Precisely. We don't know jack about how they lived, what their capabilities were, etc.
What we have had were attempts to use Neanderthals for racist stereotypes, to back up certain belief systems outside the realm of proper science. And now that we have found that white Europeans / Asians have Neanderthal DNA as part of their heritage, and Africans do not, I imagine that one of two things will happen: 1.) Denial, or 2.) a rehabilitation of the Neanderthal.
In any case, articles like these will continue to spout pure nonsense and popular group-think, while every scientist on the planet groans at the thought of humanity having to come to grips with yet another mistruth.
Or Homo Sapiens & Neanderthals interbred, and the hybrid offspring proved so be so superior to either of the parent species, that it completely replaced them.
Ask yourself, aside from relatively recent immigrants, are there any pure Homo Sapiens in the northern altitudes of Europe? Doesn't every European carry a percentage of Neanderthal DNA in them, no exceptions? I believe the Asians may be included in this as well (they also have some Neanderthal DNA in them), if I am remember an article I read recently correctly.
The only place with pure Homo Sapiens would probably be Africa.
Because compromising telecommunications equipment isn't trivial./s
Give it a miss while you're ahead, man; the '80s had their phreaks, and proved that much like declaring your company's server 'uncrackable,' no telecom is going to take out a front page ad saying that their system cannot be fooled by someone with the will to do so.
Doing something like that would rank about as highly as the US Navy declaring one of their boats unsinkable. Might as well christen it the 'Sol Invictus,' paint a bulls-eye on the side, and begin insulting the gods with every slur a drunk, burly Scotsman could think of, while parking it next to whatever nation currently has a youth filled with too much fervor and rocket launchers, and not enough female companionship. The Navy might think their boats are pretty spiffy (they are), but they aren't idiots.
Because security isn't, uhm, magic? It's not like you tick a little box, and it just works. At any given time, half the human race is trying to break that security, and the other half is trying to improve it.
And it's not like you can 'tighten' security by being increasingly belligerent, engaging in background checks, and going through people's trash. That just antagonizes people, and makes them work against you.
If you want a more secure populace, you might want a slightly more intelligent one. True, it does tend to fare worse for the rulers of said populace (well...except for the British, possibly; a learned populace being somewhat less pliable to authority, on the basis of authority...), but it also does wonders for false alarms ("Say old chap, there's a man climbing the power pole outside the Wilson's place with a.38 Winchester in his company...are you aware of them having an animal problem? No? Then call one of the lads from the local PD to come and have a talk with him...I'd hate to think he is going to do something rash.").
Or you could argue that the populace was experiencing negative symptoms from the windmills being nearby, but up until they were made aware that they could cause negative health effects, they attributed the decline to other things. The effect of the information, then, served to give them a list of symptoms that they could validate against, and come to their own conclusions.
Indeed. Feels kind of like someone pulling the rug out from underneath you...then you take a look around, and realize that people prefer scams and fraud, inefficient ways of doing things, because it's power, their power, and that's why technology is hated.
Those programming books, needed to keep current, cost a bundle, last I checked. No one is going to enter a field where you rack your brain all-day doing mind-bending equations, only to be forced to scrimp and save for the latest programming books. And no one is going to invest four years in a college degree that becomes obsolete faster than the latest iPhone. And those books are not even the bare minimum.
Pay your programmers, or do not. But do know that if you pretend to pay your programmers, then they will pretend to work. If the Technology sector falling into shambles in this country isn't enough to convince you of this, nothing will. Enjoy your iPhones, kids, and your financial bailouts. Remember, there's always one born every minute, and it's not like the US has steadily acquired a reputation for burning its partners.
There are many possibilities / rationalizations here.
