But they're doing 45 billion in business a year... 1 billion of that is under 3% markup. I don't think I'd call that "overpriced"?
Actually, they're loosing 4 to 8 Billion per year, so if you look at their $67B in revenue form 2010, then $8B in losses amounts to 12% operating loss. That kind of performance put GM into bankruptcy in less than 2 years. The post office hasn't turned a profit since congress semi-privatized it in 2006, and cut off its lifeline to the US budget.
The post office operated as a bureaucracy for so long, that the management there is incapable of surviving any real competition. Even in a market, where their monopoly is protected by law, the post office can't compete. That is a really good working definition of incompetent.
Yeah, the billion dollar profits over each of the last 5 years shows they've clearly overpriced themselves in the market, and won't survive long.
Personally, I think the fact you can get letters delivered up to 5,000 miles away for less than $.50 is pretty amazing, but if you want to think that's overpriced and they're screwing you, go right ahead.
For all of those out there who don't understand the post offices financial situation, They are regularly and routinely funded by congress to make up significant shortfalls in their operations. You can look at the USPS annual report for more information. Specifically, Page 86 where you can see that the USPS has had four solid years of 9 digit losses, and that the USPS currently owes the US treasury over 13 Billion in interest free loans. That is *after* the US congress voted in 2009 to forgive $4B in USPS debt to help fund their pension costs.
If that doesn't amount to the US tax payers subsidizing a failed business model, I don't know what does.
Total meltdown is where the rods turn into liquid and drip down into a super-critical pool at the bottom of the reactor. If that happened, you'd know about it, "Fortunate Island" would become more like "Wide Island" than Three Mile Island if you get my reference.
In order for anything to go super-critical, it would first have to be enriched beyond the 20% (40%?) mark. That requires a refinement of the fuel well beyond what is done for power plants. Sorry to disappoint you, but a hydrogen and / or steam explosion is the most your going to get from a nuclear power plant, and even that is relatively unlikely to happen again at this facility. The most you could still get out of Fukashima now would be a Uranium fire and full aught meltdown, but even that is fairly unlikely now.
And your suggestion of a Chernobyl-style sarcophagus being required is still rather unlikely. Since it appears none of the reactors have actually melted down or suffered a substantial failure in containment in the immediate vicinity of the rods themselves, it's quite likely that they'll be able to take them through a more or less normal shutdown and decommissioning once proper cooling is restored.
Unfortunately, Reactor 2 has had damage which puts radiation levels, in parts of the reactor building, too high for humans to work safely. This effectively puts reactor 2 into the realm of entomb and monitor, much like Chernobyl reactor 4. The rest of the Fukashima reactors can likely be decommissioned as you suggest. Reactors 5 and 6 might even be restored to normal function, but #2 is a complete write-off.
To use the car analogy, it would be like posting an auto mechanic position that specifies, "must have real experience with Breaks, Transmission, Steering, Engines, Air Filters, Air Conditioning, Fuel Filters, Suspension, Radiators, Stereos, and Upholstery." It would be reasonable to expect an auto mechanic to be familiar with all of those systems. Similarly, it's reasonable to expect IT professionals to be familiar with a long string of technologies.
To correct your car analogy, it is like posting an auto mechanic position that specifies real experience with Bentley Brakes, Volvo air bags, Ford Transmissions and Lotus engines. Part of what the employer is looking for is someone who knows how to kludge all that together, which you wont get without that exact skill set. Many employers will simply take the closest match they get. That doesn't make the requirements any less ridiculous.
I'm going to have to call BS on that one... In my experience, critical thinking skills are taught much earlier, usually around middle school. Certainly by high school graduation. If an incoming college freshman doesn't have those skills coming in, they definitely won't have them coming out, no matter how good the university.
When was the last time you used BCC? I'm not sure I used it at all in the last five years. Is it even useful for anything practical?
I use it all the time at work, when I want person X to know that I am on top of a situation dealing with person Y, and person Y is being a douche. I usually only have to do this once with any given douche before they do what I tell them to without the stupid games.
If you're going to take nothing more than the fact that I use a particular communication tool as a reason to write me off as irresponsible, I feel fully justified in declaring you as a pompous, superior, neo-luddite based on nothing more than that single Slashdot post.
