Please get rid of: XM radio that I have to cycle through 3 selections of to get back to FM. Climate settings that are only displayed on the LCD, and often not displayed unless I am in the right mode. 2G, 3G, or 4G anything. I want to drive. I can login when I get there. Anything with sub-menus. I'm trying to drive, KISS. Ability to order a pizza. Recently saw this touted as a feature, WTF?
Let's add any stereo that can't be replaced by generic after market and/or requires BUS connection or the whole fucking car stops working.
I'm not sure how this is more convenient for the main user... compare "get keys out of pocket, click button, put keys in ignition" to "get phone out of pocket, unlock phone, open app, press button on app"... OK, it's one less thing to carry, but then you'd probably end up carrying the keys anyway as backup in case your phone died or the app crashed.
I've been experimenting with home automation. While having lights come on automatically via various rules is nice, it's a pain to go into the app to turn them on and off manually when you need to - easier to get up, walk across the room and flick a switch. This feels similar - a solution in search of a problem
That being said it would be nice not to have to pay 200+ euros for a new key/remote when one is lost.
It works both ways, but the Plaintiff's strategy can't really change, they are locked into the arguments they've already made. In civil trials all the evidence that can be presented and all the base arguments and defenses have to be filed to keep the trial as fair as possible. They can certainly fine tune and try to adjust their prior arguments but the best chance for the Plaintiff is to catch the Defendant off guard with a presentation of the evidence that can't be countered effectively. They would have used their best bullets in the first trial and now Google knows what they are and how best to defend against them because of the feedback they got from Jurors of the previous trial.
It's possible that Oracle could find a new "bullet" to use in this trial that is in line with all their arguments up to the trial but the chances are pretty slim or they would have used it during the first trial. You simply don't hold back on your evidence, you expend all your best attacks. They won't catch Google's lawyers off guard with a refinement of those same arguments.
It's a statistically known fact that a second trial always favors the defendant, this is true in both Criminal and Civil trials. The criminal trials even have a freer hand to make completely different arguments and propose new motives where in the civil trial they can't argue outside the prior boundaries they established in the run-up to the first trial. This also limits Google because they can't make defenses outside the ones they proposed but they can and will find evidence to blunt Oracles best attacks and that could swing the next trial into their favor.
Or maybe Oracle is just hoping to get a jury that isn't split or actively against them?
But the rest of the world and considering illegal frequencies being used around the US will make this problem harder than one thinks.
So you come up with a great solution for 900Mhz, problem is you can't use it in the EU or Asia. Or how about 433? nope, more conflicts outside the US.
Then there's the 1W vs 25mW (rest of the world) requirement....
Not only is this a tech and regulation problem, it's a frequency management and standards nightmare.
At least you can drive a DARPA challenge car or a biped robot in pretty much any country without conflicting tech (but conflicting regs).
They're looking for a mechanism to share bandwidth intelligently. There is nothing specific to frequencies or power handling in how bandwidth might be shared so the result should be usable regardless of local variations on implementation.
"...it would deposit $72.8 million in a "customer investment fund," set aside $11.25 million for energy efficiency and conservation programs targeted toward low-income residents, and carve out $21.55 million for pilot projects such as modernizing the electric distribution grid."
So basically these companies bought off the regulatory commission to the tune of some 100 million that will probably never make it to the slated end projects.
Is there any level of American government that can't be bought?
And there we have it. An online business that processes $10,000 a month with an average ticket of $50 will pay about 2.80% of volume or $280 a month in credit card processing charges.
If you're paying your cash-handling staff $10/hour, that's about 28 hours of work in the month, or about 1 hour per day (1.5 hours if you don't open on weekends) for additional cash handling beyond the individual transactions.
That's not especially far-fetched - in practice for a business carrying about $300 in float, and taking between $300-$500/day, the cash handling time is probably somewhere between 30-45 minutes per day, depending on whether you bank daily or you have a safe on site and bank weekly. Cards are more expensive, but not significantly more so, unless you're running your business on the slimmest of margins.
You're assuming employee vs. owner actually handling the cash themselves but okay, time value and all that.