1.) For the Democrats, this is their way of punishing the Republicans. Remember, in a two-party system, it's all about getting revenge from the last time your party was kicked out of office. One of the sadder things I heard, and I am paraphrasing here, is the flimsiest rationalization I've heard yet: "Well, you guys [he was replying to some Republicans in a forum] had your fun for 8 years, so now it's our turn!" For a lot of the third parties (Greens, Socialists, etc.) who thought Obama was going to stop some of this nonsense, the Democrats proved that they were every bit as infantile as the Republicans they had just replaced; needless to say, those parties were somewhat disheartened by this news.
2.) For the Democrats, it hurts to be wrong. Well, it hurts to be wrong in general, when you are emotionally invested in the outcome, no matter your loyalties or allegiances; what does politics prey on, but the emotionally weak? Driving the masses into a furor, demanding authority, and only scripted questionings before installing people into high offices. Utter madness. Sometimes, with human beings, even mentioning that they were wrong is akin to tapping on a bruise...you're inflicting mental pain, even if you're trying to be 'helpful' or corrective. The emotions surrounding that decision need to be vacated before the outcome can be properly understood. Surprising, then, to find that there is a type of human predator that thrives by making people relive these experiences, trapped in a world they cannot escape from, while quietly using them to their own ends. You won't find that definition in any book, but then, I've found most psychology books are littered with the labels for the victims of the types never trapped before (most people find this thought ludicrous, or upsetting), rather than the types they'd really care to keep an eye out for. Remember, the most dangerous types of criminals are the ones that are never caught.
3.) People are quietly racist. See, there's the common form of racism, that you're all aware of, that involves shouting various slurs and treating a human being as an unequal. But there's also another form, highlighted by our good friends over at Reddit, who pointed out one of its subtler forms: avoiding interacting with people of another race, for fear of being perceived as racist / accidentally saying something that may be misinterpreted, leading to higher racial tensions. The easiest example is of a white girl, walking down a street, at night, sees a black guy coming up the same side of the street from the opposite direction; she crosses the street to avoid interacting with him, because of a subtle fear that either he might rape her (closet racism / sexism), and also to avoid talking to him (racism) if, perchance, he is to say anything to her (even if it's just "Hey"). So, you have a large portion of the Democrats who treat any criticism of Obama's policies as a racist attack (weird, since I thought he was half-white, half-black...); and any Democrat who wishes to remark of any of Obama's failures, real or not, cannot, for fear of being perceived as racist, and thus being pushed out of the group (the Democrats); since group identity means so much to these people (my party, right or wrong), they have to gerry-mand their criticism...which in its own way shows their closet racism.
I liken it to this episode of "Better Off Ted" I watched last night. Ted's daughter was competing against a girl in a wheelchair in some fundraising activity, and the girl had to make a choice: treat the handicap girl as a competitor, no different from any other, and, if she wins, let her relish a true victory, not one handed to her / prorated for her because she was disabled, or purposefully fail, let the girl win, but sour her victory; she wins, but only because others would not compete with her, to determine whether she could truly beat them at their best. In much the same way, America is having a hard time deciding whether to treat its first 'black'
Funny, I thought he was a Constitutional lawyer at some point...and yet the laissez-faire approach he has taken to enforcing many of its rights, as per the individual (also known as the smallest minority), seems to speak to the contrary.
But then, this is common in politics. Those with the loudest voices tend to drown out those with softer ones.
Amazing, isn't it? All this technology, education, and one hell of a legal system, and people still steal. Weird, right?
And here's the funny thing. Most of the time they get away with it.
What more, there's no sure fire way to prevent theft, even if everyone had a chip in their heads, and a supercomputer was dedicated to thought crime. Even the most dedicate, read-only AI with the best intents would, IMHO, go completely nuts after several generations of exposure to humanity; you either have a drift of values from the time the AI was initialized (what was once a social vice is now not), or you have an accumulating error (good luck with that), or even spontaneous errors (a problem that the designers never imagined the AI would encounter, and CANNOT adapt around). Those are just a few of the possible error conditions.
