"Warren Buffet proof that rick people are not smart", says Lumpy.
Honestly, the old fart has no clue at all. there has been free news for thousands of years. I think the man needs to get a clue as to how the world works and step outside his ivory tower and see how things have been done for the past 200 years.
free news has been king for over 50 years now. I dont pay for my TV news.
TV news can more accurately be described as 'infotainment' for the masses; worth-while stories are glossed over, discourse limited to 30 second sound bites, certain important topics not covered at all, human interest stories (puke). Yeah, you don't pay for TV "news". What Buffet's doing is signaling that market that pay walls are OK. Here's what I think is happening: The occupy movement has actually been quite effective at one thing and that's bringing wealth inequality into national discourse, much to the chagrin of elites like Buffet. Buffet and Gates are worried about this inequality, because they are wise enough to know it is a very bad sign for society. Throughout history, it's been a signal of a society in decline, so they resist it. They'd rather pay more taxes, than the alternative, which is society practically crumbling around them. (This is not the same goal as the corporations they run, which are bound by charter to increase this inequality) They're also concerned about the common man becoming too curious. It's always been known in elite circles that the regular news is propaganda. The only honest news is actually the business press (The buisiness press gives elites a tolerably accurate picture of the world that they own). You might not like the WSJ editorial (aka wsj funny pages), but the regular reporting is world class and *very* honest. They've been talking about wealth inequality, in a completely different context, for thirty years or more. You think Buffet wants free internet access to honest reporting? If I had a billion dollars, I'd want it pay walled, too. Access to info is getting a bit too seamless for their tastes, I'm sure. Higher taxes on the rich and hiding the truth are a great way to delay the inevitable...total economic collapse under state capitalism.
Um. No. My phone works just fine. I also disconnected the line which should have terminated the call immediate, but the scammer was still talking when I reconnected the line. (I figure they were using some override built into the POTS.)
...Which is precisely why man invented the airhorn.
Next time those bastards grab your line and won't let go, give them a really, really fucking loud reason to.
Except it's not a translation of the word of God, but a translation of a bunch of superstitious middle-eastern tribesmen from 2000 odd years ago (or more).
I find it extremely sad that Slashdot has declined to the point where any random Christian-bashing is modded +5 Insightful, instead of off-topic. If you want to know why readership has declined significantly, here is an example.
How is stating that the Bible was written by superstitious middle eastern tribesmen from 2000 years ago "Christian-bashing"? And I don't know that slashdot readership has declined at all. Any numbers to back up that claim?
It's only hard to "pocket dial" if your phone is locked. But if you are texting someone back and forth, you're not going to lock your phone between every text.
Just to be clear, you do know that your phone is already capable of real time two way voice communication right?
This entire use case would not be a problem if it weren't for you idiots who'd rather send 20 text messages than make one call.
Yeah, the "one call" always turns into a 30 minute "how's things" session about *nothing* because of "idiots" who like to blather on the phone forever. That's why some people prefer text.
This will sound like a troll, but it would be interesting to cross reference this study with Slashdot's demographic. Slashdot posts a LOT of Bittorrent and piracy news, as well as a ton of news about very cheap gadgets in the $100 range. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the majority of the demographic is made up of single, depressed techies with little disposable income, which would explain the almost obsessive interest in piracy, online rights, and cheap gadgets.
There's a sharp contrast in tone between the angry subject matter of Slashdot comments and the comments on practically every other popular tech news site. For example, Hacker News, where the demographic is mostly made up married, financially established programmers and Silicon Valley investors, actively discourages the kinds of angry comments that often get modded +5 here.
I think it would be workable. We could simply make the House a true People's branch --- Keep the representatives, allowing them to craft laws and write bills, but when it's time for the "ayes and nays" have the reps stand-aside and submit the bill to the People for a direct referendum.
And keep the Senate as is (a house representing the 50 Member States). If we had such a system the TARP Bailout Bill never would have passed the House, and 1 trillion not transferred as corporate welfare.
What you're talking about is simpler than the system that's in place now. The founding fathers went out of their way to ensure elite rule and avoid a direct democracy, so understand that what you're talking about flies in the face of that. The point was to avoid public input as much as possible and only give "the bewildered herd" an opportunity to endorse one elite candidate or another, not directly make choices. What you're talking about isn't just some voting tweaks, but a revolution.
