You see, I used to be a grocery checker, and I used to get a paycheck for doing that work. (I quit when I got a "real" job, but it got me through college.) When the stores decide to pay me (a 2% discount on everything I purchase through self-checkout would be nice), then I'll use the self-checkout. Until then, I'll wait in a long line, not buying their stale candy bars, and make their for-pay employees earn their paychecks (and keep their jobs).
Grocery checker is a real job, just not one to retire wealthy on. No need to be ashamed of it.
While I rarely use bank tellers instead of ATMs, I absolutely refuse to go near self-checkout.
You're right, though. One of the ways that people delude themselves into thinking they're wealthier than they really are is by doing everything self-service. In short, becoming an unpaid employee sans benefits. If you're really wealthly, people will actually fall over themselves to do things for you. If you're even moderately so, you can afford to pay for the convenience because your time is more valuable/important than that. If you have to do your own work, you're either value money over comfort or you're simply too poor to do otherwise.
This is exactly why I don't want a Kindle.The displays are improving, the price is decent and it would sure be more convenient in many cases, but I refuse to hand control of my personal bookshelf over. I don't want Animal Farm to just go poof one night while I sleep.
Or, as it's more formally known: "Amazon Memory Hole (patent pending)".
The old pre-tablet Nooks can be archived to permanent (non-Nook) storage and (so far) decrypted. B&N has always done a pretty decent job on overall hardware (except for the "secret storage" on newer Nooks) and it has saved my house from exploding due to too many physical books. But they're one step away from losing me, because I want to OWN the books I BUY and not "rent" or "lease" them.
Amazon, on the other hand, has become even more odious by claiming that they can slap DRM on books regardless of the publisher's intent. Publishers like TOR, Baen, and O'Reilly have won my respect by jettisoning DRM. Publishers like Harper (e-books "wear out") Collins, on the other hand, only get money from me when they have a monopoly lock on a popular work/author. Of the two types of publishers, I can tell you which one gets more impulse purchases from me.
The owner of the store. They don't have to have fair or consistent rules. Deal with it or start/support a new store with like minded people.
These are eBooks. Amazon has demonstrated that not only can they yank books you "bought" back, they will. And not just books with questionable moral value.
It's one of the reasons I don't deal with them anymore.
No, OP is correct. Most people who think they've had the flu have actually only had a cold. They're different types of viruses which just share some similar symptoms.
The flu tends to be much worse. One key difference is that whereas a cold will just stuff up your nose and make your head feel miserable, the flu will make you feel like you just ran a marathon and then a truck ran over you. It also tends to last a lot longer. I was bedridden for 10 days, and it was 3 weeks before I felt normal again. It was so bad that even though I wanted to go back to work, I was afraid to because I didn't want to pass it on to a coworker and make them go through the same misery I had just been through. Totally the opposite of the guy who's only had a cold and thinks you should just tough it out and come to work.
I get my flu shot every year now.
Your definitions and mine differ. When I have a "cold", I spend serveral days - up to a week - with clogged sinuses, low-grade fever, sometimes a cough, often a sore throat. Then generally another week trying to evict the remnants, for a total of about 14 days.
My "flu" is generally something that spends about 1 day building up, builds into a higher-grade fever, aches, chills, and so forth, more rarely coughing. And is usually history after 3-4 days.
I agree. The problem comes when we forget that the traditional role of the USA was, if anything, to wait too long before getting involved and now get involved too soon.
Case in point: During the waning months of 1999, Saddam Hussein had been probing the Iraq No-Fly Zone, continually pushing his limits.
Had we not rushed off to invade under the ridiculous pretense that Iraq was in bed with Al Queda, Hussein would have almost certainly eventually done something flagrant enough to warrant the invasion that eventually occurred. Like most political leaders, knowing when to quit isn't a strong point. Instead of the USA coming across as an aggressor dragging in a blackmailed "coalition of the (not-so-)willing", there would have been a real moral justification, the US would have had a real willing coalition, a moral high ground, and less grounds for subversive elements within Iraq to paint the USA as a bully and an invader. An awful lot of atrocities get "justified" in the name of Gitmo and things like the invasion of Iraq.