Finally, we haven't considered, though this is way out here on the fringe branch, that morality is a weapon, used by groups to subjugate individuals to their agendas, whether it benefits them or not. I say this, because the first thing any would-be aggressor does is establish the moral high-ground in any given scenario, nullifies the current set of group beliefs and replaces it with their own, then directs the group against those now outside the group.
On the other hand, I am currently taking some migraine meds which have some fairly horrific side-effects (feels like my skin is on fire right now...like I'm in an oven), so perhaps I am not in the best frame of mind to consider the more philosophical points of civility tonight. Topamax is a crazy drug.
Ah, the power of gossip. When everyone 'knows' what you are thinking, except it's the wrong thing, but your attempts to correct it lead to two unhappy outcomes: a lack of privacy or no change at all (the more you attempt to convince people otherwise, the more it confirms it in their eyes). Were it not for the passive aggressive nature of mankind, it might even be entertaining; but sadly, this is some people's lives...
I've noticed an interesting defense mechanism is to talk about someone else that a group can agree is deplorable, if only because it prevents active gossiping about any of the immediate members. Human beings are such ugly creatures....
What would make the world safer is a little less fear and paranoia. Holding people without trials, ordering assassinations of citizens...this does nothing for the citizen's ideal of safety within the homeland, to speak nothing of without.
A weapon is a weapon is a weapon...it's the mind behind it that you need to be wary of, not the weapon itself. Even if we eliminated every WMD in existence, a new one could be cooked up over a long weekend by a skilled chemist or physicist. Feel me? Understand me? No, you may not. That's not important. The point is, douse the flames of nationalism and global paranoia before the US & friends end up like NK, who is, by various accounts, going full schizo this week.
The average human being can die in an innumerable number of ways every day: the way they get through their day, get on with their lives, is by being largely blind to the sheer number of possibilities in which they can bite the big one. When you make them too aware of these ways, then they stop working, start OCDing / ruminating on the various ways, and get trapped in a 'fear maze' with no exit. These national security jokers, who, in their short term greed / self interest of securing more resources for themselves by cranking up the fear factor, have seriously unhinged some parts of this society that are not meant to be unhinged, unless we want a civil war...which is where we are headed. Now, sometimes a civil war is a good thing, or so I am told, but the fact remains that my personal confidence in anyone's reasons for starting one, let alone their game plan for day two, are currently at an all time low.
If the IRS started tapping everyone's phone lines to get tax info, then yeah, people would consider having gone way too far. If the IRS started tailing your kids, to see what they spent their lunch money on, the money which you gave them, and then proceeded to ding you for failing to disclose certain taxable items on your tax returns that your kids bought (you said $10 that day for lunch, a food item...your son bought some pencils and a yoyo without your knowledge...as such, the IRS considers your return fraudulent...), then people would consider that beyond creepy.
And that's where these cameras are. 1.) The law behind them is flawed (it is; sit down, and shut up), 2.) the implementation is flawed (seriously, how much money was the city giving away?), 3.) instead of having an officer there to actually chase the person down, and prevent a recurrence, they receive a ticket in the mail; cue the 'what if the car is stolen?' scenarios, the 'what if someone else is driving' scenarios, the 'what if this person was running through several red lights, high on crystal meth, and hit someone, killing them, if only an officer had stopped them / been there, instead of an idiotic revenue generating machine' scenarios, etc. And once again, the law is flawed -> the goal is not eliminate speeding, it's to tax it! That's what a ticket is, a tax on speeding! Take a look at your city / town's cash flow statement sometime, and you'll see that it depends on revenue from a variety of nefarious activities to fund other 'feel good' public works projects. It's not a small amount either. Nor is it easily replaced. The fact remains that if speeding stopped, your town would hold an emergency meeting to highlight budget shortfalls, and try to find a new source of income so it could maintain its array of works. So some other social vice would have to be invented / taxed, and it takes forever to get people to agree to a 'sin' tax. They have to be taught to hate the sin from a young age, and never question that it is evil, or the whole enterprise will fall apart. Sure, short term, they might be able to increase the taxation of other 'vices,' but that doesn't always work.