The difference between you and the OP is that the OP has good reason to worry. FB users post things to FB they shouldn't. I know several people who have been burned by things they posted on social media sites. My estimation of anyone who uses them is automatically adjusted lower, just like anyone who uses texting abbreviations in professional communications. It shows a level of ignorance of proper etiquette and social consequences. Does it mean that everyone who uses FB is stupid? No, but it does make for an easy metric to weed out people who are less likely to make good decisions about confidentiality when they have a personal stake in the results. How are they going to behave when it is some strangers privacy they are destroying? I should also point out that in all of the cases of people I know being burned by social media posts, not one of them learned their lessons, and they all continue posting things that can and probably will be used against them in the future. Social Media is akin to any other addiction, and I don't trust the addicts for the obvious reasons.
But on the other, will we have no discussion of whether a vigilante retaliation is appropriate? Logging in, maybe some embarassing modifications to the web site, sure. Publishing all the employee's e-mails and deleting backups, too? (If someone had come and broken Barr's legs in an alley, would we be so ready to gobble up the technical details of how it'd been done?)
I'll take that one... I think it is reasonably proactive of Anonymous to have taken up this path. HBGary claims to know who at least some influential members of Anonymous are. HBGary also claims to be a security specialist. By demonstrating that HBGary is not competent as a security specialist, Anonymous have also, by extension, cast doubt onto HBGarys claims to know who Anonymous are. This throws any conclusions HBGary may have made public into doubt, and establishes reasonable doubt. This will muddy the waters if anything ever makes it to court.
As long as were on the topic, whatever made you think that a government should have any right or authority that an individual does not have? Why should an individual not be allowed to act in the capacity as judge. Our world has demonstrated repeatedly that those that have been selected by governments to perform as judges are often woefully inadequate to the task, and we would often be better off letting the mob make the decisions, because the judges are outright corrupt. Why is it that when a government retaliates it is called justice, and when and individual retaliates it is called revenge? I call that a monumental violation of common sense, and a most egregious violation of human rights. There should be no power that a government wields that the constituents of that government are prevented from wielding.
The basic idea is that SQL instructions are processed on the back end by an interpreter that accepts whatever plaintext requests it gets. The SQL interpreter has no real security, other than the fact that it is usually set up only to talk to the web front end. The frontend (Java, PHP, whatever) that runs the website, takes user inputs and process' that input, then creates the plaintext command to send to the SQL interpreter. when creating those plaintext commands, the frontend software is sometimes made without any smarts, so that if an attacker knows the correct language for the SQL interpreter being used, and the frontend software doesn't prevent it, you could put in your own plaintext commands instead of whatever you were supposed to put in. The result is that the frontend will simply pass what you gave it directly to the SQL interpreter unmodified, which effectively allows the end user to send commands directly to the SQL interpreter when all they were supposed to be able to do was put in their user name. The most commonly referenced command is "DROP TABLE" which tells the database to delete stuff; hence the xkcd comic about Bobby Tables.
A simple and slightly flawed analogy is a function call into a jump table that is supposed to allow you to call functions 1 through 5, but the function call doesn't check to see what number you gave it so you can actually tell it to call any function in the table just by putting in a different number. A properly written frontend would do the checking to see that all you gave it was a number between 1 and 5. A poorly written front end will just take whatever number you gave it and call that function from the table...
Just because Amazon did the wrong thing doesn't mean Texas is "asking for a handout."
Ahh, but the crux of the problem is this: When amazon starting doing business with Texans, they did so under the belief (for which there is precedent and case law) that they had no responsibility to collect or subsequently remit sales tax to any state they were not incorporated in (i.e. where the home office is). They did everything in good faith, and Texas has every right to change the laws in this regard, but not without first giving Amazon the opportunity to adjust their business model. That is called bait and switch, and is unethical, and out and out illegal when anyone except the government does it. Texas has every right to pass new laws to enact taxes as they see fit within Texas. What they have no right to do is claim unpaid back taxes when no such taxes were due to be collected in the first place. Some sleezeball politician in Texas is simply trying to pull a fast one. Instead of actually working to balance the budget, they are looking for any way to avoid making politically painful cuts, apparently even if it means playing fast and loose with tax law. This is exactly the behavior that made the Tea Party possible in the first place.
Create a (federal) government run site to manage sales-tax related data, and offer an API that can easily integrate with all major services. The coding required for individual vendors would be minimal - when the user clicks the "checkout" button, create a connection to the API requesting the most recent applicable tax rates for the customers address, and apply them to the total. Even a script kiddie could slap together the required code in about 5 minutes. Larger sites could store a local cache of the entire tax database to minimize latency and unneccessary overhead, while smaller vendors would use the simpler approach. For even easier integration, paypal and similar payment-sites could compute the taxes automatically if the vendor requests it.