Aside from that look at a business like a bakery (which is good business here in France) or a cafe - with a huge number of very small value transactions - the per transaction fees are relatively huge compared to even 50/transaction.
Not good enough. Our society has a problem assuming regulations and laws are the first solution, when they should always be the last. If you can fix a problem without creating an expensive, corruptable bureaucracy around it, shouldn't you do that instead?
Oh I didn't say it would work by itself but it certainly contributed to the instability that caused the latest round of bank bailouts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Policy by itself will never be sufficient - regulation is required. The reality is that both together are proving insufficient due to the power of lobbying and the corrupt who decide both policy and law.
Did not know that the training in the US military is so hard that you can get killed during exercising.
Yes I am aware (been there, done that) but training in a sim dome isn't going to be that way if for no other reason than live fire would destroy the dome itself.
I couldn't agree more. I would add that during the process you described, the government should have made it their first priority to correct the issues in monetary policy that caused this. Not through regulations and increased bureaucracy but through identifying the systemic causes and creating policy to correct the root of the problem. The ultimate conclusion would have been nationalizing the central bank and money creation process through a slow but steady increase of the fractional reserve requirement. The central bank could then have exclusive "new money" lending rights by maintaining a central credit database, and registering private banks as brokers of new money loans instead of creators.
Or undoing changes to existing laws that were set up to protect against this kind of nonsense to start with.
You believe that paying with a credit card does not cost more than cash? You may not see the cost as it may be charged to the store instead of you, but you pay in higher prices for all goods and services.
For a long time, I used to think like you did - that the merchant was getting ripped off to the tune of 1-2% when I paid by credit card.
However, that was before taking into account the costs of handling cash - paying staff to count the cash twice a day, infrastructure/security to store cash safely overnight, paying staff to transfer cash safely to the bank regularly, potential costs of staff theft, arranging/maintaining sufficient float to give change to customers, sufficient security for float cash during the work day, etc.
These are real costs on a business, which are not relevant for card transactions, and also get factored into the costs of goods and services.
Depends on the business. Small value transactions cost a lot more relative to large value transactions.
"For example, let's pretend that two businesses each process $1,000 in transactions. Business A has an average ticket of $10, and Business B has an average ticket of $100. This means that Business A will have 100 transactions, and Business B will have 10 transactions.
Let's assume that both businesses have the exact same rates, including a $0.18 transaction fee. Business A would pay $18 in transaction fees, while Business B would only pay $1.80. Business A pays 1,000% more!" https://www.cardfellow.com/ave...
Their merchant fees are not in lockstep. You don't hear about those because merchants are required by the card companies to absorb all of those costs themselves, they're not allowed to charge extra for credit payments. That's the biggest reason why some merchants will accept certain cards and not others though.
In Europe it's common to see smaller stores that take credit cards starting at a minimum amount - usually between 12 and 15 euros.
"Payroll robberies" were a thriving industry when I started my working life in the 70's, electronic transfers have eliminated that risk and reduced insurance premiums, so good luck finding an employer who pays your wage in cash rather than direct deposit into your bank account.
No doubt there are plenty of them paying the illegal workers that permeate much of the US.
Cute, but I think you know this isn't accurate. The worst thing that can happen to any currency is rampant deflation. It serves to make it useless, just like rampant *in*flation, but the impact is even worse. When there's not enough money supply to service incomes and day to day transactions the entire economy of labor shuts down, potentially overnight. Add that to the fact that most of the world pegs the value of their currency (either directly or indirectly) to the US dollar and you'll understand why the bailout wasn't an option, it was a necessity. Once you understand that, then you should understand why nearly every political issue up for debate should be taking a back seat to monetary policy and banking reform.
The bailouts may have been necessary but the methodologies around them were poor bordering on criminal.
The companies that had to be bailed out should have been nationalized on the basis of the money for the bailout constituting purchase of interest in the company and then later re-privatized once the market had stabilized with any capital gain going towards the cost of the bailouts. If there were eventual capital loss we the taxpayers wouldn't be any worse off than we already are as we had to carry the whole cost anyway.
