You are really only going to be able to observe what you call "objective value" in hypothetical contrived examples that do not exist in reality, where there are only two variables (eg, price and reliability).
Really? There seems to be an entire review/product testing industry, of which Consumer Reports is one of the more well-known names. They seem to have been around a while. I would think they might be interested in your constructive criticism. I'm sure they'd rather stick to factual matters and not contrived hypotheticals, and imagine how much more successful they would be!
Seriously though, if hand-waving dismissals are all you've got, you're not exactly coming from a strong position here.
But taking the far leap from that to "voting against your interest" is not compelling, to say the least. In my experience this complaint comes from left leaning individuals who would rather dismiss voters as dumb or irrational.
I'm far from left leaning, though it's amusing to have someone suggest that I might be. I would describe myself as small-'l' libertarian in most matters (which, by the way, is not anarcho-capitalism, though it's often portrayed that way by ignorant or dishonest people).
Most voters are too stressed out, pressed for time, and overwhelmed with trying to take care of their families and make ends meet for concerns like "dumb" (or their short memories and demonstrably low attention spans) to enter into it, really. So they tend to defer to some form of authority, or appearance of authority. The polished speaker in an expensive suit who appears on TV and has lots of famous names behind him tends to fit the bill. So does a government official when he issues a press release that is never seriously questioned or critiqued, against which contradictory facts are either never introduced or selectively introduced. It often takes a lot of research, a wide range of interests, a familiarity with history, and a willingness to "follow the money" to see what's wrong with that.
For all of these reasons, plus a variety of psychological ones, PR is used so heavily for one simple reason: it works. If an idea is already in your best interests, no one would need sophisticated PR, various forms of misrepresentation and deception, and various emotional appeals to convince you of it. The facts would be on their side.
Speaking of familiarity with history, mass surveillance has no place in a constitutional republic but several dictatorships have found it extremely useful. The most reliable way to subvert a relatively free society is to have some kind of threat, real or imagined, and tell the public that such measures are necessary for their safety and security. This is an age-old practice, but it's explained well in an interview with Hermann Goering, who was (among other things), the founder of the Gestapo:
Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Also... One GLARING misstep in the article. The data/publications that Dan used for his wage increase idea far predates any of this.
What follows is my opinion. Omission is the simplest, most basic way to deceive or mislead without actually making a verifiably false statement.
A professional news source is far too sophisticated to risk their credibility by actually knowingly making a statement that can later be disproved. It's an unnecessary gamble. One can present news and apply any slant desired simply by selectively reporting the facts. Then the presenter can claim that every statement made was verifiably true without technically lying.
I'm not sure if that happened here, but I can tell you that it happens in mainstream news all the time, far too often to be coincidental and (I believe), much too frequently to be accidental. It's one of those "knew or should have known" situations.
To give just one simple example, a reading of any major newspaper or a watching of any network news show would lead one to believe that civilians with conceal-carry permits never stop a crime without having to fire a shot. You simply won't see this mentioned, but it does happen and it happens during events that get reported. The news article will say something like "the suspect was subdued until police arrived", which is technically true. However, to say any more would go against a narrative (guns = evil! - unless held by a gov't agent) cherished by most of the decision-makers who decide what news is and how it gets presented (a surprisingly small group of people).
In which case, it's backfired horribly, since all the coverage I've seen has said that it's actually been very good for business.
Yes, but a lot of people get some kind of strange visceral satisfaction from seeing a plan backfire, even when it has no effect on their own lives. That tendency is especially noticable when the person implementing the plan is famous, wealthy, powerful, or generally successful in some way.
Thus, several posters seem to have a vested emotional interest in a cynical motivation for this particular plan. Apparently their worldview would take a swift kick to the gonads if they were wrong about this one.
Personally I'd be delighted to know that something somewhere was done for a good reason, and that this good reason was also the real reason. I'm not remotely naive enough to assume that, but if it should turn out to be true, it would be good news all the same.
unless, of course, you decide that your preferred narrative is more important than the details
Isn't that what usually happens? Most people don't care about discovering the truth, whatever that may turn out to be. If they cared about that, they wouldn't be so quick to judge. Instead, they would be asking more questions.
What most people care about is highlighting events that appear to validate whatever worldview they cherish most, and ignoring, downplaying, or being offended by any credible information that doesn't. It's the reason why there's so precious little genuine dissent on this site. Most of what masquerades as disagreement is little more than pigeonholing and name-calling from people who mistake their own passion for proof of veracity.