I'm not saying that this is neccessarily the ideal solution, but it's certainly not an insurmountable problem.
Yeah that sounds like a good idea because everythingelse That the federal government has become involved in works so well.
This business solution is a service better provided by the private sector. If that isn't obvious to you, then you don't have a good grasp of history or government.
The only place where two wrongs make a right is boolean algebra. Revenge/retaliation just continues a cycle of aggression and destruction.
Then why do our laws prosecute people who are not really criminals, and never really hurt anyone before, probably wont hurt anyone again? The reason is deterrent, the ultimate form of which is M.A.D. If it doesn't work, as you say, then why does virtually every government on earth employ this tactic? When an individual does it, its called revenge. When a government does it, its called justice. You can't tell me that's not the ultimate double standard.
"Is it so hard to tweak the Internet to make DDoS impossible?"
Yes.
No, It just requires a little thoughtful design... Amazon has rendered itself demonstrably ddos-proof. Google and Mircosoft are likewise near impossible to take down. If Cicso were to implement the proper tools, we could all have an automated way to stop a ddos within minutes of its start. Because no one has put the tools on the routers, we dont have the tools. Just because internet providers and the router manufacturers have all the foresight of a deep-water fish, doesn't make the desired result impossible.
I see this tribalism is wrong argument popping up quite often but really what is this based on philosophically. I don't know them and they don't know me. I can only assume they are going to look out for their best interests, I therefore must do the same. This does not hold true for my friends and neighbors who I can expect to consider my interests, at least to a degree.
The problem with Tribalism is that it leads to discrimination and in its most extreme form: War. Tribalism is the driving principle behind religious extremism and jihad. Without tribalism, many of our worlds social ills would not exist. That is not to say that other ills wouldn't replace them, but at least we would be rid of a great deal of hostile behavior.
Smarter rats are definitely on my wish list. With the possible exception of the tails, Rats are damn cool pets, especially if you can get ones the size of small dobermans.
They chose? People at the bottom of the socio-economic scale don't have a lot of choice in jobs. And in fact, it might be partly his fault for people's lack of job opportunities depending on how he votes, etc.
That is pure crap. I work for a fortune 500 company, whose primary employee base are those at the bottom of the food chain when they start. I can telly you that hard working people have plenty of opportunity and become successful where I work, and those that are lazy simply fail and go elsewhere. Hard workers never stay on the bottom for long, and lazy people don't make it off the bottom. If we really wanted to help those on the bottom, teach them the value of a hard days work from a young age instead of giving their parents handouts and teaching the kids the wrong lessons. That was why the "New Deal" worked, and welfare/disability are complete failures.
Instead of welfare, guarantee every citizen a job. Make those jobs hard goddamn work, but anyone who needs work will have it. Then people who are down and out have a safety net, but one that no-one will be too comfortable living with unless they have to.
Finally, this is interesting from purely psychological point of view: It proves that the leadership of BoA understands that their actions would be considered evil by common people; thus it seems unlikely that they are psychopaths, as common theories hold, but rather simply evil.
Actually, they would be sociopaths.
Psychopaths kill for no reason, Sociopaths kill for money...
Everytime someone spouts bullshit like that, I'm reminded of the McDonald's waitress that was raped while her supervisor was looking on. The corporate world won't ensure the protection of their workers on the workplace because it costs money. Ensuring the integrity of their slaves is counter productive because those people are harder to abuse. You know why the girl didn't resist or try to escape? Because she would have been FIRED on the spot for DISOBEYING her managers orders.
That is patently absurd. Just about all companies with any history at all, and with more than 100 employees take employee safety very seriously. This has nothing to do with being conscientious employers, but merely with the bottom line. Injuries and harassment lawsuits cost far more money than proper safety training and equipment. Win or lose, the company looses either way. Any manager worth his/her salt will go to great lengths to keep his/her employees as safe as possible. Bad actors don't last long.
In the case of the Honeywell plant, it is very telling that the temp workers are cheating on the safety tests, and even more telling that the companies biggest complaint was that the union did not give 24 hours notice before the strike.
