Until your neighbors read, and believe, what's in the post. What do you do then? Laugh it off because you know it's not true and that's all that really matters as people start lobbing rocks through your window to get the kid-touching perv out of the neighborhood?
An anonymous false-accusation can be just as damaging in the real world as one that has a name attached to it. Actually, it could be even more damaging, as you can't turn around and point out that the person making the accusation is motivated to lie about you.
My god but that sounded like it came straight out of the mouth of a William Gibson character, which makes it both a great post, and deeply troubling at the same time...
Here is a little bit of truth about human nature. Your leaders are narcissistic cheating lying scum. Your bankers are narcissistic, cheating lying scum. Vanity is the human condition.
You know, I'm getting a little sick of you Vulcans always criticizing us Humans. Oh, you're all just soooooooo superior. Green-blooded bastards.
Which actually brings up another thought; why isn't getting divorced as easy as getting married? Even when it's amicable, in many states it's still a mountain of paperwork (which can get rejected for any number of "technical mistakes") culminating in a court appearance that can take months to get on the judge's calendar. Marriage though, only really requires a short trip to the town clerk, and another visit to someone to officiate (priest, mayor, judge, McDonalds manager, dog-catcher, etc). In NJ at least, the resistance is from the "save marriage" crowd, who somehow believe that if you make divorce as miserable as possible the end result will be more happily married couples (can you spot the flaw in the logic there?). Sure, sometimes it's going to get messy if people are ready for a fight, but there really should be a "fast-track" option that is as cheap and easy as getting married in the first place for people who are in agreement and simply want to break off the relationship amicably.
I dunno, I have one of those old accounts with no feedback, and I'm not a scammer. Why no feedback? Because every auction I've bid in (granted, I don't bid often) I've lost. Every time. Maybe it's bad luck, or maybe there's some strategy on eBay that I just really don't care to learn, but it always turns out the same way. I'm in the lead, I watch the time run out, and at the very last possible second I get outbid. I'm not complaining, just pointing out that in my case it's perfectly possible to have a bid come in from one of these accounts that's perfectly legitimate. If you want to toss out that bid, fine, that's your business. My point is that I'm probably far from the only person with an account like this that only goes on eBay every once in a while. If eBay were to delete the account, it's unlikely I'd go to the bother of starting a new one (considering I never win anyway), but if they keep the account alive they at least have the *potential* to make money on it. That being the case, I can see why they may not be particularly eager to purge them.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here, how is it Microsoft's fault/problem that you bought your phone from a store with awful customer service? I agree that MS should have done a better job, but really, if the clerk is flipping you off for a valid return that's a problem between you and the store, not MS.
Why do you think Nokia sold 1200 in millions every month of last year?
Are you suggesting that it's because they have zero defects and that a Nokia phone has never been returned, or does Nokia personally come to your house and pick up defective units so that you don't have to deal with the obnoxious store clerk that doesn't like doing returns?
And here we have an easy mark, something that's known to be a severe distractive force, probably one of the most distractive forces a driver can engage in
And there are witnesses who claim the post was made while the car was still parked, but none who can state with certainty that she was using her phone at the time of the accident, so, unless you're suggesting that posting to Facebook and then driving several minutes later is somehow dangerous, I'm not sure what you're getting at.
When you consider that software weighs only as much as a cloud of electrons trapped in a memory cell -- if it costs anything at all then it's worth more than it's weight in Samsonite.
So the time of the developers, designers and artists who actually make the software has no value at all? I'm curious, if you hire a carpenter to build you something, do you just cross off the labor costs on his invoice because "labor" doesn't actually weigh anything, so you only pay for the materials? How about when you go to the mechanic, do you insist on paying only for parts, and nothing for the installation? Why do you expect everyone who builds software to provide it for you for free, and by extension donating their time to you while getting nothing in return? I'm not knocking open-source, if people want to build software and give it away, that's great, but it's their choice. Not everything has an open source equivalent though, and charging for software is no more or less "bad" than open-sourcing it.
So if I'm texting, and 2 minutes later I get into an accident, it's not much of a stretch to assume I am still messing with my crackberry and maybe even composing a new message when I plow into that stalled car. It's not necessary for them to prove I was SENDING a text at the instant of the accident. Simply showing that I was engaging in illegal distracting activities at about the time of the accident will probably be enough to convict me.
