Not even then. I don't know about other areas, but at least in Oregon/PDX, oversubscription and the forged RST packet fiasco (which still occurs here, mind you) has turned Comcast's broadband experience into pure shit. When I first got them in 2005, it was fast, smooth, and lacking in bullshit. Now? Yuck. It's 2x worse when you're living in an apartment complex who only allows Comcast as an option (which means all your neighbors are suckling on that same raw overworked teat you are... good luck gaming or downloading with that, especially considering that most of them have Netflix, XBoxes/PS3s, and/or a porn habit that just won't quit.)
No mod points to give (and I wish it went above five at times like this).
Two months ago, I gave Comcast the ol' heave-ho in favor of a far, far cheaper ($100 less per month cheaper) satellite+DSL subscription package. I get more channels, a far more reliable connection (speed? whatever... my 6Mbps DSL line gets me downloads way faster than Comcast's forged-RST and oversubscribed-DOCSIS 'product' could ever hope to give.)
Let's just say that I'd rather masturbate to a nudie pic of Rosie O'Donnell with a fistful of broken glass soaked in gasoline, than to even think of giving money to those fucktards... ever.
If Hulu demands that I get a cable sub, Hulu simply won't be visited by any computer here.
Besides, speaking of which, how exactly does Hulu intend to compete with the cableco's own online/streaming features? It's like buddying up to a ravenous tiger in the hopes that you'll be eaten last or something.
Ships in the 50,000 ton class are being retired or sold off at 15 years old because they aren't profitable enough compared to the big things. (Celebrity's "Horizon" and "Zenith", for example.)
(Posting AC since still at work...)
Depends on the market... it would suck trying to run a mid-sized ship in the hot markets (Caribbean/Mexican, Alaskan, Mediterranean, etc). On the other hand, it would hold up pretty good in the lesser-traveled markets, and given the iconic design and historical cache', the North Atlantic and possibly North Sea or North American Seaboard (New England, Canada, etc) runs would serve it pretty well.
Dunno - given the niche appeal, and the fact that not too many folks are going to really go for a cruise on the North Atlantic otherwise, it's actually not a bad size. Bigger would mean it would likely lack rooms. Smaller would mean that you couldn't pack all the modern amenities (shops, casino, et al) into it.
That last part is a bit important - the original ship was built only to get people from one side of the ocean to the other. Nowadays, cruises are more for pleasure, where back then they were merely for transportation. Adding the things that make a cruise modern (and profitable!) such as shops and casinos are going to eat space (the original already had a gym, a spa, and a few other goodies, including the first oceangoing swimming pool).
Actually, you could put the nude tanning section on the roof of the First-Class Lounge., which IIRC was accessible to First Class passengers at the time. Just a thought.
OTOH, if you have ever sailed the North Atlantic, at any time of year, you'd know that no sane human being would want to wear a bikini, given the consistent high winds and relatively low temperatures (there's a reason icebergs were hanging around in that region in April, after all...)
Well, the last gang that ran a ship of that name is rumored to have said things like "God Himself could not sink this ship!". Hell, even the captain was quoted as saying that "...modern engineering has gone beyond that" when he was asked.
I'm thinking that saner (and far less hubris-filled) heads will be at the helm this go 'round.
Well, Buckingham Palace has a pretty low population density compared to its surrounding environs. I'm pretty sure if a plane smacked that it would raise a few complaints...
Long story short, there's really no part of that town that isn't heavily populated, a historical icon of some sort, or considered to be important as hell for some other reason. The best you could hope for is to knock it in the Thames, but doing that would require some real super-human planning and execution, and not a little bit of luck.
Unless their exclusion zone is measured in a circle at least 100km wide (are we going to shut down Heathrow, then?), there won't be time to detect an inbound jet, sufficiently determine its intent, get permission to arm the weaponry, then actually shoot it down. At least, not with any confidence that the result avoids hitting buildings and population.
Not anywhere around London anyway... This is why I'm fairly safe in my assumption that by the time a missile launches, the jet will likely be in its terminal dive, or close enough to it to not really matter otherwise.
I'd be wrapped to have a missile array on my roof!
I'm thinking the exact same thing!
You see, I live on the coast, and there was recently this company a bit up the road who set up shop giving helicopter rides over the more scenic bits of our county, and sometimes they can really irritate, especially on weekends, so...
Oh, it gets worse than that... it's pure idiocy to even try using the things as a defense.
