Depends on how badly your meetings are organized... no offense. If you structure them properly you can use whiteboards just fine. Works the same with power point. If you can't see the whiteboard than how can you see the power point?
I think that is a big part of the reason white boards are more popular. White boards are more expensive because chalk is CHEAP. But white boards are more common in business. They look nicer too.
At no point did I ever claim the system was perfect. So your attempt to prove that isn't perfect statistically is utterly irrelevant since no one disputes that.
However, absent any kind of reform suggestion you will reveal that you are incurious about seeking reform. And that will be indicative of the reform comment being used as a pretext.
Show me I'm wrong... what needs to be reformed? Be specific. Be relevant.
Jesus... that looks idiotically expensive. I bet it will also break after the first week.
That would actually be a fun way of getting MS to fuck off with this stuff. Require a no questions asked total replacement warranty policy be included.
MS will have to jack the price up to even more hilariously high levels... and the schools will probably be smart enough to give it a pass.
Yet they use them in their own offices. Look at a lot of the meeting and design rooms that MS maintains for its own staff... whiteboards all over the place.
I do agree that there should be a centralized archive of all information open to congressional audit. That said, I am okay it that is only an archive and the active databases are segmented.
I don't want to hamstring organizations by forcing their day to day operations to flow through a third party just to carry out basic operations.
I am okay with requiring them to DUMP all data from their system in real time into an archive. But the flow has to be one way. The data goes INTO the archive. The Navy systems would not need exterior systems to authenticate their operations. I say that in terms of automation. Obviously actions by the Navy must be in conformance with the constitutional law, any additional laws passed by congress, and the whims of the current president respectively. However, every time the navy orders a box of tissue, they shouldn't have some exterior system saying yes or no.
You give them a budget and you expect them to stay within it. Then you evaluate the competence of what you paid for and occasionally audit practices to see if things can't be improved in some respect.
Micromanaging the fuck out any of these big departments is automatic failure.
Of course they're trying to sell something. We get sucked into this because the Gates foundation is running around trying to cure malaria or whatever so when we hear MS talking about education we assume they're speaking on behalf of the foundation. And even if they were... I'd feel better about it if MS had no conflict of interest in the matter... eg... they were trying to sell us NOTHING related to their advice.
I mean, if you can convict a man on false pretenses than surely you can release one on false pretenses as well... no?
As to statistics, either show you've given a wet fart for the issue by citing a reform or you will have effectively admitted that you've not thought about the issue in any depth thus undermining your case that your issue is problems in the legal system.
Your causal and frankly lazy position is unsustainable. You're simply proving that your position is simplistic which simply supports my position that you're mostly using the objection to the legal system as a pretext.
They're using it for a lot of things. And if I breach that system, I can monitor the Navy's activities at the very least. Having lax security is not acceptable.
And really, I don't think people are appreciating that the level of security required to keep shithead hackers out is not the same level required to keep out state sponsored cyber warfare divisions.
its like comparing a bank robber with an army battalion.
You are not giving enemy action even remotely enough respect.
Democrats used to be the party of the South... democrats used to love nothing more than segregation and related issues.
That didn't change until the civil rights movement where in the whole race issue stopped being a viable way to get votes.
Suddenly the democratic party became the party of diversity. Pretty much overnight. You can look at the regional voting maps and in the span of about two election cycles the democrat party completely flipped with the republicans.
So... if some demographic is dying off for the republicans, you can expect that they'll just find someone else and adjust the platform as required.
I think part of the reason you're seeing more of a libertarian bent to the party is because that is the future. The older generations weren't so keen on that stuff.
You could well see the republicans slow identify less with the title "conservative" as well as attracting the generation that found that comforting becomes less profitable.
The big fight looming for the republicans is between the evangelical religious right and the socially liberal libertarians.
We'll see what happens but that is going to be an ugly fight unless it is handled very carefully.
Both groups have gotten along under the conservative banner because they're both conservative in their own way. The religious right is socially conservative. Things they believe are largely similar to what most of America believed 100 years ago. And libertarians are fiscally conservative in that their notion of economic policy is generally more acceptable from a traditional american perspective.
But... if the conservatives go away... the religious right and the libertarians likely can't coexist under the same tent.
This will drive portions of both as well as anything remaining to jump to the democrats if that is more agreeable. Also there are portions of the democrat party that might easily jump to the republicans if the republicans change what they are to any extent. A lot of democrats only stay away from the republicans because of the religious right or because the libertarians. If either of those factions is ejected, suppressed, or switches sides, then there is a good chance that some portion of the democrat party might switch in sympathy.
What you can expect in the end is that both parties should represent a credible half of the political power.
Notions of either party annihilating the other are ignorant. That is not how these systems work. Either party can get annihilated for a few elections at most. Eventually what happens is that the party down in support will horse trade until it gets enough votes that it feels it is credible.
Both parties are doing this against each other all the time. Which is why support wobbles around.
The other thing you have to appreciate is that politics often change as people grow older. People that vote one way or say they vote one way at point X in their lives might vote another at point Y.