So you can say the drug war is a success for what its real purpose is, but not for its proclaimed purposes. -Noam Chomsky
Big fan of Noam here, but he's not right on this. Yes, there are beneficiaries of the Drug War, but the purpose isn't that benefit, it's to define the power relationship.
That's what makes something like marijuana so perfect to be it's major centerpiece. Hemp even. You can make all the logical, consistent arguments you want, but that doesn't matter. You can be 100% and their proffered arguments can be roundly defeatd, but if you grow it, they'll hurt you. Because they're in charge and you're not. Get that f'ing straight. As they say, "any questions?"
Noam's work on manufactured consent applies more strongly.
So, you're saying that the drug war is to show people who's in charge, basically? Trying to understand exactly what you're saying here.
it's not even necessarily businesses that benefit. For instance, a while ago the government - and the Guardian - were pushing for new laws on prostitution in the UK that were aimed at stopping sex trafficking. All the available scientific evidence suggested that they were trying to solve a problem that didn't exist rather than deal with reality and the actual workers who the law was meant to protect actually considered it to be dangerous. Despite this, said law very nearly passed in its original form just because our feminist lobbying groups demanded it, and in their world ideology outweighs actual facts.
If you're talking about the UK, you're talking about an entirely different government. Slashdot is a US based site, so most of the chat here is referring to the US, unless otherwise specified. I have a feeling, without knowing a lot about it, that we wouldn't agree even on the issue you're discussing, but I don't know enough about it.
if you go back to the 1980's crime was a lot more rampant, murder rates were double and triple what they are today. the justice system was a joke and criminals were back on the street within hours of being arrested.
in NYC i used to see drug dealers openly selling drugs on the streets with cops 50 feet away saying they couldn't do anything about it
between guiliani and bloomberg they cleaned up NYC. its safe now in most places. and putting drug users/dealers in jail is part of the reason
What you said changes nothing. Jailing people works less well than prevention and rehabilitation, it doesn't not work at all, it just doesn't work as well and costs a lot more. So those people who were locked up, saving the streets of NY, could have been treated or prevented totally and for a lot less money. All legitimate studies point to that. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/buyers/doitwork.html
Every time some politician gets a brainwave for a law, it needs to be tested in the real world. Laws are the programs for social order. To make them and roll them out without testing is as mad as writing a computer program and rolling it out without testing.
Politicians already know better answers but continue with poor policy because a business interest is benefitting. You'll find that's true of most bad social policy. A better way is known, tested and studied, but since that solution is cheap, easy and effective, it's not instituted because the policy conflicts with some entrenched, costly and inefficient business interest. What you're talking about is great and it's already been done and ignored. What you're talking about would require the end of capitalism or a massive reigning in of it.
Years ago -- maybe thirty five years ago -- around the time Nixon's first War on Drugs was called, there was a big study by the army and the RAND corporation (the main, outside advisory research bureau) analyzing the effects on drug use of various approaches to it. They studied four. The one that came out the most cost effective was prevention and treatment by a large margin. Next, much more expensive and less effective, was police work. Still less effective and more costly was border interdiction. And least effective and most costly was out-of-country operations like chemical warfare in Columbia. Well, the methods that are used are the exact opposite. Most of the funding goes into cross-border operations (least effective, most costly,) next, interdiction and police action, and least to prevention and treatment. Rational people don't keep pursuing a policy that's failing when they know there's a better policy unless there's some other reason, and I think the other reason is not terribly hidden.
Out-of-country operations are just a cover for counter-insurgency, or for clearing land in Columbia and driving out peasants so multi-national corporations can come in for mining, and resource-extraction, and agribusiness, and macra production, and so on. Which is why you have (outside of Afghanistan) probably the largest refugee population in the world in Columbia. The War on Drugs is not effecting drug production. In fact, it's going up.. But it's going to continue because that wasn't the purpose.
Here in the United States, the drug war has been associated, clearly, with a very sharp rise in incarceration. If you go back to 1980, the prison population in the United States, per capita, was approximately like other industrial countries -- kind of toward the high end, but not off the chart. Now, it's five to ten times as high and still going up. And most of it is drug related (also, length of sentences, and repeated sentences, and so on.)
