I considered eSATA, but that is spiked ball of hurt, presuming you want to connect more than one drive per port via multipliers. Thanks for the suggestion, but it really was the USB 3.0... devices would drop off the bus (no longer present in usbconfig) on 3.0. Nary an issue with the exact same hardware on 2.0.
I think it's due to hacks like USB 3.0 hubs apparently also having USB 2.0 as a separate bus/hub logically, rather than attempting to unify the device tree somehow. Given some other comments here, there are probably other, less-visible hacks and kludges in the protocol as well.
Anyway, upshot: same OS, same motherboard, same USB ports on the computer, same SATA docks, just different (i.e. 2.0) cables. Yes, I tried swapping the 3.0 cables before downgrading. Very stable now on USB 2.0. Runs for stably months on end and zfs scrub never reports an issue on a 18 TB RAID-Z2 pool.
It's laughably not enterprise grade, and I would never suggest anything like that for business use, but for my home NAS it's fine.
If all you are doing with your Thunderbolt connector is hooking up displays, that's an argument AGAINST Thunderbolt since you aren't using it, you are just using DisplayPort.
No, that's incorrect logic. Should we fill your unused PCIe slots with cyanoacrylate simply because you aren't using them right now?
Thunderbolt gives me a high speed expansion bus while conveniently not requiring a separate connector to do so. It duplexes with DisplayPort, for which I had immediate use.
Come on, I expect better arguments than this. Here... if you really hate Thunderbolt, have already made up your mind, and are just searching for stones to fling at it then why not refer to the DMA attack vector instead?
Thunderbolt 2 allows me to connect a 4k DisplayPort screen (or daisy chain two lower resolution DisplayPort monitors). Its connector is the same as mini-DisplayPort. It's small and convenient. Apple fit two TB 2 buses next to each other on my 13" MacBook Pro. Nice. Very high bandwidth, PCIe.
I don't want to plug a keyboard into this bus, because its overkill. Thunderbolt will probably never have any cost effective way to do a hub/star type topography. For general use lower bandwidth (haha, 1 gigabit is low bandwidth now!) peripherals I need USB. And my MacBook has that too. I wouldn't want it any other way.
That said, USB 3.0 seems like a ball of hurt compared to the difference between USB 1.0/1.1/2.0
Just look at the ads for USB 3 hubs. Most of them state which chipset revision they use, so you can look up whether or not your motherboard / OS will have difficulty with them. I built a FreeBSD 9.1 file server using usb 3 / usb 3 docks, but I failed them all back down to using their 2.0 interface due to persistent flakiness/dropping off the bus type issues. Rock solid on USB 2.0. YMMV, but I hope that USB 3 gets over its growing pains soon.
Until I see someone cite an actual statistic of how many people are disarmed and shot with their own weapons, I'm going to continue to see these sorts of claims as hyperbole, and rightfully so.
Right, and after they provide those statistics, they can also provide a stat showing how this smart gun + watch technology would have prevented said shootings. The gun will fire if it's within 10 inches of the watch. In an up-close scuffle (you know, the only kind where a disarming is plausible), would the distance be great enough to prevent the criminal from shooting the owner once he grabbed the gun from the owner's hand?
I wouldn't count on it.
This is a "solution" in search of a legal mandate to force people to buy it. Welcome to modern capitalism: "building a better mousetrap" is secondary to regulatory capture.
I read your post and I completely disagree with this point.
I returned the favor by reading your post, and I disagree with your retorts. I do acknowledge that my statement that the "surprise modification != default" was based on ISDA comments from late 2011 where they said that the 50% haircut was "voluntary" and would not trigger applicable CDS. Checking just now it seems they reversed themselves in early 2012 and acknowledged it was indeed a default.
However, no doubt you would not consider it to be equivalent to a default if the government passed a law that imposed a 100% tax on all bond interest payments and returns of bond principal. I presume this because according to you, they are legitimately upholding their end of the bargain if they deliberately inflate their currency to practically nothing in order to pay off the debt. In this "tax confiscation" scenario, they are paying back the bond and immediately withholding & confiscating all payments/principal in order to deprive the bondholders of any value.
However, they still made the payments as promised so no harm done, right? The government never promised not to change the law to confiscate all bond interest and principal via taxation after payment was made... the investors knew what they were getting into when they took the deal, right?
Similarly, it's farcical to allege that a government deliberately devaluing its currency in order to eliminate its debt in one fell swoop is not equivalent in effect to a default for the bondholders.
You will note that I am not debating the denotation of "default", but rather linking courses of action that result in the same effect for bondholders as "tantamount to default" (i.e. in the ethical sense).
Government savings bonds are about as safe as the money they're denominated in, while their interest rate helps with reducing the effect of inflation.