The folly of peaceniks is in thinking that bad people don't want war. Well, they don't, as long as they can conquer without it. Otherwise, they'll talk peace and prepare war.
The folly of warmongers is in thinking that war is the only tool in the toolbox.
"State-based aggressors" basically went out with the fall of the Soviet Union. 9/11 brought Asymmetrical Warface (terrorism) to the forefront. Drones reverse the asymmetry.
Drones and autonomous war robots have been the ultimate dream of generals through the ages. Soldiers who don't question orders. Who will kill anyone without hesitation or conscience. And who don't return bearing drug addictions and PTSD which can make them a burden - or a menace - to the peasants paying for it all back home.
It all sounds so wonderful, but just the other day came a plea from Malala to discontinue the use of assassin drones. And if anyone is entitled to cheer for the efficient extermination of the Taliban she is the one. It's not enough that they tried to kill her once, they're recently declared that - big brave Warriors of God that they are - they will try to kill this girl again.
So maybe it isn't so wonderful after all. War is not a mathematical or academic exercise. Donald Rumsfeld tried to treat it as such, and we've seen the results.
Maybe the best way to win a war is not to go to war.
We have seen our gov lying to us about EVERYTHING ever since Vietnam, at least.
There is no clearer way of telling a former partner in a positive sum game that you are opting out of that game, are going zero- or negative-sum, than starting to lie to them.
Our gov is not on our side any longer, just the opposite.
You never build a Solar plant because you need more electricity. Because if you build one you also have to build a traditional plant in order for cloudy days and night
Except for the fact that, in the southwestern US, peak power demand tracks sunlight pretty well. And that peaking plants (run on coal) are fairly expensive. And that all that solar power can simply displace daytime use of hydro, which can fill-in the shortfall on cloudy days of high demand.
So, you're just *completely* wrong... That's not too bad here on/.
AND that every kilowatt you can generate from carbon-free, non-imported sources is a kilowatt saved from uglier alternatives.
AND that Arizona is mostly desert and the Colorado River was over-allocated a century ago so adding hydro-power is probably not going to be a good alternative.
If you want to complain that Java lacks the ability to define its own non-class data types, I'll be glad to sign the petition. Although I don't like "special case" types, and the 0..(some limit) sequence isn't really any different than any other range-restricted integer type other than in popularity.
As for definitions of Cardinal and Ordinal numbers, those were the ones foisted on me in 5th Grade. Blame my teachers for not being enough into advanced Set Theory.
Yeah, no Java programmer needs unsigned ints. It's not as though they need to interface to code which does have unsigned ints, like calling C++ libraries, or reading data from files or databases created by C or C++ programs, or reading files in standard, language-agnostic formats which are packed full of bytes that you then have to process as 16-bit signed integers instead.
"unsigned integers" are an artefact of "bit twiddling" programming languages. Bit twiddlers are essentially high-level assembly language.
Java is not an assembly language, it is an abstract language. It is intended to create write-once/run-anywhere code that isn't dependent on the CPU or OS, byte/bit orders or how many bits are in an "unsigned integer".
Most programmers actually use "unsigned integer" to refer to a collection of bits, not actually as a mathematical unsigned integer (cardinal number), just as they erroneously refer to characters interchangeably with "bytes".
If you really DO want to work with cardinal numbers in Java, just don't use negative values. A java int can hold a respectably large integer value. And if that's not big enough, there are special classes that are more or less open-ended.
If you absolutely positively must work with 100%-guaranteed cardinal numbers, use Ada, which allows user-defined types to contain user-defined ranges that will be checked at compile time and enforced at run time and that includes integers whose range is from 0..whatever. Of course, there's a price to be paid for that.
Why does China get the job done? - They understand their priorities when the world wants the latest gadgets - Cheap labor - Small kiddy fingers == smaller gadgets - Lost of cheap labor - Factories run at 24/7 which means a more efficient use of factory resources - No workers's union which could jeopardize deadlines.