And it mostly targets what are called the "dangerous classes," the poor, minorities, and so on. So like, black males, is astronomical. On the other hand, drug use among wealthy people is barely prosecuted. So it's a class-based form of control of superfluous population, and for that purpose, it seems to be working.
It's also making a lot of money for commercial enterprises. What some criminologists call the prison-industrial complex has been a pretty substantial development, especially for rural counties, it's a Godsend. When they build prisons, it brings in construction work, jobs, and surveillance. A couple of years ago, maybe still, the fastest growing white-collar profession was security officer, and it gets rid of people you don't want anything to do with. They don't have a place in the current industrial system. And there's also racial elements involved. So you can say the drug war is a success for what its real purpose is, but not for its proclaimed purposes. -Noam Chomsky
If the US was really interested in protecting an American industry, they could have chosen any number of industries that have been destroyed by foreign competition. Rather than protecting small solar companies, they're protecting dirty US energy companies. "Critics (people who understand the industry) say the decision may end up raising prices and hurting the U.S. renewable energy industry." Yeah, a small price to pay to keep your donors in the oil, natural gas and coal industries happy.
Ummm, that depends on who you ask. When Jamie Kellner (TV Exec, at the time was CEO of Turner Broadcasting, looking after a bunch of channels including the Cartoon Network) answered that very question his reply was this: "Because of the ad skips.... It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming."
Seriously, you just can't make up quality like that.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but in the media business, the "programming" or content is the ads, the filler is the show you're watching. Once you get your head around that, it's easier to see what motivates the broadcasters/advertisers.
I didn't really know why it was happening, since MySpace was a lot more customizeable, which should have been great for all the narcissists who live for "social networking".
It was happening BECAUSE MySpace was too customisable. And most people have no sense of taste or design, and made a mess.
There's a bit lesson there, that choice is not intrinsically a good thing. It's far better to make a good UI with limited customisability than a good UI with lots of customisability. High customisability means a good UI will all too often become a bad UI.
Even if their pages were cluttered, it was some representation of them. Why would that be a bad thing? I'm really asking. At any rate, something like a cleaner UI might have been the reason for a switch back then, I don't think that would be enough now. Original point stands.
I remember back in the olden days (2006 ish) when there was a mad rush from MySpace to Facebook. It almost felt dirty to stay on MySpace. I didn't really know why it was happening, since MySpace was a lot more customizeable, which should have been great for all the narcissists who live for "social networking". Well, that was back when social networking was less entrenched and still a mere toy. We were still using evite for parties and myspace for social. Facebook has dug in a lot deeper now; people can't just all of a sudden decide to use another network. They have (usually hundreds) huge numbers of contacts, that's where they get their party invitations, all their family info, trade photos, etc. Most aren't tech savvy, so learning a new site is daunting. It's going to take a lot more than just a similar website to pull them off en masse to another service. It's going to take a huge game changer and google+ was never that game changer. My puny brain can't think of what could replace Facebook, but I don't think it exists yet.
The sprint pre-order required payment up front... sadly. I was about to do this until I saw I had to pay, then wait on the phone. Thankfully, my logical side asked me to wait.
If you were unlucky enough to put in a pre order for the Evo with Sprint, there's no way to get a refund. You're just stuck, with your money tied up, waiting for patent disputes that could take forever.
Was able to order the Evo yesterday, but doubt I'll get it now. I'll never get it EVER NEVER EVER NEVER NEVER EVER H8888 APPLE!!!! Alright, I'm mostly kidding, but I did want my fucking phone.
Well, at least Mossad is getting smarter than trying to send 3 jewish students into Iran with a bunch of surveillance equipment, trying to claim they're on a fucking Iraqi hiking trip.
That's the fucking Iraqi hiking trip I was trying to remember! Yeah, those people were obviously guilty, even from the western slanted news stories. I'm not as sure about this student, but I'd be willing to bet he was spying for Israel. If I had to bet, I'd be he was spying. On the hikers, I would have willingly bet everything I own that they were spying.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, so you're an ignorant teabagger then.
By lowering the level of the discussion like that, you just prove you have no real argument.
