This puts my left thumb on keypad0, and puts both the left, down, and right arrow keys, plus the keypad1 key at quickaccess for my thumb. My left pinky settles on the enter key and can slide down to the shift key or up to the backspace key easily.
Additionally the insert and pageup keys are available for noncritical bindings. Since I can only be moving in one of the four cardinal vectors when activating those keys.
But yeah. 8 keys without sacrificing my ability to move. Between my mouse keys and my keyboard set up, I've never had a PC game where I needed to stretch for more keys to bind.
Sumo, are you replying to my post from the 30th? or SecretAgent's post from the 31st?
I ask because I wasn't notified of a reply, but your post isn't threaded with any of SecretAgent's post.. You've got my reviewing my posts for logical fallacies that I hope aren't there.;)
If the photo gets published, and the officers are identifiable, a criminal could find the officers and possibly kill them.
Except... if any undercover officers are identifiable in the photo, they were identifiable to everyone on the street, including the suspects being arrested. Their cover is gone. If they didn't break cover to make an arrest, then there is no police to identify, that aren't already known to be police. Uniformed police are obvious, and plainclothes (but not undercover) police are going to have guns and badges out while making an arrest.
Well, drinkypoo, I just had you respond to one of my comments in an semi-dissenting sort of fashion.
But here, we're pretty much in agreement. Having police arrest citizens, in public locations, for taking photographs of police supposedly enforcing the law is in no way "the right thing." It certainly isn't garnering anyone, government employees or not, protection from terrorism.
And even if we did attain security from foreign terrorism, did we really gain anything by replacing it with domestic oppression?
This is true if all that mattered was the presidency. It isn't. Congress plays a large part in appropriations, and as of this moment, the Republicans have lost a lot of support. So when I say its a political loser, I'm not talking about an office. I'm talking about for the party, as a whole.
I don't know how a transfer of Congressional power from the Republicans to the Democrats will affect anything, but I do know that if you've got the kind of leverage with the Republicans to get a war started, you'd be better off not buring that leverage by starting the war. You can be a fearmonger, encourage all kinds of spending on security, and sidestep the worries of "whats going to happen during the midterm elections?" and "what do we do after this presidency is over, by law?" while still giggling insanely at the profits. Not to mention that if you play your political cards right, you'll create an atmosphere so that even if the Democrats come to power, they can't curtail the spending without being attacked for not taking security seriously.
If, that is, you believe its a war mainly for the benefit of defense/construction contractors.
But are you seriously suggesting that parents should micromanage their kids' lives when they are teenagers? Require permission to go to the store, search them for contraband when they come back in, forbid them from entering the house when you aren't there to search them and watch what they do?
Are you seriously suggesting that if you don't, as a parent, demand permission to leave the house, search for 'contraband', and don't string your entire home with expensive video surveillance, that you are incapable of noticing when your kid has possession of a video game that you don't approve of them possessing?
Honestly.. all you'd have to do is check the memory card. Not exactly the top of the list of contraband, unless you just prohibit the console itself. And if you want to assert that parents may not know about it, then I would assert that such ignorance is a failure of a parent not the child's.
Actually, there is a general prohibition for underage possession and consumption of alochol. But there exists, in many jurisdictions, certain exceptions where underage possession and consumption are legal. So there are more elements to the crime than simply the possession of alcohol by a minor. Some possession exceptions are by location, some are by presence of a legal guardian, some jurisdictions require both. I didn't do a very detailed read of the consumption requirements, but I got the impression that those are more lax than the possession requirements.
I don't have a terribly high opinion of the current US administration. But I don't think you're being cynical enough.
If there was really a defense/construction contractor motive, they'd be better served by not having a war. Deploying large numbers of troops and material is expensive and a political loser. If, instead, you spent the money currently being spent on defense research and in addition you spend part of the money you're saving by not having so many troops deployed on either further research or modernization, your defense contractors are booming. They're putting out the latest gadgetry, and the military gets newer bases. The Republicans don't hemorrage approval, and they get to tout how the American military is better than ever. At most, they conduct limited military campaigns mostly with Special Operations Command. You've got a much more believable reason to classify information about these units than regular line units. You don't get those pesky media outlets running video of Americans in combat.
All that said.. I agree, the US is not a democracy. And it isn't, as far as I can tell, representative of anything except politicians and corporations.
You're forgetting that because this law has been struck down, the kid can buy it himself without his mother's knowledge. The whole point of this legislation was to try to give parents more control over whether their kids play these games without banning them from having their own money or watching them every second of the day.
I'm curious how this kid managed to get to the store without the parent's permission. And then, once he's got there and purchased his game, how he manages to play it without parental oversight.
If parents are paying that little attention, I've probably found the issue. And it isn't the game.
actually.. North Carolina already taxes drug dealing.
NC General Statue, 105-113.107: Excise tax on unauthorized substances.
(a) Controlled Substances. - An excise tax is levied on controlled substances possessed, either actually or constructively, by dealers at the following rates:
(1) At the rate of forty cents (40) for each gram, or fraction thereof, of harvested marijuana stems and stalks that have been separated from and are not mixed with any other parts of the marijuana plant.
(1a) At the rate of three dollars and fifty cents ($3.50) for each gram, or fraction thereof, of marijuana, other than separated stems and stalks taxed under subdivision (1) of this section.
