Because they do not have the capability of quitting their jobs? Or "can't" in the hypothetical sense, akin to "would not consider it, despite wishing they could"?
There's nothing hypothetical about "would not consider it, despite wishing they could, because they then wouldn't be able to pay the rent, buy the kids clothes or put food on the table".
No, blackmail is a threat of violence to one's reputation, not one's person... and I just came to the conclusion that it really shouldn't be illegal.
So you do agree force is not limited to physical violence. Good to know.
As to the question this all seems to revolve around, I would have to say that I do not believe that it can be more, but with qualifications: I include physical restraint of one's person as the use of physical violence, the destruction of property, the act of trespassing, and pollution as physical violence.
But not, apparently, blackmailing someone with compromising photos.
Now that decent keyboards exist for the iPad, I've been thinking about switching to an iPad for my main portable myself-- despite all the people expressing disdain here, I can't see any downside. Smaller and lighter, thus easier to carry everywhere, and longer battery life-- seems an obvious choice.
I go the other way, personally. If you're going to carry around an iPad keyboard (and suitable case to fit it all in), why wouldn't you be carrying an 11" MacBook Air instead ?
I just want to make certain that you're making the claim you're making, here: frequently there are people that quit their jobs that are incapable of performing any other job, in areas where jobs they are capable of performing do not exist, and where they have no friends or family to network with them to help find a job and/or provide meager support until they can.
No, I'm saying frequently people don't quit their crappy jobs to try and find something better because they can't - either in reality or perception.
I never claimed that physical violence has to take place in order for ANYTHING to be considered a crime; the threat of physical violence would suffice; what I was arguing about is the means by which the police obtain knowledge about such crimes. And I am aware that physical violence is not the only means by which crimes may be committed; blackmail is an act of force, and ponzi schemes are fraud.
Blackmail is not always an act (or threat) of _physical_ violence, which brings us back to the actual question: do you agree "force" can be more than just physical violence ?
No, this is adequate evidence. The question is how they go about obtaining this information.
No, that's an irrelevant straw man argument you are making to try and change the context of the discussion, most likely to angle towards and justify some anti-Government rant.
Having connections in these networks - through informants and undercover police - would make the most sense, but I do believe that there are illegitimate means by which this information may be obtained (unless the act of obtaining this information was targeted, substantiated with evidence, and backed by a court). And I think that last part is optional... it all depends on the risk factor; i.e. balancing threat of breaching another's privacy and exposing themselves to litigation or exposing a potential murder. The stronger the evidence, the more justified the intrusion, but only in individual circumstances.
If you are, in a roundabout way, asking whether or not corruption can exist, then the answer is: of course. But it's not relevant to the discussion.
Psst, random Google result: try this [greghaygood.com].
If that's your idea of "create their own custom CentOS distribution for installation over PXE", then yes, I suppose anyone could do it in a matter of hours.
That is a hypothetical situation that has no connection with reality.
Uh, what ? Reality is millions of people living paycheque to paycheque. They have no bargaining power with their employer (current or future), cannot risk the loss of income from quitting and lack the financial resources to relocate.
In the real world, a man can choose to work for 12 hours a day for a company, choose to look for other companies to work for that do not require such long hours, choose to ask for help of his community to find another job or gain support in the interim, or any number of other things before he begins to starve.
No, he can choose to HOPE those things might be possible. Frequently they are not, either explicitly or in perception.
This is not force; what you're talking about is a lack of active will that you claim requires force to make unnecessary.
Having to accept changes to an employment arrangement because if you don't you'll be out of a job with little hope of finding anything different, is most certainly a decision made under duress.
Not precisely.
True enough. Non-sequitur or false dichotomy would also have described your logical fallacy adequately.
It wasn't an attack, but a generalizing question. Since you have made no claim or suggestion concerning that topic, I over-exaggerated. And it's not an attack either, which straw man arguments are...
A straw man argument is not an attack. It is a misrepresentation of the other parties' positions, and/or the use of false assumptions.
Changing the context of the argument from one of 'should law enforcement be able to act to prevent violent crime' and 'can force take forms other than physical violence' to 'should law enforcement be able to monitor everyone 24/7', for example, like you did.
Yes, I used the word "invite." That's no reason to bash me over the head with it.
The word itself is a minor semantic issue. The problem is your fundamental attitude that a crime can't be considered to have occurred until physical violence has taken place. Not only because of behaviour like murder plots, but also things like blackmail and ponzi schemes.
