 in advertising revenue, of which they keep around 75 cents.
On their conference call, they said that, since they were essentially tied at the end of 1Q, it's reasonable to assume that, by now, they have more Internet than TV customers.
2-10Mb/s download? You're kidding, right? Average Comcast customer is getting 44Mbps down (actual output). http://www.speedtest.net/isp/c...
Internet is a MUCH more profitable business than cable television. For every dollar a customer pays for TV, Comcast pays ~60 cents right out the door to the content guys (Disney, Time Warner, Viacom, etc.).
The problem with hamster-based encryption is the animal rarely survives the XOR process.
[Nice username.] =)
Actually, that's not that hard. Getting a slice of hamster is pretty straightforward. It's unslicing the lemon that's challenging.
You only get billed for cellular data, not Wifi. From the official announcement:
"and then it's a flat $10 per GB for cellular data while in the U.S. and abroad"
http://googleblog.blogspot.com...
That's the FireTV _box_, not the stick. The Stick is 35 pounds. You give up the voice remote and a bit of processing horsepower, but unless you really want to use it for gaming, it shouldn't make a difference.