Those running the companies should certainly not have been paid bonuses and allowed to go on with their 1% lives while we taxpayers alone foot the bill and if the value of the bailed out companies had tanked, from the investor standpoint, then those executives would have gotten what they deserved - a boot in the ass on their way out the door.
Agreed, but borders is a prerequisite. You can't complain that we're not kicking people out therefore we don't need borders, when we don't actually have well controlled borders to begin with. That logic doesn't work.
I disagree - you are trying to use reverse logic for this. To take this in the abstract: If you have a piece of land somewhere in the forest that you are not throwing anyone out of, then you do not need a fence around it. So unless and until we are actually throwing people out (which is by far more difficult than having a border as the people in question tend to have papers that allow them to be here) then there is no use for the border.
Even the loners are doing it for some ideology or in the name of some group, even if they're not actually part of it. The San Bernardino terrorists, afaik, were not "part" of ISIS, but the woman declared her allegiance to ISIS before they did it.
Well yes...and?
You must not read much news. I've seen it in every major newspaper, both in articles and in the comment section. Here's just one of many examples of what I said above: https://www.washingtonpost.com...
The entire line of reasoning is idiotic... you make decisions based on what's best for you, not some psychoanalysis of your enemy and what they want or don't want.
I can see your point with this but I suspect it is more people who want to allow refugee migrants in that are trying to use any argument they can to change public opinion - including "The enemy of our enemy is our friend".
More people die in car crashes than lots of stuff. Yet we regulate lots and lots of other stuff. Now unless you're going around saying "I'm not willing to put up with the inconveniences of food safety regulations just to save a handful of people from food poisoning, when CAR CRASHES kill so many more" then you're being awfully hypocritical.
Your argument is also very short-sighted... we already do a hell of a lot to fight against terrorism right now. We have multiple government agencies, civilian and military, dealing with terrorist groups and state sponsors. I think it's pretty remarkable, and no accident, that a wealthy terrorist group like ISIS hasn't gotten their hands on some nuclear bombs when there are suppliers from the former USSR, Pakistan, North Korea, and so on.
You are right: - we do do a hell of a lot to fight terrorism right now and I think that it's enough, if not more than enough (witness the uselessness of TSA checks).
I am not saying "do not do food safety checks" - I am saying "do not take every grain of rice of every shipment from every country and examine it for lead content" because at some point a line needs to be drawn saying "We are not willing to let go of more of our freedom in the name of a bit of perceived [temporary] safety". I am paraphrasing Ben Franklin of course but here it stands true. We are doing, in my opinion, quite enough against the real level of danger that Daesh (and whatever one-offs associate themselves with Daesh) present - relatively not much - and I am not willing to continue to give the state (states in fact as this is more than one country) more and more and more power out of fear of something that has zero (to some number of decimal points) possibility of actually harming anyone that I know.
I agree about security theater, in the instances where it is theater, but let me ask you this. If you're not Muslim, and even if you are but you're not like a hardcore radical, how would it significantly change your life if we went around shutting down radical mosques, deporting every Muslim who ever said "Yes I would welcome sharia law in [some Western country]" or "Yes I support the death penalty for apostasy", refusing all refugees and immigrants from areas with strong
I don't care if they have a Ph.D in physics, they're ignorant. You cannot argue that someone who fails to understand the value of life, both of others and their own, is not grossly ignorant.
If they execute these sorts of action and are not ignorant, then they are insane, and I have seen little evidence of their actual insanity. Ignorance is the only thing that remains. There is no action or cause that justifies random attacks on innocent civilians, especially if the cause they supposedly espouse is the ending of attacks on their own innocent compatriots.
I think you are misusing the word ignorance. They may have a different opinion of the value of life than you do but this does not mean that they are ignorant of the value of life - on the contrary they are trying to hurt us by taking our lives from us which indicates that they are quite aware of the value of life.