No argument against no government regulation and unchecked corporate tyranny? Yeah, no argument at all. Let's give the teabaggers what they want.
Why are you singling out technology? We have chosen to live in a capitalist society, people are going to be exploited, that's just the way it is.
We've chosen? I don't remember a vote on that.
"Low paid labour"
read: paid labour
Oh, so you're an ignorant teabagger then.
"Warren Buffet proof that rick people are not smart", says Lumpy.
Honestly, the old fart has no clue at all. there has been free news for thousands of years. I think the man needs to get a clue as to how the world works and step outside his ivory tower and see how things have been done for the past 200 years.
free news has been king for over 50 years now. I dont pay for my TV news.
TV news can more accurately be described as 'infotainment' for the masses; worth-while stories are glossed over, discourse limited to 30 second sound bites, certain important topics not covered at all, human interest stories (puke). Yeah, you don't pay for TV "news". What Buffet's doing is signaling that market that pay walls are OK. Here's what I think is happening: The occupy movement has actually been quite effective at one thing and that's bringing wealth inequality into national discourse, much to the chagrin of elites like Buffet. Buffet and Gates are worried about this inequality, because they are wise enough to know it is a very bad sign for society. Throughout history, it's been a signal of a society in decline, so they resist it. They'd rather pay more taxes, than the alternative, which is society practically crumbling around them. (This is not the same goal as the corporations they run, which are bound by charter to increase this inequality) They're also concerned about the common man becoming too curious. It's always been known in elite circles that the regular news is propaganda. The only honest news is actually the business press (The buisiness press gives elites a tolerably accurate picture of the world that they own). You might not like the WSJ editorial (aka wsj funny pages), but the regular reporting is world class and *very* honest. They've been talking about wealth inequality, in a completely different context, for thirty years or more. You think Buffet wants free internet access to honest reporting? If I had a billion dollars, I'd want it pay walled, too. Access to info is getting a bit too seamless for their tastes, I'm sure. Higher taxes on the rich and hiding the truth are a great way to delay the inevitable...total economic collapse under state capitalism.
Um. No. My phone works just fine. I also disconnected the line which should have terminated the call immediate, but the scammer was still talking when I reconnected the line. (I figure they were using some override built into the POTS.)
...Which is precisely why man invented the airhorn. Next time those bastards grab your line and won't let go, give them a really, really fucking loud reason to.
Like the Hornster http://www.gizmag.com/hornster-worlds-loudest-bicycle-horn/22457/
I [stupidly] left my android on silent in a cab today. It would have been nice to have it make a noise.
How do you do it?
E
You could have the sound on all day. You'll never get anything back from a cab. Ever.
Except it's not a translation of the word of God, but a translation of a bunch of superstitious middle-eastern tribesmen from 2000 odd years ago (or more).
I find it extremely sad that Slashdot has declined to the point where any random Christian-bashing is modded +5 Insightful, instead of off-topic. If you want to know why readership has declined significantly, here is an example.
How is stating that the Bible was written by superstitious middle eastern tribesmen from 2000 years ago "Christian-bashing"? And I don't know that slashdot readership has declined at all. Any numbers to back up that claim?
It's only hard to "pocket dial" if your phone is locked. But if you are texting someone back and forth, you're not going to lock your phone between every text.
Just to be clear, you do know that your phone is already capable of real time two way voice communication right?
This entire use case would not be a problem if it weren't for you idiots who'd rather send 20 text messages than make one call.
Yeah, the "one call" always turns into a 30 minute "how's things" session about *nothing* because of "idiots" who like to blather on the phone forever. That's why some people prefer text.
This will sound like a troll, but it would be interesting to cross reference this study with Slashdot's demographic. Slashdot posts a LOT of Bittorrent and piracy news, as well as a ton of news about very cheap gadgets in the $100 range. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the majority of the demographic is made up of single, depressed techies with little disposable income, which would explain the almost obsessive interest in piracy, online rights, and cheap gadgets.
There's a sharp contrast in tone between the angry subject matter of Slashdot comments and the comments on practically every other popular tech news site. For example, Hacker News, where the demographic is mostly made up married, financially established programmers and Silicon Valley investors, actively discourages the kinds of angry comments that often get modded +5 here.
