According to http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_citizen_abolitionist.html he did own two slaves. However, his opinions evolved to the point that later in life he was the president of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage
While I agree that credit card fraud is getting worse and we need to do something, I object to the immediate demonization of the restaurants as 'incompetent'. In this case, the restaurant group is a larger group with more money to play with, but what about single mom-and-pop restaurants? They may be extremely competent at running a restaurant..
Is it reasonable to suggest that every restaurant or store that takes credit cards must be run by certified network security geeks? No. The reason this is happening is that Visa and Mastercard hold all the cards (no pun intended). They can decide that they are not responsible for anything and who is going to tell them otherwise? Grandma of Grandma's Diner is going to understand the technical issues involved and take Visa down in court? Right.
In defense of support people everywhere, there is a reason for the scripting. Yes, you may know what you are doing. Unfortunately, most people SAY they do even when they know nothing.
I don't have to work with a script, thankfully, but I always start at the beginning. People rarely define the problem they're having correctly. "I can't get on the Internet." can be (and has been, in my experience) the result of the computer not being plugged in. Also, I can't tell you the number of times people will say, "Yeah, I tried all that already. The cables are all plugged in. Nothing has changed." *An hour later* "Oh, this cable isn't plugged in, could that be the problem?" In fact, "Nothing has changed" is a running joke in my office.
My favorite was the guy who started the conversation by yelling at me that he had a master's degree in computer engineering, so there was absolutely no way the problem could be on his end and I better fix it right now. I explained that others were not having the same problem, so I had to check a few things on his side anyway...
I really hate this argument. If I send money to the ACLU, that is voluntary support based on my political views. Just because I need a job does NOT mean that the CEO speaks for me. I provide labor for the company and they provide money for me. That is the end of our relationship.
This whole concept of corporations having freedom of speech is ridiculous. If a CEO wants to spend their own money on supporting a candidate or issue, then they should be free to. Even suits are people, I guess. A corporation, however, is legally not allowed to take anything into consideration except profit. They'd use slave labor in a heartbeat if they could get away with it. I don't want morally-bankrupt constructs like that anywhere near my government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
I don't need to think long and hard to come up with a reason.
I am not a Real Programmer, but I write a bunch of scripts (mostly in perl) to make certain jobs less onerous where I work. A few times, I've been asked to create small applications to help customers or non-technical departments. Instead of asking them to open a command window in XP and enter a line of arguments, I make a simple GUI. Allowing the user to just check things and put arguments in their labeled boxes means I don't have to spend hours on the phone explaining what to type where.
I work for a company that supports restaurant networks. In that environment, cables fail on a regular basis. The combination of heat, grease, smoke, and people and equipment moving around leads to constant problems. Even the wall runs aren't always safe.
Obviously, little of this applies in an office building. I would recommend evaluating your particular situation.
The only way that I see to make electronic voting machines safe is to have them create a paper ballot. This ballot would then be verified by the voter and placed in a ballot box. We could use the counts provided by the machines unless there is a close margin or someone requests a recount. At that point, we break out the ballot boxes.
Why is this so difficult? Why is this not obvious? I understand that people want to reduce costs, but, if our voting isn't secure, then what the fuck is the point of America? The security and accuracy of the voting process should be the absolute number one priority.
According to one of my professors, the Treaty of Versailles demanded more in reparations than the German GDP and they would have been paying until 1963. The treaty also took away Germany's main industrial region so they had even less income. That's why they decided to just print money to pay it off and that led to ridiculous inflation. Then came Hitler with his message of restoring national pride.
I believe that the economist Keynes said, at the time it was signed, that the Treaty would only put off the war for 20 years. 20 years later....
On the whole, I agree with what you've said. However, in defense of the FSM kneejerk, I don't think the point of bringing up FSM is to try to get it accepted. Rather, the point is to bring to light why Judeo-Christian creationism is NOT accepted as science. Any argument against teaching FSM can be turned back upon the other creationists. "You can't teach this silly FSM thing! You have no evidence! It's just something you made up!" Exactly.
Maybe the meaning is being warped, but I have only heard the term "Islamist" as referring to people who want Islamic government. Those people may be terrorists, or they may be a legitimate political party.
In fact, according to the wikipedia article, "Islamism (Arabic: al-'islmiyya) is a term that is usually used to denote a set of political ideologies holding that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system and its teachings should be preeminent in all facets of society."