Employees not knowing the necessary safety information at a nuclear power plant is downright scary. Almost as scary as all of the union people walking out all at once without telling anyone in advance. Both sides are playing dirty pool and need to get slapped, but the union gave up the moral high ground when they went on strike without notice. Hell, even the city bus drivers will give a days notice, and their industry doesn't involve the potential to kill 10 million people with one accident...
So the CIA should just hire some thugs to murder the entire staff of Wikileaks and dismember the bodies?
That sounds about right for the level of thinking we can expect out of our various government agencies. Its not that I advocate that kind of behavior from the CIA, just that I expect it.
You blithely left the nuclear weapon plans discussion point untouched. The subject which you ignored provides you with all you need to think about the issue further.
I will take on that challenge.
Having the plans for building a thermonuclear weapon is not enough by itself to actually build one. The process of creating the fuel is so complex that no one could manage it without a fairly large organization and some very sophisticated engineering. The knowledge alone is not enough. So once again we are back to a situation where secrets are bad for society. Try again.
Then I must ask: Do you live by it? Do you tell the truth, at all times, in your life? That doesn't just mean only saying what is true, that means never omitting important details, never keeping your peace when there is something that would be relevant to say. That includes things like white lies to try and make people feel better and so on. It also means providing anyone who asks with full and complete information on any subject they ask.
This is a rhetorical question because I know you don't, nobody does. There are plenty of reasons to keep secrets.
Now I'm not arguing about if specific secret should be kept or not, but it makes your "Revealing the truth is *never* inappropriate behavior," statement look rather silly.
In my experience, no one is perfect. As you have mentioned, I have not always practiced what I preach. I can however state, without reservation, that in all cases I would have been better off had I followed my conscience, and spoke the truth.
What "good reason" for keeping secrets are you referring to? I can think of none that makes the world a better place. At best, I can think of a few that didn't make it significantly worse.
Slashdot Mirror
But they're doing 45 billion in business a year... 1 billion of that is under 3% markup. I don't think I'd call that "overpriced"?
Actually, they're loosing 4 to 8 Billion per year, so if you look at their $67B in revenue form 2010, then $8B in losses amounts to 12% operating loss. That kind of performance put GM into bankruptcy in less than 2 years. The post office hasn't turned a profit since congress semi-privatized it in 2006, and cut off its lifeline to the US budget.
The post office operated as a bureaucracy for so long, that the management there is incapable of surviving any real competition. Even in a market, where their monopoly is protected by law, the post office can't compete. That is a really good working definition of incompetent.
-=Geoskd
Yeah, the billion dollar profits over each of the last 5 years shows they've clearly overpriced themselves in the market, and won't survive long.
Personally, I think the fact you can get letters delivered up to 5,000 miles away for less than $.50 is pretty amazing, but if you want to think that's overpriced and they're screwing you, go right ahead.
For all of those out there who don't understand the post offices financial situation, They are regularly and routinely funded by congress to make up significant shortfalls in their operations. You can look at the USPS annual report for more information. Specifically, Page 86 where you can see that the USPS has had four solid years of 9 digit losses, and that the USPS currently owes the US treasury over 13 Billion in interest free loans. That is *after* the US congress voted in 2009 to forgive $4B in USPS debt to help fund their pension costs.
If that doesn't amount to the US tax payers subsidizing a failed business model, I don't know what does.
-=Geoskd
Total meltdown is where the rods turn into liquid and drip down into a super-critical pool at the bottom of the reactor. If that happened, you'd know about it, "Fortunate Island" would become more like "Wide Island" than Three Mile Island if you get my reference .
In order for anything to go super-critical, it would first have to be enriched beyond the 20% (40%?) mark. That requires a refinement of the fuel well beyond what is done for power plants. Sorry to disappoint you, but a hydrogen and / or steam explosion is the most your going to get from a nuclear power plant, and even that is relatively unlikely to happen again at this facility. The most you could still get out of Fukashima now would be a Uranium fire and full aught meltdown, but even that is fairly unlikely now.
-=Geoskd
And your suggestion of a Chernobyl-style sarcophagus being required is still rather unlikely. Since it appears none of the reactors have actually melted down or suffered a substantial failure in containment in the immediate vicinity of the rods themselves, it's quite likely that they'll be able to take them through a more or less normal shutdown and decommissioning once proper cooling is restored.