As such, I favor a drunk driving course -> professional drinkers will show you how to drive, on a closed speedway, at top speed, with half a bottle of a single malt in your stomach. Successful completion of the course results in a reduction of your insurance premiums, as you've shown you're a safe drunk driver.
Stupidity is the main cause of road deaths. Everything else is accidental or malicious, and almost less than a rounding error.
"Hey kids, watch me lane change while I text (with both hands) on my phone, in the middle of heavy traffic!" -> Give me the drunk driver / speeder any day of this nonsense. At least I know that I need to watch that person...finding the subversive SUV / mini-van driving mom or daughter of mom texter in regular traffic is like trying to find the Red October in the Atlantic. Blink, and she's lane-changing on top of you.
Ever been in a traffic court? The judge is not interested in hearing you say anything other than "I'm guilty." As a matter of fact, if you don't say that, then he will say it for you, "You're guilty," even when evidence eventually proves that you are not. The entire design of this legal system is so hopelessly lopsided that trial by gladiatorial combat might be considered fair in comparison. Well, if you're one of the common people, anyway. If you're a judge, police officer, or government worker, then apparently the laws do not apply to you, and tickets can be dismissed at will.
Honestly, I do not know how a traffic court judge gets up in the morning, and can look himself in the mirror. He knows the system is hopelessly corrupt, that the laws are complete and utter bullshit, that the cops lie (he has the internet, and TV, presumably...he must have caught something over these past ten decades); and yet he sits on his throne, looks all angry and condescending like, and tells people how he never, ever had anyone fuck up this bad before, and that the cop over there is an angel that would never steal the kid's weed. Or something similar. Wat.
And people wonder why I want to leave this country. Everything is pay to play. We outlaw happiness, and regulate pain. *shudders* I'm sure if this is the implementation of the utilitarian philosophy, then somewhere, someone is extremely happy.
Well, for starters, the lie by omission you are currently experiencing. You know, the piece of information that everyone has guessed is missing for such a small town to have arrived at such an astronomical number of tickets? Yeah.
'Tis quite alright, I've been in your position before myself, many times. It's human nature to exaggerate the facts, or to leave out a small piece of information that completely tilts the argument to the opposing side.
Well obviously you need to fight back, in the form of more irritating ads that last longer and are more eye-popping, as both some form of punishment and to convince the few still not using ad-blockers to spend more, making up for the others' thrift.
I'm seeing something like Flash^3, complete with two mandatory surveys and ten minutes worth of video ads, per site visit. No, make that per page. Meanwhile, you can launch a subversive campaign 'educating' people about how when their friends use ad-block, artists / web site owners / content providers don't get their cut, and are endangering their access to their freemium content (because the web wasn't worth visiting before '95, right?). Perhaps you can form some sort of lobbying group to get congress to pass a bill making use of ad-blockers illegal? Or that every adult / child over a certain age has to be subjected to a certain amount white-noise style spamvertisement, in the interests of keeping our consumption based economy on track? Oh, and be sure to get the 'soft' science types to update their book of labels, so anyone not wishing to partake in this will be considered anti-social or something. That's a good society, run along now.
You'll find that any right not enumerated in the Constitution is quietly trampled upon by anyone seeking authority. As such, that Amendment remains somewhat useless, as does the notion of a piece of paper being the source of our highest laws, without the use of force to back it up. Indeed, those laws are only backed up if those using force agree with the silly words written on those pieces of paper, and wish to enforce those laws as written. Prove me wrong.
What it comes down to is, some people are tied to the status quo, some are tied to reason, some are tied to force. Guess which one seems to be winning these days?
Slashdot Mirror
Precisely. We don't know jack about how they lived, what their capabilities were, etc.