There are religious/spiritual/philisophical traditions with various terms for this kind of behavior, most of which are synonymous with "ego" or "pride".
The whole Prohibition fiasco is another, especially if you actually understand why it happened (alcohol was Ford's fuel of choice for his automobiles, and unlike oil, it could easily be produced independently on a small scale, a position that Standard Oil didn't like -- but even if you didn't know that, trading some drunks for gangsters like Al Capone was a bad deal).
I try not to reply to myself but I will add: what happened with oil money and the Women's Temperance Movement wasn't very different from what the MPAA/RIAA and others are doing today with intellectual property law, it's just more blatant now. In modern times the pretense that the government isn't supposed to be bought like that and made to serve corporate interests is taken much less seriously than it was nearly a century ago.
Also, just like now with our surveillence society, when Prohibition was being discussed there were people who knew how and why it would go wrong and tried to warn others. They weren't taken seriously enough. It has to run its course and fail miserably -- as predicted -- before it was repealed, but by that time an entire industry had been built around oil/gasoline and the automobile and entrenched itself, so it served its original purpose well enough.
But that was definitely a case of people being misled by PR/manufactured consent to support what was clearly not in their own rational interests. Just like I tried to explain earlier, as a "disconencted observer" scrying into my "crystal ball" and all of that...
I'm always amazed how disconnected observers can somehow determine when someone is voting or buying against their interest. Your crystal ball is much more powerful than mine. Or perhaps you don't understand that economic value is personal and subjective.
The classic economic case is Betamax vs. VHS (VHS had better marketing), though certainly there are others. A recent voting case is the passage and public support of the PATRIOT Act and all of the people who don't have a problem with massive warrantless surveillance and are, in fact, apologists for it. The whole Prohibition fiasco is another, especially if you actually understand why it happened (alcohol was Ford's fuel of choice for his automobiles, and unlike oil, it could easily be produced independently on a small scale, a position that Standard Oil didn't like -- but even if you didn't know that, trading some drunks for gangsters like Al Capone was a bad deal).
Value of any sort can have personal and subjective elements. A piece of artwork you think is beautiful might be ugly to me, for instance. That such cases exist does not mean there are never any objective observations that can and do also contribute to a rational notion of "value". I believe you might be inclined to agree that buying, say, a lawnmower with a terrible reliability record is a bad deal when it costs 30% more than an equally capable and more dependable model. Although if you are some sort of economic masochist, well then, I'm not here to judge...
I find this is usualy because legislation has been pushed through by some religiously motivated people who don't think you should be drinking at all.
... who tend to worship a God of love and forgiveness who turned water into wine and teaches them not to judge others... which they learn about in a New Testament, most of which was written by an apostle who said that what goes into a person's mouth does not defile them, but rather, what comes out of their mouth.
Apparently they have no sense of irony. I do wish more religious people would read and understand their own holy book, at least if they are going to participate in local politics.
The problem is the tool set of advance electronics tracking, on going maintenance costs of "free" military hardware at a city, state and local level is starting to catch up with traditional wage based/over time policing budgets.
The new federal mil toys have real federal budget support budgets and upgrade costs over the years that a city or state did not fully understand.
Add in over time, pensions, fancy out sourced "private" sector training and the costs are getting more interesting every decade. How to cover the costs?
Civil forfeiture in the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... that no longer goes to the victim or into state, city funds but can flow in part into a department with not much oversight or controls on what the cash is spent on.
The constant need to top up limited funds becomes the mission.
Yet another force making sure that self-respecting people with integrity who really care about their community don't want to become police officers.
As I understand it (see other posts for the official line sold to the public) the purpose is to deprive people of the ability to hire lawyers to defend themselves.
So the intention is to rob the accused (who is innocent until proven guilty) of a chance to confront his accusers and achieve the good representation that true due process requires?
This intention is already manifest in other ways. The worst of which is the prosecutorial abuse of the system. The prosecutor completely throws the book at someone, tacking on multiple charges leading to years of imprisonment for a comparatively minor offense, but then offers a reasonable sentence if the accused pleads guilty. Many criminal cases never even go to trial because of this, making a mockery of the foundational concept that government carries the burden of proof.