Weellll, it gets amusing when TIPS get sold at a negative interest rate. Yes, the story is nuanced (there is a floor in that original principal will be returned if the yield would result in an overall loss), but it's still shocking to see US sovereign debt instrument with a negative interest rate.
BTW, the 5-year fixed rate yield on TIPS is still negative.
This is primarily the result of the market's flight to perceived stability after the 2008 crash. Supply & demand.
Bond purchasers know that currencies may be debased, and that governments may even just default; happens all the time. But they gambled that the likelihood of getting a return on their investment was greater than of losing it, and that it was a better option than putting the money elsewhere. But there's no rock solid guarantee that absolutely cannot be broken.
I'm sure the American public would love to hear the truth you just expressed. I agree with you that the full faith and credit of the US government is *not* inviolable, but they may not be so happy to hear that their savings bonds and Social Security Trust Fund (cf. the SDR bonds that constitute almost the entire the Trust Fund) are risky investments that are subject to being debased and paid out with worthless scrip.
But, hey, you know: they knew what they were getting into when they decided to play the market. It's their own fault they have money locked up in government debt.
I see you're a lawyer. Here's a shibboleth for you: when two parties agree on terms for exchange of considerations, and then one party unilaterally modifies the agreement to their advantage in order to inflict loss upon the other party, do you call that savvy maneuvering or unethical? This scenario is in a vacuum, BTW, so there's no background to read into it. What's your take on it, prima facie? If we don't agree on basic semantics then there's no point in debating.
PS. Krugman and his ilk constantly say that you can't equate macroeconomics to microeconomics, so I don't know what you were trying to insinuate with your bankruptcy comment.
Thanks for the smarmy reply, I guess. I already understand all that, but it wasn't salient to the topic of Japan. If you read my post, you will see that I disagree about countries that print their own currency. It's tantamount to a default if you spool up the presses and pay it off with worthless hyperinflated currency.
FYI, you should read about what typically happens with sovereign debt denominated in another currency. The government may not control the printing presses, but they control the laws and judiciary of the nation. Surprise unilateral contract modification.
The real risk, of course, is if a country issues bonds under a foreign government's laws. Greece "surprise modified" their sovereign debt that was issued under Greek law, but they paid out in full their debt issued under English law.
What happens when you don't have enough young people to sustain the program the old people depend on?
Default, at least. A few years ago I decided to investigate why everyone was freaking out over Greece's 100% debt-to-GDP ratio but not the US' same level. I found that Japan has a *200%* debt-to-GDP ratio, yet eswentially everyone is silent about it. How does that work?
Well, government debt is treated like a savings program there. People can buy government debt at their post office, etc. So, all these old people have been saving their money for years and years by buying these savings bonds. This hasn't been a problem for Japan so far because all these people are rolling over the debt as it matures (taking the money from the retired bond and using it to buy a new one).
Much like a Ponzi scheme, this works until people want to cash out... then they find the money isn't there to do that. Who is likely to want to cash out? Well, perhaps elderly people who are retired and now are counting on using the money they saved all their lives.
I know some economists like Krugman disingenuously state that a government in control of its own currency printing presses can never default, but that's a lie. If these people bought the bonds in good faith and the government decides to pay them off with hyperinflated, worthless currency that they printed, then that's theft (at least morally speaking).
Not honoring one's obligations in debt is a default (ethically speaking), whether that's in the form of refusing to pay one's debts, disavowing debts, or paying them with worthless scrip.
Given the fact that SCO v IBM apparently refuses to die (still going as of 2013), perhaps the US military should consider deploying SCO's legal team to areas in need of interdiction.
I guess it really depends on how the psychohistory-esque meta-statistical analyses evolve. Nate Silver and Real Clear Politics both did a very good job modeling the prospective results of the vote for this past election. If this holds true again in the future—which seems quite plausible given the methodology that is being applied—then the actual vote on Election Day may end up being nearly a foregone conclusion.
Romney lost the entire election when he lost Ohio, but if you looked at the forecasts of the various states it was clear by August that he was going to lose, barring some freak upset (e.g. a Watergate-grade scandal). There was simply no plausible path to 270 electoral votes. What was really strange was that apparently Romney expected to win. I don't know if that was ignorance or delusion.
I'm uncertain what you mean by saying the exit polls carry much less weight, given that the current media system reports projected statewide results based on individual *precincts* reporting in. I mean, damn. If people are willing to buy that then they will definitely devour some stupid social media thing, especially if its the only source of information due to a federally-mandated information blackout.
That's why there should be NO reporting of results until ALL the ballots have been cast. If that means that east coast voters don't know who won until after Hawaii's polls close, that's just too damn bad.