Wait.. back up. "Synthetic biologists"? Who cares about some kit, they're already making synthetic biologists? I assume these biologists can then make more of themselves, so...
I, for one, welcome our new self-replicating biologist overlords.
I understand the motivation to have only the intelligent and well-educated among us be voters. However, as soon as you have a test for the right to vote, you disenfranchise those who need government the most. Should southern blacks not have been given the right to vote because they could not pass the tests given at the polling booths because they weren't provided with the same educational opportunities as the whites? Of course they should have been given a voice, because otherwise nothing would change. If only the 'intelligentsia' get to vote, the system will rapidly devolve into an aristocracy. "OUR children should get free college and health care, but not the whelps of those lazy proles/peasants/slaves/stupid people."
I'm not sure how this is going to embarrass Jimmy Carter. As I understand it, nothing will be released post-1975. That won't affect Carter who was elected in 1976 and took office in 1977. I suspect that the end-date for declassification was specifically chosen to avoid embarrassing anyone who isn't already dead.
No doctor would ever recommend Q-tips for ear cleaning.
Actually, my doctor did recommend it to me. I had to have hydrochloric acid poured in my ear when I was about 12 to remove the wax. He told me to regularly use Q-tips, just not to jam it straight down my ear canal. Trust me, having acid poured in your ear is good motivation to do whatever it takes to avoid it in the future.
I agree to a certain extent. In my opinion, there is no problem with a 12 year old looking at pictures of naked people. However, there is a significant difference between sneaking a look at a playboy and finding some fucked up bondage/torture videos or something. *I* certainly wouldn't want my child looking at things like that...
That's an interesting comment because my boss said to me yesterday, "Why doesn't it put all my bookmarks in alphabetical order? It's stupid."
The current method of putting them in the order they were added may not be what you want, but the alternative is not obvious. Perhaps they could add all of the above behaviours as options?
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According to http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_citizen_abolitionist.html he did own two slaves. However, his opinions evolved to the point that later in life he was the president of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage
While I agree that credit card fraud is getting worse and we need to do something, I object to the immediate demonization of the restaurants as 'incompetent'. In this case, the restaurant group is a larger group with more money to play with, but what about single mom-and-pop restaurants? They may be extremely competent at running a restaurant..
Is it reasonable to suggest that every restaurant or store that takes credit cards must be run by certified network security geeks? No. The reason this is happening is that Visa and Mastercard hold all the cards (no pun intended). They can decide that they are not responsible for anything and who is going to tell them otherwise? Grandma of Grandma's Diner is going to understand the technical issues involved and take Visa down in court? Right.
If I'm going to play a game of chess against Kasparov, I'm a competitor. I may not be competitive, but that's not the same thing.
In defense of support people everywhere, there is a reason for the scripting. Yes, you may know what you are doing. Unfortunately, most people SAY they do even when they know nothing.
I don't have to work with a script, thankfully, but I always start at the beginning. People rarely define the problem they're having correctly. "I can't get on the Internet." can be (and has been, in my experience) the result of the computer not being plugged in. Also, I can't tell you the number of times people will say, "Yeah, I tried all that already. The cables are all plugged in. Nothing has changed." *An hour later* "Oh, this cable isn't plugged in, could that be the problem?" In fact, "Nothing has changed" is a running joke in my office.
My favorite was the guy who started the conversation by yelling at me that he had a master's degree in computer engineering, so there was absolutely no way the problem could be on his end and I better fix it right now. I explained that others were not having the same problem, so I had to check a few things on his side anyway...
"Please open up the control panel."
"What's that?"
*face hits desk*
I really hate this argument. If I send money to the ACLU, that is voluntary support based on my political views. Just because I need a job does NOT mean that the CEO speaks for me. I provide labor for the company and they provide money for me. That is the end of our relationship.
This whole concept of corporations having freedom of speech is ridiculous. If a CEO wants to spend their own money on supporting a candidate or issue, then they should be free to. Even suits are people, I guess. A corporation, however, is legally not allowed to take anything into consideration except profit. They'd use slave labor in a heartbeat if they could get away with it. I don't want morally-bankrupt constructs like that anywhere near my government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
I don't need to think long and hard to come up with a reason.
I am not a Real Programmer, but I write a bunch of scripts (mostly in perl) to make certain jobs less onerous where I work. A few times, I've been asked to create small applications to help customers or non-technical departments. Instead of asking them to open a command window in XP and enter a line of arguments, I make a simple GUI. Allowing the user to just check things and put arguments in their labeled boxes means I don't have to spend hours on the phone explaining what to type where.