I meant pre-crime investigation; say, the spouse would like the police to help her investigate her husband's strange behavior: flippant remarks about death, can't stop laughing when she mentions her future plans, and/or recent purchase of several new collections of cutlery when he never even enters the kitchen. They would then be allowed to remote into the couple's home computer and check things out, since (as a spouse) there is co-ownership involved. If he's been searching for the locations of major arteries, been downloading gore pictures and videos, and/or researching murder with sharp implements, then the police can safely say that she should get the heck out of Dodge. And then they could send a patrol car down to have a chat with the guy. Maybe send him to a special hospital.
Er, right. So if someone is acting like the villain in a comedy film, then the police are ok to take action, but if he's acting in a way more connected to reality - say, asking the cousin of the woman he's having an affair with if he knows anyone who's a "problem solver" at the local bikie bar - then they can't do anything.
Your first example is not representative of a situation in which force is being used.
It is for the person who has the choice of doing it or starving.
An employer has the right (or should have the right) to request what he wants of his workers; what he risks is that his workers will no longer work for him, as it is the workers' choice whether or not to be employed by them. Also, there is a difference between quitting a job and becoming permanently unemployed; either way, it is still the choice of the worker.
If by "choice" you mean "they can do it or choose to die".
Finally: how would police prove that a husband was "conspiring" to kill his wife?
Evidence ?
Should the police have the power to watch over every second of everyone's lives to prevent this occurrence?
This is a straw man.
No. Murder does happen - albeit rarely - and it is horrific when it does. However, preventing such horrific events is dependent on a healthy codependent relationship between citizens and their police force. Citizens should be able to invite investigation into their own lives, but legislation should not be passed that would allow involuntary intrusion. These laws would provide the police with authorization that in turn would validate a spirit of conspiracy, suspicion, and distrust of the common citizenry. This is unhealthy and promotes corruption and attracts corruptible individuals.
Right. So the Police have to wait from an invitation before they can do anything. I'm sure that will work out just great.
So when you get "an offer you can't refuse" - say, to work 12 hour days or end up unemployed and starving - do you want laws to protect against this, or not ?
Do you accept "force" can take forms other than simple physical violence (or the threat thereof) ?
I never said that the government should be given the resources to predict, surveil, or intrude; it should have the resources to adequately defend individual rights when the emergency is at hand, but never at the expense of individual privacy.
So the Police couldn't arrest a husband for conspiring to kill his wife, but would have to wait until the murder was actually committed ?
They do, but they exist as violations of individual rights; government's role is to protect its citizenry against these violations (through a police force, the courts, a prison system, the military, etc.).
So you want more expansive and invasive laws than we have now ?
You are saying the only way to accomplish the voluntary exchange of goods and services to mutual benefit (the definition of capitalism) is to use violence, [...]
You may be more familiar with this concept as "laws".
something expressly forbidden in capitalism.
Capitalism is an economic system where wealth is privately held. Saying "capitalism forbids violence", is like saying "capitalism forbids smelly feet".
False. If it costs X to do Y, and you have to do Y, then you need to make X. The problem in this equation is that you make <X.
In order to maintain financial health, private citizens and organizations are required to spend less money than they take in. For some reason, "economists" such as yourself think this principle magically does not apply to governments.
For some reason you seem to think - despite Government revenue being historically quite low at the present time - it can't increase.
During the Carter years, when the top tax rate was 90%, the top 1% of taxpayers paid about 20% of all income taxes.
What was the wealth distribution ? What was the income spread ?
Now, with those evil, reviled Bush tax cuts for the evil and reviled rich (who clearly belong in concentration camps after we sieze their ill-gotten gains), the top 1% of yaxpayer pay about 40% of all income taxes.
They also make ~80% of the income. No wonder they're so much happier these days.
The simple fact is that the USA is one of the lowest taxing countries in the OECD. There's no reason whatsoever to believe that higher taxes wouldn't lead to higher revenues.
I fail to see how this is even remotely Insightful as it is made up of primarily a huge assumption. I said nothing about all taxes being theft. If you read carefully you may realize that the taxes I was speaking of are those designed with the goal of "wealth redistribution" in mind.
All taxation is essentially wealth redistribution of some kind.
The only legitimate justification of taxes are to pay for legitimate functions of a proper limited government. It should not be the role of government to see that you are fed, clothed and housed.
Many - probably most - would argue that providing for basic living conditions are absolutely a legitimate function of Government.
Nor is it the proper role of government to decide, by way of wealth redistribution, that someone is too rich and we must take from them and give to someone else.