I concur in theory. However, in practice, how would that work? The twatterblagoversetubes would have some sort of "wisdom of the crowd" tweetpost exit-poll-like mashup heatmap created by some anonymous person that everyone would link to and this would be even less statistically accurate/more subject to manipulation than the media's exit poll results.
The real problem is that the US really doesn't have a leg to stand on to criticize Russia for meddling in Crimea. We really have no moral authority: we recognized Panamanian independence from Columbia because the rebels told us we could build the Panama Canal when Columbia hadn't been cooperating, we toppled the democratically-elected government of Guatemala in order to protect our strategic Chiquita banana supply (*cough*), Vietnam, regime change in Iraq, etc.
The Kosovo issue is somewhat ironic because we essentially swapped roles with Russia in the present Ukrainian situation. Here, we claimed that Crimea couldn't vote on its own independence separate from any methods allowed in the Ukrainian constitution (which is the same position the US decided was correct for itself, after slaughtering 600k of our own population over this debate in the 19th century). In Kosovo, we claimed the opposite: that Kosovo could secede from Serbia without using the Serbian constitutional system.
I'm not one to wring my hands over the morality of US actions—I believe we act in our own self-interest. However, I do perceive hypocrisy when we claim moral authority over Russia when Russia is doing the same kinds of things we do.
+1 to this, using foreign language characters in a passphrase is a great idea, it makes things more secure since it increases the number of combinations hackers need to try (assuming they even have the foreign language characters in their data sets which I doubt they do)
Enjoy being locked out when you realize that UTF8 != CP-1252 != UTF16LE, etc. Oh, and god help you if you need to use a different OS to login, or don't have rights on the given machine's account to change the input charset. And all this is before you get into the potential disconnect between the webapp's stated charset vs the backend password system's charset (your password text field input isn't being passed around as raw bytes no matter how much you might wish it to be, sorry).
There is no hell like charset encoding. Yes, in some imaginary world where everyone dropped IPv4 when IPv6 came out, simply because it was the correct technical solution, your idea might work due to ubiquitous, end-to-end UTF8.
Here in the real world, well, one time I got locked out of a shitty online banking system because I used a punctuation character in my chosen password while setting it and all non-alphanumerics were stripped from input in the login password field, thereby preventing me from ever being able to submit my chosen password.
You might consider using a metaphor that isn't incorrect then, and especially egregious is your deliberate persistence in promulgating the false premise.
Your grandiose commentary about how it is false, and how you find hope for the future in that, rings hollow because you didn't actually disclose that the metaphor is false in your original post. "Normal" people don't know the metaphor is false... what, then, were you intending for them to conclude?
Your fatalism isn't exactly a rational response, and is particularly ironic in a thread about trying to convince the public to relinquish purported misconceptions.
There are other allegories that can be used as morality tales that do not depend upon a false assertion. Any argument undermines itself when it attempts to support itself by drawing a comparison to something that does not actually happen.
Also, this is Slashdot, FFS. Pointing out that frogs don't sit around and wait to get cooked—contrary to conventional wisdom—is the essence of this site's community.
(As for "pissing into the wind", the term you are searching for to define it is "idiom")
If there are no guns around me, there is a zero probability that I will end up with extra holes from gunshots.
Stipulated. However, the difference in perspective is that we cannot control whether the criminals will be armed. I have seen untrained people who do not respect proper handling rules for firearms and I would not wish them to be near me, either... much in the same way that I want to be nowhere near a drunk driver.
I understand your desire and responsibility in protecting your home and loved ones. But life is precious friend. Have you ever killed anyone? If so, do you feel the weight of your actions? I did. And I do.
I can respect that. Of course, you are entitled to your perspective even without such an experience. No, I have not killed anyone.
I can see, given the context, that folks might think I was painting all CC permit holders with a broad brush.
Thanks for acknowledging this. The common stereotype we face is people suggesting we are bloodthirsty people "looking for any excuse". Everyone I know who is armed hopes to live life in peace and never have to use the weapon for defense.
I know from personal experience that, depending on someone's agenda, the same data can be used to support diametrically opposed points of view.
...which is one reason I didn't start tossing stats. It would have changed our qualitative discussion into a quantitative debate, and that wouldn't further our exchange of ideas. Furthermore, I understand the point you were tendering with your thought experiment, but thought experiments are just that. Converse thought experiments are readily available.
However, can you say with certainty that every law-abiding, gun carrying individual can maintain absolute control over their weapon?