Every county gets to make it's own laws. in NY that is generally how it is handled at the state level, however each county can add it's own fees to cover court and processing costs.
So you pay your fine and then another $30-$100 to cover the cost of court.
It is why gun laws are so poorly defined, and enforced. every county has it's own gun laws. not just state, but county.
I never understood the concept of tacking a "court cost" onto the amount of a ticket. If not for things like the courts and criminal justice system, why are we paying taxes? If they want to move away from taxation and adopt usage fees instead, we can have that debate, but right now they seem to want to do both. It's effectively double-dipping.
Now it's just another greedy 0.1%er nomming up cash and playing a good game of sociopathic prisoner's dilemma. Boring.
You say that as if 1%'ers somehow behave differently from the other 99%? *Everyone* acts in their self-interest, you act surprised that having money would somehow change the laws of nature?
I don't know about that. People vote against their own self-interest all the time, both at voting booths and with their money in the marketplace. All it takes to get them to do that is a little propaganda (or PR, or whatever you like to call it - I prefer the old term "manufactured consent" because it's more honest). It works all too well, even in the case of advertising in which the bias of the message is obvious.
Oh good, my post got labeled as a troll. How the FUCK is anything that I said in my original post trolling? A gun can't do a fucking thing without the user. I am NOT a gun nut and I hate gun violence, but I also have a functioning brain and therefore understand that putting silly new feel-good laws in place like banning magazines that hold more than 10 rounds won't do a god-damned thing because, guess what, there are MILLIONS of these in the U.S. already. Anybody who thinks my post is trolling is truly a fucking dumbass in denial about why mass shootings really happen. The stupid assholes who don't like my post because it doesn't fit nicely into their worldview just proves my original point. Fucking morons, you're part of the problem, not the solution. Seriously, take your heads out of your asses and wake the fuck up.
Only the abortion topic brings out the "emotional thinkers" (not really thinking at all) more than the gun control issue does. If they were rational and wanted to do something about this problem, they would look deeply at the fundamental causes of violence in all of its forms and lose their psychotic fixation on this particular weapon of violence.
They'd also realize that making it easy for people who are not driven by violence to legally arm themselves for the purpose of last-resort self-defense would (at least) reduce the body count and reduces criminal violence everywhere it's tried.
It might also occur to them that criminals who are willing to commit murder, who are not afraid of arrest, imprisonment, potential death penalties, potentally getting shot by cops, etc., are not going to be scared of going to jail for illegally possessing a firearm. Productive law-abiding people with families, lives, and standing in the community who don't want to go to jail (who have a lot to lose from it) are the people who obey weapons restrictions. They're also the people who tend to be the victims in these shootings.
Trolling is an intentional act. It involves knowingly posting things you don't really believe in order to stir people up. Posting your on-topic actual beliefs about an issue is not an act of trolling. To mod otherwise because the mod dislikes something, or finds it "offensive", is a form of self-delusion, an effort to censor with the approval of his or her own conscience.
This is how far America has come? 14 dead is no longer considered a "mass" shooting, just a plain old everyday event?
If you can prevent yourself from reacting emotionally to it (which with dead bodies, grieving families, and the injustice, is quite understandable) you realize that in any other context, the word "mass" or "massive" is used to describe a quantity much larger than 14. That, and ignorance of the legal definition of a mass murder (3 or more bodies) are the only reasons anyone would question the use of that word.
The entire nation is a "murder-free zone". Doesn't seem like they are too concerned about murder charges either. So while I understand your desire to deflect from the situation, your argument is pretty silly.
If some sections were "murder-free zones" and others weren't, yet most of the mass murders kept happening in the ones that were declared "murder-free zones", would you fault someone for noticing the connection?
You see, you're having an emotional reaction to a factual matter. The whole guns topic seems to produce a lot of that. That's why you're using faulty reasoning that's easy to debunk.
Dumb asses think banking guns is the solution. Chicago has strict gun control. I assume you're unaware of how many died there Thanksgiving weekend. Criminals don't obey laws shit head! They'll have guns while your dumb ass is unarmed!
Support capital punishment, prisons that punish, and remove the psycho drugs from society! Problem solved!
When they can keep drugs out of prisons that last suggestion of yours might even work.
If you're tired of living in the U.S. of A., you're free to leave at any point.
Also, the word you are looking for is "fewer". Your ridiculous claim should be phrased as "less guns means fewer violence".