Currently China is a booming economy (partially because they have lots of cheap labor). Maybe The West has become too elitist in A) Gadget demands and B) Worker rights. Our demand is there, China is just for filling our wishes.
Actually, there is a worker's union. China is a Communist country. Under Communism, the union is the Party, which represents and benevolently guides everything for the benefit of all the workers.
And America is a Democracy, where the will of the people is reflected in their elected representatives without respect to who has the most money and/or can be the most annoying.
[Worker]" Sure, no problem, I'll drive in which should take 2 hours so I don't telecommute."
I did that once (I lived 90 minutes' drive away)... it was the first and last time they ever thought a physical presence in a 'war room' to fix a gimped VM was that important to have.
Well, there are issues with opening remote access to "a very important server", that will "lose millions an hour". I don't care how secure you think your remote access is, it isn't.
We're talking about a person who is probably intimately involved with the construction and maintenance of core infrastructure. Security included.
If he cannot keep his home and VPN infrastructure secure, it's likely that he cannot keep the in-house infrastructure secure either.
Very, very few IT shops live in a physically-isolated "glass house" anymore.
So far, terrorism has yet to target innocent Americans. They are usually after people in charge high-ranking officials and people that have damaged or attempted to damage their way of life.
Terrorist seem to operate much like our military does, innocents are just collateral damage in the way of their objective. Yet our overlords would prefer us to think that we are the target
Baloney. Terrorism is exactly the opposite. It's true that in the terrorists minds, all those people in the World Trade Center - even the Muslim children in the day care center had "damaged their way of life" if only by not being terrorists themselves. However, very few of those people had an active role in US policy. Even the attack on the Pentagon was more likely to get relatively un-influential people more than otherwise.
Likewise, any military officer who doesn't seek to minimize or eliminate collateral damage is not only subject to prosecution for war crimes, but is widely going to be considered incompetent. Whereas terrorists specifically seek to maximize collateral damage and consider themselves heroes for achieving it.
That doesn't mean that I think a high-ranking US official can do anything he/she wants just because "terrorists use it". Terrorists use highways and telephones too. They buy groceries and take-out food. Should we tap wires and setup checkpoints? Strip-search people in line at the checkouts?
People only compromise when they don't have a winning hand......it's always been so.
There's "having a winning hand" and then there's thinking you have a winning hand.
Since there can be at most only one actual winning hand, we are definitely dealing with some seriously delusional people here.
Though I seem to recall an old phrase "I can afford to compromise", as well. Meaning that I get what I want, so anything above that is gravy. I'll throw you a bone in the name of good sportsmanship. And, in practical terms, so that in the next round you won't be quite as desperate to fight back so hard.
In most games - say poker - winning isn't something that you only do by literally exterminating your opponent. You end up running out of people to play with. Maybe some people want that kind of government. But I'll wager that they wouldn't want it for long if they actually got it.
'Holding the country hostage' by withholding spending is legal too. Just FYI.
But what difference does it make which party they're part of? One incompetent politician is like another.
The philosophy behind the US Government was one of Checks and Balances. The idea was that no one part of the government should be able to completely overrule the actions of the other parts.
That's contrary to the Total Victory attitude of many people in government these days - and their supporters. Compromise has become a 4-letter word. Adjusting to meet realistic goals is "flip-flopping", and nothing less than the total extinction of one's opponents, all they stand for and all they've ever done is acceptable.
If memory serves, they passed a law giving Bill Clinton a "line-item veto". This meant he could veto portions of laws and let the rest be passed. However the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional because it essentially gave the president too much power (with some validity in my opinion).
And now we are in a situation where the House is attempting to "line-item veto" the budget appropriations. Or, failing that, "line-item pass" one.
The idea that people deserve copyrights based solely on the fact that they put in effort into creating something is the sweat of the brow theory; it's unconstitutional in the US.