In the end, a good thing about first past the post is that it does tend to encourage all political energies to polarize and thus you rarely get one party that dominates uncontested especially on the national level.
The economy is only booming via those statistics because they've manipulated the statistics.
This has been pointed out repeatedly. Even the New York Times has admitted it. The only people saying the economy is booming are really just incumbent supporters selling that line largely for the reasons you cited.
As to parties closer to our views... the means are the ends. A party is not what they say they believe but what they do and how they do things.
Recalculate your affiliation on the basis that what they do is who they are not what they say.
You say they're just as bad but you've show ZERO interest in dealing with the problem. In fact, you haven't even thought about it. When I queried you, you had NO solution to ANYTHING. You merely said "well, if there are exhonorations that means you're making mistakes"... okay... but even if there weren't exhonororations there could be mistakes. The legal system in Saudi Arabia doesn't have many exhonorations... are they better?
Basing your position on very wobbly statistics is not supportable.
And the fact that you've not thought about the issue deeper than that means you're not actually interested in the problems in the legal system but rather just concerned with the executions.
Show me you care about reform of the legal system by showing that you've thought about it.
I ask you again... Offer a reform. If you have none that are relevant to this discussion that will sustain my position.
As to ruling powers... they are the authority in that area and it is not for me to judge. "IF" they accept that person in their country... then that is apparently okay there.
There are countries with child soldiers. Horrors beyond your ability to comprehend. Let us say that my country has bigger problems than whether this man is or is not a murderer. Maybe the man is a doctor or has lots of money or is willing to put his services as a killer in my service protecting my people? Maybe accepting him means my country doesn't need to use as many child soldiers.
It is not for me to judge why they would accept such a man. And I don't care.
I am making it plain that I don't need to execute people for capital crimes. I just refuse to pay for them to live.
I am offering exile as an alternative to execution and I'd like to apply it in all cases of life without parole as well. They will have a choice.
If they were slotted for execution they can opt for exile instead. And exile requires that some other country is willing to take them.
And same thing for life in prison without parole. Any other country that wants them can take them.
Only condition is that if they come back to my country without permission... Instant death. No appeals. If they stay away though... they can live out the rest of their lives in any shit hole that will take them.
Works for me.
I'm making this point so you understand I'm not bloodthirsty. I don't need severed heads. I just won't give them so much as a scrap of my bread. They get NOTHING from me. Nothing. If I find you guilty of a capital crime... the only cell I'll feel happy leaving you in is one of those cells that you brick the inmate up in so he suffocates in the dark. That's the only cell I'm going to feel is justified.
I am willing to give these people exile though. I just never want to see them again breathing my air.
A candidate that raises more money generally has more support from his party and base... and that is what gets you the nomination. Not the money. The money correlates with the support it is not caused by the support.
In the case of Jeb, he's getting most of his money from a small group of big money donors. This cash is therefore less representative of support than it would be otherwise.
Again, I can point at Eric Cantor who spent more money on fancy dinners than his opponent did on his entire campaign. And Cantor lost. Cantor also raised a lot more money than his rival.
And he lost.
Raising more money does not automatically mean you win.
It can be indicative of support. But only if the money is raised from a large number of people. If you got it all from a small group then it is as meaningless as Ross Perot's personal fortune.
If your only basis is statistical then I have to question your basis of complaint.
Statistics are an extremely wobbly basis for most opinions unless you've examined the methodology of the analysis and the means by which they were taken.
For example, what if most of your exhortations happen in two states and the rest not so much? Perhaps the problem is that some regions have bad legal practices while the others do not.
What is more, some areas without exhortations might simply not have them because they don't have a good appeals process so that no one is exonerated regardless of their innocence.
So the statistical argument is questionable. I'd prefer something concrete and that demonstrated you had a thoughtful opinion on the issue.
As to the distinction between unobtainable standards being reasonable. Give me an example of an unobtainable standard that people feel it is reasonable to apply in any other context?
If you can't think of one then I'm going to have tap my foot and smirk at you.
As to people only complaining about executions, wrong. I did not say that people EXCLUSIVELY complain about the legal system executions came up. I said rather that people only suggested that the that the legal system were inherently flawed to such an extent that you could not sustain a particular sentence in the case of execution.
Again, if you're so worried about people getting falsly executed, let me point out that there are FAR more people getting falsely imprisoned. Shall we abolish that? And don't tell me you can unimprison someone. You cannot. You do not have a time machine. You cannot give someone back their ten years.
Let me be very clear here. If I kidnap you and hold you in my rape dungeon for 10 years and then let you go... are we cool? I think not. If you went to the police and complained about my throwing you in the rape dungeon... could I just respond "I let him go though"... That might have some meaning if you let the guy go after a day or so. But ten fucking years? You can't undo that.
And the fact that you're not calling for the abolition of imprisonment means that you clearly have enough confidence in the legal system that you're willing to accept that most people that go to prison deserved it and you're happy with them being there. Even though far more innocent people are imprisoned than are executed.
I'm sorry, this is a conflict. You can't be against a couple false executions every DECADE if you're completely fine with probably thousands and thousands of false imprisonments.
