I said that the medallion drivers are playing murder roulette, because unless you luck out with a credit card transaction, it's basically an anonymous cash business. If a Yellow Cab driver is found dead in an alley, his next of kin have no way of knowing who the customer was. Uber customers are known to the company, call the cabs through an app, and are picked up and dropped at times that are logged. The thugs and drug operatives who prize the 'anonymity' of the traditional taxi experience prefer the old system.
" a chipmunk christmas remix of Gangnam Style at every border outpost by tomorrow morning."
You jest, but if all South Korea dod was set up one of those huge arrays of bigscreens at some border point where it was visible to the North, and play the Gangnam video, and the Norks would lose faith in their society.
Yes, the Alabama rednecks of sixty years ago didn't have the august academic credentials it would have taken to come up with a phrase like "cultural affinity groups."
In the US our pharma monopoly, which is government-enforced by a long series of laws passed by the best paid lobbyists in the history of the world, is a much bigger problem than municipal taxi monopolies.
"The glut of skills will cause employment problems"
NH is in an advantageous position because it is not the boonies, but a capitalist suburb of Massachusetts. There's work to be had on Route 128, and meanwhile that 'glut of skills' in the local area can be the nucleus for new local businesses.
"As Jury Nullification is not law, serving on a jury with the intent to nullify is perjury."
That's why you never say that you are any sort of political advocate of jury nullification, or you will never get past voir dire. Just keep in mind that nullification is one of the basic rights a juror has, and make sure that at trial your decision is based on an interpretation of the evidence and testimony that you could explain if polled to 'show your work'. You have the right to be just as picky and pettifogging in making up your mind as the prosecutor can be.
"What will happen is that, at some point, people who have lived there their entire lives and do not share the extreme political views will have to move out"
If authoritarianism, both the direct-by-government kind and the corporation-buying-government kind, is decreasing, then why the need to move? Society would just be becoming more voluntary.
But if you just like the idea of a rules-for-everything society, California's the place ya oughta be.
"they're in blatant violation of taxi laws in the u.s. too and just hide behind semantics..."
In the US this is a selling point for Uber, because here everyone hates the taxi-monopoly laws except the cab companies. Even our cabdrivers hate the fact that, unlike Uber drivers, the company has no connection with the customer and it's murder roulette every time they pick up a fare.
And there are no victims so easily plucked clean as a population that is legally unable to defend itself. In European societies you have to hope the police are everywhere, because that's all the protection you have.
Cabs are not needed as often in European cities because of the lush public transit systems available, and are in general a convenience, rather than a necessity. You might take a cab to the airport because you have luggage, but the alternative is a five-minute walk on safe streets (before the "refugees" came, anyway) to a tram or Metro stop, rather than having to beseech some car-equipped friend for a ride.
Because taxis are a non-critical part of the city experience in Europe, they compete on service. No grimy cabbies who don't speak the local language, and they know the city.
The podcast is a total waste of time, mostly devoted to noodling about comics and the reappearance in 2015 of a certain major movie franchise. The subject of books comes up in minute 47, immediately before it's time to wrap.
"- For the people that survived on earth, where did all their heat go? How did they not cook from the heat generated by their plant growing machinery?"
Finally - SOMEONE got this point! I liked Seveneves a lot but the power source for the tribe that survived in a deep mine was a science hole that really bothered me. Their power source was handwaved as being "geothermal" but when we make use of geothermal energy, we are exploiting the Carnot differential between hot rock underground and the much cooler surface. In Stephenson's scenario the surface was just as hot as the deep rock, so no usable temperature differential. And of course, no sink for any locally created heat to go.
I also noted a culture hole: why does the spacefaring tribe, after going to the trouble of establishing a sustainable presence off Earth, waste thousands of years clinging to the dangerous vicinity of an uninhabitable planet? Because the disaster zone was limited to the immediate vicinity of earth, logically they would have colonized asteroids, far from the danger zone, after getting their initial colony going.
I thought the Hillary Clinton character was well done, though. As US president in this scenario, she almost succeeds in putting an end to the spacefaring tribe not by exercising any specific ideology, but by introducing political division itself, splitting the survivors and leading to the loss of all the men.
So Microsoft can see me gingerly firing up my Windows 10 ever few weeks inside a VMware sandbox, as though it were a flask of Ebola in a medical lab, to check for updates?
When it comes to fighting something like genetic disease, we need more scientific hubris. We need more of the old sense of adventure that once made us first in applying science to real-world problems. If we want society to fund more research, public or private, we need to make more use of the results research provides.
Today's liberals, of course. Their leftist parents embraced the idea of human progress, including science and its applications, as did Marx himself. The Manhattan Project, Mt Palomar, Hoover Dam and their last program, Apollo, were part of this ideal.
Slashdot Mirror
I said that the medallion drivers are playing murder roulette, because unless you luck out with a credit card transaction, it's basically an anonymous cash business. If a Yellow Cab driver is found dead in an alley, his next of kin have no way of knowing who the customer was. Uber customers are known to the company, call the cabs through an app, and are picked up and dropped at times that are logged. The thugs and drug operatives who prize the 'anonymity' of the traditional taxi experience prefer the old system.