So your ideal taxation structure would be one where everyone pays an identical, fixed amount each year, independent of their income or wealth ?
A federal government that does little more than provide for my safety, prosecutes federal crimes, acts as a unified entity to other countries, and keeps up interstate infrastructure sounds like a dream to me.
Which still requires taxation.
Everything else can be done by the states.
So how are you planning to fund your state government without taxation ?
Your average computer person who can read a blog can create their own custom CentOS distribution for installation over PXE in a couple hours (or a lot less).
Firstly, you're already comparing apples to oranges ("average person who knows how to install Windows" vs "average computer person") to suit your bias.
Secondly, having spent a sizeable chunk of my career as a Linux sysadmin, and been responsible for setting up and maintaining several unattended install environments, the idea that some random person only capable of installing Linux from a CD can sit down and create one in a matter of hours is utterly laughable.
I'll bite... and exactly what would you advocate to "fix the distribution of wealth in this country"? Wholesale theft and armed robbery (but we'll call it taxes and execute it through the government so it'll be okay)?
So you're clearly someone who believes there should be no taxes at all.
How are you planning to finance even a basic and useless Government that does nothing more than provide an army and court system ?
Someone who ran Mandrake eight years ago would have no trouble at all migrating to kubuntu 11. Someone running Windows 98 or XP at that time has to relearn everything when upgrading to Win 7.
Complete and utter bullshit. The basic structure of the current Windows UI (Start Menu, Desktop, Taskbar, application and document windows, etc) hasn't changed significantly since Windows 95, and in many ways (window manipulation, drop-down menus, the concept of document-application associations) since Windows 3.0.
Anyone who has significant problems going from Windows XP, 98, or even 95 to 7, is going to have _at least_ as much trouble moving between just about any two Linux distributions.
The rest of your rant is equally biased and inaccurate.
I'm not saying bad nor good, just saying that the sole reason for doing what they are doing is because our immigration laws were designed with the assumption that those outside of the US borders do not have particularly easy access to our major places of business.
Given the proximity of Canada and Mexico (heck, even parts of Europe and South America), that seems like a rather odd assumption.
Which means the HD manufacturers may go the way of the dinosaur in a few years.
No chance. Out in the enterprise, storage requirements volume-wise are accelerating every year. SSDs simply don't have have the capacity at a competitive price.
If I've got 100TB I need to store, and performance requirements are modest, SSDs haven't even got a look in.
I have an Optiplex at my desk, and it's a fairly powerfull machine (for its time), running RHEL5 (probably officially supported). Methinks optiplex is their line for workstations needing some "ooomph" (but cheaper than the certified-for-everything line of workstations which I can't remember what's called), not just typing stuff into word?
The point of the Optiplex line is not to have more "oomph", but to be a consistent hardware platform with a known lifecycle (usually at least a few years) and support timeframe. Broadly speaking they also have better components, construction, materials and QA.
This is in contrast to "consumer" models like the Inspiron whose release cycles might be less than a year, or have some of the details of the hardware (eg: onboard NIC chipset) change throughout its lifetime without notification.
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There's nothing hypothetical about "would not consider it, despite wishing they could, because they then wouldn't be able to pay the rent, buy the kids clothes or put food on the table".
So you do agree force is not limited to physical violence. Good to know.
But not, apparently, blackmailing someone with compromising photos.
I go the other way, personally. If you're going to carry around an iPad keyboard (and suitable case to fit it all in), why wouldn't you be carrying an 11" MacBook Air instead ?
No, I'm saying frequently people don't quit their crappy jobs to try and find something better because they can't - either in reality or perception.
Blackmail is not always an act (or threat) of _physical_ violence, which brings us back to the actual question: do you agree "force" can be more than just physical violence ?
No, that's an irrelevant straw man argument you are making to try and change the context of the discussion, most likely to angle towards and justify some anti-Government rant.
If you are, in a roundabout way, asking whether or not corruption can exist, then the answer is: of course. But it's not relevant to the discussion.
If that's your idea of "create their own custom CentOS distribution for installation over PXE", then yes, I suppose anyone could do it in a matter of hours.
As could someone with Windows.
Uh, what ? Reality is millions of people living paycheque to paycheque. They have no bargaining power with their employer (current or future), cannot risk the loss of income from quitting and lack the financial resources to relocate.
No, he can choose to HOPE those things might be possible. Frequently they are not, either explicitly or in perception.
Having to accept changes to an employment arrangement because if you don't you'll be out of a job with little hope of finding anything different, is most certainly a decision made under duress.