If some jackass wanted to slam a plane into the crowd, they'd merely have to fly very fast and very low. Most missiles have a minimum effective altitude (due to the physics of speed, for starters). Most missiles also work on the principle of sending shrapnel into an enemy plane, hoping to tear it apart... few (if any?) are made to simply blow a plane up.
Finally, with sufficient speed, no missile short of a full blown telephone-pole-sized SAM (we're talking massive multi-ton Soviet-style rigs) would completely stop a multi-ton object moving full-throttle at nearly 1,000 km/h. So instead of an intact aircraft slamming into a crowd, you now have a big flaming ball of metal flying into the crowd. Umm, okay...
The best you can hope for is to knock it off course, which in London just means that it'll slam into some other heavily-populated area full of buildings.
Seriously? Someone in security has been watching too many frickin' movies.
1) Microsoft happily supported it because at the time no one outside of Congress and a few tech giants knew what it actually was. Once its evils were divulged and the tech world at large began ringing the alarms, Microsoft scuttled back. I doubt you'll find those PR release in support of CISPA now, at least not without resorting to archive.org
2) Google actually took no position on CISPA. Their quote is as follows:
"We think this is an important issue and we're watching the process closely but we haven't taken a formal position on any specific legislation."
(The author of the CNET article posted that above-linked quote. Read the story for context).
In other words, Google is sitting back and not taking any position. Nice attempt to shill on your part, though.
Please - the only reason Microsoft is backing away from it now is because they were caught supporting it. Look for them to happily support the next anti-consumer bill to come down the pike if the bill benefits them... and just like this time, and SOPA before it, they'll quietly hope that this time, nobody notices.
Even if done intentionally, sometimes the answer is "yes." If the goal is justifiable and there are no practical alternatives in which one can avoid the act, then yes, the action is justifiable. Col. Paul Tibbetts flew the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb. He killed a shitload of children that day. That said, his actions helped hasten the end of WWII, thus saving a lot more lives than were lost that day (an estimated five million). He slept like a baby from that day all the way until he died of old age. There were hundreds, if not thousands of GIs who shot and killed Hitler Youth (we're talking kids as young as 12 here), because the alternative was to be killed by them.
But then, that sort of shatters the whole sophomoric postulate in the first place, doesn't it?
Is it a decent price to pay for your own comfort?
Nice strawman, but it needs more stuffing to be believable. Maybe if the original question was along the lines of "Do our goals in Iraq and Afghanistan justify the intentional targeting and killing of children?" It would have been shown for the intellectually dishonest question it was, as it was exactly what you gents were asking in the first place. Funny thing is, the answer to that one is usually (depending on circumstance) "no" (now if the kid was walking towards me with explosives strapped to his chest, all bets are off).
Funny thing is, many people see the goals in Iraq and Afghanistan differently. Some see it as liberation from oppressors. Others see it as a grab for power/oil/whatever. The answer to the specific question of children (whether killed intentionally or incidentally) will either be written off as the cost of war, or as a horror to be stopped at all costs.
"organizational waste" is endemic. Be it government or private.
It usually is, but that's too much of a generalization, as it encompasses all organizations, period.
Talking percentages is meaningless, in the end - what is relevant is the total effected.
1) Given differing monetary systems and centuries of counting for inflation, percentage of all income is the only fair measuring stick I could think of (otherwise, if you really want to go there with absolute dollar/euro/whatever figures, one could almost say that the Vatican would have given almost as much towards charitable purposes in total monies than the entire current US National Debt, if not more. I'm pretty sure you don't want to be stuck painted into that corner.)
2) "total effected"? Well, considering that literacy itself only remained alive because of clergy during the Dark Ages, that most hospital organizations more than 100 years old were founded by churches or religious organizations, that art and architecture (including most of the Renaissance) was nurtured by religious groups of various types, and... seriously? You still want to make the argument that "we could go without churches without noticing it"? I'm certain that much of the better portions of history would call bullshit to that.
Atheism is one thing, but being blindly so to the point of supporting some stupendously silly assertions is another thing entirely.
I'm not talking totals, I'm talking percentages. Given that "government waste" is (and pretty much always has been) endemic, I suspect you may be on a fool's errand in trying to defend governments (apparently as is the feverish mod with the itchy trigger finger;) ).
I can give props to how Rev. Wolfwood was portrayed, big-time. It showed a shitload of character depth and humanity in the guy.
OTOH, I can point you to at least one series with Catholicism as a subtext: Samurai Champloo - from teh same fine gent who brought the world Cowbow Bebop. Context and Plot? No problem: The main characters were helping the girl looking for her father. This father of the female character (most likely Catholic given the historical context, because he...) was a rebel who participated in the Shimabara Rebellion.