Unfortunately, Reactor 2 has had damage which puts radiation levels, in parts of the reactor building, too high for humans to work safely. This effectively puts reactor 2 into the realm of entomb and monitor, much like Chernobyl reactor 4. The rest of the Fukashima reactors can likely be decommissioned as you suggest. Reactors 5 and 6 might even be restored to normal function, but #2 is a complete write-off.
-=Geoskd
and more importantly, what is a China Syndrome called when it happens in Japan???
A Toledo syndrome...
many modern business methods have come out of there, including the Toyota system...
Is that the system where they just keep going without stopping?
To use the car analogy, it would be like posting an auto mechanic position that specifies, "must have real experience with Breaks, Transmission, Steering, Engines, Air Filters, Air Conditioning, Fuel Filters, Suspension, Radiators, Stereos, and Upholstery." It would be reasonable to expect an auto mechanic to be familiar with all of those systems. Similarly, it's reasonable to expect IT professionals to be familiar with a long string of technologies.
To correct your car analogy, it is like posting an auto mechanic position that specifies real experience with Bentley Brakes, Volvo air bags, Ford Transmissions and Lotus engines. Part of what the employer is looking for is someone who knows how to kludge all that together, which you wont get without that exact skill set. Many employers will simply take the closest match they get. That doesn't make the requirements any less ridiculous.
-=Geoskd
I fail to see why business should expect new graduates to be ready to work
Because once in a while they find such a person, and it ruins it for everyone else.
-=Geoskd
University gives you critical thinking skills.
I'm going to have to call BS on that one... In my experience, critical thinking skills are taught much earlier, usually around middle school. Certainly by high school graduation. If an incoming college freshman doesn't have those skills coming in, they definitely won't have them coming out, no matter how good the university.
-Geoskd
When was the last time you used BCC? I'm not sure I used it at all in the last five years. Is it even useful for anything practical?
I use it all the time at work, when I want person X to know that I am on top of a situation dealing with person Y, and person Y is being a douche. I usually only have to do this once with any given douche before they do what I tell them to without the stupid games.
-=Geoskd
If you're going to take nothing more than the fact that I use a particular communication tool as a reason to write me off as irresponsible, I feel fully justified in declaring you as a pompous, superior, neo-luddite based on nothing more than that single Slashdot post.
The difference between you and the OP is that the OP has good reason to worry. FB users post things to FB they shouldn't. I know several people who have been burned by things they posted on social media sites. My estimation of anyone who uses them is automatically adjusted lower, just like anyone who uses texting abbreviations in professional communications. It shows a level of ignorance of proper etiquette and social consequences. Does it mean that everyone who uses FB is stupid? No, but it does make for an easy metric to weed out people who are less likely to make good decisions about confidentiality when they have a personal stake in the results. How are they going to behave when it is some strangers privacy they are destroying? I should also point out that in all of the cases of people I know being burned by social media posts, not one of them learned their lessons, and they all continue posting things that can and probably will be used against them in the future. Social Media is akin to any other addiction, and I don't trust the addicts for the obvious reasons.
-=Geoskd
But on the other, will we have no discussion of whether a vigilante retaliation is appropriate? Logging in, maybe some embarassing modifications to the web site, sure. Publishing all the employee's e-mails and deleting backups, too? (If someone had come and broken Barr's legs in an alley, would we be so ready to gobble up the technical details of how it'd been done?)
I'll take that one... I think it is reasonably proactive of Anonymous to have taken up this path. HBGary claims to know who at least some influential members of Anonymous are. HBGary also claims to be a security specialist. By demonstrating that HBGary is not competent as a security specialist, Anonymous have also, by extension, cast doubt onto HBGarys claims to know who Anonymous are. This throws any conclusions HBGary may have made public into doubt, and establishes reasonable doubt. This will muddy the waters if anything ever makes it to court.
As long as were on the topic, whatever made you think that a government should have any right or authority that an individual does not have? Why should an individual not be allowed to act in the capacity as judge. Our world has demonstrated repeatedly that those that have been selected by governments to perform as judges are often woefully inadequate to the task, and we would often be better off letting the mob make the decisions, because the judges are outright corrupt. Why is it that when a government retaliates it is called justice, and when and individual retaliates it is called revenge? I call that a monumental violation of common sense, and a most egregious violation of human rights. There should be no power that a government wields that the constituents of that government are prevented from wielding.