This is an impossible standard to meet, and it is not a necessary one. Demanding perfect safety would rule out nearly every aspect of modern life. I do agree that individuals should hold themselves to very high standards. As an aside, it is illegal to carry while intoxicated (in my state this means "nonzero BAC" for CC purposes), not that the law is the only thing stopping responsible people from doing so.
in situations where there is a clear and imminent threat to life or health, or in fairly common life situations, things aren't necessarily as cut and dried as you *appear* to be making them out to be. I may have misunderstood. If so, please enlighten me.
Some situations are cut and dried, some are not. Everyone must do their best to ascertain the best course of action given the information available at that time.
I agree that we have a right to protect ourselves from harm or death. I have had to do so several times. However, I do not believe that guns are the best way to do so.
I respect your perspective. I think we all would favor Star Trek phasers with a perfectly reliable "stun" action. I have considered firearm alternatives for self-defense and have concluded they were not the best way to protect myself or my family.
This is not a legal precedent. Read the Windows XP EULA if you want to see how liable Microsoft is for people using Windows XP after the end of life (or at all).
Granted.
Tangentially, their EULA also disclaims implied warranty of merchantability. Aside from the fact that MS can buy as much justice as they want, is it even technically legally binding to disclaim such implied warranties?
I enjoy interacting with those who hold viewpoints that differ from my own, especially if the discourse remains rational. Though we are unlikely to convince one another of our chosen viewpoint, perhaps increased understanding can be accomplished for both of us.
I am curious: do you know anyone who owns a firearm for self-defense, or does firearm ownership for this purpose preclude your association with a person? Would you terminate a friendship if you subsequently discovered the person had a concealed carry permit?
I can attest that you are applying prejudicial stereotypes to those with concealed carry permits/weapons (I am stressing that these people are of the law abiding type rather than criminals who concealed carry illegally). Standard training includes the appropriate use of deadly force. For example, there is a duty to retreat in public places if possible, which implies that drawing the firearm is the last resort. I sense you presume that concealed carry people will draw down on an unarmed mugger, or boldly stride into dangerous areas due to the false security of carrying a firearm. This isn't the case. In fact, training also indicates that if you draw a gun you must be ready to use it (i.e. brandishing and threatening with a firearm is not allowed). You are supposed to hand over your keys/wallet if mugged, as these are just possessions. Only if there is a legitimate fear for your life or someone else's is deadly force allowable.
So, that means if I had a CCW, I would surrender my possessions during a nonviolent mugging and let the mugger walk away without ever knowing I had a firearm. By the same token, if someone breaks into my home at night, they have forfeit their right to live in favor of my right and duty to protect my family.
As you claim to be an empiricist, I suggest you research the amount of crime perpetrated by those with concealed carry permits. You seem to believe they are highly dangerous, mentally imbalanced people. This should be borne out in the crime statistics if true, don't you agree? They should have a higher rate of violence, etc, than the normal population "controls". I can give you some statistics, but I sense you are the type of person who would prefer to do their own research and draw their own conclusions.
You will find that the concealed carry permit holders will respect your wishes for them not to bring firearms into your home. I mean, aside from being trespassing to do otherwise, it's just inappropriate to not comply with your host's wishes. I do know some that might decline an invitation to your home due to the restriction, but that's due to a political statement.
Finally, you have misstated the perspective: it's not that people with a concealed carry permit believe they have a right to kill people. Is this what you honestly believe they think? Rather, they believe that they have a right to self defense (i.e. that we all have a right to try to prevent ourselves from being killed by the aggression of others, and that this trumps the right of life-threatening aggressors to live unharmed).
I don't begrudge you your right to bear arms. But you certainly aren't welcome in my home. Your fear makes you much more dangerous than the vast majority of bad actors in this world, IMHO.
I disagree with your line of reasoning, and I doubt we would associate with one another due to incompatibility in our basic outlooks. However, I do respect your right to your opinion and viewpoint because you are not attempting to meddle in the affairs of others by calling for laws to strip away rights. Returning the favor, as it were.
Your viewpoint does trend toward denigrating those who disagree with you, and I will withhold my rejoinders except to ask: have you ever spent much time shooting firearms? Many people (though perhaps not you) fear what they do not understand. Find someone to take you to the range for an afternoon if you have never been. Don't be xenophobic and prejudicial against those who use firearms. Learn the safety rules and give it a try with a friend who will give you a demonstration.
At the very least, you will be able to claim you applied an open, critical mind to your chosen philosophy.
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I considered eSATA, but that is spiked ball of hurt, presuming you want to connect more than one drive per port via multipliers. Thanks for the suggestion, but it really was the USB 3.0... devices would drop off the bus (no longer present in usbconfig) on 3.0. Nary an issue with the exact same hardware on 2.0.