That's actually a big stretch depending on the circumstances. I walk outside, start my car and decide to, while standing in my driveway, send a text saying "leaving now". I hit send, jump in the car, and get into an accident at the end of my street. That can easily happen within two minutes. If we go with your assumption, I'd be charged with distracted driving for sending texts while standing in my yard. The nature of the message doesn't suggest that I'm continuing to text anything else. Now, if that happens on the highway, and the onramp where I got on is three minutes behind me and I get into that accident, and my phone has me texting "hey, what r u doing?" and a reply that says "not much how about u?", sure, it suggests that texting *may* have played a part. Both the timing and nature of the messages suggest ongoing interaction. Again, circumstances are important.
Neither do I. Oddly, I don't see where I said it was with any frequency, I just said I could have had *a* week with that many. That's a detail that you seem to have come up with all by yourself.
From TFA: Seventh- and eighth-graders with four unexcused absences or more this school year are assigned to carry a handheld GPS device, about the size of a cell phone. and Because schools lose about $35 per day for each absent student, the program can pay for itself and more if students return to class consistently, Miller said. Four absences? Hell, I coulda blown through that many "unexcused" absences in a week, let alone a year and I didn't turn out to be a violent criminal. This really seems like it's more about the money than anything else. It looks like they're criminalizing absences because they don't want to lose funding. The "criminal activity" is denying the school a hundred dollars or so in government funding.
Ah, so you quote Marx and that's supposed to be some kind of auto-win? He also said "Democracy is the road to socialism", does that mean you'd like to get rid of democracy? Must be bad, since Marx thought it was a key to his ideal state. How about "Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex"? Holy shit, we've got to roll back women's suffrage, IT'S MARXIST!!!!!! Not everything Marx said was wrong, evil or even remotely incompatible with American society. I don't advocate a Marxist system, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss an idea just because he espoused it.
Now, onto your quote itself. It isn't applicable. While I suggested that those who reap the biggest rewards owe the biggest debt for the opportunity, I didn't suggest that taxes should in some way flatten income so that everyone is economically equal. I pay more in taxes than many of my friends, but I also still have more after those taxes than they do. If you make $10 million, and the tax rate was applied at, lets say 60% (far lower than the 90% percent that has been applied to that bracket years back, but nearly double the highest bracket now), you'd still have $4 million left. You're still far better off than the person making the median $50k or so (or $500k for that matter), you're still amply rewarded for your efforts. Nobody is going to say they'd rather make $50k than $10 million because of a 60% tax burden. So while superficially that quote may seem like it applies, if you know what the quote actually means, which is that everyone contributes what they can, and takes back only what they need, you can see that no system of taxation ever practiced, or seriously proposed in the U.S., would ever be accurately described by that quote.
Only if poor people buy more than rich people, which I very much doubt.
Individually, probably not, but how about collectively? How many "rich" people are there? How many "poor"? Depending on the metrics used, there could be something on the order of 50:1 poor/rich. How many pairs of shoes does that 1 rich person have? How many dinners does he eat a night (probably not 50)? How many rolls of toilet paper does he use? Keep on going. If we stick with reasonable items, staples rather than luxuries, then yes, it's pretty fair to say that poor people pay more than rich people, by virtue of the fact that there are far more of them.
But, I suppose you consider it "equitable" when people are discriminated against on the basis of their success.
Success doesn't exist in a vacuum. That success was made possible by the society that it took root and grew in. So, no, it's not unreasonable to ask those who reap the biggest benefits from that society to pay more back in than the people who didn't reap such huge rewards. I pay far more in taxes than quite a few people I know. I have no problem with that. I worked hard to get where I am, but without the rest of society, including the people who work at the stores I shop in, the restaurants I eat at, those who clean my office, maintain my yard and the other million little things that need to get done, that success may not have come (nobody to buy my products) and it would be pointless (nobody to do those jobs I mentioned). Given the choice, I'd rather be me and pay those taxes every time instead of being them, making less, and paying lower taxes.
But I was told this was a war for (cheap)oil. So, did we get cheap(er) oil or not? If not, you better tell that to all the Bush Haters out there that kept that screed going. And if we did, then it wasn't a money sink per se.
Or it was a war for cheap oil that failed to meet its goal. What I can see is that a) we did not get cheap oil, b) it does appear to be a money sink, and c) the terrorist threat that was the stated reason for the war (smoking gun/mushroom cloud) does not seem to have been seriously diminished by our invasion.
On the one hand, Bush ran grand conspiracy and evil pots abounded. On the other hand he was a stupid monkey.