Oh, you're a troll.
I think it would be workable. We could simply make the House a true People's branch --- Keep the representatives, allowing them to craft laws and write bills, but when it's time for the "ayes and nays" have the reps stand-aside and submit the bill to the People for a direct referendum.
And keep the Senate as is (a house representing the 50 Member States). If we had such a system the TARP Bailout Bill never would have passed the House, and 1 trillion not transferred as corporate welfare.
What you're talking about is simpler than the system that's in place now. The founding fathers went out of their way to ensure elite rule and avoid a direct democracy, so understand that what you're talking about flies in the face of that. The point was to avoid public input as much as possible and only give "the bewildered herd" an opportunity to endorse one elite candidate or another, not directly make choices. What you're talking about isn't just some voting tweaks, but a revolution.
So you can say the drug war is a success for what its real purpose is, but not for its proclaimed purposes. -Noam Chomsky
Big fan of Noam here, but he's not right on this. Yes, there are beneficiaries of the Drug War, but the purpose isn't that benefit, it's to define the power relationship.
That's what makes something like marijuana so perfect to be it's major centerpiece. Hemp even. You can make all the logical, consistent arguments you want, but that doesn't matter. You can be 100% and their proffered arguments can be roundly defeatd, but if you grow it, they'll hurt you. Because they're in charge and you're not. Get that f'ing straight. As they say, "any questions?"
Noam's work on manufactured consent applies more strongly.
So, you're saying that the drug war is to show people who's in charge, basically? Trying to understand exactly what you're saying here.
it's not even necessarily businesses that benefit. For instance, a while ago the government - and the Guardian - were pushing for new laws on prostitution in the UK that were aimed at stopping sex trafficking. All the available scientific evidence suggested that they were trying to solve a problem that didn't exist rather than deal with reality and the actual workers who the law was meant to protect actually considered it to be dangerous. Despite this, said law very nearly passed in its original form just because our feminist lobbying groups demanded it, and in their world ideology outweighs actual facts.
If you're talking about the UK, you're talking about an entirely different government. Slashdot is a US based site, so most of the chat here is referring to the US, unless otherwise specified. I have a feeling, without knowing a lot about it, that we wouldn't agree even on the issue you're discussing, but I don't know enough about it.
if you go back to the 1980's crime was a lot more rampant, murder rates were double and triple what they are today. the justice system was a joke and criminals were back on the street within hours of being arrested.
in NYC i used to see drug dealers openly selling drugs on the streets with cops 50 feet away saying they couldn't do anything about it
between guiliani and bloomberg they cleaned up NYC. its safe now in most places. and putting drug users/dealers in jail is part of the reason
What you said changes nothing. Jailing people works less well than prevention and rehabilitation, it doesn't not work at all, it just doesn't work as well and costs a lot more. So those people who were locked up, saving the streets of NY, could have been treated or prevented totally and for a lot less money. All legitimate studies point to that. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/buyers/doitwork.html
Every time some politician gets a brainwave for a law, it needs to be tested in the real world. Laws are the programs for social order. To make them and roll them out without testing is as mad as writing a computer program and rolling it out without testing.
Politicians already know better answers but continue with poor policy because a business interest is benefitting. You'll find that's true of most bad social policy. A better way is known, tested and studied, but since that solution is cheap, easy and effective, it's not instituted because the policy conflicts with some entrenched, costly and inefficient business interest. What you're talking about is great and it's already been done and ignored. What you're talking about would require the end of capitalism or a massive reigning in of it.
Out-of-country operations are just a cover for counter-insurgency, or for clearing land in Columbia and driving out peasants so multi-national corporations can come in for mining, and resource-extraction, and agribusiness, and macra production, and so on. Which is why you have (outside of Afghanistan) probably the largest refugee population in the world in Columbia. The War on Drugs is not effecting drug production. In fact, it's going up.. But it's going to continue because that wasn't the purpose.
Here in the United States, the drug war has been associated, clearly, with a very sharp rise in incarceration. If you go back to 1980, the prison population in the United States, per capita, was approximately like other industrial countries -- kind of toward the high end, but not off the chart. Now, it's five to ten times as high and still going up. And most of it is drug related (also, length of sentences, and repeated sentences, and so on.)