I think it's due to hacks like USB 3.0 hubs apparently also having USB 2.0 as a separate bus/hub logically, rather than attempting to unify the device tree somehow. Given some other comments here, there are probably other, less-visible hacks and kludges in the protocol as well.
Anyway, upshot: same OS, same motherboard, same USB ports on the computer, same SATA docks, just different (i.e. 2.0) cables. Yes, I tried swapping the 3.0 cables before downgrading. Very stable now on USB 2.0. Runs for stably months on end and zfs scrub never reports an issue on a 18 TB RAID-Z2 pool.
It's laughably not enterprise grade, and I would never suggest anything like that for business use, but for my home NAS it's fine.
If all you are doing with your Thunderbolt connector is hooking up displays, that's an argument AGAINST Thunderbolt since you aren't using it, you are just using DisplayPort.
No, that's incorrect logic. Should we fill your unused PCIe slots with cyanoacrylate simply because you aren't using them right now?
Thunderbolt gives me a high speed expansion bus while conveniently not requiring a separate connector to do so. It duplexes with DisplayPort, for which I had immediate use.
Come on, I expect better arguments than this. Here... if you really hate Thunderbolt, have already made up your mind, and are just searching for stones to fling at it then why not refer to the DMA attack vector instead?
Thunderbolt 2 allows me to connect a 4k DisplayPort screen (or daisy chain two lower resolution DisplayPort monitors). Its connector is the same as mini-DisplayPort. It's small and convenient. Apple fit two TB 2 buses next to each other on my 13" MacBook Pro. Nice. Very high bandwidth, PCIe.
I don't want to plug a keyboard into this bus, because its overkill. Thunderbolt will probably never have any cost effective way to do a hub/star type topography. For general use lower bandwidth (haha, 1 gigabit is low bandwidth now!) peripherals I need USB. And my MacBook has that too. I wouldn't want it any other way.
That said, USB 3.0 seems like a ball of hurt compared to the difference between USB 1.0/1.1/2.0
Just look at the ads for USB 3 hubs. Most of them state which chipset revision they use, so you can look up whether or not your motherboard / OS will have difficulty with them. I built a FreeBSD 9.1 file server using usb 3 / usb 3 docks, but I failed them all back down to using their 2.0 interface due to persistent flakiness/dropping off the bus type issues. Rock solid on USB 2.0. YMMV, but I hope that USB 3 gets over its growing pains soon.
[bad guy disarms person with smart gun]
Until I see someone cite an actual statistic of how many people are disarmed and shot with their own weapons, I'm going to continue to see these sorts of claims as hyperbole, and rightfully so.
Right, and after they provide those statistics, they can also provide a stat showing how this smart gun + watch technology would have prevented said shootings. The gun will fire if it's within 10 inches of the watch. In an up-close scuffle (you know, the only kind where a disarming is plausible), would the distance be great enough to prevent the criminal from shooting the owner once he grabbed the gun from the owner's hand?
I wouldn't count on it.
This is a "solution" in search of a legal mandate to force people to buy it. Welcome to modern capitalism: "building a better mousetrap" is secondary to regulatory capture.
I read your post and I completely disagree with this point.
I returned the favor by reading your post, and I disagree with your retorts. I do acknowledge that my statement that the "surprise modification != default" was based on ISDA comments from late 2011 where they said that the 50% haircut was "voluntary" and would not trigger applicable CDS. Checking just now it seems they reversed themselves in early 2012 and acknowledged it was indeed a default.
However, no doubt you would not consider it to be equivalent to a default if the government passed a law that imposed a 100% tax on all bond interest payments and returns of bond principal. I presume this because according to you, they are legitimately upholding their end of the bargain if they deliberately inflate their currency to practically nothing in order to pay off the debt. In this "tax confiscation" scenario, they are paying back the bond and immediately withholding & confiscating all payments/principal in order to deprive the bondholders of any value.
However, they still made the payments as promised so no harm done, right? The government never promised not to change the law to confiscate all bond interest and principal via taxation after payment was made... the investors knew what they were getting into when they took the deal, right?
Similarly, it's farcical to allege that a government deliberately devaluing its currency in order to eliminate its debt in one fell swoop is not equivalent in effect to a default for the bondholders.
You will note that I am not debating the denotation of "default", but rather linking courses of action that result in the same effect for bondholders as "tantamount to default" (i.e. in the ethical sense).
Government savings bonds are about as safe as the money they're denominated in, while their interest rate helps with reducing the effect of inflation.
Weellll, it gets amusing when TIPS get sold at a negative interest rate. Yes, the story is nuanced (there is a floor in that original principal will be returned if the yield would result in an overall loss), but it's still shocking to see US sovereign debt instrument with a negative interest rate.