Unfortunately, you got bad information. Let's get you started on the basics first: Start here.
It ain't the "Spanish Inquisition" as you and GP were talking about. That particular group is detailed here, and ran independently of the Vatican (it was a pet project of the Spanish crown). Surprisingly, as an institution the Spanish Inquisition lasted into the 19th Century.
I suspect that these (and many other) crackdowns have created a lot of disgruntled people among the clergy.
But you're right in a way - dishonesty is a symptom. It also stems from craven desires and from a lack of personal responsibility - both inside and outside of the church.
But by all means, let's stop spending money on aid programs in Africa, South America, and Asia. Let's have them stop putting up hospitals in places which traditionally had none otherwise (and not just Mother Teresa's outfit in India either, because historically this includes a very large number of cities in the US), schools and universities in places which otherwise had/have none (again, if you look at history...), community food and shelter assistance programs (worldwide), watchdog and (albeit passive) resistance efforts in totalitarian nations (including today, in China, Iran, etc). Oh, and yeah, let's just stop supporting the poor altogether.
So, what would you have them spend the money on instead? You got half the suggestion done, so let's hear the other half. What would you spend it on, and how would you do it in a manner that's more efficient than what they use - especially considering that they're using mostly volunteers for the administration and much of the labor (which alone can eat anywhere from 20 - 60%or more of the budget for most registered charities out there).
I'll certainly never say their spending record is perfect (especially a record spanning over nearly two millennia), but overall it's a damned sight better than nearly any other organization in human history has managed - especially once you include governments and commercial institutions into the comparison.
Slashdot Mirror
When Unity came out as the enforced default UI.
Mentioned in two whole posts, relevant to the subject at hand?
Color me not impressed with your analytic skills, troll. ;)
Not even then. I don't know about other areas, but at least in Oregon/PDX, oversubscription and the forged RST packet fiasco (which still occurs here, mind you) has turned Comcast's broadband experience into pure shit. When I first got them in 2005, it was fast, smooth, and lacking in bullshit. Now? Yuck. It's 2x worse when you're living in an apartment complex who only allows Comcast as an option (which means all your neighbors are suckling on that same raw overworked teat you are... good luck gaming or downloading with that, especially considering that most of them have Netflix, XBoxes/PS3s, and/or a porn habit that just won't quit.)
No mod points to give (and I wish it went above five at times like this).
Two months ago, I gave Comcast the ol' heave-ho in favor of a far, far cheaper ($100 less per month cheaper) satellite+DSL subscription package. I get more channels, a far more reliable connection (speed? whatever... my 6Mbps DSL line gets me downloads way faster than Comcast's forged-RST and oversubscribed-DOCSIS 'product' could ever hope to give.)
Let's just say that I'd rather masturbate to a nudie pic of Rosie O'Donnell with a fistful of broken glass soaked in gasoline, than to even think of giving money to those fucktards... ever.
If Hulu demands that I get a cable sub, Hulu simply won't be visited by any computer here.
Besides, speaking of which, how exactly does Hulu intend to compete with the cableco's own online/streaming features? It's like buddying up to a ravenous tiger in the hopes that you'll be eaten last or something.
Ships in the 50,000 ton class are being retired or sold off at 15 years old because they aren't profitable enough compared to the big things. (Celebrity's "Horizon" and "Zenith", for example.)
(Posting AC since still at work...)
Depends on the market... it would suck trying to run a mid-sized ship in the hot markets (Caribbean/Mexican, Alaskan, Mediterranean, etc). On the other hand, it would hold up pretty good in the lesser-traveled markets, and given the iconic design and historical cache', the North Atlantic and possibly North Sea or North American Seaboard (New England, Canada, etc) runs would serve it pretty well.
Dunno - given the niche appeal, and the fact that not too many folks are going to really go for a cruise on the North Atlantic otherwise, it's actually not a bad size. Bigger would mean it would likely lack rooms. Smaller would mean that you couldn't pack all the modern amenities (shops, casino, et al) into it.
That last part is a bit important - the original ship was built only to get people from one side of the ocean to the other. Nowadays, cruises are more for pleasure, where back then they were merely for transportation. Adding the things that make a cruise modern (and profitable!) such as shops and casinos are going to eat space (the original already had a gym, a spa, and a few other goodies, including the first oceangoing swimming pool).