I beg to differ. If you create an original work recorded on a tangible medium, it's automatically copyrighted in the USA. Since around 1986, IIRC, you don't even have to file a formal copyright registration. As long as it's a creative work subject to copyright protection under US law, it's copyrighted. You can keep the copyrights or pass them on but it's yours do do with as you like.
That's not the same thing as being a profitable copyright. If nobody wants a copy at any price, your copyright is financially worthless. I have stacks of stuff that are dead-ends, low-quality or outright horrors that I'd never dream of publishing, but they still fall under the same legal protections as Stephen King's latest bestseller.
Gaining a copyright is trivial. Making a profit off it less so, and protecting it is a job all its own.
And I don't think the argument is that there is no disruption. What is being claimed is that there is no overall loss to the economy. A common flawed argument is: "If we let industry die, we're going to lose jobs and dollars from our economy." This argument is flawed for at least two reasons: 1) the money spent on doesn't disappear, it shifts to other sectors of the economy, and the thing that replaces or disrupts creates new and different jobs and opportunities.
If 40,000 senior buggy-whip manufacturers lose their jobs and 15,000 of them get new jobs as junior steering-column assemblers, 25,000 new jobs with compensatory salaries don't just magically spring into existence to keep everything in balance.
Economies are not based on invariant intrinsic values. They are based on the confidence of the participants. That's why there are booms and recessions as people's expectations change. It's not that suddenly 30,000 LCD TVs vanished overnight, just that 25,000 prospective TV buyers without paychecks decided that eating was more important and 15,000 junior steering-column assemblers found amusements that were more in line with smaller incomes.
So yes, money does "disappear". Even in economies without fiat currencies. You might have as much gold coins or dollar bills, but you can do less with them. And, worse, you may see fewer of them coming your way in the future.
Capitalism requires that increased productivity should cause increased wages. When the 10 Luddites are replaced by a machine (that costs the same as paying 4 Luddites) and 1 Luddite, does the remaining Luddite's pay increase 10 fold, 4 fold, or 2 fold? Where does the money go? This is the riddle of the robot menace, and why Capitalism can't solve the problem by itself.
According to capitalism there's be many robot makers who'd push the prices down to half as it's now costs 4+1 = 5 luddite wages instead of 10 luddite wages to produce while the last 5 wages would stay in the pockets of the customers. And the 4 wages spent on the machine would be spent on luddites to build the machine or by even more layers of indirections, so really no money is lost at all only more is produced with less effort freeing up more people to work on producing value to society. Sorry, you'll have to work a little harder on nailing down your point.
What's the point in buying robots that can only do as much or less work than the humans than they replace? Or in buying robots that cost more than the humans?
You buy the robots because you can spend less money. The manufacturer makes the robots because it's profitable. But since the driving force is to save money, a certain amount of cash gets pulled out of the business workflow entirely, not merely re-distributed from one company to another.
Trickle-down Economics says that the cash thus saved is then spent on other things. We've had something like 30 years to see its benefits.
In the mean time, an awful lot of people have demonstrated that their skills lie in doing a job, not starting or running a business. So the free time only helps them if they can find someone to work for who can. Which means that basically, they're at risk for the whole thing all over again.
Personally, I can do what I do really well and have someone else do the marketing, bookkeeping, human resource management and other things it takes to make a successful business or I can do all those things myself (often badly) while trying to do what I actually excel at and being constantly distracted by business needs.
Slashdot Mirror
"Fat person detected. Would you be interested in a 20 cents off coupon for Special K?"
More like "Fat person detected. Have a coupon for 50 cents off 5-gallon Hagen-Daas, 2-for-1 Mega-Bag chips and 3-liter Diet Dr. Pepper".
I have yet to use a self-checkout.
You see, I used to be a grocery checker, and I used to get a paycheck for doing that work. (I quit when I got a "real" job, but it got me through college.) When the stores decide to pay me (a 2% discount on everything I purchase through self-checkout would be nice), then I'll use the self-checkout. Until then, I'll wait in a long line, not buying their stale candy bars, and make their for-pay employees earn their paychecks (and keep their jobs).