Why do you think the two are mutually exclusive? If he was both stupid, and running an evil conspiracy, it probably wouldn't be surprising that it failed to work out the way he hoped.
Sounds more like Schrodinger Cat.
Sounds like sometimes things aren't perfectly black and white.
There's a good chance that you're actually already here, so you'd have to work that out with yourself....you don't have a goatee do you? The you that's already here may take that as a bad sign. Sorry, can't help referencing old episodes of "Stellar Voyage". I love that episode where Captain Curt and Mr. Stock go to the "evil" universe though.....
No I can't. Neither can anyone else outside the United States.
People in parallel universes are excluded as well. Stupid licensing, I wanted to find out who this "Colbert" person that does interviews is. The only famous Colbert here is Vice-President Stephen Colbert, who ran on the Stewart/Colbert ticket in 2000, beating O'Reilly/Hannity in a surprise upset. Enough about politics here in the Dominion of North America though, I'm sure it's probably not that different in your part of the multiverse.....
You could have said, "You're right, and neither did I", and launch into a discussion about the common misconception about "evolving from monkeys", and correctly explained common ancestry, and the theories about how various apes and humans diverged from that common ancestry. Challenges to science can, if handled well, be a great opportunity to teach, assuming the audience is willing to listen. Even if that particular kid refused to listen, that's fine, the rest of the class might benefit from the discussion.
The reason people dismiss ideas like that are a) There's no evidence to even suggest, let alone support, the idea of highly technological societies millions of years ago. The idea is entirely rooted in the "I can imagine it, so it could be possible" category, and without evidence it's the plot to a novel, not an avenue of serious study. b) Even if this ancient technological civilization existed, but managed to leave absolutely no evidence of itself behind, how would you "study" them? You said yourself, the evidence, if there was any, could have been completely erased over millions of years. If they no longer exist, and left no trace of their existence, they might as well never have existed for all practical purposes.
When the argument comes down to "but you can't PROVE that it didn't happen", with nothing else to support it, it's not science, it's entertainment.
If anything, it's arguably safer now. The difference is that now there's a constant stream of news 24/7 that could leave you with the impression that there's a kidnapper behind every mailbox, a murderer behind every tree and a sex offender hiding in the sewer grate outside of every playground. Pre-CNN, the national news programs were about an hour a night, and didn't have the time to inform people in Fair Lawn, New Jersey of all the gory details of a single child kidnapping in Rialto, California. Now though, this kind of news is brought to you in such detail that you feel like the incident happened on your block, instead of a thousand miles away. Constant updates, interviews, commentators, and the inevitable "Could this happen in your town?" piece. This is part of the amazing interconnectedness that we have now. The benefits are massive, but there's a price. It's no wonder that people feel like their under siege and have to protect their children, it's easy to loose perspective in the face of all those reports....
Slashdot Mirror
Until your neighbors read, and believe, what's in the post. What do you do then? Laugh it off because you know it's not true and that's all that really matters as people start lobbing rocks through your window to get the kid-touching perv out of the neighborhood?
An anonymous false-accusation can be just as damaging in the real world as one that has a name attached to it. Actually, it could be even more damaging, as you can't turn around and point out that the person making the accusation is motivated to lie about you.
My god but that sounded like it came straight out of the mouth of a William Gibson character, which makes it both a great post, and deeply troubling at the same time...
You know, I'm getting a little sick of you Vulcans always criticizing us Humans. Oh, you're all just soooooooo superior. Green-blooded bastards.
Which actually brings up another thought; why isn't getting divorced as easy as getting married? Even when it's amicable, in many states it's still a mountain of paperwork (which can get rejected for any number of "technical mistakes") culminating in a court appearance that can take months to get on the judge's calendar. Marriage though, only really requires a short trip to the town clerk, and another visit to someone to officiate (priest, mayor, judge, McDonalds manager, dog-catcher, etc). In NJ at least, the resistance is from the "save marriage" crowd, who somehow believe that if you make divorce as miserable as possible the end result will be more happily married couples (can you spot the flaw in the logic there?).
Sure, sometimes it's going to get messy if people are ready for a fight, but there really should be a "fast-track" option that is as cheap and easy as getting married in the first place for people who are in agreement and simply want to break off the relationship amicably.
Okay, rant over.....