BTW, the 5-year fixed rate yield on TIPS is still negative.
This is primarily the result of the market's flight to perceived stability after the 2008 crash. Supply & demand.
Bond purchasers know that currencies may be debased, and that governments may even just default; happens all the time. But they gambled that the likelihood of getting a return on their investment was greater than of losing it, and that it was a better option than putting the money elsewhere. But there's no rock solid guarantee that absolutely cannot be broken.
I'm sure the American public would love to hear the truth you just expressed. I agree with you that the full faith and credit of the US government is *not* inviolable, but they may not be so happy to hear that their savings bonds and Social Security Trust Fund (cf. the SDR bonds that constitute almost the entire the Trust Fund) are risky investments that are subject to being debased and paid out with worthless scrip.
But, hey, you know: they knew what they were getting into when they decided to play the market. It's their own fault they have money locked up in government debt.
I see you're a lawyer. Here's a shibboleth for you: when two parties agree on terms for exchange of considerations, and then one party unilaterally modifies the agreement to their advantage in order to inflict loss upon the other party, do you call that savvy maneuvering or unethical? This scenario is in a vacuum, BTW, so there's no background to read into it. What's your take on it, prima facie? If we don't agree on basic semantics then there's no point in debating.
PS. Krugman and his ilk constantly say that you can't equate macroeconomics to microeconomics, so I don't know what you were trying to insinuate with your bankruptcy comment.
Thanks for the smarmy reply, I guess. I already understand all that, but it wasn't salient to the topic of Japan. If you read my post, you will see that I disagree about countries that print their own currency. It's tantamount to a default if you spool up the presses and pay it off with worthless hyperinflated currency.
FYI, you should read about what typically happens with sovereign debt denominated in another currency. The government may not control the printing presses, but they control the laws and judiciary of the nation. Surprise unilateral contract modification.
The real risk, of course, is if a country issues bonds under a foreign government's laws. Greece "surprise modified" their sovereign debt that was issued under Greek law, but they paid out in full their debt issued under English law.
Is that simple enough for you?
What happens when you don't have enough young people to sustain the program the old people depend on?
Default, at least. A few years ago I decided to investigate why everyone was freaking out over Greece's 100% debt-to-GDP ratio but not the US' same level. I found that Japan has a *200%* debt-to-GDP ratio, yet eswentially everyone is silent about it. How does that work?
Well, government debt is treated like a savings program there. People can buy government debt at their post office, etc. So, all these old people have been saving their money for years and years by buying these savings bonds. This hasn't been a problem for Japan so far because all these people are rolling over the debt as it matures (taking the money from the retired bond and using it to buy a new one).
Much like a Ponzi scheme, this works until people want to cash out... then they find the money isn't there to do that. Who is likely to want to cash out? Well, perhaps elderly people who are retired and now are counting on using the money they saved all their lives.
I know some economists like Krugman disingenuously state that a government in control of its own currency printing presses can never default, but that's a lie. If these people bought the bonds in good faith and the government decides to pay them off with hyperinflated, worthless currency that they printed, then that's theft (at least morally speaking).
Not honoring one's obligations in debt is a default (ethically speaking), whether that's in the form of refusing to pay one's debts, disavowing debts, or paying them with worthless scrip.
Both sides of the Bering strait are part of the north american plate.
True, but if we're going by plate tectonics then a tunnel from China to northern Japan could be considered a tunnel to North America as well.
Finally I'll be able to make an apple pie from scratch!
Obscure Cosmos reference is obscure.
Given the fact that SCO v IBM apparently refuses to die (still going as of 2013), perhaps the US military should consider deploying SCO's legal team to areas in need of interdiction.
I guess it really depends on how the psychohistory-esque meta-statistical analyses evolve. Nate Silver and Real Clear Politics both did a very good job modeling the prospective results of the vote for this past election. If this holds true again in the future—which seems quite plausible given the methodology that is being applied—then the actual vote on Election Day may end up being nearly a foregone conclusion.
Romney lost the entire election when he lost Ohio, but if you looked at the forecasts of the various states it was clear by August that he was going to lose, barring some freak upset (e.g. a Watergate-grade scandal). There was simply no plausible path to 270 electoral votes. What was really strange was that apparently Romney expected to win. I don't know if that was ignorance or delusion.
I'm uncertain what you mean by saying the exit polls carry much less weight, given that the current media system reports projected statewide results based on individual *precincts* reporting in. I mean, damn. If people are willing to buy that then they will definitely devour some stupid social media thing, especially if its the only source of information due to a federally-mandated information blackout.
That's why there should be NO reporting of results until ALL the ballots have been cast. If that means that east coast voters don't know who won until after Hawaii's polls close, that's just too damn bad.