-=Geoskd
The basic idea is that SQL instructions are processed on the back end by an interpreter that accepts whatever plaintext requests it gets. The SQL interpreter has no real security, other than the fact that it is usually set up only to talk to the web front end. The frontend (Java, PHP, whatever) that runs the website, takes user inputs and process' that input, then creates the plaintext command to send to the SQL interpreter. when creating those plaintext commands, the frontend software is sometimes made without any smarts, so that if an attacker knows the correct language for the SQL interpreter being used, and the frontend software doesn't prevent it, you could put in your own plaintext commands instead of whatever you were supposed to put in. The result is that the frontend will simply pass what you gave it directly to the SQL interpreter unmodified, which effectively allows the end user to send commands directly to the SQL interpreter when all they were supposed to be able to do was put in their user name. The most commonly referenced command is "DROP TABLE" which tells the database to delete stuff; hence the xkcd comic about Bobby Tables.
A simple and slightly flawed analogy is a function call into a jump table that is supposed to allow you to call functions 1 through 5, but the function call doesn't check to see what number you gave it so you can actually tell it to call any function in the table just by putting in a different number. A properly written frontend would do the checking to see that all you gave it was a number between 1 and 5. A poorly written front end will just take whatever number you gave it and call that function from the table...
-=Geoskd
Just because Amazon did the wrong thing doesn't mean Texas is "asking for a handout."
Ahh, but the crux of the problem is this: When amazon starting doing business with Texans, they did so under the belief (for which there is precedent and case law) that they had no responsibility to collect or subsequently remit sales tax to any state they were not incorporated in (i.e. where the home office is). They did everything in good faith, and Texas has every right to change the laws in this regard, but not without first giving Amazon the opportunity to adjust their business model. That is called bait and switch, and is unethical, and out and out illegal when anyone except the government does it. Texas has every right to pass new laws to enact taxes as they see fit within Texas. What they have no right to do is claim unpaid back taxes when no such taxes were due to be collected in the first place. Some sleezeball politician in Texas is simply trying to pull a fast one. Instead of actually working to balance the budget, they are looking for any way to avoid making politically painful cuts, apparently even if it means playing fast and loose with tax law. This is exactly the behavior that made the Tea Party possible in the first place.
-=Geoskd
Create a (federal) government run site to manage sales-tax related data, and offer an API that can easily integrate with all major services. The coding required for individual vendors would be minimal - when the user clicks the "checkout" button, create a connection to the API requesting the most recent applicable tax rates for the customers address, and apply them to the total. Even a script kiddie could slap together the required code in about 5 minutes. Larger sites could store a local cache of the entire tax database to minimize latency and unneccessary overhead, while smaller vendors would use the simpler approach. For even easier integration, paypal and similar payment-sites could compute the taxes automatically if the vendor requests it.
I'm not saying that this is neccessarily the ideal solution, but it's certainly not an insurmountable problem.
Yeah that sounds like a good idea because everything else That the federal government has become involved in works so well.
This business solution is a service better provided by the private sector. If that isn't obvious to you, then you don't have a good grasp of history or government.
-=Geoskd
The only place where two wrongs make a right is boolean algebra. Revenge/retaliation just continues a cycle of aggression and destruction.
Then why do our laws prosecute people who are not really criminals, and never really hurt anyone before, probably wont hurt anyone again? The reason is deterrent, the ultimate form of which is M.A.D. If it doesn't work, as you say, then why does virtually every government on earth employ this tactic? When an individual does it, its called revenge. When a government does it, its called justice. You can't tell me that's not the ultimate double standard.
-=Geoskd
"Is it so hard to tweak the Internet to make DDoS impossible?"
Yes.
No, It just requires a little thoughtful design... Amazon has rendered itself demonstrably ddos-proof. Google and Mircosoft are likewise near impossible to take down. If Cicso were to implement the proper tools, we could all have an automated way to stop a ddos within minutes of its start. Because no one has put the tools on the routers, we dont have the tools. Just because internet providers and the router manufacturers have all the foresight of a deep-water fish, doesn't make the desired result impossible.
-=Geoskd
I see this tribalism is wrong argument popping up quite often but really what is this based on philosophically. I don't know them and they don't know me. I can only assume they are going to look out for their best interests, I therefore must do the same. This does not hold true for my friends and neighbors who I can expect to consider my interests, at least to a degree.
The problem with Tribalism is that it leads to discrimination and in its most extreme form: War. Tribalism is the driving principle behind religious extremism and jihad. Without tribalism, many of our worlds social ills would not exist. That is not to say that other ills wouldn't replace them, but at least we would be rid of a great deal of hostile behavior.