What we have had were attempts to use Neanderthals for racist stereotypes, to back up certain belief systems outside the realm of proper science. And now that we have found that white Europeans / Asians have Neanderthal DNA as part of their heritage, and Africans do not, I imagine that one of two things will happen: 1.) Denial, or 2.) a rehabilitation of the Neanderthal.
In any case, articles like these will continue to spout pure nonsense and popular group-think, while every scientist on the planet groans at the thought of humanity having to come to grips with yet another mistruth.
Or Homo Sapiens & Neanderthals interbred, and the hybrid offspring proved so be so superior to either of the parent species, that it completely replaced them.
Ask yourself, aside from relatively recent immigrants, are there any pure Homo Sapiens in the northern altitudes of Europe? Doesn't every European carry a percentage of Neanderthal DNA in them, no exceptions? I believe the Asians may be included in this as well (they also have some Neanderthal DNA in them), if I am remember an article I read recently correctly.
The only place with pure Homo Sapiens would probably be Africa.
There you go again, using logic and facts. Why don't you just put down the gun, and step outside? We're all friends here...
Because compromising telecommunications equipment isn't trivial./s
Give it a miss while you're ahead, man; the '80s had their phreaks, and proved that much like declaring your company's server 'uncrackable,' no telecom is going to take out a front page ad saying that their system cannot be fooled by someone with the will to do so.
Doing something like that would rank about as highly as the US Navy declaring one of their boats unsinkable. Might as well christen it the 'Sol Invictus,' paint a bulls-eye on the side, and begin insulting the gods with every slur a drunk, burly Scotsman could think of, while parking it next to whatever nation currently has a youth filled with too much fervor and rocket launchers, and not enough female companionship. The Navy might think their boats are pretty spiffy (they are), but they aren't idiots.
Because security isn't, uhm, magic? It's not like you tick a little box, and it just works. At any given time, half the human race is trying to break that security, and the other half is trying to improve it.
And it's not like you can 'tighten' security by being increasingly belligerent, engaging in background checks, and going through people's trash. That just antagonizes people, and makes them work against you.
If you want a more secure populace, you might want a slightly more intelligent one. True, it does tend to fare worse for the rulers of said populace (well...except for the British, possibly; a learned populace being somewhat less pliable to authority, on the basis of authority...), but it also does wonders for false alarms ("Say old chap, there's a man climbing the power pole outside the Wilson's place with a .38 Winchester in his company...are you aware of them having an animal problem? No? Then call one of the lads from the local PD to come and have a talk with him...I'd hate to think he is going to do something rash.").
Or you could argue that the populace was experiencing negative symptoms from the windmills being nearby, but up until they were made aware that they could cause negative health effects, they attributed the decline to other things. The effect of the information, then, served to give them a list of symptoms that they could validate against, and come to their own conclusions.
Perhaps Cray has seen better years...
Indeed. Feels kind of like someone pulling the rug out from underneath you...then you take a look around, and realize that people prefer scams and fraud, inefficient ways of doing things, because it's power, their power, and that's why technology is hated.
Those programming books, needed to keep current, cost a bundle, last I checked. No one is going to enter a field where you rack your brain all-day doing mind-bending equations, only to be forced to scrimp and save for the latest programming books. And no one is going to invest four years in a college degree that becomes obsolete faster than the latest iPhone. And those books are not even the bare minimum.
Pay your programmers, or do not. But do know that if you pretend to pay your programmers, then they will pretend to work. If the Technology sector falling into shambles in this country isn't enough to convince you of this, nothing will. Enjoy your iPhones, kids, and your financial bailouts. Remember, there's always one born every minute, and it's not like the US has steadily acquired a reputation for burning its partners.
So, what you're saying is, is that the status quo is God?
There are many possibilities / rationalizations here.