I concur in theory. However, in practice, how would that work? The twatterblagoversetubes would have some sort of "wisdom of the crowd" tweetpost exit-poll-like mashup heatmap created by some anonymous person that everyone would link to and this would be even less statistically accurate/more subject to manipulation than the media's exit poll results.
The real problem is that the US really doesn't have a leg to stand on to criticize Russia for meddling in Crimea. We really have no moral authority: we recognized Panamanian independence from Columbia because the rebels told us we could build the Panama Canal when Columbia hadn't been cooperating, we toppled the democratically-elected government of Guatemala in order to protect our strategic Chiquita banana supply (*cough*), Vietnam, regime change in Iraq, etc.
The Kosovo issue is somewhat ironic because we essentially swapped roles with Russia in the present Ukrainian situation. Here, we claimed that Crimea couldn't vote on its own independence separate from any methods allowed in the Ukrainian constitution (which is the same position the US decided was correct for itself, after slaughtering 600k of our own population over this debate in the 19th century). In Kosovo, we claimed the opposite: that Kosovo could secede from Serbia without using the Serbian constitutional system.
I'm not one to wring my hands over the morality of US actions—I believe we act in our own self-interest. However, I do perceive hypocrisy when we claim moral authority over Russia when Russia is doing the same kinds of things we do.
That won't happen. When it starts happening the US military will go in and sort out the place no matter where that is
You mean you'd do what you are telling Putin he should not do in Ukraine?
You mean we'd do what we did in Kosovo in 1999? Crimea was *totally* different. For one, it's spelled with a C instead of a K...
+1 to this, using foreign language characters in a passphrase is a great idea, it makes things more secure since it increases the number of combinations hackers need to try (assuming they even have the foreign language characters in their data sets which I doubt they do)
Enjoy being locked out when you realize that UTF8 != CP-1252 != UTF16LE, etc. Oh, and god help you if you need to use a different OS to login, or don't have rights on the given machine's account to change the input charset. And all this is before you get into the potential disconnect between the webapp's stated charset vs the backend password system's charset (your password text field input isn't being passed around as raw bytes no matter how much you might wish it to be, sorry).
There is no hell like charset encoding. Yes, in some imaginary world where everyone dropped IPv4 when IPv6 came out, simply because it was the correct technical solution, your idea might work due to ubiquitous, end-to-end UTF8.
Here in the real world, well, one time I got locked out of a shitty online banking system because I used a punctuation character in my chosen password while setting it and all non-alphanumerics were stripped from input in the login password field, thereby preventing me from ever being able to submit my chosen password.
The real world is horrific and soul crushing.
You might consider using a metaphor that isn't incorrect then, and especially egregious is your deliberate persistence in promulgating the false premise.
Your grandiose commentary about how it is false, and how you find hope for the future in that, rings hollow because you didn't actually disclose that the metaphor is false in your original post. "Normal" people don't know the metaphor is false... what, then, were you intending for them to conclude?
Your fatalism isn't exactly a rational response, and is particularly ironic in a thread about trying to convince the public to relinquish purported misconceptions.
There are other allegories that can be used as morality tales that do not depend upon a false assertion. Any argument undermines itself when it attempts to support itself by drawing a comparison to something that does not actually happen.
Also, this is Slashdot, FFS. Pointing out that frogs don't sit around and wait to get cooked—contrary to conventional wisdom—is the essence of this site's community.
(As for "pissing into the wind", the term you are searching for to define it is "idiom")
Please stop using the slow-boiled frog meme. It's false.
Are you certain?
If there are no guns around me, there is a zero probability that I will end up with extra holes from gunshots.
Stipulated. However, the difference in perspective is that we cannot control whether the criminals will be armed. I have seen untrained people who do not respect proper handling rules for firearms and I would not wish them to be near me, either... much in the same way that I want to be nowhere near a drunk driver.
I understand your desire and responsibility in protecting your home and loved ones. But life is precious friend. Have you ever killed anyone? If so, do you feel the weight of your actions? I did. And I do.
I can respect that. Of course, you are entitled to your perspective even without such an experience. No, I have not killed anyone.
I can see, given the context, that folks might think I was painting all CC permit holders with a broad brush.
Thanks for acknowledging this. The common stereotype we face is people suggesting we are bloodthirsty people "looking for any excuse". Everyone I know who is armed hopes to live life in peace and never have to use the weapon for defense.
I know from personal experience that, depending on someone's agenda, the same data can be used to support diametrically opposed points of view.
...which is one reason I didn't start tossing stats. It would have changed our qualitative discussion into a quantitative debate, and that wouldn't further our exchange of ideas. Furthermore, I understand the point you were tendering with your thought experiment, but thought experiments are just that. Converse thought experiments are readily available.