Grocery checker is a real job, just not one to retire wealthy on. No need to be ashamed of it.
While I rarely use bank tellers instead of ATMs, I absolutely refuse to go near self-checkout.
You're right, though. One of the ways that people delude themselves into thinking they're wealthier than they really are is by doing everything self-service. In short, becoming an unpaid employee sans benefits. If you're really wealthly, people will actually fall over themselves to do things for you. If you're even moderately so, you can afford to pay for the convenience because your time is more valuable/important than that. If you have to do your own work, you're either value money over comfort or you're simply too poor to do otherwise.
I'm happy to say I can value a little comfort.
This is exactly why I don't want a Kindle.The displays are improving, the price is decent and it would sure be more convenient in many cases, but I refuse to hand control of my personal bookshelf over. I don't want Animal Farm to just go poof one night while I sleep.
Or, as it's more formally known: "Amazon Memory Hole (patent pending)".
The old pre-tablet Nooks can be archived to permanent (non-Nook) storage and (so far) decrypted. B&N has always done a pretty decent job on overall hardware (except for the "secret storage" on newer Nooks) and it has saved my house from exploding due to too many physical books. But they're one step away from losing me, because I want to OWN the books I BUY and not "rent" or "lease" them.
Amazon, on the other hand, has become even more odious by claiming that they can slap DRM on books regardless of the publisher's intent. Publishers like TOR, Baen, and O'Reilly have won my respect by jettisoning DRM. Publishers like Harper (e-books "wear out") Collins, on the other hand, only get money from me when they have a monopoly lock on a popular work/author. Of the two types of publishers, I can tell you which one gets more impulse purchases from me.
Who decides?
The owner of the store. They don't have to have fair or consistent rules. Deal with it or start/support a new store with like minded people.
These are eBooks. Amazon has demonstrated that not only can they yank books you "bought" back, they will. And not just books with questionable moral value.
It's one of the reasons I don't deal with them anymore.
No, OP is correct. Most people who think they've had the flu have actually only had a cold. They're different types of viruses which just share some similar symptoms.
The flu tends to be much worse. One key difference is that whereas a cold will just stuff up your nose and make your head feel miserable, the flu will make you feel like you just ran a marathon and then a truck ran over you. It also tends to last a lot longer. I was bedridden for 10 days, and it was 3 weeks before I felt normal again. It was so bad that even though I wanted to go back to work, I was afraid to because I didn't want to pass it on to a coworker and make them go through the same misery I had just been through. Totally the opposite of the guy who's only had a cold and thinks you should just tough it out and come to work.
I get my flu shot every year now.
Your definitions and mine differ. When I have a "cold", I spend serveral days - up to a week - with clogged sinuses, low-grade fever, sometimes a cough, often a sore throat. Then generally another week trying to evict the remnants, for a total of about 14 days.
My "flu" is generally something that spends about 1 day building up, builds into a higher-grade fever, aches, chills, and so forth, more rarely coughing. And is usually history after 3-4 days.
"State-based aggressors" basically went out with the fall of the Soviet Union. 9/11 brought Asymmetrical Warface
Bullshit, you don't scare me - lemme see your real war face..!
Ouch! Any correspondence between what keys I meant to hit and what letters were recorded is structly coincidental.
I agree. The problem comes when we forget that the traditional role of the USA was, if anything, to wait too long before getting involved and now get involved too soon.
Case in point: During the waning months of 1999, Saddam Hussein had been probing the Iraq No-Fly Zone, continually pushing his limits.
Had we not rushed off to invade under the ridiculous pretense that Iraq was in bed with Al Queda, Hussein would have almost certainly eventually done something flagrant enough to warrant the invasion that eventually occurred. Like most political leaders, knowing when to quit isn't a strong point. Instead of the USA coming across as an aggressor dragging in a blackmailed "coalition of the (not-so-)willing", there would have been a real moral justification, the US would have had a real willing coalition, a moral high ground, and less grounds for subversive elements within Iraq to paint the USA as a bully and an invader. An awful lot of atrocities get "justified" in the name of Gitmo and things like the invasion of Iraq.