What is the equiliency between an execution and a year of a man's life? How many years of false imprisonment equals one life.
1? 2? 2000? 2,000,000? 2,000,000,000?
Obviously if you cite the right number one will equal the other. I know that is painfully utilitarian but it is also factual. We send men to forests to cut down trees even though we know that some percentage of them will die when a tree falls on them. We have made the calculation that X trees is worth Y lives. Notice, there is no outcry over the number of loggers that die in forests? Why is that? Because we acknowledge it is a dangerous job and we accept that there will be causalities to see it done. Same thing with almost anything.
And that is just for deaths... consider the years people spend doing things. Lets say you are an insurance adjuster. At some level, our society has determined that the most productive years of this man's life are best spent sitting at this little desk, in a sunless cubical, tapping away on a database.
See the bigger picture.
If I get sufficient evidence to convict someone of multiple murders... they're never going to set foot on the streets as a free man again. Yes yes... appeals and exhortation... but lets assume for a moment that I did my job properly and he's properly guilty.
Why not throw the switch?
Here is my compromise... I am happy to accept exile as an alternative. Another country has to willingly accept them and if they
I disagree because you can infer things from what you think are meaningless bits of information.
Imagine if you were Sherlock Holmes... someone very intelligent, very rational, very knowledgable... and you were handed a long list of seemingly meaningless statistics from the Navy's various requisitions including time stamps, locations, etc. Do you honestly think that someone couldn't infer something you'd rather keep secret from all that?
Of course they could.
Which is why the bias should be to keep things secret whenever practical.
I don't need to put that database on a corporate server so why should I do it? Are you really going to claim that you're going to save a relevant amount of money by shifting those systems to a commercial data center? If so, I'd ask why your private systems are so fucking expensive?
I've set up a lot of corporate databases and the costs of self hosting are trivial.
The only cost savings of putting it in a data center is that you can shed some of your IT department. The equipment costs are meaningless. As to the IT department... it depends entirely on the business. I've seen a lot of businesses that kill most of their IT department thinking they're so fucking clever and then realize "oh shit we need these people to do other things"... and thus they rehire either the same fucking people they fired or they hire a new group or they have to hire a consulting group to do what the IT department used to do at basically the same fucking price.
Look at a Navy ship and you'll see a lot of things are done manually on the ship that could be automated.
Why is that? Because in a crisis automated stuff tends to break. And people... especially if they're cross trained in different departments are more reliable. They're more expensive... but if you're in a battle reliability is what you need. That is why Navy ships have many redundancies built into them. They almost never for example have only one engine. Two engines is standard and sometimes they have four. If an engine dies the ship goes slower but it does not stop.
Take that philosophy and apply it to the computers. You have PEOPLE manning those systems. Yes, a corporation will be cheaper... but its priorities are the cost profit bottom line. For the Navy that isn't their priority. The Navy doesn't make money. The Navy costs money. There is no way for the Navy to EVER be in the black. It is literally impossible.
Whether or not they are considered to be well run is not judged by the same metrics that you judge a business. What you judge a military force on is its ability to win battles. A military force that wins battles is a superior military force.
Does that mean the military can just spend infinite amounts of money? Nope. Their budget should be relative to the resources of the host nation and the perceived threats. Whether or not that money is being spent efficiently is judged by whether the money invested translates into a proportionally effective military force.
If you have an existing system that is as good as a more expensive electronic option then you would be foolish to replace the existing system.
Chalkboards and whiteboards are fine. They're entirely modern and you'll find them in use in modern business and modern academic settings at the HIGHEST level. Suggesting that this system is stiffing to young minds is an insult to our intelligence.
As to something better... their technology isn't better. It is just more expensive and locks schools into buying things from ONE company where as you're not going to run into any stupid compatibility issues between one company's chalkboard and another company's chalk. I don't have to buy just chalk made by the same company that made my chalkboard.
But if I buy the MS product then the school is locked into buying everything from MS relating to that product.
Its a dumb move which will only be attractive to schools so insecure about their tech chops that they'll buy some out of the box shit from one of the big companies and think that that makes up for their staff being technologically literate.
The problem with education is not that teachers don't have access to computers but that if you gave those teachers access to everything they wouldn't know what to do with it.
If you want to get kids knowledgeable and excited about technology then you need teachers that are knowledgeable and excited about technology. Most aren't. Most are liberal arts majors that think the internet is facebook.
Your school needs some help? Hire some CS majors. Why is this rocket science for people?
If we wanted to teach our kids how to play a musical instrument, would it not be obvious that the teacher would themselves have to know how to play? Obviously.
Yet how many teachers presumed to be able to teach technology are actually knowledgable about technology?
Exactly.
And it doesn't matter what piece of shit you buy from MS or Apple or whomever if you do not address that issue.
The entire teacher hiring process has to be reviewed.