(1b) At the rate of fifty dollars ($50.00) for each gram, or fraction thereof, of cocaine.
(2) At the rate of two hundred dollars ($200.00) for each gram, or fraction thereof, of any other controlled substance that is sold by weight.
(2a) At the rate of fifty dollars ($50.00) for each 10 dosage units, or fraction thereof, of any lowstreetvalue drug that is not sold by weight.
(3) At the rate of two hundred dollars ($200.00) for each 10 dosage units, or fraction thereof, of any other controlled substance that is not sold by weight.
(a1) Weight. - A quantity of marijuana or other controlled substance is measured by the weight of the substance whether pure or impure or dilute, or by dosage units when the substance is not sold by weight, in the dealer's possession. A quantity of a controlled substance is dilute if it consists of a detectable quantity of pure controlled substance and any excipients or fillers.
(b) Illicit Spirituous Liquor. - An excise tax is levied on illicit spirituous liquor possessed by a dealer at the following rates:
(1) At the rate of thirtyone dollars and seventy cents ($31.70) for each gallon, or fraction thereof, of illicit spirituous liquor sold by the drink.
(2) At the rate of twelve dollars and eighty cents ($12.80) for each gallon, or fraction thereof, of illicit spirituous liquor not sold by the drink.
(c) Mash. - An excise tax is levied on mash possessed by a dealer at the rate of one dollar and twentyeight cents ($1.28) for each gallon or fraction thereof.
(d) Illicit Mixed Beverages. - A tax is levied on illicit mixed beverages sold by a dealer at the rate of twenty dollars ($20.00) on each four liters and a proportional sum on lesser quantities.
I wonder if the legislators find it odd that most don't pay...
However it may come to pass that a crime is no longer a crime isn't really relevant. Once an act is no longer a crime, there is no longer a legal authority to imprison a person for that act.
I don't know whether the convictions would be considered void, thus eliminating the crime from their record, or if they would merely be released as if their setence was commuted to time already served.
So.. if the speed limit were increased, no, tickets wouldn't have to be refunded. Fines are not an on-going punishment. Pending tickets may very well be fought on the basis that it is no longer an offense. At least that is what I'd expect.
Ah.. yes.. if you're part of a group encouraging voter turnount to vote on a particular issue or a candidate because of some item(s) of his platform, you may indeed motivate others to vote. Of course they're about as likely to vote against you because they oppose the political objectives you support as they are to vote with you in support of your goals. And there is no reason to believe that a close election would be less close with a higher turnout either. Unless you believe that one candidate has broad, but very weak, support and another has narrow, but fervent, support.
I usually don't vote because the choice isn't usually between supporting political agendas I applaud versus supporting political agendas I would attack. It usually is a choice between one candidate that supports some of my civil liberties and would trample on others versus a candidate that supports different civil liberties... and would trample on still others. Either way, I'm going to get boned along a specturm of liberties of which I take heavy advantage to liberties that I value but to which I rarely resort.
So, apparently erroneously, I took your mention of "taking action" to mean becoming an activist in some way. I suppose what you really meant was to take steps to improve your own driving habits?
You erroneously interpreted "taking action" to mean only political activity. I meant, perhaps not too surprisingly, take action which may indeed be political action but also improved personal driving, which is also an action.
I would also assert that a general statistic such as "all drivers" is not going to have the power that a more specific statistic such as "people who eat cheeseburgers while driving" will have if you, indeed, are a person who eats cheeseburgers while driving. People tend to respond more strongly to details they can relate to personally. It becomes more real to them. "All drivers" is too vague; almost everyone who's legally allowed to drive, drives. At least in the U.S.
Indeed, and all drivers who eat cheesburgers while driving do so because they find the risk to be worthwhile. As I said, if a general statistic about drivers has little or no power, a more specific stat will have equally little power. A stat about cheesburger eating drivers reaches a smaller group of people, but cheesburer eating drivers aren't any worse at risk assessment. So you find out that they have __% chance of being in an accident because of the cheeseburger eating. They'll likely respond "isn't that interesting" and go on eating cheeseburgers.
On the other hand, it's not so clear if you want to break it down into individual factors. We don't know how much driving people do in some sort of impaired or distracted condition, but with no incident.
No, we don't. So what? You're on a different track here. Such a statistic wouldn't have anything to do with accidents. If you succeeded in generating the statistic, you'd know absolutely nothing about the probability those factors cause accidents. Only how much of the population possesses which potentially accident-causing factors. And then you'd need to determine how often those people suffer the deleterious effects of those factors. After all that, you'd know something about the population, not accidents. Of all the statistics we've brought up thus far, this one is the best suited for "thats interesting" treatment.
Even if the general statistic is the best indicator we can realistically get, where I get off the bus is the place where people present it as anything that deserves attention beyond the aforementioned "yes, that's interesting" reaction. Even if the reality is that we're not likely to get anything more accurate, I say we shouldn't make this into something it's not.
Sooo.. Is it your contention that, even if the general stat is the most efficient approximation, we should ignore it in our decision making process? That would seem foolhardy. Discard the data we have because we don't have the data we want. And in its place, we'll use data with even less confirmation?
In such a case, your ultimate goal is to find the statistics I want.