I dunno, I have one of those old accounts with no feedback, and I'm not a scammer. Why no feedback? Because every auction I've bid in (granted, I don't bid often) I've lost. Every time. Maybe it's bad luck, or maybe there's some strategy on eBay that I just really don't care to learn, but it always turns out the same way. I'm in the lead, I watch the time run out, and at the very last possible second I get outbid. I'm not complaining, just pointing out that in my case it's perfectly possible to have a bid come in from one of these accounts that's perfectly legitimate. If you want to toss out that bid, fine, that's your business.
My point is that I'm probably far from the only person with an account like this that only goes on eBay every once in a while. If eBay were to delete the account, it's unlikely I'd go to the bother of starting a new one (considering I never win anyway), but if they keep the account alive they at least have the *potential* to make money on it. That being the case, I can see why they may not be particularly eager to purge them.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here, how is it Microsoft's fault/problem that you bought your phone from a store with awful customer service? I agree that MS should have done a better job, but really, if the clerk is flipping you off for a valid return that's a problem between you and the store, not MS.
Are you suggesting that it's because they have zero defects and that a Nokia phone has never been returned, or does Nokia personally come to your house and pick up defective units so that you don't have to deal with the obnoxious store clerk that doesn't like doing returns?
Well duh, that's what the monolith is for.
Maybe you're holding it wrong.....
So the time of the developers, designers and artists who actually make the software has no value at all? I'm curious, if you hire a carpenter to build you something, do you just cross off the labor costs on his invoice because "labor" doesn't actually weigh anything, so you only pay for the materials? How about when you go to the mechanic, do you insist on paying only for parts, and nothing for the installation? Why do you expect everyone who builds software to provide it for you for free, and by extension donating their time to you while getting nothing in return? I'm not knocking open-source, if people want to build software and give it away, that's great, but it's their choice. Not everything has an open source equivalent though, and charging for software is no more or less "bad" than open-sourcing it.
That's actually a big stretch depending on the circumstances.
I walk outside, start my car and decide to, while standing in my driveway, send a text saying "leaving now". I hit send, jump in the car, and get into an accident at the end of my street. That can easily happen within two minutes. If we go with your assumption, I'd be charged with distracted driving for sending texts while standing in my yard. The nature of the message doesn't suggest that I'm continuing to text anything else.
Now, if that happens on the highway, and the onramp where I got on is three minutes behind me and I get into that accident, and my phone has me texting "hey, what r u doing?" and a reply that says "not much how about u?", sure, it suggests that texting *may* have played a part. Both the timing and nature of the messages suggest ongoing interaction. Again, circumstances are important.
Neither do I. Oddly, I don't see where I said it was with any frequency, I just said I could have had *a* week with that many. That's a detail that you seem to have come up with all by yourself.
Luckily I went to one of those schools where there was more than one week in a school year.
From TFA:
Seventh- and eighth-graders with four unexcused absences or more this school year are assigned to carry a handheld GPS device, about the size of a cell phone.
and
Because schools lose about $35 per day for each absent student, the program can pay for itself and more if students return to class consistently, Miller said.
Four absences? Hell, I coulda blown through that many "unexcused" absences in a week, let alone a year and I didn't turn out to be a violent criminal. This really seems like it's more about the money than anything else. It looks like they're criminalizing absences because they don't want to lose funding. The "criminal activity" is denying the school a hundred dollars or so in government funding.
Ah, so you quote Marx and that's supposed to be some kind of auto-win? He also said "Democracy is the road to socialism", does that mean you'd like to get rid of democracy? Must be bad, since Marx thought it was a key to his ideal state. How about "Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex"? Holy shit, we've got to roll back women's suffrage, IT'S MARXIST!!!!!! Not everything Marx said was wrong, evil or even remotely incompatible with American society. I don't advocate a Marxist system, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss an idea just because he espoused it.
Now, onto your quote itself. It isn't applicable. While I suggested that those who reap the biggest rewards owe the biggest debt for the opportunity, I didn't suggest that taxes should in some way flatten income so that everyone is economically equal. I pay more in taxes than many of my friends, but I also still have more after those taxes than they do. If you make $10 million, and the tax rate was applied at, lets say 60% (far lower than the 90% percent that has been applied to that bracket years back, but nearly double the highest bracket now), you'd still have $4 million left. You're still far better off than the person making the median $50k or so (or $500k for that matter), you're still amply rewarded for your efforts. Nobody is going to say they'd rather make $50k than $10 million because of a 60% tax burden. So while superficially that quote may seem like it applies, if you know what the quote actually means, which is that everyone contributes what they can, and takes back only what they need, you can see that no system of taxation ever practiced, or seriously proposed in the U.S., would ever be accurately described by that quote.