1.) For the Democrats, this is their way of punishing the Republicans. Remember, in a two-party system, it's all about getting revenge from the last time your party was kicked out of office. One of the sadder things I heard, and I am paraphrasing here, is the flimsiest rationalization I've heard yet: "Well, you guys [he was replying to some Republicans in a forum] had your fun for 8 years, so now it's our turn!" For a lot of the third parties (Greens, Socialists, etc.) who thought Obama was going to stop some of this nonsense, the Democrats proved that they were every bit as infantile as the Republicans they had just replaced; needless to say, those parties were somewhat disheartened by this news.
2.) For the Democrats, it hurts to be wrong. Well, it hurts to be wrong in general, when you are emotionally invested in the outcome, no matter your loyalties or allegiances; what does politics prey on, but the emotionally weak? Driving the masses into a furor, demanding authority, and only scripted questionings before installing people into high offices. Utter madness. Sometimes, with human beings, even mentioning that they were wrong is akin to tapping on a bruise...you're inflicting mental pain, even if you're trying to be 'helpful' or corrective. The emotions surrounding that decision need to be vacated before the outcome can be properly understood. Surprising, then, to find that there is a type of human predator that thrives by making people relive these experiences, trapped in a world they cannot escape from, while quietly using them to their own ends. You won't find that definition in any book, but then, I've found most psychology books are littered with the labels for the victims of the types never trapped before (most people find this thought ludicrous, or upsetting), rather than the types they'd really care to keep an eye out for. Remember, the most dangerous types of criminals are the ones that are never caught.
3.) People are quietly racist. See, there's the common form of racism, that you're all aware of, that involves shouting various slurs and treating a human being as an unequal. But there's also another form, highlighted by our good friends over at Reddit, who pointed out one of its subtler forms: avoiding interacting with people of another race, for fear of being perceived as racist / accidentally saying something that may be misinterpreted, leading to higher racial tensions. The easiest example is of a white girl, walking down a street, at night, sees a black guy coming up the same side of the street from the opposite direction; she crosses the street to avoid interacting with him, because of a subtle fear that either he might rape her (closet racism / sexism), and also to avoid talking to him (racism) if, perchance, he is to say anything to her (even if it's just "Hey"). So, you have a large portion of the Democrats who treat any criticism of Obama's policies as a racist attack (weird, since I thought he was half-white, half-black...); and any Democrat who wishes to remark of any of Obama's failures, real or not, cannot, for fear of being perceived as racist, and thus being pushed out of the group (the Democrats); since group identity means so much to these people (my party, right or wrong), they have to gerry-mand their criticism...which in its own way shows their closet racism.
I liken it to this episode of "Better Off Ted" I watched last night. Ted's daughter was competing against a girl in a wheelchair in some fundraising activity, and the girl had to make a choice: treat the handicap girl as a competitor, no different from any other, and, if she wins, let her relish a true victory, not one handed to her / prorated for her because she was disabled, or purposefully fail, let the girl win, but sour her victory; she wins, but only because others would not compete with her, to determine whether she could truly beat them at their best. In much the same way, America is having a hard time deciding whether to treat its first 'black'
Funny, I thought he was a Constitutional lawyer at some point...and yet the laissez-faire approach he has taken to enforcing many of its rights, as per the individual (also known as the smallest minority), seems to speak to the contrary.
But then, this is common in politics. Those with the loudest voices tend to drown out those with softer ones.
Amazing, isn't it? All this technology, education, and one hell of a legal system, and people still steal. Weird, right?
And here's the funny thing. Most of the time they get away with it.
What more, there's no sure fire way to prevent theft, even if everyone had a chip in their heads, and a supercomputer was dedicated to thought crime. Even the most dedicate, read-only AI with the best intents would, IMHO, go completely nuts after several generations of exposure to humanity; you either have a drift of values from the time the AI was initialized (what was once a social vice is now not), or you have an accumulating error (good luck with that), or even spontaneous errors (a problem that the designers never imagined the AI would encounter, and CANNOT adapt around). Those are just a few of the possible error conditions.