While this is potentially true, it isn't necessarily true. And even if you wanted to argue that it was necessarily true, it wouldn't matter to my point. Simply because the 'bland' stat furthers the goal of finding the stat you want gives the bland stat utility.
What kind of action are you going to take? Join MADD? Support a group that's promoting laws against using a cell phone while driving? Circulate petitions to install traffic lights at dangerous intersections? If you're using statistics as a basis for your actions, your next step is going to have to be finding statistics on individual factors.
No, no, no, and may I say.. no. All of what you say are ways for potentially ways for individuals or organizations to act in the hopes of reducing the American driver crash statistic. But if I felt the need to join some organization based on a general crash stat and then actually joined an organization focused on one potential factor, I am signaling one or some combination of three opinions. One, its the only available organization. Two, it is the only organization I believe has a chance of success. Three, I believe the difference between the general stat and my personal estimation is made up largely or entirely of the one factor. Your point, however, was that statistics describing factors of accidents was necessary to decision making about your individual driving behavior. I'm saying that isn't necessary to have them. It isn't even a necessary (although it is a somewhat probable) next step that I look for them.
I don't need a statistic to tell me that driving with a blindfold on is a bad idea. I don't have such a statistic and still I don't do it. The mere existence of an accident statistic provides you, as an individual driver, information. If this statistic is higher than your personal estimation/gut instinct then you get to be confronted with the fact that you're less safe than you thought. Which in turn prompts rational people to re-evaulate their behavior. Maybe I decide to not fiddle with the radio. Maybe I decide to not make that call with only intent to chat for entertainment. Maybe I don't drive so fast.
And if you assert that people don't generally/don't at all respond to a general accident statistic, I'd respond that there's no reason to believe they'd respond to a detailed accident statistic. After all, if a person thought driving was more dangerous than the benefit recieved by driving, they wouldn't be driving at all. If they believed they gained more than they lost by maintaining their vehicle or maintaining focus, they'd already have adjusted their behavior accordingly. The only people any crash statistic are going to reach are the ones who underestimated their risks. There's no reason to believe that someone who has accurately estimated his risk of being in an accident because he's an American driver is then going to underestimate his risk because he has a lead foot.
Am I more likely to make a better decision with more detailed information? Yes. Am I better off with no information until I can get the level of detailed information I think I need/want/should have? Probably not. Is it potentially unfeasibile to obtain more detailed information about accident factors? Of course. Is it even potentially inefficient to obtain that more detailed information? Yes, it is. So while you may think its merely an interestic statistic, I'd contend that the general crash statistic is the most efficient approximation of driver risk. Why would I make this contention? Because, with the variety of groups and corporations that stand to gain from less accidents, I haven't seen the statistics you want.
You called the statistic meaningless. Here's how a statistic is meaningless: It has no use for anyone.
Statistics that don't answer questions that you ask don't have much use. To you.
You want an answer to the question "how does my driving affect my chances of being in an accident?" A statistic such as the one you claim is meaningless is answering the question "what are the chances American (assuming the statistic was built on American data, that is..) drivers get in accidents?" Different question. Does the stat as given earlier explicitly tell you that you're __% more likely to crash when fiddling with the radio? No. But it might be useful in soliticing funds for a study into accident factors. Might also serve a purpose in the airline industry to maintain or improve consumer confidence. In fact, the statistic as given is potentially useful to individual drivers. And as I said in my other post, the stat as given is a rough approximation. If I find the rough approximation alarming, I may take action. If I find it not worth troubling myself over, I do nothing different. I can identify factors of driving safety even though I have no information on how much they affect driving safety.
I wouldn't worry about it. Only one vote in each race matters. Maybe your vote would make a difference, but if I were a betting man.. I'd say the $500 you earn (and spend) makes a bigger difference to the country.
It isn't a meaningless statistic. It won't be a terribly accurate predictor for an individual's accident exposure, but it isn't meaningless. Its a very rough approximation. Of course if you want individual accuracy, statistics is.. well.. pretty useless. My 'chance' of getting cancer is either 1 or 0. Either I'll have it or I won't. I can't get 10% of cancer.
Can I get a better approximation of my cancer risk? Sure. Is that going to alter any circumstances of whether or not I actually get cancer? Nope. Is the approximation of my risk useless? Nope.
Even if you could account for every accident-causing factor in your driving, it wouldn't be a terribly useful statistic. If you came up with a 1% per trip chance of accident, what does that tell you? That, generally, you'd get into an accident every 100 trips. But for any given trip you'll either get into the accident or you won't. And if you make 99 trips accident free, your 1% chance in no way predetermines a bad outcome on your 100th trip.
People that argue that everyone else is liable for his or her own mistakes are the reason everybody has to build giant fences around their pool.
Legal systems that allow people to argue that sort of bs annoy me, too.
There are a great many places you can go, in both realspace and cyberspace, where permission to enter is implicit not explicit. Do I expect the law to consistiently apply that? Nope. I don't expect morality, equality, rationality, justice, or logic from the law either. I only expect legality from the law.
No. Your garden is visible from the street. But no one can step onto your property without invitation.
If you want a more accurate analogy, it would be this:
You go to your neighbor, tell him your door is unlocked, and instruct him to walk around the neighborhood telling everyone about the house. Further, you instruct your neighbor to respond to all inquiries about the house with "please, open the door and go inside."