The teaching profession is not attracting the right people. Here someone will say "they're not paid enough money"... Yes and no. Some of them are not paid enough and some of them are paid far too much. Part of the issue is that the teachers want to be paid based on seniority rather on the actual quality of their work or on whether their skills as a teacher are actually in demand. So a PE coach that has been working at a school for many years expects to be paid more than a new science teacher that is actually hard to attract.
Wrong way to do it. You pay people according to how hard they are to attract. People that are really easy to get are paid less. People that are harder to get are paid more. Added to that, you reward teachers that are good at their jobs while generally paying the crappy ones what you think they're worth... which might be not a lot.
What is more, concepts like "tenure" in grade school is absurd. The point of tenure in higher education was to attract extremely learned and skilled people and doing everything in your power to make them feel comfortable working there forever. You don't want that or need that in lower education.
If you're a kindergarten teacher... you are not a prized physics professor with a body of published work. Don't get mad, no one else gets tenure either. Doctors don't get it. Lawyers don't get it. Only university professors used to get it. And its silly that it be expanded beyond that subset.
Doubtless every kid with a relative that teachers is going to call me an asshole... I'm regret that I offend... I really do. But I'd rather offend then lie to people.
Yeah, that was a mistake. I was having some other discussions in other threads and got his one confused with another one. Sorry about that.
What I meant to ask was if you have any recommendations as to how the legal system be reformed such that you'd be MORE comfortable with the execution.
I'm fairly certain you're going to say that there is nothing you can do that can ACTUALLY make you comfortable with it... so lets just take it for granted that your level certainy is unobtainable and thus unreasonable.
So... what can we do that would IMPROVE the situation? Actually obtaining your standard is not interesting to me in this discussion because it is like asking or unicorns or something. But what is your primary complaint with the legal system?
And please, keep it relevant to executions. Citing the drug war is generally a red herring because the people that get sent to execution chambers generally only arrive there through murder... not drug possession.
And do not either mention plea bargains because no one plea bargains into an execution sentence. Rather, you plea bargain OUT of them.
Those were your two reference above and they are laughable because NEITHER one has any contextual relationship to execution.
Now... what aspect of the legal system do you think is causing innocent men to wind up on the chopping block?
Organizational walls are a good thing. Keep an open mind. You need tight organizations that can operate independently. The walls are bad when they don't talk to each other but they should be able to operate independently of each other. When you jam everything together you tend to get a one size fits all system which is ultimately shitty for everyone. You can't run the Marines on the same system the NSA runs on... its incompatible. So the idea is to let each department work like its own little kingdom of specialists. Their job is to master a given skill or ability. And then collectively when all the specialists are used together you get a well oiled professional machine.
However, they need to not half ass things they're not good at on their own. The Navy is quite clearly shit at computer security. Very well... Kindly consult with the NSA and get their two cents. The Navy can still run their system but just get some input from people that actually know what they're doing. Maybe send some of the Navy techs to an NSA crash course just so they're appropriately paranoid.
That said, they should ask each other for help.
If I were the NSA and I needed someone to slip a bug into some place I might ask the CIA for help. And if I were the CIA, and I needed to train some locals to start an insurgency somewhere then I'd at least consult the green berets. Etc.
I'm not saying they should be slaved to each other but for the love of god at least talk to them about it. Get their input in the report somewhere. If the report is all roses and then suddenly you hit the opinion from the NSA and they basically say "this plan is stupid and you're stupid for thinking it is a good idea."... that might make the consulting agency question the wisdom of the plan because they know in that case the NSA knows what they're talking about.
chalkboards and whiteboards are entirely reasonable in lectures and are still used in modern settings in business all the time.
Go into a lot of meeting rooms and you're gong to find a whiteboard which is basically the same thing as a chalkboard.
This notion that you have to use technology for everything is goofy.. and frankly I suspect they might be trying to sell us something rather than giving good advice.
It should be noted that the US strategic air command is moving BACK to cheyenne mountain.
The military does need to have multiple redundant fail safes.
As to consolidation... it depends on what you're consolidating.
Logistics and procurement for example don't need distributed databases. You can centralize that. YES have a backup where someone can just pick up a phone and call an order in manually or by fucking carrier pigeon. But the primary workhorse of day to day procurement and inventory should be computerized and centralized.
Certain defense secrets should also be centralized in that they should be in the minimum number of places possible. Ideally ONE place that will be very heavily guarded.
But if you need it spread around a little bit and you need that info to be accessible in an emergency... then so be it.
One thing which I think is very important is for the military to maintain its own redundant communications system. Not just military communications sats but encrypted hardwired point to point communications.
If the president orders the nukes launched, then that signal needs to go out without a hitch.
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Depends on how badly your meetings are organized... no offense. If you structure them properly you can use whiteboards just fine. Works the same with power point. If you can't see the whiteboard than how can you see the power point?
I think that is a big part of the reason white boards are more popular. White boards are more expensive because chalk is CHEAP. But white boards are more common in business. They look nicer too.
So you admit your position is a pretext?
or did you have a reform to demonstrate that you actually thought about it?
Last chance.
I don't care... that wasn't my point. We were talking about money.
I'm not interested in you clouding the issue.