It's "fewer guns means less violence". "Fewer" is quantitative while "less" is qualitative. I suppose you could also say "fewer guns means fewer cases of violence". If you're going to correct someone, do it correctly.
I understand that this is important news, but it doesn't really seem to fit with Slashdot's theme of news for nerds. I suppose if it were at some event that was tech/nerd related there would be enough of a reason, but this apparently has nothing to do with either of those things.
But I suppose it will generate a lot of page views and ad impressions for Dice as people rehash the same arguments over and over again.
It will also give talking points to people who seem to believe that, even though the gun control laws didn't stop this attack, somehow doing more of the same will work.
But I am yet to see anyone change their pre-existing opinion as a result of these discussions.
Many seem to have great difficulty even acknowledging easily verified facts. From the article:
"At this point, I know one of your questions is going to be 'Is this a terrorist incident?' I will tell you right now we do not know if this is a terrorist incident," David Bowdich, an assistant director for Los Angeles FBI's office told reporters.
No, I personally haven't bought into the "everything must be terrorism" hysteria (although I understand it's extremely useful for passing onerous laws). Actually my own question: did this happen in a "gun free zone"? Because mass shootings overwhelmingly happen in such zones. It would seem that criminals willing to commit mass murder are not afraid of weapons charges.
That's a lot like saying, "Some people don't like freedom."
A lot of people really don't like freedom. Real liberty might mean that other people can do things you don't approve of. They might adopt a lifestyle you don't like. They might want to marry a same-sex partner. They might want to smoke a joint in their own home. They might want to have consentual sex between adult people in which money is involved, or a position other than missionary. A willing buyer might want to purchase alcohol from a willing seller on a Sunday. Someone might want to own a gun in certain areas, or carry that gun concealed, both with no intention of shooting anyone unless mortally threatened. They might want to buy raw milk with a full understanding of any risk involved. They might want to collect rainwater. They might want to install roll bars (a safety feature) on their vehicle. They might want to generate their own electricity and go off-grid without the city condemning their property.
In some parts of the world they might want to practice an unapproved religion, educate their daughters, hear a woman sing, or explore their feelings for another consenting adult of the same sex.
All of these things are illegal somewhere. The urge to pry into the lives of others and worry about what other people are doing, how they are living, and find ways to stop them is rampant. There are large numbers of small-minded busybodies who seem to have no lives of their own, thus they need a piece of someone else's. Achieving the force of law is their ultimate wet dream. They like "freedom" when it means "things I personally approve of", which makes a mockery of what freedom actually is. Yes, one can reasonably conclude that lots and lots of people really don't like freedom.
If these UFOs people keep reporting actually are advanced aliens from a distant star system, it's no wonder they don't make open contact. They're looking down at us and saying, "clearly they aren't ready yet. All they seem to care about is controlling each other. They most admire the ones who are best at it, calling them great leaders."
Reading reviews & comments on a couple other tech sites with similar article are calling B.S., there really is performance improvement even though certain promised features didn't appear. Hmmm, fanboys of other vendors?
I don't know about you, but I tend to be disappointed when promises are broken (especially by people who had the resources to keep them) and I rightly tend to take a dim view of people who make promises they won't keep. This doesn't make someone a "fanboy", it makes them a person with good judgment.
I use Linux on my desktop. It has an AMD card and uses AMD drivers. So I do have a vested interest in better performance and stability in their products.
That being said, I am also a realist. AMD is a business, and they're there to make money. If they have to invest too much money into making Linux drivers, it hurts their profitability.
Yes but don't you have a vested interest in getting the best stability and performance you can get for your money, and in not rewarding a company that has decided you're not a priority? I want to like AMD. I want to have to really think about the next card I purchase because I want to have more than one really good option. That would be a healthy market. But I've stuck with nVidia and I've been very glad I did. That's been the single most effective way for me to avoid all of the problems I keep hearing about. But it shouldn't be that way.
Like I explained in more detail in this post, I have no idea why AMD doesn't unify their drivers the way nVidia did. That someone else has done it proves that it's feasible, and it just makes so much sense. It would eliminate this entire problem.
As much as AMD is a company I want to love, I generally regret something about every purchase in the last 5 years (CPUs and occasionally a motherboard with integrated GFX chips from AMD). I want them to be successful because there should at least be a couple competent players in the market so that one doesn't bend everyone over completely. For linux I would only buy nVidia. Then in turn that means I only buy nVidia because I don't trust the AMD GFX cards at all.