The router has instructions on how to handle connections. Instructions you provide. You not encrypting the connection is failing to lock the door. You allowing the DHCP service to assign IPs to all parties that ask is the invitation to enter the house.
Other people comparing it to stealing something are making bad analogies, too. If I steal a car, the owner of record is deprived of both possession and use of the car. If I hop on someone's unsecured access point, the owner retains both possession and use. And I have their mechanical agent's (and the owner's implicit) authorization to use it.
The problem with gouging the early adopters is that you can run the risk of alienating them. And they're the market segment you can't afford to lose.
So the next time a Microsoft offering comes around, you get the early adopters thinking about waiting a couple of months and saving a couple of hundred dollars. Instead of just frothing at the mouth waiting to nab a unit on the first day they hit the stores. Not the mentality for your market to be in on launch day.
Not to mention that I'd be willing to bet the percantage of 360 units resold at higher price points is pretty small. Which is indicative that some people are willing to pay more than whats charged at retail. But thats always the case with virtually all products. Theres lots of stuff that I own that I would've happily paid more for, but it wasn't necessary. The reason the prices aren't hiked to extract the extra money from me.. is because there are plenty of other people who aren't willing to pay the higher price and the companies dont' want to sacrifice those sales.
So yeah. There was some money that could be extracted from the market by Microsoft. But finding that magical balanced price point is really difficult before you've even sold your first unit. So rather than price high and have unsold units, they lowballed, moved all their units. And now they can blather about how demand was so high.
Then they can go to game developers and say "how about making exclusive games for us.. look at our outstanding sales figures!" Perhaps they'll convince more companies to make non-sucky games that aren't perpetual iterations in the sports genre. There were something like a grand total of 4 games released for the Xbox that I kinda sorta wanted to play and couldn't do so elsewhere. And thats over the whole life of the console. Obviously, I didn't buy an Xbox. If there are exclusive titles that I can play and not feel like I'm being tortured, I might actually buy an Xbox 360. But to get those exclusive titles Microsoft has to have developer support. To get developer support, MS has to move units.
Its still appropriate, as the numbers of forced emmigration to the colonies was rather low. So for most people, they were free to live elsewhere. Thus, there was a legal option that was being unused while illegal action was being taken. And so what of the representative government? If you emmigrated from the United Kingdom (as opposed to its colonies and protectorates) you had a representative government. A representative government that was knowingly left behind for a colony without represenation. It was acceptable when the decision to leave was made, so why not after?
As for not buying something I don't want.. how the heck would I know I wanted it? I don't buy a car without checking under the hood, sitting in the driver's seat, and taking it for a test drive. There's no way I'm going to hop on somebody's website, view a flash intro, and cut some dealer a check. I don't buy books without thumbing through a few pages. And I don't buy movies and music because some critic said its good. Which really means I don't buy many movies and cds because theres no simple legal way for me to sample them. I can't be bothered to hover over some file-sharing app waiting for downloads to finish only to discover its crap or corrupted or mislabled.
Sure, there are a number of definitions of capitalism. Of course every country I know of that claims to be a "capitalist" country is actually running a mixed economy with elements of socialism and capitalism. The mix of socialist and capitalist elements varies, but they're there in every case of which I'm aware. I don't see your point in stating more precisely what definition of capitalism you want to use.
I'm not arguing that rights and laws should be done away with so as to give rise to a pure capitalist economy. But a balanced, as you say, economic system has also got to recognize when laws are becoming unwieldly, unjust, or that exist solely for the benefit of corporate profit (that is to say there is no offsetting gains to the general public). The difference between legal-but-distasteful and illegal is only a point of view. That some people engage in legal-but-distasteful actions is a choice, with oft-times negative consequences. That others engage in illegal actions can be an equally valid choice.
Uh.. the United States of America is kind of founded on the principle that its okay to break the law when you don't like the deal that you've been forced to accept.
I'm pretty sure that armed rebellion wasn't an acceptable practice under UK law. I'm certain that tax evasion wasn't.
Yes that is kind of an extreme comparison, but it is actually valid. Since you're making the argument that the law is the law and violating it is not acceptable. (Incidentally, this seems like a bit of a silly argument, since people everywhere, of good standing, knowingly breaks laws. Its all a matter of which ones. There's just some weird societal formula for which laws are socially acceptable to break and which aren't.)
As to the rest of what you've posted.. capitalism doesn't care about rewarding producers. Capitalism operates on the principle that all parties, consumers AND producers, are looking out solely for themselves. Efficient outcomes come to be in the face of prices. Capitalism, like pretty much all other economic schemes, is a method of distributing resources in an efficient fashion. Some systems are more efficient than others, certainly. However whether you get filthy rich or you're barely covering costs, capitalism doesn't care.
Intellectual property law isn't capitalism. It is an intervention in the market, theoretically for the public good, to prevent capitalism from operating. I'd also like to point out that both socialist and communist systems provide incentives. They just do so in different fashion.
So.. no. Consumers, none of them, need to think about 'rewarding producers.' Especially producers that have priced themselves out of the market. Not, you understand, that I'm saying media companies have priced themselves out of the market, since they obviously haven't. They're still around, and I'm pretty sure they're not losing money. They're just bemoaning their slower sales. Boo hoo, our execs can only afford 5 mansions instead of 6. Sorry, not particularly touching an emotional spot for me there.