At no point did I ever claim the system was perfect. So your attempt to prove that isn't perfect statistically is utterly irrelevant since no one disputes that.
However, absent any kind of reform suggestion you will reveal that you are incurious about seeking reform. And that will be indicative of the reform comment being used as a pretext.
Show me I'm wrong... what needs to be reformed? Be specific. Be relevant.
Ed wasn't working alone... it is quite obvious that he had quite a bit of help from inside the agency from other like minded people.
Furthermore, he claims he wasn't as low down the totem pole as the NSA claims. It is quite possible he was a senior analyst/agent/operative.
Regardless, you can't stop someone that has access to your critical systems having access to your critical systems.
They either have it or they don't.
You think it will be better with corporate private sector datacenters? Come on now.
Jesus... that looks idiotically expensive. I bet it will also break after the first week.
That would actually be a fun way of getting MS to fuck off with this stuff. Require a no questions asked total replacement warranty policy be included.
MS will have to jack the price up to even more hilariously high levels... and the schools will probably be smart enough to give it a pass.
Yet they use them in their own offices. Look at a lot of the meeting and design rooms that MS maintains for its own staff... whiteboards all over the place.
I do agree that there should be a centralized archive of all information open to congressional audit. That said, I am okay it that is only an archive and the active databases are segmented.
I don't want to hamstring organizations by forcing their day to day operations to flow through a third party just to carry out basic operations.
I am okay with requiring them to DUMP all data from their system in real time into an archive. But the flow has to be one way. The data goes INTO the archive. The Navy systems would not need exterior systems to authenticate their operations. I say that in terms of automation. Obviously actions by the Navy must be in conformance with the constitutional law, any additional laws passed by congress, and the whims of the current president respectively. However, every time the navy orders a box of tissue, they shouldn't have some exterior system saying yes or no.
You give them a budget and you expect them to stay within it. Then you evaluate the competence of what you paid for and occasionally audit practices to see if things can't be improved in some respect.
Micromanaging the fuck out any of these big departments is automatic failure.
Of course they're trying to sell something. We get sucked into this because the Gates foundation is running around trying to cure malaria or whatever so when we hear MS talking about education we assume they're speaking on behalf of the foundation. And even if they were... I'd feel better about it if MS had no conflict of interest in the matter... eg... they were trying to sell us NOTHING related to their advice.
Unless the exhortations are false?
I mean, if you can convict a man on false pretenses than surely you can release one on false pretenses as well... no?
As to statistics, either show you've given a wet fart for the issue by citing a reform or you will have effectively admitted that you've not thought about the issue in any depth thus undermining your case that your issue is problems in the legal system.
Your causal and frankly lazy position is unsustainable. You're simply proving that your position is simplistic which simply supports my position that you're mostly using the objection to the legal system as a pretext.
Cite a reform or we're done.
They're using it for a lot of things. And if I breach that system, I can monitor the Navy's activities at the very least. Having lax security is not acceptable.
And really, I don't think people are appreciating that the level of security required to keep shithead hackers out is not the same level required to keep out state sponsored cyber warfare divisions.
its like comparing a bank robber with an army battalion.
You are not giving enemy action even remotely enough respect.
Democrats used to be the party of the South... democrats used to love nothing more than segregation and related issues.
That didn't change until the civil rights movement where in the whole race issue stopped being a viable way to get votes.
Suddenly the democratic party became the party of diversity. Pretty much overnight. You can look at the regional voting maps and in the span of about two election cycles the democrat party completely flipped with the republicans.
Look at it:
http://www.270towin.com/histor...
So... if some demographic is dying off for the republicans, you can expect that they'll just find someone else and adjust the platform as required.
I think part of the reason you're seeing more of a libertarian bent to the party is because that is the future. The older generations weren't so keen on that stuff.
You could well see the republicans slow identify less with the title "conservative" as well as attracting the generation that found that comforting becomes less profitable.
The big fight looming for the republicans is between the evangelical religious right and the socially liberal libertarians.
We'll see what happens but that is going to be an ugly fight unless it is handled very carefully.
Both groups have gotten along under the conservative banner because they're both conservative in their own way. The religious right is socially conservative. Things they believe are largely similar to what most of America believed 100 years ago. And libertarians are fiscally conservative in that their notion of economic policy is generally more acceptable from a traditional american perspective.
But... if the conservatives go away... the religious right and the libertarians likely can't coexist under the same tent.
This will drive portions of both as well as anything remaining to jump to the democrats if that is more agreeable. Also there are portions of the democrat party that might easily jump to the republicans if the republicans change what they are to any extent. A lot of democrats only stay away from the republicans because of the religious right or because the libertarians. If either of those factions is ejected, suppressed, or switches sides, then there is a good chance that some portion of the democrat party might switch in sympathy.
What you can expect in the end is that both parties should represent a credible half of the political power.
Notions of either party annihilating the other are ignorant. That is not how these systems work. Either party can get annihilated for a few elections at most. Eventually what happens is that the party down in support will horse trade until it gets enough votes that it feels it is credible.