-=Geoskd
Smarter rats are definitely on my wish list. With the possible exception of the tails, Rats are damn cool pets, especially if you can get ones the size of small dobermans.
-=Geoskd
They chose? People at the bottom of the socio-economic scale don't have a lot of choice in jobs. And in fact, it might be partly his fault for people's lack of job opportunities depending on how he votes, etc.
That is pure crap. I work for a fortune 500 company, whose primary employee base are those at the bottom of the food chain when they start. I can telly you that hard working people have plenty of opportunity and become successful where I work, and those that are lazy simply fail and go elsewhere. Hard workers never stay on the bottom for long, and lazy people don't make it off the bottom. If we really wanted to help those on the bottom, teach them the value of a hard days work from a young age instead of giving their parents handouts and teaching the kids the wrong lessons. That was why the "New Deal" worked, and welfare/disability are complete failures.
Instead of welfare, guarantee every citizen a job. Make those jobs hard goddamn work, but anyone who needs work will have it. Then people who are down and out have a safety net, but one that no-one will be too comfortable living with unless they have to.
-=Geoskd
Finally, this is interesting from purely psychological point of view: It proves that the leadership of BoA understands that their actions would be considered evil by common people; thus it seems unlikely that they are psychopaths, as common theories hold, but rather simply evil.
Actually, they would be sociopaths.
Psychopaths kill for no reason, Sociopaths kill for money...
-=Geoskd
Everytime someone spouts bullshit like that, I'm reminded of the McDonald's waitress that was raped while her supervisor was looking on. The corporate world won't ensure the protection of their workers on the workplace because it costs money. Ensuring the integrity of their slaves is counter productive because those people are harder to abuse. You know why the girl didn't resist or try to escape? Because she would have been FIRED on the spot for DISOBEYING her managers orders.
That is patently absurd. Just about all companies with any history at all, and with more than 100 employees take employee safety very seriously. This has nothing to do with being conscientious employers, but merely with the bottom line. Injuries and harassment lawsuits cost far more money than proper safety training and equipment. Win or lose, the company looses either way. Any manager worth his/her salt will go to great lengths to keep his/her employees as safe as possible. Bad actors don't last long.
In the case of the Honeywell plant, it is very telling that the temp workers are cheating on the safety tests, and even more telling that the companies biggest complaint was that the union did not give 24 hours notice before the strike.
Employees not knowing the necessary safety information at a nuclear power plant is downright scary. Almost as scary as all of the union people walking out all at once without telling anyone in advance. Both sides are playing dirty pool and need to get slapped, but the union gave up the moral high ground when they went on strike without notice. Hell, even the city bus drivers will give a days notice, and their industry doesn't involve the potential to kill 10 million people with one accident...
-=Geoskd
So the CIA should just hire some thugs to murder the entire staff of Wikileaks and dismember the bodies?
That sounds about right for the level of thinking we can expect out of our various government agencies. Its not that I advocate that kind of behavior from the CIA, just that I expect it.
-=Geoskd
You blithely left the nuclear weapon plans discussion point untouched. The subject which you ignored provides you with all you need to think about the issue further.
I will take on that challenge.
Having the plans for building a thermonuclear weapon is not enough by itself to actually build one. The process of creating the fuel is so complex that no one could manage it without a fairly large organization and some very sophisticated engineering. The knowledge alone is not enough. So once again we are back to a situation where secrets are bad for society. Try again.
-=Geoskd
Then I must ask: Do you live by it? Do you tell the truth, at all times, in your life? That doesn't just mean only saying what is true, that means never omitting important details, never keeping your peace when there is something that would be relevant to say. That includes things like white lies to try and make people feel better and so on. It also means providing anyone who asks with full and complete information on any subject they ask.
This is a rhetorical question because I know you don't, nobody does. There are plenty of reasons to keep secrets.
Now I'm not arguing about if specific secret should be kept or not, but it makes your "Revealing the truth is *never* inappropriate behavior," statement look rather silly.
In my experience, no one is perfect. As you have mentioned, I have not always practiced what I preach. I can however state, without reservation, that in all cases I would have been better off had I followed my conscience, and spoke the truth.
What "good reason" for keeping secrets are you referring to? I can think of none that makes the world a better place. At best, I can think of a few that didn't make it significantly worse.
-=Geoskd