I'll finish up by saying that record companies and movie studios are providing consumers with exactly the wrong incentives. The prices are high, the hassles are really irritating, and consumers aren't as uninformed about the cost of production. Which basically means, we'll go with the option that doesn't require us to leave our house (hidden costs of fuel, wear and tear on the vehicles, time involved) and doesn't piss us off with adverts and unnecessary legal bluster. Both of which would serve to make P2P more attractive, even if you had to pay the same monetary costs. Which you don't. Its capitalism at work.
Of course the fact that they would be buying the reactors means that jobs lost to oil companies could be partially replaced by jobs manufacturing the reactors. Or in supplying the materials to build the reactors, if the process was that simple.
And presumably the alcohol involved isn't going to just appear magically. Also presumably current levels of production of that alcohol aren't high enough to sustain biodisel production of sufficient magnitude to seriously impact the oil industry. So you'd have some more jobs there.
Annnnd you'd have all this glycerin being produced in a non-centralized fashion. So you'd have to move that (+jobs in the transport sector) to industries that consume the glycerin. And those industries may grow or shrink.
I gather you can make plastics from it, but I have no idea how glycerin would affect that industry. The industry could grow if the process is slightly more labor intensive, requiring more employees than they currently have, with the costs offset because of the cheaper glycerin replacing the petroleum.
sorry.. the above post is me. Not quite sure how/. missed the fact that I was logged in, given that it quite clearly had my login attached to the preview.
Uhhh.. I can't say I agree with how you're using "stealing" any more than I agree with the way the RIAA is throwing around the word "theft"
Until and unless I see proof that humankind is much improved, in fact, over the rest of the animal kingdom (that is to say.. civilized), instead of just in name, I support the theory of patent and copyright as a method to prod the greedy, selfish human being into creating new, useful stuff. Shocking, I know. Do note that I most emphatically do not support the current body of patent law. However.. given that I support the theory of patent law, that means I cannot say in any fashion that any patent or copyright holder is stealing anything from anyone else by exercising their right. For much the same reason I wouldn't be able to say a 'pirate' is stealing anything because copyright infringement is theft in the same way that distributing copyrighted material in legal fashion is theft. Which is to say, it isn't.
Now.. one or the other activity may indeed be unethical. I even have my opinions on which that would be. But trying to match legality and ethicality is akin to sticking your hand in a running garbage disposal. That is.. you can do it, but its guaranteed to be senseless and messy.
Slashdot Mirror
I use Home/End/Delete/PageDown keys for movement.
This puts my left thumb on keypad0, and puts both the left, down, and right arrow keys, plus the keypad1 key at quickaccess for my thumb. My left pinky settles on the enter key and can slide down to the shift key or up to the backspace key easily.
Additionally the insert and pageup keys are available for noncritical bindings. Since I can only be moving in one of the four cardinal vectors when activating those keys.
But yeah. 8 keys without sacrificing my ability to move. Between my mouse keys and my keyboard set up, I've never had a PC game where I needed to stretch for more keys to bind.
Sumo, are you replying to my post from the 30th? or SecretAgent's post from the 31st?
;)
I ask because I wasn't notified of a reply, but your post isn't threaded with any of SecretAgent's post..
You've got my reviewing my posts for logical fallacies that I hope aren't there.
Well, drinkypoo, I just had you respond to one of my comments in an semi-dissenting sort of fashion.
But here, we're pretty much in agreement. Having police arrest citizens, in public locations, for taking photographs of police supposedly enforcing the law is in no way "the right thing." It certainly isn't garnering anyone, government employees or not, protection from terrorism.
And even if we did attain security from foreign terrorism, did we really gain anything by replacing it with domestic oppression?
I don't know how a transfer of Congressional power from the Republicans to the Democrats will affect anything, but I do know that if you've got the kind of leverage with the Republicans to get a war started, you'd be better off not buring that leverage by starting the war. You can be a fearmonger, encourage all kinds of spending on security, and sidestep the worries of "whats going to happen during the midterm elections?" and "what do we do after this presidency is over, by law?" while still giggling insanely at the profits. Not to mention that if you play your political cards right, you'll create an atmosphere so that even if the Democrats come to power, they can't curtail the spending without being attacked for not taking security seriously.
If, that is, you believe its a war mainly for the benefit of defense/construction contractors.
Honestly.. all you'd have to do is check the memory card. Not exactly the top of the list of contraband, unless you just prohibit the console itself. And if you want to assert that parents may not know about it, then I would assert that such ignorance is a failure of a parent not the child's.
Actually, there is a general prohibition for underage possession and consumption of alochol. But there exists, in many jurisdictions, certain exceptions where underage possession and consumption are legal. So there are more elements to the crime than simply the possession of alcohol by a minor. Some possession exceptions are by location, some are by presence of a legal guardian, some jurisdictions require both. I didn't do a very detailed read of the consumption requirements, but I got the impression that those are more lax than the possession requirements.
I don't have a terribly high opinion of the current US administration. But I don't think you're being cynical enough.