The folly of peaceniks is in thinking that bad people don't want war. Well, they don't, as long as they can conquer without it. Otherwise, they'll talk peace and prepare war.
The folly of warmongers is in thinking that war is the only tool in the toolbox.
"State-based aggressors" basically went out with the fall of the Soviet Union. 9/11 brought Asymmetrical Warface (terrorism) to the forefront. Drones reverse the asymmetry.
Drones and autonomous war robots have been the ultimate dream of generals through the ages. Soldiers who don't question orders. Who will kill anyone without hesitation or conscience. And who don't return bearing drug addictions and PTSD which can make them a burden - or a menace - to the peasants paying for it all back home.
It all sounds so wonderful, but just the other day came a plea from Malala to discontinue the use of assassin drones. And if anyone is entitled to cheer for the efficient extermination of the Taliban she is the one. It's not enough that they tried to kill her once, they're recently declared that - big brave Warriors of God that they are - they will try to kill this girl again.
So maybe it isn't so wonderful after all. War is not a mathematical or academic exercise. Donald Rumsfeld tried to treat it as such, and we've seen the results.
Maybe the best way to win a war is not to go to war.
We have seen our gov lying to us about EVERYTHING ever since Vietnam, at least.
There is no clearer way of telling a former partner in a positive sum game that you are opting out of that game, are going zero- or negative-sum, than starting to lie to them.
Our gov is not on our side any longer, just the opposite.
"Remember the Maine!"
The American population HAS brought an end to a war before.
The war was in Viet Nam. A combination of popular disapproval and revelations such as were provided by "the Pentagon Papers" did the trick.
And at that, it took years. What they didn't do was prevent it in the first place.
Except for the fact that, in the southwestern US, peak power demand tracks sunlight pretty well. And that peaking plants (run on coal) are fairly expensive. And that all that solar power can simply displace daytime use of hydro, which can fill-in the shortfall on cloudy days of high demand.
So, you're just *completely* wrong... That's not too bad here on /.
AND that every kilowatt you can generate from carbon-free, non-imported sources is a kilowatt saved from uglier alternatives.
AND that Arizona is mostly desert and the Colorado River was over-allocated a century ago so adding hydro-power is probably not going to be a good alternative.
If you want to complain that Java lacks the ability to define its own non-class data types, I'll be glad to sign the petition. Although I don't like "special case" types, and the 0..(some limit) sequence isn't really any different than any other range-restricted integer type other than in popularity.
As for definitions of Cardinal and Ordinal numbers, those were the ones foisted on me in 5th Grade. Blame my teachers for not being enough into advanced Set Theory.
Yeah, no Java programmer needs unsigned ints. It's not as though they need to interface to code which does have unsigned ints, like calling C++ libraries, or reading data from files or databases created by C or C++ programs, or reading files in standard, language-agnostic formats which are packed full of bytes that you then have to process as 16-bit signed integers instead.
In other words, "bit twiddling".
"unsigned integers" are an artefact of "bit twiddling" programming languages. Bit twiddlers are essentially high-level assembly language.
Java is not an assembly language, it is an abstract language. It is intended to create write-once/run-anywhere code that isn't dependent on the CPU or OS, byte/bit orders or how many bits are in an "unsigned integer".
Most programmers actually use "unsigned integer" to refer to a collection of bits, not actually as a mathematical unsigned integer (cardinal number), just as they erroneously refer to characters interchangeably with "bytes".
If you really DO want to work with cardinal numbers in Java, just don't use negative values. A java int can hold a respectably large integer value. And if that's not big enough, there are special classes that are more or less open-ended.
If you absolutely positively must work with 100%-guaranteed cardinal numbers, use Ada, which allows user-defined types to contain user-defined ranges that will be checked at compile time and enforced at run time and that includes integers whose range is from 0..whatever. Of course, there's a price to be paid for that.
Why does China get the job done?
