"May I suggest that it is long past time to consider turning law enforcement back to the state and local governments. Many of them may not be much good at it, but Americans can choose to live in places where they are."
The reason we have an FBI to begin with is that organized crime doesn't respect state lines. It doesn't matter how "effective" your home state's law enforcement is when your new neighbor's many arrest warrants are in another state that's too inept to get the information out to the other 49.
"the decline of the Geek Squad and Best Buy ethics in general."
Ethics cost money.
Between the money that worthwhile employees expect to be paid and the lost sales from honesty on the sales floor, why would anybody be surprised that an organization focused exclusively on the bottom line wouldn't give a damn about ethics?
Just ignore that clicking sound in the middle of your phone calls, the federal government wants you to know that you have nothing to worry about (and orders you to forget about it if you think you do!).
I've recently had problems with the USB ports on my PS3, but Sony won't touch it for free since I no longer have my receipt (nevermind that it's impossible for the warranty to have expired by now; I guess the policy saves them some money). So with Microsoft retroactively extending the warranty like this, what happens to those people who voided their warranty, thinking that it was expired?
"The Mass law makes denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions ILLEGAL!"
What it doesn't make illegal is raising premiums for those with pre-existing conditions to the point where it would actually be cheaper to pay the fine for not having insurance.
"Health insurance should cost the same whether I work for Charles Schwaab or sell used books on eBay."
Larger employers with more employees to ensure have more negotiating power to lower prices from insurance companies than can the small employers or the self-employed. Similarly, large insurance providers with more patients in the system have more negotiating power to lower prices from providers than do smaller insurance providers or the uninsured.
"What if we're the ones living in a "post-cosmology universe," and the evidence for what really happened has faded so much that we can't detect it?"
Because what we're seeing is evidence of change, that something actually happened. Even if we're lacking information, the information we do have couldn't have always existed, and something phenomenal must have happened to bring about a change. What the future will lack is evidence of change, nothing to suggest that what they're seeing now is all there ever was to see.
"What is time anyway, other than an abstraction of counting how often something vibrates?"
Time and space are inherently intertwined (see special relativity), and space-time is something that expanded from and did not exist (ahem) "before" the Big Bang. So what you ask may or may not be a valid question, but realize that it makes as much sense as (indeed, is the same question as) "What's outside the universe?"
"back when the Earth was considered the center of a static universe."
Assuming you're focusing on European culture, that's kinda hard to do when the reigning dogma says "In the beginning God created..." The static universe idea was mostly fostered in Eastern religions and by pagan Greek philosophers. If anything, Twentieth Century cosmology vindicated the Abrahamic view of a "beginning" for space-time and all therein, one that wasn't standing up well against classical physics with its conservation of mass and laws of thermodynamics.
"There is a problem of managing identity across the internet, so when I say Darren Waters I mean this person and all of the manifestations and representations and personas of that person. The ability to knit those together is a huge challenge and opportunity for us as an industry."
Didn't they call that Microsoft Passport? Or is that Windows Live ID nowadays?
"The problem of managing identities." Do people really want this "problem" solved?
Since when did "increased physical pain tolerance" equate with "stronger?"
"I can't imagine being intimidated by some other dork's IM, e-mail, or MySpace post."
Simple: after your daily beating, stills and movies of your beating taken from cell phones ends up in said medium. Think of it as a pleasant little reminder while enabling exponentially more people to laugh at the way you start to cry.
"I miss the days before we had to have cops patrolling the hallways as if the kids were in prison."
Let's see: you're told what room to be in at what time, sometimes even what to where while there, and if the police spot you elsewhere when you're supposed to be present, legal problems ensue. When has it not been a prison?
"I miss the days when kids just got into a little fight and that was that. Now, parents sue each other or even go to jail."
People going to prison for assault and battery? Perish the thought!
"What's happened over the last 25-30 years? Maybe kids just need attention because their parents are addicted to the internet, drugs, work, TV, porn, or themselves?"
Or maybe, just maybe, they got sick of this "builds character/makes you stronger/kids being kids" bullshit and decided to employ the Great Equalizer instead of bending over and taking it like you did (while telling yourself that it was actually a good thing to do so)?
Or are you just jealous that you didn't have the spine and foresight they had to end things once and for all?
"How about we look at the root cause for all the violence?"
"Yes, but is this the modern threat? These days, the biggest threat is not from invasion and occupation, but from global guerilla warfare, also known as terrorism."
Yes, the world changed drastically in 1776^W1917^W2001! No longer will we ever see warring nation-states, rather we must defend ourselves from the insidious republican^Wcommunist^WIslamo-fascist foes within our midst, lest we all be consumed! Only a fool would worry about defending national borders with the New World Order coming about!
"They thought battleships still ruled the waves, because that's what Nelson used."