Actually, you could put the nude tanning section on the roof of the First-Class Lounge., which IIRC was accessible to First Class passengers at the time. Just a thought.
OTOH, if you have ever sailed the North Atlantic, at any time of year, you'd know that no sane human being would want to wear a bikini, given the consistent high winds and relatively low temperatures (there's a reason icebergs were hanging around in that region in April, after all...)
Well, the last gang that ran a ship of that name is rumored to have said things like "God Himself could not sink this ship!". Hell, even the captain was quoted as saying that "...modern engineering has gone beyond that" when he was asked.
I'm thinking that saner (and far less hubris-filled) heads will be at the helm this go 'round.
Well, Buckingham Palace has a pretty low population density compared to its surrounding environs. I'm pretty sure if a plane smacked that it would raise a few complaints...
Long story short, there's really no part of that town that isn't heavily populated, a historical icon of some sort, or considered to be important as hell for some other reason. The best you could hope for is to knock it in the Thames, but doing that would require some real super-human planning and execution, and not a little bit of luck.
Unless their exclusion zone is measured in a circle at least 100km wide (are we going to shut down Heathrow, then?), there won't be time to detect an inbound jet, sufficiently determine its intent, get permission to arm the weaponry, then actually shoot it down. At least, not with any confidence that the result avoids hitting buildings and population.
Not anywhere around London anyway... This is why I'm fairly safe in my assumption that by the time a missile launches, the jet will likely be in its terminal dive, or close enough to it to not really matter otherwise.
I'd be wrapped to have a missile array on my roof!
I'm thinking the exact same thing!
You see, I live on the coast, and there was recently this company a bit up the road who set up shop giving helicopter rides over the more scenic bits of our county, and sometimes they can really irritate, especially on weekends, so...
Nah - Daleks can be stopped by installing a simple staircase.
Now these bad boys require a bit more firepower.
(and for the love of all that's holy, do NOT let them find the fertilizer warehouse...)
Oh, it gets worse than that... it's pure idiocy to even try using the things as a defense.
If some jackass wanted to slam a plane into the crowd, they'd merely have to fly very fast and very low. Most missiles have a minimum effective altitude (due to the physics of speed, for starters). Most missiles also work on the principle of sending shrapnel into an enemy plane, hoping to tear it apart... few (if any?) are made to simply blow a plane up.
Finally, with sufficient speed, no missile short of a full blown telephone-pole-sized SAM (we're talking massive multi-ton Soviet-style rigs) would completely stop a multi-ton object moving full-throttle at nearly 1,000 km/h. So instead of an intact aircraft slamming into a crowd, you now have a big flaming ball of metal flying into the crowd. Umm, okay...
The best you can hope for is to knock it off course, which in London just means that it'll slam into some other heavily-populated area full of buildings.
Seriously? Someone in security has been watching too many frickin' movies.
1) Microsoft happily supported it because at the time no one outside of Congress and a few tech giants knew what it actually was. Once its evils were divulged and the tech world at large began ringing the alarms, Microsoft scuttled back. I doubt you'll find those PR release in support of CISPA now, at least not without resorting to archive.org
2) Google actually took no position on CISPA. Their quote is as follows:
"We think this is an important issue and we're watching the process closely but we haven't taken a formal position on any specific legislation."
(The author of the CNET article posted that above-linked quote. Read the story for context).
In other words, Google is sitting back and not taking any position. Nice attempt to shill on your part, though.
Please - the only reason Microsoft is backing away from it now is because they were caught supporting it. Look for them to happily support the next anti-consumer bill to come down the pike if the bill benefits them... and just like this time, and SOPA before it, they'll quietly hope that this time, nobody notices.
You don't answer the question.
It's a loaded question with false assumptions.
Is it OK? Is it justifiable?
Even if done intentionally, sometimes the answer is "yes." If the goal is justifiable and there are no practical alternatives in which one can avoid the act, then yes, the action is justifiable. Col. Paul Tibbetts flew the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb. He killed a shitload of children that day. That said, his actions helped hasten the end of WWII, thus saving a lot more lives than were lost that day (an estimated five million). He slept like a baby from that day all the way until he died of old age. There were hundreds, if not thousands of GIs who shot and killed Hitler Youth (we're talking kids as young as 12 here), because the alternative was to be killed by them.
But then, that sort of shatters the whole sophomoric postulate in the first place, doesn't it?
Is it a decent price to pay for your own comfort?