True enough. Non-sequitur or false dichotomy would also have described your logical fallacy adequately.
A straw man argument is not an attack. It is a misrepresentation of the other parties' positions, and/or the use of false assumptions.
Changing the context of the argument from one of 'should law enforcement be able to act to prevent violent crime' and 'can force take forms other than physical violence' to 'should law enforcement be able to monitor everyone 24/7', for example, like you did.
The word itself is a minor semantic issue. The problem is your fundamental attitude that a crime can't be considered to have occurred until physical violence has taken place. Not only because of behaviour like murder plots, but also things like blackmail and ponzi schemes.
Er, right. So if someone is acting like the villain in a comedy film, then the police are ok to take action, but if he's acting in a way more connected to reality - say, asking the cousin of the woman he's having an affair with if he knows anyone who's a "problem solver" at the local bikie bar - then they can't do anything.
It is for the person who has the choice of doing it or starving.
If by "choice" you mean "they can do it or choose to die".
Evidence ?
This is a straw man.
Right. So the Police have to wait from an invitation before they can do anything. I'm sure that will work out just great.
So when you get "an offer you can't refuse" - say, to work 12 hour days or end up unemployed and starving - do you want laws to protect against this, or not ?
Do you accept "force" can take forms other than simple physical violence (or the threat thereof) ?
So the Police couldn't arrest a husband for conspiring to kill his wife, but would have to wait until the murder was actually committed ?
So you want more expansive and invasive laws than we have now ?
You may be more familiar with this concept as "laws".
Capitalism is an economic system where wealth is privately held. Saying "capitalism forbids violence", is like saying "capitalism forbids smelly feet".
So "offers you can't refuse" don't exist in your world ?
False. If it costs X to do Y, and you have to do Y, then you need to make X. The problem in this equation is that you make <X.
For some reason you seem to think - despite Government revenue being historically quite low at the present time - it can't increase.
What was the wealth distribution ? What was the income spread ?
They also make ~80% of the income. No wonder they're so much happier these days.
The simple fact is that the USA is one of the lowest taxing countries in the OECD. There's no reason whatsoever to believe that higher taxes wouldn't lead to higher revenues.
Your Uncle is a straw man ?
All taxation is essentially wealth redistribution of some kind.
Many - probably most - would argue that providing for basic living conditions are absolutely a legitimate function of Government.
So your ideal taxation structure would be one where everyone pays an identical, fixed amount each year, independent of their income or wealth ?
Which still requires taxation.
So how are you planning to fund your state government without taxation ?
Firstly, you're already comparing apples to oranges ("average person who knows how to install Windows" vs "average computer person") to suit your bias.
Secondly, having spent a sizeable chunk of my career as a Linux sysadmin, and been responsible for setting up and maintaining several unattended install environments, the idea that some random person only capable of installing Linux from a CD can sit down and create one in a matter of hours is utterly laughable.
So you're clearly someone who believes there should be no taxes at all.
How are you planning to finance even a basic and useless Government that does nothing more than provide an army and court system ?
Unsurprisingly, so are unattended Windows installations. That is, after all, kind of the point of an unattended install.
Complete and utter bullshit. The basic structure of the current Windows UI (Start Menu, Desktop, Taskbar, application and document windows, etc) hasn't changed significantly since Windows 95, and in many ways (window manipulation, drop-down menus, the concept of document-application associations) since Windows 3.0.
Anyone who has significant problems going from Windows XP, 98, or even 95 to 7, is going to have _at least_ as much trouble moving between just about any two Linux distributions.
The rest of your rant is equally biased and inaccurate.
Given the proximity of Canada and Mexico (heck, even parts of Europe and South America), that seems like a rather odd assumption.
No chance. Out in the enterprise, storage requirements volume-wise are accelerating every year. SSDs simply don't have have the capacity at a competitive price.
If I've got 100TB I need to store, and performance requirements are modest, SSDs haven't even got a look in.
Which model, and what was different ?
The point of the Optiplex line is not to have more "oomph", but to be a consistent hardware platform with a known lifecycle (usually at least a few years) and support timeframe. Broadly speaking they also have better components, construction, materials and QA.
This is in contrast to "consumer" models like the Inspiron whose release cycles might be less than a year, or have some of the details of the hardware (eg: onboard NIC chipset) change throughout its lifetime without notification.
ITT: Americans discovering how expensive the rest of the world is.
My house has security screens and deadbolt doors. I guess that means I don't need a guard dog or a gun, then ?