Finally, we haven't considered, though this is way out here on the fringe branch, that morality is a weapon, used by groups to subjugate individuals to their agendas, whether it benefits them or not. I say this, because the first thing any would-be aggressor does is establish the moral high-ground in any given scenario, nullifies the current set of group beliefs and replaces it with their own, then directs the group against those now outside the group.
On the other hand, I am currently taking some migraine meds which have some fairly horrific side-effects (feels like my skin is on fire right now...like I'm in an oven), so perhaps I am not in the best frame of mind to consider the more philosophical points of civility tonight. Topamax is a crazy drug.
Ah, the power of gossip. When everyone 'knows' what you are thinking, except it's the wrong thing, but your attempts to correct it lead to two unhappy outcomes: a lack of privacy or no change at all (the more you attempt to convince people otherwise, the more it confirms it in their eyes). Were it not for the passive aggressive nature of mankind, it might even be entertaining; but sadly, this is some people's lives...
I've noticed an interesting defense mechanism is to talk about someone else that a group can agree is deplorable, if only because it prevents active gossiping about any of the immediate members. Human beings are such ugly creatures....
What would make the world safer is a little less fear and paranoia. Holding people without trials, ordering assassinations of citizens...this does nothing for the citizen's ideal of safety within the homeland, to speak nothing of without.
A weapon is a weapon is a weapon...it's the mind behind it that you need to be wary of, not the weapon itself. Even if we eliminated every WMD in existence, a new one could be cooked up over a long weekend by a skilled chemist or physicist. Feel me? Understand me? No, you may not. That's not important. The point is, douse the flames of nationalism and global paranoia before the US & friends end up like NK, who is, by various accounts, going full schizo this week.
The average human being can die in an innumerable number of ways every day: the way they get through their day, get on with their lives, is by being largely blind to the sheer number of possibilities in which they can bite the big one. When you make them too aware of these ways, then they stop working, start OCDing / ruminating on the various ways, and get trapped in a 'fear maze' with no exit. These national security jokers, who, in their short term greed / self interest of securing more resources for themselves by cranking up the fear factor, have seriously unhinged some parts of this society that are not meant to be unhinged, unless we want a civil war...which is where we are headed. Now, sometimes a civil war is a good thing, or so I am told, but the fact remains that my personal confidence in anyone's reasons for starting one, let alone their game plan for day two, are currently at an all time low.
Bacon dipped in maple syrup.
They want your wallet, they do not wish to limit you speed.
If the IRS started tapping everyone's phone lines to get tax info, then yeah, people would consider having gone way too far. If the IRS started tailing your kids, to see what they spent their lunch money on, the money which you gave them, and then proceeded to ding you for failing to disclose certain taxable items on your tax returns that your kids bought (you said $10 that day for lunch, a food item...your son bought some pencils and a yoyo without your knowledge...as such, the IRS considers your return fraudulent...), then people would consider that beyond creepy.
And that's where these cameras are. 1.) The law behind them is flawed (it is; sit down, and shut up), 2.) the implementation is flawed (seriously, how much money was the city giving away?), 3.) instead of having an officer there to actually chase the person down, and prevent a recurrence, they receive a ticket in the mail; cue the 'what if the car is stolen?' scenarios, the 'what if someone else is driving' scenarios, the 'what if this person was running through several red lights, high on crystal meth, and hit someone, killing them, if only an officer had stopped them / been there, instead of an idiotic revenue generating machine' scenarios, etc. And once again, the law is flawed -> the goal is not eliminate speeding, it's to tax it! That's what a ticket is, a tax on speeding! Take a look at your city / town's cash flow statement sometime, and you'll see that it depends on revenue from a variety of nefarious activities to fund other 'feel good' public works projects. It's not a small amount either. Nor is it easily replaced. The fact remains that if speeding stopped, your town would hold an emergency meeting to highlight budget shortfalls, and try to find a new source of income so it could maintain its array of works. So some other social vice would have to be invented / taxed, and it takes forever to get people to agree to a 'sin' tax. They have to be taught to hate the sin from a young age, and never question that it is evil, or the whole enterprise will fall apart. Sure, short term, they might be able to increase the taxation of other 'vices,' but that doesn't always work.