- They understand their priorities when the world wants the latest gadgets
- Cheap labor
- Small kiddy fingers == smaller gadgets
- Lost of cheap labor
- Factories run at 24/7 which means a more efficient use of factory resources
- No workers's union which could jeopardize deadlines.
Currently China is a booming economy (partially because they have lots of cheap labor). Maybe The West has become too elitist in A) Gadget demands and B) Worker rights. Our demand is there, China is just for filling our wishes.
Actually, there is a worker's union. China is a Communist country. Under Communism, the union is the Party, which represents and benevolently guides everything for the benefit of all the workers.
And America is a Democracy, where the will of the people is reflected in their elected representatives without respect to who has the most money and/or can be the most annoying.
[Worker]" Sure, no problem, I'll drive in which should take 2 hours so I don't telecommute."
I did that once (I lived 90 minutes' drive away)... it was the first and last time they ever thought a physical presence in a 'war room' to fix a gimped VM was that important to have.
Well, there are issues with opening remote access to "a very important server", that will "lose millions an hour". I don't care how secure you think your remote access is, it isn't.
We're talking about a person who is probably intimately involved with the construction and maintenance of core infrastructure. Security included.
If he cannot keep his home and VPN infrastructure secure, it's likely that he cannot keep the in-house infrastructure secure either.
Very, very few IT shops live in a physically-isolated "glass house" anymore.
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Try not to use absolutes like "Never" in general statements, you will most likely be wrong, and also a fool.
Or at least a Sith.
and the typical slashdotter seems to trivialize
it, ignoring the fact that both sides have drawbacks.
It's not hard to trivialize. If someone doesn't understand that freedom is more important than safety, then they're imbeciles to begin with.
I don't know if they can be counted imbeciles.
But the USA was founded on the concept of freedom over safety.
So if you want safe, you have the freedom to emigrate to someplace where different standards apply.
Or have we changed our standards that much already?
So far, terrorism has yet to target innocent Americans. They are usually after people in charge high-ranking officials and people that have damaged or attempted to damage their way of life.
Terrorist seem to operate much like our military does, innocents are just collateral damage in the way of their objective. Yet our overlords would prefer us to think that we are the target
Baloney. Terrorism is exactly the opposite. It's true that in the terrorists minds, all those people in the World Trade Center - even the Muslim children in the day care center had "damaged their way of life" if only by not being terrorists themselves. However, very few of those people had an active role in US policy. Even the attack on the Pentagon was more likely to get relatively un-influential people more than otherwise.
Likewise, any military officer who doesn't seek to minimize or eliminate collateral damage is not only subject to prosecution for war crimes, but is widely going to be considered incompetent. Whereas terrorists specifically seek to maximize collateral damage and consider themselves heroes for achieving it.
That doesn't mean that I think a high-ranking US official can do anything he/she wants just because "terrorists use it". Terrorists use highways and telephones too. They buy groceries and take-out food. Should we tap wires and setup checkpoints? Strip-search people in line at the checkouts?
Oh wait...
People only compromise when they don't have a winning hand......it's always been so.
There's "having a winning hand" and then there's thinking you have a winning hand.
Since there can be at most only one actual winning hand, we are definitely dealing with some seriously delusional people here.
Though I seem to recall an old phrase "I can afford to compromise", as well. Meaning that I get what I want, so anything above that is gravy. I'll throw you a bone in the name of good sportsmanship. And, in practical terms, so that in the next round you won't be quite as desperate to fight back so hard.
In most games - say poker - winning isn't something that you only do by literally exterminating your opponent. You end up running out of people to play with. Maybe some people want that kind of government. But I'll wager that they wouldn't want it for long if they actually got it.
'Holding the country hostage' by withholding spending is legal too. Just FYI.
But what difference does it make which party they're part of? One incompetent politician is like another.
The philosophy behind the US Government was one of Checks and Balances. The idea was that no one part of the government should be able to completely overrule the actions of the other parts.