Nice strawman, but it needs more stuffing to be believable. Maybe if the original question was along the lines of "Do our goals in Iraq and Afghanistan justify the intentional targeting and killing of children?" It would have been shown for the intellectually dishonest question it was, as it was exactly what you gents were asking in the first place. Funny thing is, the answer to that one is usually (depending on circumstance) "no" (now if the kid was walking towards me with explosives strapped to his chest, all bets are off).
Funny thing is, many people see the goals in Iraq and Afghanistan differently. Some see it as liberation from oppressors. Others see it as a grab for power/oil/whatever. The answer to the specific question of children (whether killed intentionally or incidentally) will either be written off as the cost of war, or as a horror to be stopped at all costs.
I always thought it went along the lines of "...so what would happen if we turned this thing loose downtown?"
"organizational waste" is endemic. Be it government or private.
It usually is, but that's too much of a generalization, as it encompasses all organizations, period.
Talking percentages is meaningless, in the end - what is relevant is the total effected.
1) Given differing monetary systems and centuries of counting for inflation, percentage of all income is the only fair measuring stick I could think of (otherwise, if you really want to go there with absolute dollar/euro/whatever figures, one could almost say that the Vatican would have given almost as much towards charitable purposes in total monies than the entire current US National Debt, if not more. I'm pretty sure you don't want to be stuck painted into that corner.)
2) "total effected"? Well, considering that literacy itself only remained alive because of clergy during the Dark Ages, that most hospital organizations more than 100 years old were founded by churches or religious organizations, that art and architecture (including most of the Renaissance) was nurtured by religious groups of various types, and... seriously? You still want to make the argument that "we could go without churches without noticing it"? I'm certain that much of the better portions of history would call bullshit to that.
Atheism is one thing, but being blindly so to the point of supporting some stupendously silly assertions is another thing entirely.
So "italian taxpayers" = all of Christendom?
Wow.
I'm not talking totals, I'm talking percentages. Given that "government waste" is (and pretty much always has been) endemic, I suspect you may be on a fool's errand in trying to defend governments (apparently as is the feverish mod with the itchy trigger finger ;) ).
By the way, I never mentioned socialism.
The only reason Galileo was not burned alive is because he was a close friend to the pope.
...and the only reason he got arrested in the first place was for misusing the pope's Imprimatur (look it up) in his book.
I can give props to how Rev. Wolfwood was portrayed, big-time. It showed a shitload of character depth and humanity in the guy.
OTOH, I can point you to at least one series with Catholicism as a subtext: Samurai Champloo - from teh same fine gent who brought the world Cowbow Bebop. Context and Plot? No problem: The main characters were helping the girl looking for her father. This father of the female character (most likely Catholic given the historical context, because he...) was a rebel who participated in the Shimabara Rebellion.
Unfortunately, you got bad information. Let's get you started on the basics first: Start here.
It ain't the "Spanish Inquisition" as you and GP were talking about. That particular group is detailed here, and ran independently of the Vatican (it was a pet project of the Spanish crown). Surprisingly, as an institution the Spanish Inquisition lasted into the 19th Century.
Actually, as slow as the organization moves, it has been cleaning up the messes, both of criminal conduct by some of its clergy, and a lot of the crazy-assed 'theology' that has actually encouraged and hushed a lot of it, for quite awhile now.
I suspect that these (and many other) crackdowns have created a lot of disgruntled people among the clergy.
But you're right in a way - dishonesty is a symptom. It also stems from craven desires and from a lack of personal responsibility - both inside and outside of the church.
How sophomoric...
But by all means, let's stop spending money on aid programs in Africa, South America, and Asia. Let's have them stop putting up hospitals in places which traditionally had none otherwise (and not just Mother Teresa's outfit in India either, because historically this includes a very large number of cities in the US), schools and universities in places which otherwise had/have none (again, if you look at history...), community food and shelter assistance programs (worldwide), watchdog and (albeit passive) resistance efforts in totalitarian nations (including today, in China, Iran, etc). Oh, and yeah, let's just stop supporting the poor altogether.
So, what would you have them spend the money on instead? You got half the suggestion done, so let's hear the other half. What would you spend it on, and how would you do it in a manner that's more efficient than what they use - especially considering that they're using mostly volunteers for the administration and much of the labor (which alone can eat anywhere from 20 - 60%or more of the budget for most registered charities out there).
I'll certainly never say their spending record is perfect (especially a record spanning over nearly two millennia), but overall it's a damned sight better than nearly any other organization in human history has managed - especially once you include governments and commercial institutions into the comparison.