It's not terrorism if you have a flag and it's not computer theft if you have a brand name.
I work for a company that supports restaurant networks. In that environment, cables fail on a regular basis. The combination of heat, grease, smoke, and people and equipment moving around leads to constant problems. Even the wall runs aren't always safe.
Obviously, little of this applies in an office building. I would recommend evaluating your particular situation.
The only way that I see to make electronic voting machines safe is to have them create a paper ballot. This ballot would then be verified by the voter and placed in a ballot box. We could use the counts provided by the machines unless there is a close margin or someone requests a recount. At that point, we break out the ballot boxes.
Why is this so difficult? Why is this not obvious? I understand that people want to reduce costs, but, if our voting isn't secure, then what the fuck is the point of America? The security and accuracy of the voting process should be the absolute number one priority.
According to one of my professors, the Treaty of Versailles demanded more in reparations than the German GDP and they would have been paying until 1963. The treaty also took away Germany's main industrial region so they had even less income. That's why they decided to just print money to pay it off and that led to ridiculous inflation. Then came Hitler with his message of restoring national pride.
I believe that the economist Keynes said, at the time it was signed, that the Treaty would only put off the war for 20 years. 20 years later....
On the whole, I agree with what you've said. However, in defense of the FSM kneejerk, I don't think the point of bringing up FSM is to try to get it accepted. Rather, the point is to bring to light why Judeo-Christian creationism is NOT accepted as science. Any argument against teaching FSM can be turned back upon the other creationists. "You can't teach this silly FSM thing! You have no evidence! It's just something you made up!" Exactly.
Maybe the terrorists will listen to Reason?
But seriously.. is this for fighting China? Why are we still preparing for WWII when we're already good to go for WWIII?
Maybe the meaning is being warped, but I have only heard the term "Islamist" as referring to people who want Islamic government. Those people may be terrorists, or they may be a legitimate political party.
In fact, according to the wikipedia article, "Islamism (Arabic: al-'islmiyya) is a term that is usually used to denote a set of political ideologies holding that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system and its teachings should be preeminent in all facets of society."
Wait.. back up. "Synthetic biologists"? Who cares about some kit, they're already making synthetic biologists? I assume these biologists can then make more of themselves, so...
I, for one, welcome our new self-replicating biologist overlords.
I understand the motivation to have only the intelligent and well-educated among us be voters. However, as soon as you have a test for the right to vote, you disenfranchise those who need government the most. Should southern blacks not have been given the right to vote because they could not pass the tests given at the polling booths because they weren't provided with the same educational opportunities as the whites? Of course they should have been given a voice, because otherwise nothing would change. If only the 'intelligentsia' get to vote, the system will rapidly devolve into an aristocracy. "OUR children should get free college and health care, but not the whelps of those lazy proles/peasants/slaves/stupid people."
Yes, only this time I'm bloody well going to get a single-digit UID. *grr*
Like, totally tubular, man!
I'm not sure how this is going to embarrass Jimmy Carter. As I understand it, nothing will be released post-1975. That won't affect Carter who was elected in 1976 and took office in 1977. I suspect that the end-date for declassification was specifically chosen to avoid embarrassing anyone who isn't already dead.
Of course not. There is no spoon.
[IANAL]
Actually, you don't even need (in most circumstances) to give your name necessarily. Silence is protected speech.
There is a good summary of the case that covers this here.
[/IANAL]
Actually, my doctor did recommend it to me. I had to have hydrochloric acid poured in my ear when I was about 12 to remove the wax. He told me to regularly use Q-tips, just not to jam it straight down my ear canal. Trust me, having acid poured in your ear is good motivation to do whatever it takes to avoid it in the future.
"Fox believes in presenting both sides of the story -- the president's side and the vice president's side."
http://www.thankyoustephencolbert.org/
I agree to a certain extent. In my opinion, there is no problem with a 12 year old looking at pictures of naked people. However, there is a significant difference between sneaking a look at a playboy and finding some fucked up bondage/torture videos or something. *I* certainly wouldn't want my child looking at things like that...
That's an interesting comment because my boss said to me yesterday, "Why doesn't it put all my bookmarks in alphabetical order? It's stupid."
The current method of putting them in the order they were added may not be what you want, but the alternative is not obvious. Perhaps they could add all of the above behaviours as options?
I think the quote you're looking for is this:
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier...just as long as I'm the dictator..." -- George W. Bush