If there was really a defense/construction contractor motive, they'd be better served by not having a war. Deploying large numbers of troops and material is expensive and a political loser. If, instead, you spent the money currently being spent on defense research and in addition you spend part of the money you're saving by not having so many troops deployed on either further research or modernization, your defense contractors are booming. They're putting out the latest gadgetry, and the military gets newer bases. The Republicans don't hemorrage approval, and they get to tout how the American military is better than ever. At most, they conduct limited military campaigns mostly with Special Operations Command. You've got a much more believable reason to classify information about these units than regular line units. You don't get those pesky media outlets running video of Americans in combat.
All that said.. I agree, the US is not a democracy. And it isn't, as far as I can tell, representative of anything except politicians and corporations.
I'm curious how this kid managed to get to the store without the parent's permission. And then, once he's got there and purchased his game, how he manages to play it without parental oversight.
If parents are paying that little attention, I've probably found the issue. And it isn't the game.
NC General Statue, 105-113.107: Excise tax on unauthorized substances.
I wonder if the legislators find it odd that most don't pay...
However it may come to pass that a crime is no longer a crime isn't really relevant. Once an act is no longer a crime, there is no longer a legal authority to imprison a person for that act.
I don't know whether the convictions would be considered void, thus eliminating the crime from their record, or if they would merely be released as if their setence was commuted to time already served.
So.. if the speed limit were increased, no, tickets wouldn't have to be refunded. Fines are not an on-going punishment. Pending tickets may very well be fought on the basis that it is no longer an offense. At least that is what I'd expect.
Ah.. yes.. if you're part of a group encouraging voter turnount to vote on a particular issue or a candidate because of some item(s) of his platform, you may indeed motivate others to vote. Of course they're about as likely to vote against you because they oppose the political objectives you support as they are to vote with you in support of your goals. And there is no reason to believe that a close election would be less close with a higher turnout either. Unless you believe that one candidate has broad, but very weak, support and another has narrow, but fervent, support.
... and would trample on still others. Either way, I'm going to get boned along a specturm of liberties of which I take heavy advantage to liberties that I value but to which I rarely resort.
I usually don't vote because the choice isn't usually between supporting political agendas I applaud versus supporting political agendas I would attack. It usually is a choice between one candidate that supports some of my civil liberties and would trample on others versus a candidate that supports different civil liberties
Indeed, and all drivers who eat cheesburgers while driving do so because they find the risk to be worthwhile. As I said, if a general statistic about drivers has little or no power, a more specific stat will have equally little power. A stat about cheesburger eating drivers reaches a smaller group of people, but cheesburer eating drivers aren't any worse at risk assessment. So you find out that they have __% chance of being in an accident because of the cheeseburger eating. They'll likely respond "isn't that interesting" and go on eating cheeseburgers.
No, we don't. So what? You're on a different track here. Such a statistic wouldn't have anything to do with accidents. If you succeeded in generating the statistic, you'd know absolutely nothing about the probability those factors cause accidents. Only how much of the population possesses which potentially accident-causing factors. And then you'd need to determine how often those people suffer the deleterious effects of those factors. After all that, you'd know something about the population, not accidents. Of all the statistics we've brought up thus far, this one is the best suited for "thats interesting" treatment.
Sooo.. Is it your contention that, even if the general stat is the most efficient approximation, we should ignore it in our decision making process? That would seem foolhardy. Discard the data we have because we don't have the data we want. And in its place, we'll use data with even less confirmation?
No, no, no, and may I say.. no. All of what you say are ways for potentially ways for individuals or organizations to act in the hopes of reducing the American driver crash statistic. But if I felt the need to join some organization based on a general crash stat and then actually joined an organization focused on one potential factor, I am signaling one or some combination of three opinions. One, its the only available organization. Two, it is the only organization I believe has a chance of success. Three, I believe the difference between the general stat and my personal estimation is made up largely or entirely of the one factor. Your point, however, was that statistics describing factors of accidents was necessary to decision making about your individual driving behavior. I'm saying that isn't necessary to have them. It isn't even a necessary (although it is a somewhat probable) next step that I look for them.
I don't need a statistic to tell me that driving with a blindfold on is a bad idea. I don't have such a statistic and still I don't do it. The mere existence of an accident statistic provides you, as an individual driver, information. If this statistic is higher than your personal estimation/gut instinct then you get to be confronted with the fact that you're less safe than you thought. Which in turn prompts rational people to re-evaulate their behavior. Maybe I decide to not fiddle with the radio. Maybe I decide to not make that call with only intent to chat for entertainment. Maybe I don't drive so fast.
And if you assert that people don't generally/don't at all respond to a general accident statistic, I'd respond that there's no reason to believe they'd respond to a detailed accident statistic. After all, if a person thought driving was more dangerous than the benefit recieved by driving, they wouldn't be driving at all. If they believed they gained more than they lost by maintaining their vehicle or maintaining focus, they'd already have adjusted their behavior accordingly. The only people any crash statistic are going to reach are the ones who underestimated their risks. There's no reason to believe that someone who has accurately estimated his risk of being in an accident because he's an American driver is then going to underestimate his risk because he has a lead foot.
Am I more likely to make a better decision with more detailed information? Yes. Am I better off with no information until I can get the level of detailed information I think I need/want/should have? Probably not. Is it potentially unfeasibile to obtain more detailed information about accident factors? Of course. Is it even potentially inefficient to obtain that more detailed information? Yes, it is. So while you may think its merely an interestic statistic, I'd contend that the general crash statistic is the most efficient approximation of driver risk. Why would I make this contention? Because, with the variety of groups and corporations that stand to gain from less accidents, I haven't seen the statistics you want.