Both parties are doing this against each other all the time. Which is why support wobbles around.
The other thing you have to appreciate is that politics often change as people grow older. People that vote one way or say they vote one way at point X in their lives might vote another at point Y.
In the end, a good thing about first past the post is that it does tend to encourage all political energies to polarize and thus you rarely get one party that dominates uncontested especially on the national level.
The economy is only booming via those statistics because they've manipulated the statistics.
This has been pointed out repeatedly. Even the New York Times has admitted it. The only people saying the economy is booming are really just incumbent supporters selling that line largely for the reasons you cited.
As to parties closer to our views... the means are the ends. A party is not what they say they believe but what they do and how they do things.
Recalculate your affiliation on the basis that what they do is who they are not what they say.
You say they're just as bad but you've show ZERO interest in dealing with the problem. In fact, you haven't even thought about it. When I queried you, you had NO solution to ANYTHING. You merely said "well, if there are exhonorations that means you're making mistakes"... okay... but even if there weren't exhonororations there could be mistakes. The legal system in Saudi Arabia doesn't have many exhonorations... are they better?
Basing your position on very wobbly statistics is not supportable.
And the fact that you've not thought about the issue deeper than that means you're not actually interested in the problems in the legal system but rather just concerned with the executions.
Show me you care about reform of the legal system by showing that you've thought about it.
I ask you again... Offer a reform. If you have none that are relevant to this discussion that will sustain my position.
As to ruling powers... they are the authority in that area and it is not for me to judge. "IF" they accept that person in their country... then that is apparently okay there.
There are countries with child soldiers. Horrors beyond your ability to comprehend. Let us say that my country has bigger problems than whether this man is or is not a murderer. Maybe the man is a doctor or has lots of money or is willing to put his services as a killer in my service protecting my people? Maybe accepting him means my country doesn't need to use as many child soldiers.
It is not for me to judge why they would accept such a man. And I don't care.
I am making it plain that I don't need to execute people for capital crimes. I just refuse to pay for them to live.
I am offering exile as an alternative to execution and I'd like to apply it in all cases of life without parole as well. They will have a choice.
If they were slotted for execution they can opt for exile instead. And exile requires that some other country is willing to take them.
And same thing for life in prison without parole. Any other country that wants them can take them.
Only condition is that if they come back to my country without permission... Instant death. No appeals. If they stay away though... they can live out the rest of their lives in any shit hole that will take them.
Works for me.
I'm making this point so you understand I'm not bloodthirsty. I don't need severed heads. I just won't give them so much as a scrap of my bread. They get NOTHING from me. Nothing. If I find you guilty of a capital crime... the only cell I'll feel happy leaving you in is one of those cells that you brick the inmate up in so he suffocates in the dark. That's the only cell I'm going to feel is justified.
I am willing to give these people exile though. I just never want to see them again breathing my air.
Then why is the NSA building that datacenter in Utah?
It would obviously be cheaper to run it all through Amazon's systems. No?
... you're confusing correlation with causation.
A candidate that raises more money generally has more support from his party and base... and that is what gets you the nomination. Not the money. The money correlates with the support it is not caused by the support.
In the case of Jeb, he's getting most of his money from a small group of big money donors. This cash is therefore less representative of support than it would be otherwise.
Again, I can point at Eric Cantor who spent more money on fancy dinners than his opponent did on his entire campaign. And Cantor lost. Cantor also raised a lot more money than his rival.
And he lost.
Raising more money does not automatically mean you win.
It can be indicative of support. But only if the money is raised from a large number of people. If you got it all from a small group then it is as meaningless as Ross Perot's personal fortune.
If your only basis is statistical then I have to question your basis of complaint.
Statistics are an extremely wobbly basis for most opinions unless you've examined the methodology of the analysis and the means by which they were taken.
For example, what if most of your exhortations happen in two states and the rest not so much? Perhaps the problem is that some regions have bad legal practices while the others do not.
What is more, some areas without exhortations might simply not have them because they don't have a good appeals process so that no one is exonerated regardless of their innocence.
So the statistical argument is questionable. I'd prefer something concrete and that demonstrated you had a thoughtful opinion on the issue.
As to the distinction between unobtainable standards being reasonable. Give me an example of an unobtainable standard that people feel it is reasonable to apply in any other context?
If you can't think of one then I'm going to have tap my foot and smirk at you.
As to people only complaining about executions, wrong. I did not say that people EXCLUSIVELY complain about the legal system executions came up. I said rather that people only suggested that the that the legal system were inherently flawed to such an extent that you could not sustain a particular sentence in the case of execution.
Again, if you're so worried about people getting falsly executed, let me point out that there are FAR more people getting falsely imprisoned. Shall we abolish that? And don't tell me you can unimprison someone. You cannot. You do not have a time machine. You cannot give someone back their ten years.
Let me be very clear here. If I kidnap you and hold you in my rape dungeon for 10 years and then let you go... are we cool? I think not. If you went to the police and complained about my throwing you in the rape dungeon... could I just respond "I let him go though"... That might have some meaning if you let the guy go after a day or so. But ten fucking years? You can't undo that.