My understanding is that those targeting civilians consider that these civilians have voted for the people in power making decisions. Although we may disagree with them, it cannot be said that the thought process itself is irrational and therefore the people following it are not necessarily insane. You should also keep in mind that in years of war our bombs have also killed many civilians who were just as innocent as our own civilians are (here we should particularly not forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki but it holds true as well for the recent years in the middle east).
You may consider them to be insane per your frame of reference, and some of the ones who blow themselves up may very well be insane. Others are not insane and have just chosen to spend their lives in such a way that they believe (rightly or wrongly) will make a difference in their war against us.
I'll point out that there are people in our culture who are willing to die for what they believe in as well - we call them soldiers and although they surely prefer to live through missions they are generally aware that they may very well die 'for the cause', whatever that cause may be. The Japanese used kamikaze pilots to effectuate maximum damage against us. Were they insane?
Yes they do. They allow you to start kicking people out. Without border patrols, the people you kick out can come right back in.
If we were kicking anyone out this might make a difference...but we're not actually kicking anyone out so adding borders does not have any effect other than to annoy those of us who like traveling between countries here.
That's right, but if it's just some random "someone" doing it, it's a different situation. If they're not part of a larger, organized group, then what did they accomplish? Killing a few people. On the other hand, terrorist groups manipulate governments and populations with their attacks. They have goals.
Look at the plight of free speech for instance... you have people in the US, which is much stronger on free speech than Europe already, saying that the dude in Florida shouldn't burn Korans because it might provoke terrorist attacks abroad. WTF? That conversation simply doesn't happen when some random idiot blows himself up. Meanwhile in Europe you have many many people justifying their positions based on terrorism... did you not hear arguments such as "we have to accept refugees, because ISIS wants us to NOT accept refugees, thus justifying attacks against us?"
The terrorist attacks are like Anonymous attacks in that they are sometimes well coordinated and sometimes done by incompetent loners.
Daesh (I use this title because it's an insult to them and I do not wish to grant them their wish to be called a state) has goals but so what? There are always going to be stupid people who will say stupid things (as those you are referencing) even without anyone blowing anything up. And to answer your question - no, I have not actually heard anyone at all basing their position based on terrorism, other than to be more against Daesh than ever.
While I feel bad for the families of those who have been killed or wounded, the reality is that Daesh have managed to kill fewer people outside of the middle east than die in car crashes here in a month - which is why I do not perceive Daesh's ability to do war against us here to be substantial enough to justify any significant changes in the way that I live my life (i.e. being willing to put up with more security theater that isn't useful for stopping Daesh anyway).
No, it's a justification for breaking up the EU and reinstating border controls like we've had for the vast majority of history. Because there was a goddamn reason we had them.
1) Border controls don't do anything to stop people already in the borders from doing harm.
2) Explosives are available in the UK, the same as in Belgium, France and every other country in the world - and if someone wants to blow themselves up and take other people with them - they're going to do it.
Let's say you have border controls between country X and country Y. At any given time, there will be some number of people from each of those countries standing in a line waiting to get home - and thus are a target.
3) You could keep the EU and have border controls anyway (but see point 2 above)
Conclusion: Your anti-EU rant is not really applicable here.
In Australia, burner phones are illegal. You can't even buy a prepaid SIM card without producing and linking it to a government-issued ID. But in New Zealand, you can buy as many burner phones as you want - they're next to the chocolate bars in the supermarket check-outs and cost as little as $10. This makes the
Australian rules ridiculous given that actual terrorists and criminals could just visit NZ and post the burners back over to Australia, and use them in roaming mode.
Is travel between NZ and Australia easy if one doesn't want to pass border control?
Slashdot Mirror
Please get rid of:
XM radio that I have to cycle through 3 selections of to get back to FM.
Climate settings that are only displayed on the LCD, and often not displayed unless I am in the right mode.
2G, 3G, or 4G anything. I want to drive. I can login when I get there.
Anything with sub-menus. I'm trying to drive, KISS.
Ability to order a pizza. Recently saw this touted as a feature, WTF?
Let's add any stereo that can't be replaced by generic after market and/or requires BUS connection or the whole fucking car stops working.