Individually, probably not, but how about collectively? How many "rich" people are there? How many "poor"? Depending on the metrics used, there could be something on the order of 50:1 poor/rich. How many pairs of shoes does that 1 rich person have? How many dinners does he eat a night (probably not 50)? How many rolls of toilet paper does he use? Keep on going. If we stick with reasonable items, staples rather than luxuries, then yes, it's pretty fair to say that poor people pay more than rich people, by virtue of the fact that there are far more of them.
Success doesn't exist in a vacuum. That success was made possible by the society that it took root and grew in. So, no, it's not unreasonable to ask those who reap the biggest benefits from that society to pay more back in than the people who didn't reap such huge rewards. I pay far more in taxes than quite a few people I know. I have no problem with that. I worked hard to get where I am, but without the rest of society, including the people who work at the stores I shop in, the restaurants I eat at, those who clean my office, maintain my yard and the other million little things that need to get done, that success may not have come (nobody to buy my products) and it would be pointless (nobody to do those jobs I mentioned). Given the choice, I'd rather be me and pay those taxes every time instead of being them, making less, and paying lower taxes.
Or it was a war for cheap oil that failed to meet its goal. What I can see is that a) we did not get cheap oil, b) it does appear to be a money sink, and c) the terrorist threat that was the stated reason for the war (smoking gun/mushroom cloud) does not seem to have been seriously diminished by our invasion.
Why do you think the two are mutually exclusive? If he was both stupid, and running an evil conspiracy, it probably wouldn't be surprising that it failed to work out the way he hoped.
Sounds like sometimes things aren't perfectly black and white.
Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with letting the average folks design their own products?
Dad: "Honey, where are the kids?"
Mom: "They're playing by the couch"
Couch: "Burp"
There's a good chance that you're actually already here, so you'd have to work that out with yourself....you don't have a goatee do you? The you that's already here may take that as a bad sign. Sorry, can't help referencing old episodes of "Stellar Voyage". I love that episode where Captain Curt and Mr. Stock go to the "evil" universe though.....
People in parallel universes are excluded as well. Stupid licensing, I wanted to find out who this "Colbert" person that does interviews is. The only famous Colbert here is Vice-President Stephen Colbert, who ran on the Stewart/Colbert ticket in 2000, beating O'Reilly/Hannity in a surprise upset. Enough about politics here in the Dominion of North America though, I'm sure it's probably not that different in your part of the multiverse.....
Exactly, some weird, foreign country.....
You would have missed an opportunity.
You could have said, "You're right, and neither did I", and launch into a discussion about the common misconception about "evolving from monkeys", and correctly explained common ancestry, and the theories about how various apes and humans diverged from that common ancestry. Challenges to science can, if handled well, be a great opportunity to teach, assuming the audience is willing to listen. Even if that particular kid refused to listen, that's fine, the rest of the class might benefit from the discussion.
The reason people dismiss ideas like that are
a) There's no evidence to even suggest, let alone support, the idea of highly technological societies millions of years ago. The idea is entirely rooted in the "I can imagine it, so it could be possible" category, and without evidence it's the plot to a novel, not an avenue of serious study.
b) Even if this ancient technological civilization existed, but managed to leave absolutely no evidence of itself behind, how would you "study" them? You said yourself, the evidence, if there was any, could have been completely erased over millions of years. If they no longer exist, and left no trace of their existence, they might as well never have existed for all practical purposes.
When the argument comes down to "but you can't PROVE that it didn't happen", with nothing else to support it, it's not science, it's entertainment.
If anything, it's arguably safer now. The difference is that now there's a constant stream of news 24/7 that could leave you with the impression that there's a kidnapper behind every mailbox, a murderer behind every tree and a sex offender hiding in the sewer grate outside of every playground. Pre-CNN, the national news programs were about an hour a night, and didn't have the time to inform people in Fair Lawn, New Jersey of all the gory details of a single child kidnapping in Rialto, California. Now though, this kind of news is brought to you in such detail that you feel like the incident happened on your block, instead of a thousand miles away. Constant updates, interviews, commentators, and the inevitable "Could this happen in your town?" piece. This is part of the amazing interconnectedness that we have now. The benefits are massive, but there's a price. It's no wonder that people feel like their under siege and have to protect their children, it's easy to loose perspective in the face of all those reports....