I know exactly what you mean. Years ago AMD was great if you were on the market for CPUs and wanted the best value for your dollar. They weren't the very fastest possible CPUs but they were good and came at a really reasonable price. I used AMD CPUs for years. I would love to see AMD succeed more than they have lately. I don't want the market to be utterly dominated by Intel. I want Intel to feel lots of competitive pressure. But in my opinion, AMD just keeps finding ways to metaphorically shoot themselves in the foot. It seems like they can do better than this.
Back to graphics cards, I have no clue why AMD can't just do the same thing nVidia did: unify their drivers. Make the Linux driver use essentially the same codebase as the Windows driver, with the only significant differences being the parts that actually depend on the OS. This makes so much more sense than two different drivers maintained by two different teams and having one that's pretty good and another that seems half-assed and slapped together. I don't think they should do it because nVidia does it, but because it's a good idea. It would more effeciently utilize their developmental resources and it would fix the driver issues in Linux nearly "for free". I really want to know why they haven't done it this way.
What I *can* compare my experience to is the Linux users who did choose AMD and all the problems they have, both in terms of malfunctions/bugs and lower performance.
Or you can compare your experience to the Linux users who also chose nVidia and did run into a lot of problems.
Perhaps nVidia wasn't the best choice for those users? Maybe these were PEBKAC errors? Possibly their distro doesn't offer the best/latest drivers because of difficulties redistributing proprietary binaries? Maybe nVidia really screwed up and I'm just a really lucky guy to have always had reliability and good performance from my nVidia hardware? Without investigating specific cases, I don't know, and neither do you.
On the proprietary binary issue, Gentoo has a neat way of dealing with this. The Gentoo organization itself does not package and does not redistribute anything. The package manager (Portage) simply has instructions (ebuilds - text files) causing it to fetch the driver directly from nVidia's own servers, the same way you would if you were manually installing it by hand. It's just automated and kept track of so you can easily uninstall or upgrade it. That way the only thing you're downloading from Gentoo-controlled mirrors is a text file. It completely avoids any issues about redistributing closed-source software.
With several binary distros I've used, getting the nVidia driver is not nearly as simple and often the available driver is several versions behind the latest release. Maybe that's a factor in some of those problems and maybe it isn't, but it's something to consider. Whether you're using the latest driver is definitely one of the first things to check from a diagnostic or tech-support perspective.
A different graphics card that is still mediocre at best. You know what I love about Nvidia cards? Watching a movie and VDPAU freezing my entire system that I have to reboot the whole computer. I feel like I'm on Windows 98.
That must be really frustrating. This doesn't happen to me on Gentoo Linux with my nVidia card. What system are you using (OS and version)? Have you been able to narrow down the problem or diagnose exactly what's happening? Did you manage to catch any kernel panics or other error messages? I'm curious about this.
You could also try disabling vdpau as a workaround. The computation resources needed to decode HD MP4 streams is relatively insignificant these days, unless you have really old hardware. That might be a viable option for you, though I understand it sucks not being able to use the full capabilities of what you've got.
Slashdot Mirror
You are really only going to be able to observe what you call "objective value" in hypothetical contrived examples that do not exist in reality, where there are only two variables (eg, price and reliability).
Really? There seems to be an entire review/product testing industry, of which Consumer Reports is one of the more well-known names. They seem to have been around a while. I would think they might be interested in your constructive criticism. I'm sure they'd rather stick to factual matters and not contrived hypotheticals, and imagine how much more successful they would be!
Seriously though, if hand-waving dismissals are all you've got, you're not exactly coming from a strong position here.
But taking the far leap from that to "voting against your interest" is not compelling, to say the least. In my experience this complaint comes from left leaning individuals who would rather dismiss voters as dumb or irrational.
I'm far from left leaning, though it's amusing to have someone suggest that I might be. I would describe myself as small-'l' libertarian in most matters (which, by the way, is not anarcho-capitalism, though it's often portrayed that way by ignorant or dishonest people).