I will tell the valet to remember that the unlock code is y04WhDlHff6A49yarVdYjVxhwlu5X9WEOw5MZBu2Flj9srrbbB2
8ZDAr1IN4lm7fvoe4Y9n
I can just about get that to fit that on a post-it to stick on the dashboard....
I'm not sure how this is more convenient for the main user... compare "get keys out of pocket, click button, put keys in ignition" to "get phone out of pocket, unlock phone, open app, press button on app"... OK, it's one less thing to carry, but then you'd probably end up carrying the keys anyway as backup in case your phone died or the app crashed.
I've been experimenting with home automation. While having lights come on automatically via various rules is nice, it's a pain to go into the app to turn them on and off manually when you need to - easier to get up, walk across the room and flick a switch. This feels similar - a solution in search of a problem
That being said it would be nice not to have to pay 200+ euros for a new key/remote when one is lost.
If the battery is too dead to unlock the car it's probably not going to start.
Yes, but it would be nice to be able to get into the car so you can open the hood so you can attach jumper cables...
Or the boot, as it's Volvo and the batteries are in the back...
It works both ways, but the Plaintiff's strategy can't really change, they are locked into the arguments they've already made. In civil trials all the evidence that can be presented and all the base arguments and defenses have to be filed to keep the trial as fair as possible. They can certainly fine tune and try to adjust their prior arguments but the best chance for the Plaintiff is to catch the Defendant off guard with a presentation of the evidence that can't be countered effectively. They would have used their best bullets in the first trial and now Google knows what they are and how best to defend against them because of the feedback they got from Jurors of the previous trial.
It's possible that Oracle could find a new "bullet" to use in this trial that is in line with all their arguments up to the trial but the chances are pretty slim or they would have used it during the first trial. You simply don't hold back on your evidence, you expend all your best attacks. They won't catch Google's lawyers off guard with a refinement of those same arguments.
It's a statistically known fact that a second trial always favors the defendant, this is true in both Criminal and Civil trials. The criminal trials even have a freer hand to make completely different arguments and propose new motives where in the civil trial they can't argue outside the prior boundaries they established in the run-up to the first trial. This also limits Google because they can't make defenses outside the ones they proposed but they can and will find evidence to blunt Oracles best attacks and that could swing the next trial into their favor.
Or maybe Oracle is just hoping to get a jury that isn't split or actively against them?
But the rest of the world and considering illegal frequencies being used around the US will make this problem harder than one thinks.
So you come up with a great solution for 900Mhz, problem is you can't use it in the EU or Asia. Or how about 433? nope, more conflicts outside the US.
Then there's the 1W vs 25mW (rest of the world) requirement....
Not only is this a tech and regulation problem, it's a frequency management and standards nightmare.
At least you can drive a DARPA challenge car or a biped robot in pretty much any country without conflicting tech (but conflicting regs).
They're looking for a mechanism to share bandwidth intelligently. There is nothing specific to frequencies or power handling in how bandwidth might be shared so the result should be usable regardless of local variations on implementation.
"...it would deposit $72.8 million in a "customer investment fund," set aside $11.25 million for energy efficiency and conservation programs targeted toward low-income residents, and carve out $21.55 million for pilot projects such as modernizing the electric distribution grid."
So basically these companies bought off the regulatory commission to the tune of some 100 million that will probably never make it to the slated end projects.
Is there any level of American government that can't be bought?
from your link:
If you're paying your cash-handling staff $10/hour, that's about 28 hours of work in the month, or about 1 hour per day (1.5 hours if you don't open on weekends) for additional cash handling beyond the individual transactions.
That's not especially far-fetched - in practice for a business carrying about $300 in float, and taking between $300-$500/day, the cash handling time is probably somewhere between 30-45 minutes per day, depending on whether you bank daily or you have a safe on site and bank weekly. Cards are more expensive, but not significantly more so, unless you're running your business on the slimmest of margins.
You're assuming employee vs. owner actually handling the cash themselves but okay, time value and all that.
Aside from that look at a business like a bakery (which is good business here in France) or a cafe - with a huge number of very small value transactions - the per transaction fees are relatively huge compared to even 50/transaction.