And the fact that you're not calling for the abolition of imprisonment means that you clearly have enough confidence in the legal system that you're willing to accept that most people that go to prison deserved it and you're happy with them being there. Even though far more innocent people are imprisoned than are executed.
I'm sorry, this is a conflict. You can't be against a couple false executions every DECADE if you're completely fine with probably thousands and thousands of false imprisonments.
What is the equiliency between an execution and a year of a man's life? How many years of false imprisonment equals one life.
1?
2?
2000?
2,000,000?
2,000,000,000?
Obviously if you cite the right number one will equal the other. I know that is painfully utilitarian but it is also factual. We send men to forests to cut down trees even though we know that some percentage of them will die when a tree falls on them. We have made the calculation that X trees is worth Y lives. Notice, there is no outcry over the number of loggers that die in forests? Why is that? Because we acknowledge it is a dangerous job and we accept that there will be causalities to see it done. Same thing with almost anything.
And that is just for deaths... consider the years people spend doing things. Lets say you are an insurance adjuster. At some level, our society has determined that the most productive years of this man's life are best spent sitting at this little desk, in a sunless cubical, tapping away on a database.
See the bigger picture.
If I get sufficient evidence to convict someone of multiple murders... they're never going to set foot on the streets as a free man again. Yes yes... appeals and exhortation... but lets assume for a moment that I did my job properly and he's properly guilty.
Why not throw the switch?
Here is my compromise... I am happy to accept exile as an alternative. Another country has to willingly accept them and if they
I disagree because you can infer things from what you think are meaningless bits of information.
Imagine if you were Sherlock Holmes... someone very intelligent, very rational, very knowledgable... and you were handed a long list of seemingly meaningless statistics from the Navy's various requisitions including time stamps, locations, etc. Do you honestly think that someone couldn't infer something you'd rather keep secret from all that?
Of course they could.
Which is why the bias should be to keep things secret whenever practical.
I don't need to put that database on a corporate server so why should I do it? Are you really going to claim that you're going to save a relevant amount of money by shifting those systems to a commercial data center? If so, I'd ask why your private systems are so fucking expensive?
I've set up a lot of corporate databases and the costs of self hosting are trivial.
The only cost savings of putting it in a data center is that you can shed some of your IT department. The equipment costs are meaningless. As to the IT department... it depends entirely on the business. I've seen a lot of businesses that kill most of their IT department thinking they're so fucking clever and then realize "oh shit we need these people to do other things"... and thus they rehire either the same fucking people they fired or they hire a new group or they have to hire a consulting group to do what the IT department used to do at basically the same fucking price.
Look at a Navy ship and you'll see a lot of things are done manually on the ship that could be automated.
Why is that? Because in a crisis automated stuff tends to break. And people... especially if they're cross trained in different departments are more reliable. They're more expensive... but if you're in a battle reliability is what you need. That is why Navy ships have many redundancies built into them. They almost never for example have only one engine. Two engines is standard and sometimes they have four. If an engine dies the ship goes slower but it does not stop.
Take that philosophy and apply it to the computers. You have PEOPLE manning those systems. Yes, a corporation will be cheaper... but its priorities are the cost profit bottom line. For the Navy that isn't their priority. The Navy doesn't make money. The Navy costs money. There is no way for the Navy to EVER be in the black. It is literally impossible.
Whether or not they are considered to be well run is not judged by the same metrics that you judge a business. What you judge a military force on is its ability to win battles. A military force that wins battles is a superior military force.
Does that mean the military can just spend infinite amounts of money? Nope. Their budget should be relative to the resources of the host nation and the perceived threats. Whether or not that money is being spent efficiently is judged by whether the money invested translates into a proportionally effective military force.
If you have an existing system that is as good as a more expensive electronic option then you would be foolish to replace the existing system.
Chalkboards and whiteboards are fine. They're entirely modern and you'll find them in use in modern business and modern academic settings at the HIGHEST level. Suggesting that this system is stiffing to young minds is an insult to our intelligence.
As to something better... their technology isn't better. It is just more expensive and locks schools into buying things from ONE company where as you're not going to run into any stupid compatibility issues between one company's chalkboard and another company's chalk. I don't have to buy just chalk made by the same company that made my chalkboard.
But if I buy the MS product then the school is locked into buying everything from MS relating to that product.
Its a dumb move which will only be attractive to schools so insecure about their tech chops that they'll buy some out of the box shit from one of the big companies and think that that makes up for their staff being technologically literate.
The problem with education is not that teachers don't have access to computers but that if you gave those teachers access to everything they wouldn't know what to do with it.
If you want to get kids knowledgeable and excited about technology then you need teachers that are knowledgeable and excited about technology. Most aren't. Most are liberal arts majors that think the internet is facebook.
Your school needs some help? Hire some CS majors. Why is this rocket science for people?
If we wanted to teach our kids how to play a musical instrument, would it not be obvious that the teacher would themselves have to know how to play? Obviously.
Yet how many teachers presumed to be able to teach technology are actually knowledgable about technology?