Actually, I haven't missed the point.
You called the statistic meaningless. Here's how a statistic is meaningless: It has no use for anyone.
Statistics that don't answer questions that you ask don't have much use. To you.
You want an answer to the question "how does my driving affect my chances of being in an accident?" A statistic such as the one you claim is meaningless is answering the question "what are the chances American (assuming the statistic was built on American data, that is..) drivers get in accidents?" Different question. Does the stat as given earlier explicitly tell you that you're __% more likely to crash when fiddling with the radio? No. But it might be useful in soliticing funds for a study into accident factors. Might also serve a purpose in the airline industry to maintain or improve consumer confidence. In fact, the statistic as given is potentially useful to individual drivers. And as I said in my other post, the stat as given is a rough approximation. If I find the rough approximation alarming, I may take action. If I find it not worth troubling myself over, I do nothing different. I can identify factors of driving safety even though I have no information on how much they affect driving safety.
I wouldn't worry about it. Only one vote in each race matters. Maybe your vote would make a difference, but if I were a betting man.. I'd say the $500 you earn (and spend) makes a bigger difference to the country.
It isn't a meaningless statistic. .. well .. pretty useless. My 'chance' of getting cancer is either 1 or 0. Either I'll have it or I won't. I can't get 10% of cancer.
It won't be a terribly accurate predictor for an individual's accident exposure, but it isn't meaningless. Its a very rough approximation. Of course if you want individual accuracy, statistics is
Can I get a better approximation of my cancer risk? Sure. Is that going to alter any circumstances of whether or not I actually get cancer? Nope. Is the approximation of my risk useless? Nope.
Even if you could account for every accident-causing factor in your driving, it wouldn't be a terribly useful statistic. If you came up with a 1% per trip chance of accident, what does that tell you? That, generally, you'd get into an accident every 100 trips. But for any given trip you'll either get into the accident or you won't. And if you make 99 trips accident free, your 1% chance in no way predetermines a bad outcome on your 100th trip.
Noooooot really.
People that argue that everyone else is liable for his or her own mistakes are the reason everybody has to build giant fences around their pool.
Legal systems that allow people to argue that sort of bs annoy me, too.
There are a great many places you can go, in both realspace and cyberspace, where permission to enter is implicit not explicit. Do I expect the law to consistiently apply that? Nope. I don't expect morality, equality, rationality, justice, or logic from the law either. I only expect legality from the law.
No. Your garden is visible from the street. But no one can step onto your property without invitation.
If you want a more accurate analogy, it would be this:
You go to your neighbor, tell him your door is unlocked, and instruct him to walk around the neighborhood telling everyone about the house. Further, you instruct your neighbor to respond to all inquiries about the house with "please, open the door and go inside."
The router has instructions on how to handle connections. Instructions you provide. You not encrypting the connection is failing to lock the door. You allowing the DHCP service to assign IPs to all parties that ask is the invitation to enter the house.
Other people comparing it to stealing something are making bad analogies, too. If I steal a car, the owner of record is deprived of both possession and use of the car. If I hop on someone's unsecured access point, the owner retains both possession and use. And I have their mechanical agent's (and the owner's implicit) authorization to use it.
The problem with gouging the early adopters is that you can run the risk of alienating them. And they're the market segment you can't afford to lose.
So the next time a Microsoft offering comes around, you get the early adopters thinking about waiting a couple of months and saving a couple of hundred dollars. Instead of just frothing at the mouth waiting to nab a unit on the first day they hit the stores. Not the mentality for your market to be in on launch day.
Not to mention that I'd be willing to bet the percantage of 360 units resold at higher price points is pretty small. Which is indicative that some people are willing to pay more than whats charged at retail. But thats always the case with virtually all products. Theres lots of stuff that I own that I would've happily paid more for, but it wasn't necessary. The reason the prices aren't hiked to extract the extra money from me.. is because there are plenty of other people who aren't willing to pay the higher price and the companies dont' want to sacrifice those sales.
So yeah. There was some money that could be extracted from the market by Microsoft. But finding that magical balanced price point is really difficult before you've even sold your first unit. So rather than price high and have unsold units, they lowballed, moved all their units. And now they can blather about how demand was so high.
Then they can go to game developers and say "how about making exclusive games for us.. look at our outstanding sales figures!" Perhaps they'll convince more companies to make non-sucky games that aren't perpetual iterations in the sports genre. There were something like a grand total of 4 games released for the Xbox that I kinda sorta wanted to play and couldn't do so elsewhere. And thats over the whole life of the console. Obviously, I didn't buy an Xbox. If there are exclusive titles that I can play and not feel like I'm being tortured, I might actually buy an Xbox 360. But to get those exclusive titles Microsoft has to have developer support. To get developer support, MS has to move units.
Its still appropriate, as the numbers of forced emmigration to the colonies was rather low. So for most people, they were free to live elsewhere. Thus, there was a legal option that was being unused while illegal action was being taken. And so what of the representative government? If you emmigrated from the United Kingdom (as opposed to its colonies and protectorates) you had a representative government. A representative government that was knowingly left behind for a colony without represenation. It was acceptable when the decision to leave was made, so why not after?