Not good enough. Our society has a problem assuming regulations and laws are the first solution, when they should always be the last. If you can fix a problem without creating an expensive, corruptable bureaucracy around it, shouldn't you do that instead?
Oh I didn't say it would work by itself but it certainly contributed to the instability that caused the latest round of bank bailouts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Policy by itself will never be sufficient - regulation is required. The reality is that both together are proving insufficient due to the power of lobbying and the corrupt who decide both policy and law.
Did not know that the training in the US military is so hard that you can get killed during exercising.
Yes I am aware (been there, done that) but training in a sim dome isn't going to be that way if for no other reason than live fire would destroy the dome itself.
I couldn't agree more. I would add that during the process you described, the government should have made it their first priority to correct the issues in monetary policy that caused this. Not through regulations and increased bureaucracy but through identifying the systemic causes and creating policy to correct the root of the problem. The ultimate conclusion would have been nationalizing the central bank and money creation process through a slow but steady increase of the fractional reserve requirement. The central bank could then have exclusive "new money" lending rights by maintaining a central credit database, and registering private banks as brokers of new money loans instead of creators.
Or undoing changes to existing laws that were set up to protect against this kind of nonsense to start with.
For a long time, I used to think like you did - that the merchant was getting ripped off to the tune of 1-2% when I paid by credit card.
However, that was before taking into account the costs of handling cash - paying staff to count the cash twice a day, infrastructure/security to store cash safely overnight, paying staff to transfer cash safely to the bank regularly, potential costs of staff theft, arranging/maintaining sufficient float to give change to customers, sufficient security for float cash during the work day, etc.
These are real costs on a business, which are not relevant for card transactions, and also get factored into the costs of goods and services.
Depends on the business. Small value transactions cost a lot more relative to large value transactions.
"For example, let's pretend that two businesses each process $1,000 in transactions. Business A has an average ticket of $10, and Business B has an average ticket of $100. This means that Business A will have 100 transactions, and Business B will have 10 transactions.
Let's assume that both businesses have the exact same rates, including a $0.18 transaction fee. Business A would pay $18 in transaction fees, while Business B would only pay $1.80. Business A pays 1,000% more!"
https://www.cardfellow.com/ave...
Their merchant fees are not in lockstep. You don't hear about those because merchants are required by the card companies to absorb all of those costs themselves, they're not allowed to charge extra for credit payments. That's the biggest reason why some merchants will accept certain cards and not others though.
In Europe it's common to see smaller stores that take credit cards starting at a minimum amount - usually between 12 and 15 euros.
"Payroll robberies" were a thriving industry when I started my working life in the 70's, electronic transfers have eliminated that risk and reduced insurance premiums, so good luck finding an employer who pays your wage in cash rather than direct deposit into your bank account.
No doubt there are plenty of them paying the illegal workers that permeate much of the US.
Cute, but I think you know this isn't accurate. The worst thing that can happen to any currency is rampant deflation. It serves to make it useless, just like rampant *in*flation, but the impact is even worse. When there's not enough money supply to service incomes and day to day transactions the entire economy of labor shuts down, potentially overnight. Add that to the fact that most of the world pegs the value of their currency (either directly or indirectly) to the US dollar and you'll understand why the bailout wasn't an option, it was a necessity. Once you understand that, then you should understand why nearly every political issue up for debate should be taking a back seat to monetary policy and banking reform.
The bailouts may have been necessary but the methodologies around them were poor bordering on criminal.
The companies that had to be bailed out should have been nationalized on the basis of the money for the bailout constituting purchase of interest in the company and then later re-privatized once the market had stabilized with any capital gain going towards the cost of the bailouts. If there were eventual capital loss we the taxpayers wouldn't be any worse off than we already are as we had to carry the whole cost anyway.
Those running the companies should certainly not have been paid bonuses and allowed to go on with their 1% lives while we taxpayers alone foot the bill and if the value of the bailed out companies had tanked, from the investor standpoint, then those executives would have gotten what they deserved - a boot in the ass on their way out the door.