And it mostly targets what are called the "dangerous classes," the poor, minorities, and so on. So like, black males, is astronomical. On the other hand, drug use among wealthy people is barely prosecuted. So it's a class-based form of control of superfluous population, and for that purpose, it seems to be working.
It's also making a lot of money for commercial enterprises. What some criminologists call the prison-industrial complex has been a pretty substantial development, especially for rural counties, it's a Godsend. When they build prisons, it brings in construction work, jobs, and surveillance. A couple of years ago, maybe still, the fastest growing white-collar profession was security officer, and it gets rid of people you don't want anything to do with. They don't have a place in the current industrial system. And there's also racial elements involved. So you can say the drug war is a success for what its real purpose is, but not for its proclaimed purposes. -Noam Chomsky
If the US was really interested in protecting an American industry, they could have chosen any number of industries that have been destroyed by foreign competition. Rather than protecting small solar companies, they're protecting dirty US energy companies. "Critics (people who understand the industry) say the decision may end up raising prices and hurting the U.S. renewable energy industry." Yeah, a small price to pay to keep your donors in the oil, natural gas and coal industries happy.
Ummm, that depends on who you ask. When Jamie Kellner (TV Exec, at the time was CEO of Turner Broadcasting, looking after a bunch of channels including the Cartoon Network) answered that very question his reply was this: "Because of the ad skips.... It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming."
Seriously, you just can't make up quality like that.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but in the media business, the "programming" or content is the ads, the filler is the show you're watching. Once you get your head around that, it's easier to see what motivates the broadcasters/advertisers.
JUMP!
Forgive me if I don't just for joy, just because he's a fellow engineer.
I didn't really know why it was happening, since MySpace was a lot more customizeable, which should have been great for all the narcissists who live for "social networking".
It was happening BECAUSE MySpace was too customisable. And most people have no sense of taste or design, and made a mess.
There's a bit lesson there, that choice is not intrinsically a good thing. It's far better to make a good UI with limited customisability than a good UI with lots of customisability. High customisability means a good UI will all too often become a bad UI.
Even if their pages were cluttered, it was some representation of them. Why would that be a bad thing? I'm really asking. At any rate, something like a cleaner UI might have been the reason for a switch back then, I don't think that would be enough now. Original point stands.
I remember back in the olden days (2006 ish) when there was a mad rush from MySpace to Facebook. It almost felt dirty to stay on MySpace. I didn't really know why it was happening, since MySpace was a lot more customizeable, which should have been great for all the narcissists who live for "social networking". Well, that was back when social networking was less entrenched and still a mere toy. We were still using evite for parties and myspace for social. Facebook has dug in a lot deeper now; people can't just all of a sudden decide to use another network. They have (usually hundreds) huge numbers of contacts, that's where they get their party invitations, all their family info, trade photos, etc. Most aren't tech savvy, so learning a new site is daunting. It's going to take a lot more than just a similar website to pull them off en masse to another service. It's going to take a huge game changer and google+ was never that game changer. My puny brain can't think of what could replace Facebook, but I don't think it exists yet.
The sprint pre-order required payment up front... sadly. I was about to do this until I saw I had to pay, then wait on the phone. Thankfully, my logical side asked me to wait.
Worst pre-order *ever*. -Comic book guy
If you were unlucky enough to put in a pre order for the Evo with Sprint, there's no way to get a refund. You're just stuck, with your money tied up, waiting for patent disputes that could take forever.
Was able to order the Evo yesterday, but doubt I'll get it now. I'll never get it EVER NEVER EVER NEVER NEVER EVER H8888 APPLE!!!! Alright, I'm mostly kidding, but I did want my fucking phone.
Well, at least Mossad is getting smarter than trying to send 3 jewish students into Iran with a bunch of surveillance equipment, trying to claim they're on a fucking Iraqi hiking trip.
That's the fucking Iraqi hiking trip I was trying to remember! Yeah, those people were obviously guilty, even from the western slanted news stories. I'm not as sure about this student, but I'd be willing to bet he was spying for Israel. If I had to bet, I'd be he was spying. On the hikers, I would have willingly bet everything I own that they were spying.