Exactly.
And it doesn't matter what piece of shit you buy from MS or Apple or whomever if you do not address that issue.
The entire teacher hiring process has to be reviewed.
The teaching profession is not attracting the right people. Here someone will say "they're not paid enough money"... Yes and no. Some of them are not paid enough and some of them are paid far too much. Part of the issue is that the teachers want to be paid based on seniority rather on the actual quality of their work or on whether their skills as a teacher are actually in demand. So a PE coach that has been working at a school for many years expects to be paid more than a new science teacher that is actually hard to attract.
Wrong way to do it. You pay people according to how hard they are to attract. People that are really easy to get are paid less. People that are harder to get are paid more. Added to that, you reward teachers that are good at their jobs while generally paying the crappy ones what you think they're worth... which might be not a lot.
What is more, concepts like "tenure" in grade school is absurd. The point of tenure in higher education was to attract extremely learned and skilled people and doing everything in your power to make them feel comfortable working there forever. You don't want that or need that in lower education.
If you're a kindergarten teacher... you are not a prized physics professor with a body of published work. Don't get mad, no one else gets tenure either. Doctors don't get it. Lawyers don't get it. Only university professors used to get it. And its silly that it be expanded beyond that subset.
Doubtless every kid with a relative that teachers is going to call me an asshole... I'm regret that I offend... I really do. But I'd rather offend then lie to people.
*rolls eyes*
Except for their behavior changed and their security policies were hugely upgraded.
I believe the Russian FSB moved to type writers as a result of Snowden.
So no. Your theory was amusing but wrong.
Yeah, that was a mistake. I was having some other discussions in other threads and got his one confused with another one. Sorry about that.
What I meant to ask was if you have any recommendations as to how the legal system be reformed such that you'd be MORE comfortable with the execution.
I'm fairly certain you're going to say that there is nothing you can do that can ACTUALLY make you comfortable with it... so lets just take it for granted that your level certainy is unobtainable and thus unreasonable.
So... what can we do that would IMPROVE the situation? Actually obtaining your standard is not interesting to me in this discussion because it is like asking or unicorns or something. But what is your primary complaint with the legal system?
And please, keep it relevant to executions. Citing the drug war is generally a red herring because the people that get sent to execution chambers generally only arrive there through murder... not drug possession.
And do not either mention plea bargains because no one plea bargains into an execution sentence. Rather, you plea bargain OUT of them.
Those were your two reference above and they are laughable because NEITHER one has any contextual relationship to execution.
Now... what aspect of the legal system do you think is causing innocent men to wind up on the chopping block?
Organizational walls are a good thing. Keep an open mind. You need tight organizations that can operate independently. The walls are bad when they don't talk to each other but they should be able to operate independently of each other. When you jam everything together you tend to get a one size fits all system which is ultimately shitty for everyone. You can't run the Marines on the same system the NSA runs on... its incompatible. So the idea is to let each department work like its own little kingdom of specialists. Their job is to master a given skill or ability. And then collectively when all the specialists are used together you get a well oiled professional machine.
However, they need to not half ass things they're not good at on their own. The Navy is quite clearly shit at computer security. Very well... Kindly consult with the NSA and get their two cents. The Navy can still run their system but just get some input from people that actually know what they're doing. Maybe send some of the Navy techs to an NSA crash course just so they're appropriately paranoid.
That said, they should ask each other for help.
If I were the NSA and I needed someone to slip a bug into some place I might ask the CIA for help. And if I were the CIA, and I needed to train some locals to start an insurgency somewhere then I'd at least consult the green berets. Etc.
I'm not saying they should be slaved to each other but for the love of god at least talk to them about it. Get their input in the report somewhere. If the report is all roses and then suddenly you hit the opinion from the NSA and they basically say "this plan is stupid and you're stupid for thinking it is a good idea."... that might make the consulting agency question the wisdom of the plan because they know in that case the NSA knows what they're talking about.
chalkboards and whiteboards are entirely reasonable in lectures and are still used in modern settings in business all the time.
Go into a lot of meeting rooms and you're gong to find a whiteboard which is basically the same thing as a chalkboard.
This notion that you have to use technology for everything is goofy.. and frankly I suspect they might be trying to sell us something rather than giving good advice.
Completely agree.
It should be noted that the US strategic air command is moving BACK to cheyenne mountain.
The military does need to have multiple redundant fail safes.
As to consolidation... it depends on what you're consolidating.
Logistics and procurement for example don't need distributed databases. You can centralize that. YES have a backup where someone can just pick up a phone and call an order in manually or by fucking carrier pigeon. But the primary workhorse of day to day procurement and inventory should be computerized and centralized.
Certain defense secrets should also be centralized in that they should be in the minimum number of places possible. Ideally ONE place that will be very heavily guarded.
But if you need it spread around a little bit and you need that info to be accessible in an emergency... then so be it.
One thing which I think is very important is for the military to maintain its own redundant communications system. Not just military communications sats but encrypted hardwired point to point communications.
If the president orders the nukes launched, then that signal needs to go out without a hitch.