However, can you say with certainty that every law-abiding, gun carrying individual can maintain absolute control over their weapon?
This is an impossible standard to meet, and it is not a necessary one. Demanding perfect safety would rule out nearly every aspect of modern life. I do agree that individuals should hold themselves to very high standards. As an aside, it is illegal to carry while intoxicated (in my state this means "nonzero BAC" for CC purposes), not that the law is the only thing stopping responsible people from doing so.
in situations where there is a clear and imminent threat to life or health, or in fairly common life situations, things aren't necessarily as cut and dried as you *appear* to be making them out to be. I may have misunderstood. If so, please enlighten me.
Some situations are cut and dried, some are not. Everyone must do their best to ascertain the best course of action given the information available at that time.
I agree that we have a right to protect ourselves from harm or death. I have had to do so several times. However, I do not believe that guns are the best way to do so.
I respect your perspective. I think we all would favor Star Trek phasers with a perfectly reliable "stun" action. I have considered firearm alternatives for self-defense and have concluded they were not the best way to protect myself or my family.
This is not a legal precedent. Read the Windows XP EULA if you want to see how liable Microsoft is for people using Windows XP after the end of life (or at all).
Granted.
Tangentially, their EULA also disclaims implied warranty of merchantability. Aside from the fact that MS can buy as much justice as they want, is it even technically legally binding to disclaim such implied warranties?
I enjoy interacting with those who hold viewpoints that differ from my own, especially if the discourse remains rational. Though we are unlikely to convince one another of our chosen viewpoint, perhaps increased understanding can be accomplished for both of us.
I am curious: do you know anyone who owns a firearm for self-defense, or does firearm ownership for this purpose preclude your association with a person? Would you terminate a friendship if you subsequently discovered the person had a concealed carry permit?
I can attest that you are applying prejudicial stereotypes to those with concealed carry permits/weapons (I am stressing that these people are of the law abiding type rather than criminals who concealed carry illegally). Standard training includes the appropriate use of deadly force. For example, there is a duty to retreat in public places if possible, which implies that drawing the firearm is the last resort. I sense you presume that concealed carry people will draw down on an unarmed mugger, or boldly stride into dangerous areas due to the false security of carrying a firearm. This isn't the case. In fact, training also indicates that if you draw a gun you must be ready to use it (i.e. brandishing and threatening with a firearm is not allowed). You are supposed to hand over your keys/wallet if mugged, as these are just possessions. Only if there is a legitimate fear for your life or someone else's is deadly force allowable.
So, that means if I had a CCW, I would surrender my possessions during a nonviolent mugging and let the mugger walk away without ever knowing I had a firearm. By the same token, if someone breaks into my home at night, they have forfeit their right to live in favor of my right and duty to protect my family.
As you claim to be an empiricist, I suggest you research the amount of crime perpetrated by those with concealed carry permits. You seem to believe they are highly dangerous, mentally imbalanced people. This should be borne out in the crime statistics if true, don't you agree? They should have a higher rate of violence, etc, than the normal population "controls". I can give you some statistics, but I sense you are the type of person who would prefer to do their own research and draw their own conclusions.
You will find that the concealed carry permit holders will respect your wishes for them not to bring firearms into your home. I mean, aside from being trespassing to do otherwise, it's just inappropriate to not comply with your host's wishes. I do know some that might decline an invitation to your home due to the restriction, but that's due to a political statement.
Finally, you have misstated the perspective: it's not that people with a concealed carry permit believe they have a right to kill people. Is this what you honestly believe they think? Rather, they believe that they have a right to self defense (i.e. that we all have a right to try to prevent ourselves from being killed by the aggression of others, and that this trumps the right of life-threatening aggressors to live unharmed).
I wish you a nice day as well.
I don't begrudge you your right to bear arms. But you certainly aren't welcome in my home. Your fear makes you much more dangerous than the vast majority of bad actors in this world, IMHO.
I disagree with your line of reasoning, and I doubt we would associate with one another due to incompatibility in our basic outlooks. However, I do respect your right to your opinion and viewpoint because you are not attempting to meddle in the affairs of others by calling for laws to strip away rights. Returning the favor, as it were.
Your viewpoint does trend toward denigrating those who disagree with you, and I will withhold my rejoinders except to ask: have you ever spent much time shooting firearms? Many people (though perhaps not you) fear what they do not understand. Find someone to take you to the range for an afternoon if you have never been. Don't be xenophobic and prejudicial against those who use firearms. Learn the safety rules and give it a try with a friend who will give you a demonstration.
At the very least, you will be able to claim you applied an open, critical mind to your chosen philosophy.