" a chipmunk christmas remix of Gangnam Style at every border outpost by tomorrow morning."
You jest, but if all South Korea dod was set up one of those huge arrays of bigscreens at some border point where it was visible to the North, and play the Gangnam video, and the Norks would lose faith in their society.
Yes, the Alabama rednecks of sixty years ago didn't have the august academic credentials it would have taken to come up with a phrase like "cultural affinity groups."
My mention of "refugees" in such terms speaks of my looking at available news sources.
At last, Europeans are learning the difference between immigration and insurgency.
In the US our pharma monopoly, which is government-enforced by a long series of laws passed by the best paid lobbyists in the history of the world, is a much bigger problem than municipal taxi monopolies.
"LSD and shrooms are predominantly white drugs, and are associated with higher education."
This may be what accounts for the cultural weirdness in academia today. In fact, just pointing this out is probably a microagression.
Yes, you can't just walk there, become a political activist and lobby for 'amnesty'.
"The glut of skills will cause employment problems"
NH is in an advantageous position because it is not the boonies, but a capitalist suburb of Massachusetts. There's work to be had on Route 128, and meanwhile that 'glut of skills' in the local area can be the nucleus for new local businesses.
"As Jury Nullification is not law, serving on a jury with the intent to nullify is perjury."
That's why you never say that you are any sort of political advocate of jury nullification, or you will never get past voir dire. Just keep in mind that nullification is one of the basic rights a juror has, and make sure that at trial your decision is based on an interpretation of the evidence and testimony that you could explain if polled to 'show your work'. You have the right to be just as picky and pettifogging in making up your mind as the prosecutor can be.
"What will happen is that, at some point, people who have lived there their entire lives and do not share the extreme political views will have to move out"
If authoritarianism, both the direct-by-government kind and the corporation-buying-government kind, is decreasing, then why the need to move? Society would just be becoming more voluntary.
But if you just like the idea of a rules-for-everything society, California's the place ya oughta be.
"they're in blatant violation of taxi laws in the u.s. too and just hide behind semantics..."
In the US this is a selling point for Uber, because here everyone hates the taxi-monopoly laws except the cab companies. Even our cabdrivers hate the fact that, unlike Uber drivers, the company has no connection with the customer and it's murder roulette every time they pick up a fare.
At least you're not ein Wiener.
And there are no victims so easily plucked clean as a population that is legally unable to defend itself. In European societies you have to hope the police are everywhere, because that's all the protection you have.
Cabs are not needed as often in European cities because of the lush public transit systems available, and are in general a convenience, rather than a necessity. You might take a cab to the airport because you have luggage, but the alternative is a five-minute walk on safe streets (before the "refugees" came, anyway) to a tram or Metro stop, rather than having to beseech some car-equipped friend for a ride.
Because taxis are a non-critical part of the city experience in Europe, they compete on service. No grimy cabbies who don't speak the local language, and they know the city.
He's been depressed since the SpaceX first stage soft landing.
The podcast is a total waste of time, mostly devoted to noodling about comics and the reappearance in 2015 of a certain major movie franchise. The subject of books comes up in minute 47, immediately before it's time to wrap.
"- For the people that survived on earth, where did all their heat go? How did they not cook from the heat generated by their plant growing machinery?"
Finally - SOMEONE got this point! I liked Seveneves a lot but the power source for the tribe that survived in a deep mine was a science hole that really bothered me. Their power source was handwaved as being "geothermal" but when we make use of geothermal energy, we are exploiting the Carnot differential between hot rock underground and the much cooler surface. In Stephenson's scenario the surface was just as hot as the deep rock, so no usable temperature differential. And of course, no sink for any locally created heat to go.
I also noted a culture hole: why does the spacefaring tribe, after going to the trouble of establishing a sustainable presence off Earth, waste thousands of years clinging to the dangerous vicinity of an uninhabitable planet? Because the disaster zone was limited to the immediate vicinity of earth, logically they would have colonized asteroids, far from the danger zone, after getting their initial colony going.
I thought the Hillary Clinton character was well done, though. As US president in this scenario, she almost succeeds in putting an end to the spacefaring tribe not by exercising any specific ideology, but by introducing political division itself, splitting the survivors and leading to the loss of all the men.
Computer, build me a slut with big tits
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave. You're married."
If it existed, it would take the prevalence and power of lawyers as a reason to exterminate mankind.
So Microsoft can see me gingerly firing up my Windows 10 ever few weeks inside a VMware sandbox, as though it were a flask of Ebola in a medical lab, to check for updates?
See what I mean? This is exactly how today's left views science.
When it comes to fighting something like genetic disease, we need more scientific hubris. We need more of the old sense of adventure that once made us first in applying science to real-world problems. If we want society to fund more research, public or private, we need to make more use of the results research provides.
Today's liberals, of course. Their leftist parents embraced the idea of human progress, including science and its applications, as did Marx himself. The Manhattan Project, Mt Palomar, Hoover Dam and their last program, Apollo, were part of this ideal.
That means four more cartridges for my 3D printer!
But you're still going to keep running out of astatine first.
Meanwhile, liberals won't recognize any element north of bismuth. They're all eeee-vil!