As for not buying something I don't want.. how the heck would I know I wanted it? I don't buy a car without checking under the hood, sitting in the driver's seat, and taking it for a test drive. There's no way I'm going to hop on somebody's website, view a flash intro, and cut some dealer a check. I don't buy books without thumbing through a few pages. And I don't buy movies and music because some critic said its good. Which really means I don't buy many movies and cds because theres no simple legal way for me to sample them. I can't be bothered to hover over some file-sharing app waiting for downloads to finish only to discover its crap or corrupted or mislabled.
Sure, there are a number of definitions of capitalism. Of course every country I know of that claims to be a "capitalist" country is actually running a mixed economy with elements of socialism and capitalism. The mix of socialist and capitalist elements varies, but they're there in every case of which I'm aware. I don't see your point in stating more precisely what definition of capitalism you want to use.
I'm not arguing that rights and laws should be done away with so as to give rise to a pure capitalist economy. But a balanced, as you say, economic system has also got to recognize when laws are becoming unwieldly, unjust, or that exist solely for the benefit of corporate profit (that is to say there is no offsetting gains to the general public). The difference between legal-but-distasteful and illegal is only a point of view. That some people engage in legal-but-distasteful actions is a choice, with oft-times negative consequences. That others engage in illegal actions can be an equally valid choice.
Uh.. the United States of America is kind of founded on the principle that its okay to break the law when you don't like the deal that you've been forced to accept.
I'm pretty sure that armed rebellion wasn't an acceptable practice under UK law. I'm certain that tax evasion wasn't.
Yes that is kind of an extreme comparison, but it is actually valid. Since you're making the argument that the law is the law and violating it is not acceptable. (Incidentally, this seems like a bit of a silly argument, since people everywhere, of good standing, knowingly breaks laws. Its all a matter of which ones. There's just some weird societal formula for which laws are socially acceptable to break and which aren't.)
As to the rest of what you've posted.. capitalism doesn't care about rewarding producers. Capitalism operates on the principle that all parties, consumers AND producers, are looking out solely for themselves. Efficient outcomes come to be in the face of prices. Capitalism, like pretty much all other economic schemes, is a method of distributing resources in an efficient fashion. Some systems are more efficient than others, certainly. However whether you get filthy rich or you're barely covering costs, capitalism doesn't care.
Intellectual property law isn't capitalism. It is an intervention in the market, theoretically for the public good, to prevent capitalism from operating. I'd also like to point out that both socialist and communist systems provide incentives. They just do so in different fashion.
So.. no. Consumers, none of them, need to think about 'rewarding producers.' Especially producers that have priced themselves out of the market. Not, you understand, that I'm saying media companies have priced themselves out of the market, since they obviously haven't. They're still around, and I'm pretty sure they're not losing money. They're just bemoaning their slower sales. Boo hoo, our execs can only afford 5 mansions instead of 6. Sorry, not particularly touching an emotional spot for me there.
I'll finish up by saying that record companies and movie studios are providing consumers with exactly the wrong incentives. The prices are high, the hassles are really irritating, and consumers aren't as uninformed about the cost of production. Which basically means, we'll go with the option that doesn't require us to leave our house (hidden costs of fuel, wear and tear on the vehicles, time involved) and doesn't piss us off with adverts and unnecessary legal bluster. Both of which would serve to make P2P more attractive, even if you had to pay the same monetary costs. Which you don't. Its capitalism at work.
Of course the fact that they would be buying the reactors means that jobs lost to oil companies could be partially replaced by jobs manufacturing the reactors. Or in supplying the materials to build the reactors, if the process was that simple.
And presumably the alcohol involved isn't going to just appear magically. Also presumably current levels of production of that alcohol aren't high enough to sustain biodisel production of sufficient magnitude to seriously impact the oil industry. So you'd have some more jobs there.
Annnnd you'd have all this glycerin being produced in a non-centralized fashion. So you'd have to move that (+jobs in the transport sector) to industries that consume the glycerin. And those industries may grow or shrink.
I gather you can make plastics from it, but I have no idea how glycerin would affect that industry. The industry could grow if the process is slightly more labor intensive, requiring more employees than they currently have, with the costs offset because of the cheaper glycerin replacing the petroleum.
sorry.. the above post is me. Not quite sure how /. missed the fact that I was logged in, given that it quite clearly had my login attached to the preview.
Uhhh.. I can't say I agree with how you're using "stealing" any more than I agree with the way the RIAA is throwing around the word "theft"
Until and unless I see proof that humankind is much improved, in fact, over the rest of the animal kingdom (that is to say.. civilized), instead of just in name, I support the theory of patent and copyright as a method to prod the greedy, selfish human being into creating new, useful stuff. Shocking, I know. Do note that I most emphatically do not support the current body of patent law. However.. given that I support the theory of patent law, that means I cannot say in any fashion that any patent or copyright holder is stealing anything from anyone else by exercising their right. For much the same reason I wouldn't be able to say a 'pirate' is stealing anything because copyright infringement is theft in the same way that distributing copyrighted material in legal fashion is theft. Which is to say, it isn't.
Now.. one or the other activity may indeed be unethical. I even have my opinions on which that would be. But trying to match legality and ethicality is akin to sticking your hand in a running garbage disposal. That is.. you can do it, but its guaranteed to be senseless and messy.