No, he used ships of the line. If they were stuck in the days of Nelson, they wouldn't have built the HMS Dreadnaught with its fewer, larger guns built on turrets, capable of being elevated for plunging fire.
"Then they sent a few to the Pacific theatre, which were promptly sunk by Japanese air power, leading to the fall of Singapore."
Name one British battleship (i. e. not a lightly-armored cruiser) sunk by the Japanese. Heck, outside of Pearl, name one American battleship sunk by the Japanese.
The fall of Singapore had less to do with naval technology and more to do with the Germans. Two-front wars are hard.
"Now nobody has battleships anymore."
Nobody has battleships any more because they can't sink things from as far away as a carrier, at least not with 1930's technology. We use carriers today because they still work and there's no compelling reason to put R&D into light gas or rail guns.
"Also, the cost of one bunker buster is probably enough to buy a school in Palestine. That school might prevent a good few people from becoming suicide bombers."
Or, suicide bombers being what they are, it might become a target in the Fatah vs. Hamas fratricide.
"The local library stocks subject matter that I find offensive, including material that project certain people as subhuman."
The local library is a government institution that is funded by taxpayers and exists to be a repository for information, rather than being funded by potentially outraged customers who could take their business elsewhere if a store starts selling Ao games, effecting the bottom line of something that exists solely to make money.
"When I finished the game I played for a particularly long day and that night"
And there's your problem. Do any activity that requires your attention long enough to cut into your proper sleep and REM time and of course your brain is going to kick into overdrive to defrag all the new memories. At worst, the game is only indirectly responsible, and only if you try to argue "The game made me stay up past my bedtime!"
Slashdot Mirror
"May I suggest that it is long past time to consider turning law enforcement back to the state and local governments. Many of them may not be much good at it, but Americans can choose to live in places where they are."
The reason we have an FBI to begin with is that organized crime doesn't respect state lines. It doesn't matter how "effective" your home state's law enforcement is when your new neighbor's many arrest warrants are in another state that's too inept to get the information out to the other 49.
"the decline of the Geek Squad and Best Buy ethics in general."
Ethics cost money.
Between the money that worthwhile employees expect to be paid and the lost sales from honesty on the sales floor, why would anybody be surprised that an organization focused exclusively on the bottom line wouldn't give a damn about ethics?
"but Verizon the best quality."
Just ignore that clicking sound in the middle of your phone calls, the federal government wants you to know that you have nothing to worry about (and orders you to forget about it if you think you do!).
I paid in cash.
I've recently had problems with the USB ports on my PS3, but Sony won't touch it for free since I no longer have my receipt (nevermind that it's impossible for the warranty to have expired by now; I guess the policy saves them some money). So with Microsoft retroactively extending the warranty like this, what happens to those people who voided their warranty, thinking that it was expired?
"The Mass law makes denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions ILLEGAL!"
What it doesn't make illegal is raising premiums for those with pre-existing conditions to the point where it would actually be cheaper to pay the fine for not having insurance.
"Health insurance should cost the same whether I work for Charles Schwaab or sell used books on eBay."
Larger employers with more employees to ensure have more negotiating power to lower prices from insurance companies than can the small employers or the self-employed. Similarly, large insurance providers with more patients in the system have more negotiating power to lower prices from providers than do smaller insurance providers or the uninsured.
A natural monopoly if there ever was one.
is that selling sex toys in Second Life apparently pays more than a unionized contracting gig like plumbing.
Time Cube!
"What if we're the ones living in a "post-cosmology universe," and the evidence for what really happened has faded so much that we can't detect it?"
Because what we're seeing is evidence of change, that something actually happened. Even if we're lacking information, the information we do have couldn't have always existed, and something phenomenal must have happened to bring about a change. What the future will lack is evidence of change, nothing to suggest that what they're seeing now is all there ever was to see.
"What led up to the big bang?"
See, there's a problem with that statement...
"What is time anyway, other than an abstraction of counting how often something vibrates?"
Time and space are inherently intertwined (see special relativity), and space-time is something that expanded from and did not exist (ahem) "before" the Big Bang. So what you ask may or may not be a valid question, but realize that it makes as much sense as (indeed, is the same question as) "What's outside the universe?"
"back when the Earth was considered the center of a static universe."
Assuming you're focusing on European culture, that's kinda hard to do when the reigning dogma says "In the beginning God created..." The static universe idea was mostly fostered in Eastern religions and by pagan Greek philosophers. If anything, Twentieth Century cosmology vindicated the Abrahamic view of a "beginning" for space-time and all therein, one that wasn't standing up well against classical physics with its conservation of mass and laws of thermodynamics.
Dying Man Has Perverse Sense of Humor
"Why do Apple programs "break" the usual look and feel of Windows programs?"
Because they're hipsters and too cool for that! Haven't you seen any of their commercials in the past fifteen years or so?