It's never going to be "real-world" until there's a real element of real shit hitting the real fan.
If there is no real danger of being killed then this is nothing more than a (probably very cool) video game.
Agreed, but borders is a prerequisite. You can't complain that we're not kicking people out therefore we don't need borders, when we don't actually have well controlled borders to begin with. That logic doesn't work.
I disagree - you are trying to use reverse logic for this. To take this in the abstract: If you have a piece of land somewhere in the forest that you are not throwing anyone out of, then you do not need a fence around it. So unless and until we are actually throwing people out (which is by far more difficult than having a border as the people in question tend to have papers that allow them to be here) then there is no use for the border.
Even the loners are doing it for some ideology or in the name of some group, even if they're not actually part of it. The San Bernardino terrorists, afaik, were not "part" of ISIS, but the woman declared her allegiance to ISIS before they did it.
Well yes...and?
You must not read much news. I've seen it in every major newspaper, both in articles and in the comment section. Here's just one of many examples of what I said above: https://www.washingtonpost.com...
The entire line of reasoning is idiotic... you make decisions based on what's best for you, not some psychoanalysis of your enemy and what they want or don't want.
I can see your point with this but I suspect it is more people who want to allow refugee migrants in that are trying to use any argument they can to change public opinion - including "The enemy of our enemy is our friend".
More people die in car crashes than lots of stuff. Yet we regulate lots and lots of other stuff. Now unless you're going around saying "I'm not willing to put up with the inconveniences of food safety regulations just to save a handful of people from food poisoning, when CAR CRASHES kill so many more" then you're being awfully hypocritical.
Your argument is also very short-sighted... we already do a hell of a lot to fight against terrorism right now. We have multiple government agencies, civilian and military, dealing with terrorist groups and state sponsors. I think it's pretty remarkable, and no accident, that a wealthy terrorist group like ISIS hasn't gotten their hands on some nuclear bombs when there are suppliers from the former USSR, Pakistan, North Korea, and so on.
You are right: - we do do a hell of a lot to fight terrorism right now and I think that it's enough, if not more than enough (witness the uselessness of TSA checks).
I am not saying "do not do food safety checks" - I am saying "do not take every grain of rice of every shipment from every country and examine it for lead content" because at some point a line needs to be drawn saying "We are not willing to let go of more of our freedom in the name of a bit of perceived [temporary] safety". I am paraphrasing Ben Franklin of course but here it stands true. We are doing, in my opinion, quite enough against the real level of danger that Daesh (and whatever one-offs associate themselves with Daesh) present - relatively not much - and I am not willing to continue to give the state (states in fact as this is more than one country) more and more and more power out of fear of something that has zero (to some number of decimal points) possibility of actually harming anyone that I know.
I agree about security theater, in the instances where it is theater, but let me ask you this. If you're not Muslim, and even if you are but you're not like a hardcore radical, how would it significantly change your life if we went around shutting down radical mosques, deporting every Muslim who ever said "Yes I would welcome sharia law in [some Western country]" or "Yes I support the death penalty for apostasy", refusing all refugees and immigrants from areas with strong
I don't care if they have a Ph.D in physics, they're ignorant. You cannot argue that someone who fails to understand the value of life, both of others and their own, is not grossly ignorant.
If they execute these sorts of action and are not ignorant, then they are insane, and I have seen little evidence of their actual insanity. Ignorance is the only thing that remains. There is no action or cause that justifies random attacks on innocent civilians, especially if the cause they supposedly espouse is the ending of attacks on their own innocent compatriots.
I think you are misusing the word ignorance. They may have a different opinion of the value of life than you do but this does not mean that they are ignorant of the value of life - on the contrary they are trying to hurt us by taking our lives from us which indicates that they are quite aware of the value of life.
My understanding is that those targeting civilians consider that these civilians have voted for the people in power making decisions. Although we may disagree with them, it cannot be said that the thought process itself is irrational and therefore the people following it are not necessarily insane. You should also keep in mind that in years of war our bombs have also killed many civilians who were just as innocent as our own civilians are (here we should particularly not forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki but it holds true as well for the recent years in the middle east).