As such, I favor a drunk driving course -> professional drinkers will show you how to drive, on a closed speedway, at top speed, with half a bottle of a single malt in your stomach. Successful completion of the course results in a reduction of your insurance premiums, as you've shown you're a safe drunk driver.
Stupidity is the main cause of road deaths. Everything else is accidental or malicious, and almost less than a rounding error.
"Hey kids, watch me lane change while I text (with both hands) on my phone, in the middle of heavy traffic!" -> Give me the drunk driver / speeder any day of this nonsense. At least I know that I need to watch that person...finding the subversive SUV / mini-van driving mom or daughter of mom texter in regular traffic is like trying to find the Red October in the Atlantic. Blink, and she's lane-changing on top of you.
Ever been in a traffic court? The judge is not interested in hearing you say anything other than "I'm guilty." As a matter of fact, if you don't say that, then he will say it for you, "You're guilty," even when evidence eventually proves that you are not. The entire design of this legal system is so hopelessly lopsided that trial by gladiatorial combat might be considered fair in comparison. Well, if you're one of the common people, anyway. If you're a judge, police officer, or government worker, then apparently the laws do not apply to you, and tickets can be dismissed at will.
Honestly, I do not know how a traffic court judge gets up in the morning, and can look himself in the mirror. He knows the system is hopelessly corrupt, that the laws are complete and utter bullshit, that the cops lie (he has the internet, and TV, presumably...he must have caught something over these past ten decades); and yet he sits on his throne, looks all angry and condescending like, and tells people how he never, ever had anyone fuck up this bad before, and that the cop over there is an angel that would never steal the kid's weed. Or something similar. Wat.
And people wonder why I want to leave this country. Everything is pay to play. We outlaw happiness, and regulate pain. *shudders* I'm sure if this is the implementation of the utilitarian philosophy, then somewhere, someone is extremely happy.
Well, for starters, the lie by omission you are currently experiencing. You know, the piece of information that everyone has guessed is missing for such a small town to have arrived at such an astronomical number of tickets? Yeah.
'Tis quite alright, I've been in your position before myself, many times. It's human nature to exaggerate the facts, or to leave out a small piece of information that completely tilts the argument to the opposing side.
Well obviously you need to fight back, in the form of more irritating ads that last longer and are more eye-popping, as both some form of punishment and to convince the few still not using ad-blockers to spend more, making up for the others' thrift.
I'm seeing something like Flash^3, complete with two mandatory surveys and ten minutes worth of video ads, per site visit. No, make that per page. Meanwhile, you can launch a subversive campaign 'educating' people about how when their friends use ad-block, artists / web site owners / content providers don't get their cut, and are endangering their access to their freemium content (because the web wasn't worth visiting before '95, right?). Perhaps you can form some sort of lobbying group to get congress to pass a bill making use of ad-blockers illegal? Or that every adult / child over a certain age has to be subjected to a certain amount white-noise style spamvertisement, in the interests of keeping our consumption based economy on track? Oh, and be sure to get the 'soft' science types to update their book of labels, so anyone not wishing to partake in this will be considered anti-social or something. That's a good society, run along now.
Paraphrasing, but yes, the BOFH's influence can be found, at times, in my writings.
You'll find that any right not enumerated in the Constitution is quietly trampled upon by anyone seeking authority. As such, that Amendment remains somewhat useless, as does the notion of a piece of paper being the source of our highest laws, without the use of force to back it up. Indeed, those laws are only backed up if those using force agree with the silly words written on those pieces of paper, and wish to enforce those laws as written. Prove me wrong.
What it comes down to is, some people are tied to the status quo, some are tied to reason, some are tied to force. Guess which one seems to be winning these days?