That's contrary to the Total Victory attitude of many people in government these days - and their supporters. Compromise has become a 4-letter word. Adjusting to meet realistic goals is "flip-flopping", and nothing less than the total extinction of one's opponents, all they stand for and all they've ever done is acceptable.
If memory serves, they passed a law giving Bill Clinton a "line-item veto". This meant he could veto portions of laws and let the rest be passed. However the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional because it essentially gave the president too much power (with some validity in my opinion).
And now we are in a situation where the House is attempting to "line-item veto" the budget appropriations. Or, failing that, "line-item pass" one.
The idea that people deserve copyrights based solely on the fact that they put in effort into creating something is the sweat of the brow theory; it's unconstitutional in the US.
I beg to differ. If you create an original work recorded on a tangible medium, it's automatically copyrighted in the USA. Since around 1986, IIRC, you don't even have to file a formal copyright registration. As long as it's a creative work subject to copyright protection under US law, it's copyrighted. You can keep the copyrights or pass them on but it's yours do do with as you like.
That's not the same thing as being a profitable copyright. If nobody wants a copy at any price, your copyright is financially worthless. I have stacks of stuff that are dead-ends, low-quality or outright horrors that I'd never dream of publishing, but they still fall under the same legal protections as Stephen King's latest bestseller.
Gaining a copyright is trivial. Making a profit off it less so, and protecting it is a job all its own.
And I don't think the argument is that there is no disruption. What is being claimed is that there is no overall loss to the economy. A common flawed argument is: "If we let industry die, we're going to lose jobs and dollars from our economy." This argument is flawed for at least two reasons: 1) the money spent on doesn't disappear, it shifts to other sectors of the economy, and the thing that replaces or disrupts creates new and different jobs and opportunities.
If 40,000 senior buggy-whip manufacturers lose their jobs and 15,000 of them get new jobs as junior steering-column assemblers, 25,000 new jobs with compensatory salaries don't just magically spring into existence to keep everything in balance.
Economies are not based on invariant intrinsic values. They are based on the confidence of the participants. That's why there are booms and recessions as people's expectations change. It's not that suddenly 30,000 LCD TVs vanished overnight, just that 25,000 prospective TV buyers without paychecks decided that eating was more important and 15,000 junior steering-column assemblers found amusements that were more in line with smaller incomes.
So yes, money does "disappear". Even in economies without fiat currencies. You might have as much gold coins or dollar bills, but you can do less with them. And, worse, you may see fewer of them coming your way in the future.
Capitalism requires that increased productivity should cause increased wages. When the 10 Luddites are replaced by a machine (that costs the same as paying 4 Luddites) and 1 Luddite, does the remaining Luddite's pay increase 10 fold, 4 fold, or 2 fold? Where does the money go? This is the riddle of the robot menace, and why Capitalism can't solve the problem by itself.
According to capitalism there's be many robot makers who'd push the prices down to half as it's now costs 4+1 = 5 luddite wages instead of 10 luddite wages to produce while the last 5 wages would stay in the pockets of the customers. And the 4 wages spent on the machine would be spent on luddites to build the machine or by even more layers of indirections, so really no money is lost at all only more is produced with less effort freeing up more people to work on producing value to society. Sorry, you'll have to work a little harder on nailing down your point.
What's the point in buying robots that can only do as much or less work than the humans than they replace? Or in buying robots that cost more than the humans?
You buy the robots because you can spend less money. The manufacturer makes the robots because it's profitable. But since the driving force is to save money, a certain amount of cash gets pulled out of the business workflow entirely, not merely re-distributed from one company to another.
Trickle-down Economics says that the cash thus saved is then spent on other things. We've had something like 30 years to see its benefits.
In the mean time, an awful lot of people have demonstrated that their skills lie in doing a job, not starting or running a business. So the free time only helps them if they can find someone to work for who can. Which means that basically, they're at risk for the whole thing all over again.
Personally, I can do what I do really well and have someone else do the marketing, bookkeeping, human resource management and other things it takes to make a successful business or I can do all those things myself (often badly) while trying to do what I actually excel at and being constantly distracted by business needs.