You may consider them to be insane per your frame of reference, and some of the ones who blow themselves up may very well be insane. Others are not insane and have just chosen to spend their lives in such a way that they believe (rightly or wrongly) will make a difference in their war against us.
I'll point out that there are people in our culture who are willing to die for what they believe in as well - we call them soldiers and although they surely prefer to live through missions they are generally aware that they may very well die 'for the cause', whatever that cause may be. The Japanese used kamikaze pilots to effectuate maximum damage against us. Were they insane?
Yes they do. They allow you to start kicking people out. Without border patrols, the people you kick out can come right back in.
If we were kicking anyone out this might make a difference...but we're not actually kicking anyone out so adding borders does not have any effect other than to annoy those of us who like traveling between countries here.
That's right, but if it's just some random "someone" doing it, it's a different situation. If they're not part of a larger, organized group, then what did they accomplish? Killing a few people. On the other hand, terrorist groups manipulate governments and populations with their attacks. They have goals.
Look at the plight of free speech for instance... you have people in the US, which is much stronger on free speech than Europe already, saying that the dude in Florida shouldn't burn Korans because it might provoke terrorist attacks abroad. WTF? That conversation simply doesn't happen when some random idiot blows himself up. Meanwhile in Europe you have many many people justifying their positions based on terrorism... did you not hear arguments such as "we have to accept refugees, because ISIS wants us to NOT accept refugees, thus justifying attacks against us?"
The terrorist attacks are like Anonymous attacks in that they are sometimes well coordinated and sometimes done by incompetent loners.
Daesh (I use this title because it's an insult to them and I do not wish to grant them their wish to be called a state) has goals but so what? There are always going to be stupid people who will say stupid things (as those you are referencing) even without anyone blowing anything up. And to answer your question - no, I have not actually heard anyone at all basing their position based on terrorism, other than to be more against Daesh than ever.
While I feel bad for the families of those who have been killed or wounded, the reality is that Daesh have managed to kill fewer people outside of the middle east than die in car crashes here in a month - which is why I do not perceive Daesh's ability to do war against us here to be substantial enough to justify any significant changes in the way that I live my life (i.e. being willing to put up with more security theater that isn't useful for stopping Daesh anyway).
yeah 0 to 8 killed in a year since the 1970s, until the MUSLIM TERRORISTS killed 20 in Jan 2015, 130 in November 2015, and now this
And that has...what to do with border controls exactly?
No, it's a justification for breaking up the EU and reinstating border controls like we've had for the vast majority of history. Because there was a goddamn reason we had them.
1) Border controls don't do anything to stop people already in the borders from doing harm.
2) Explosives are available in the UK, the same as in Belgium, France and every other country in the world - and if someone wants to blow themselves up and take other people with them - they're going to do it.
Let's say you have border controls between country X and country Y. At any given time, there will be some number of people from each of those countries standing in a line waiting to get home - and thus are a target.
3) You could keep the EU and have border controls anyway (but see point 2 above)
Conclusion: Your anti-EU rant is not really applicable here.
There was drastically less terrorism. I can't really think of any significant Europe terrorist attacks between WW2 and the late 90s.
Here's just France and there were several 'of significance' :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Even tax return has a box right near the end that says "contribute extra to US/state treasury".
Use it.
Has it occurred to you that these 40 want to effect more than just themselves?
If they can convince the government to increase taxes on them...it isn't just them but all the super rich.
Contributing extra to the US/state treasury themselves has comparatively no effect at all.
Or a strong contender, at the very least.
Or it would be if Obama's head were down just a bit lower and to the right
In Australia, burner phones are illegal. You can't even buy a prepaid SIM card without producing and linking it to a government-issued ID. But in New Zealand, you can buy as many burner phones as you want - they're next to the chocolate bars in the supermarket check-outs and cost as little as $10. This makes the
Australian rules ridiculous given that actual terrorists and criminals could just visit NZ and post the burners back over to Australia, and use them in roaming mode.
Is travel between NZ and Australia easy if one doesn't want to pass border control?