"Chomiak said cars are stolen twice as often in Winnipeg as in other Manitoba cities,"
You mean there are other cities in Manitoba?
Hmm, slow internet access on a client for which you pay for internet access by the minute.
Oh, I'm real sure an honest, reputable company like AT&T wouldn't have done this on purpose.
"Points taken--but I think you have some anger issues. I can see that my comments hit a nerve about your own experience."
"Anger issues?" Oh no, I've been made stronger. My character has been built.
"The real issue is parents can't keep up with their kids and/or don't know how to deal with them."
Because the obvious solution to dealing with kids is a laissez-faire approach to violence just so long as it's not lethal?
"THAT is really what I was trying to say in my rant."
Seemed to me that you were pining away for the Good Ole Days of childhood fisticuffs.
"There is a problem of managing identity across the internet, so when I say Darren Waters I mean this person and all of the manifestations and representations and personas of that person. The ability to knit those together is a huge challenge and opportunity for us as an industry."
Didn't they call that Microsoft Passport? Or is that Windows Live ID nowadays?
"The problem of managing identities." Do people really want this "problem" solved?
"It didn't kill me but it made me stronger."
Since when did "increased physical pain tolerance" equate with "stronger?"
"I can't imagine being intimidated by some other dork's IM, e-mail, or MySpace post."
Simple: after your daily beating, stills and movies of your beating taken from cell phones ends up in said medium. Think of it as a pleasant little reminder while enabling exponentially more people to laugh at the way you start to cry.
"I miss the days before we had to have cops patrolling the hallways as if the kids were in prison."
Let's see: you're told what room to be in at what time, sometimes even what to where while there, and if the police spot you elsewhere when you're supposed to be present, legal problems ensue. When has it not been a prison?
"I miss the days when kids just got into a little fight and that was that. Now, parents sue each other or even go to jail."
People going to prison for assault and battery? Perish the thought!
"What's happened over the last 25-30 years? Maybe kids just need attention because their parents are addicted to the internet, drugs, work, TV, porn, or themselves?"
Or maybe, just maybe, they got sick of this "builds character/makes you stronger/kids being kids" bullshit and decided to employ the Great Equalizer instead of bending over and taking it like you did (while telling yourself that it was actually a good thing to do so)?
Or are you just jealous that you didn't have the spine and foresight they had to end things once and for all?
"How about we look at the root cause for all the violence?"
Checked the mirror lately?
"Yes, but is this the modern threat? These days, the biggest threat is not from invasion and occupation, but from global guerilla warfare, also known as terrorism."
Yes, the world changed drastically in 1776^W1917^W2001! No longer will we ever see warring nation-states, rather we must defend ourselves from the insidious republican^Wcommunist^WIslamo-fascist foes within our midst, lest we all be consumed! Only a fool would worry about defending national borders with the New World Order coming about!
"They thought battleships still ruled the waves, because that's what Nelson used."
No, he used ships of the line. If they were stuck in the days of Nelson, they wouldn't have built the HMS Dreadnaught with its fewer, larger guns built on turrets, capable of being elevated for plunging fire.
"Then they sent a few to the Pacific theatre, which were promptly sunk by Japanese air power, leading to the fall of Singapore."
Name one British battleship (i. e. not a lightly-armored cruiser) sunk by the Japanese. Heck, outside of Pearl, name one American battleship sunk by the Japanese.
The fall of Singapore had less to do with naval technology and more to do with the Germans. Two-front wars are hard.
"Now nobody has battleships anymore."
Nobody has battleships any more because they can't sink things from as far away as a carrier, at least not with 1930's technology. We use carriers today because they still work and there's no compelling reason to put R&D into light gas or rail guns.
"Also, the cost of one bunker buster is probably enough to buy a school in Palestine. That school might prevent a good few people from becoming suicide bombers."
Or, suicide bombers being what they are, it might become a target in the Fatah vs. Hamas fratricide.
""The first kick of the baby in the womb"? Awkward metaphors ahoy."
Surely a geeky fan of fantasy games would know about the term "quickening."
"The plans are $59.99/mo for 450 minutes, $79.99 for 900 minutes, and $99.99 for 1350 minutes,"
Man, it sure is expensive these days to get illegally wiretapped.
"The local library stocks subject matter that I find offensive, including material that project certain people as subhuman."
The local library is a government institution that is funded by taxpayers and exists to be a repository for information, rather than being funded by potentially outraged customers who could take their business elsewhere if a store starts selling Ao games, effecting the bottom line of something that exists solely to make money.
"When is the last time america made peace?"
1919. Didn't work out so well.
"When I finished the game I played for a particularly long day and that night"
And there's your problem. Do any activity that requires your attention long enough to cut into your proper sleep and REM time and of course your brain is going to kick into overdrive to defrag all the new memories. At worst, the game is only indirectly responsible, and only if you try to argue "The game made me stay up past my bedtime!"