Most voters are too stressed out, pressed for time, and overwhelmed with trying to take care of their families and make ends meet for concerns like "dumb" (or their short memories and demonstrably low attention spans) to enter into it, really. So they tend to defer to some form of authority, or appearance of authority. The polished speaker in an expensive suit who appears on TV and has lots of famous names behind him tends to fit the bill. So does a government official when he issues a press release that is never seriously questioned or critiqued, against which contradictory facts are either never introduced or selectively introduced. It often takes a lot of research, a wide range of interests, a familiarity with history, and a willingness to "follow the money" to see what's wrong with that.
For all of these reasons, plus a variety of psychological ones, PR is used so heavily for one simple reason: it works. If an idea is already in your best interests, no one would need sophisticated PR, various forms of misrepresentation and deception, and various emotional appeals to convince you of it. The facts would be on their side.
Speaking of familiarity with history, mass surveillance has no place in a constitutional republic but several dictatorships have found it extremely useful. The most reliable way to subvert a relatively free society is to have some kind of threat, real or imagined, and tell the public that such measures are necessary for their safety and security. This is an age-old practice, but it's explained well in an interview with Hermann Goering, who was (among other things), the founder of the Gestapo:
Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Also... One GLARING misstep in the article. The data/publications that Dan used for his wage increase idea far predates any of this.
What follows is my opinion. Omission is the simplest, most basic way to deceive or mislead without actually making a verifiably false statement.
A professional news source is far too sophisticated to risk their credibility by actually knowingly making a statement that can later be disproved. It's an unnecessary gamble. One can present news and apply any slant desired simply by selectively reporting the facts. Then the presenter can claim that every statement made was verifiably true without technically lying.
I'm not sure if that happened here, but I can tell you that it happens in mainstream news all the time, far too often to be coincidental and (I believe), much too frequently to be accidental. It's one of those "knew or should have known" situations.
To give just one simple example, a reading of any major newspaper or a watching of any network news show would lead one to believe that civilians with conceal-carry permits never stop a crime without having to fire a shot. You simply won't see this mentioned, but it does happen and it happens during events that get reported. The news article will say something like "the suspect was subdued until police arrived", which is technically true. However, to say any more would go against a narrative (guns = evil! - unless held by a gov't agent) cherished by most of the decision-makers who decide what news is and how it gets presented (a surprisingly small group of people).
In which case, it's backfired horribly, since all the coverage I've seen has said that it's actually been very good for business.
Yes, but a lot of people get some kind of strange visceral satisfaction from seeing a plan backfire, even when it has no effect on their own lives. That tendency is especially noticable when the person implementing the plan is famous, wealthy, powerful, or generally successful in some way.
Thus, several posters seem to have a vested emotional interest in a cynical motivation for this particular plan. Apparently their worldview would take a swift kick to the gonads if they were wrong about this one.
Personally I'd be delighted to know that something somewhere was done for a good reason, and that this good reason was also the real reason. I'm not remotely naive enough to assume that, but if it should turn out to be true, it would be good news all the same.
unless, of course, you decide that your preferred narrative is more important than the details
Isn't that what usually happens? Most people don't care about discovering the truth, whatever that may turn out to be. If they cared about that, they wouldn't be so quick to judge. Instead, they would be asking more questions.
What most people care about is highlighting events that appear to validate whatever worldview they cherish most, and ignoring, downplaying, or being offended by any credible information that doesn't. It's the reason why there's so precious little genuine dissent on this site. Most of what masquerades as disagreement is little more than pigeonholing and name-calling from people who mistake their own passion for proof of veracity.
There are religious/spiritual/philisophical traditions with various terms for this kind of behavior, most of which are synonymous with "ego" or "pride".
The whole Prohibition fiasco is another, especially if you actually understand why it happened (alcohol was Ford's fuel of choice for his automobiles, and unlike oil, it could easily be produced independently on a small scale, a position that Standard Oil didn't like -- but even if you didn't know that, trading some drunks for gangsters like Al Capone was a bad deal).
I try not to reply to myself but I will add: what happened with oil money and the Women's Temperance Movement wasn't very different from what the MPAA/RIAA and others are doing today with intellectual property law, it's just more blatant now. In modern times the pretense that the government isn't supposed to be bought like that and made to serve corporate interests is taken much less seriously than it was nearly a century ago.
Also, just like now with our surveillence society, when Prohibition was being discussed there were people who knew how and why it would go wrong and tried to warn others. They weren't taken seriously enough. It has to run its course and fail miserably -- as predicted -- before it was repealed, but by that time an entire industry had been built around oil/gasoline and the automobile and entrenched itself, so it served its original purpose well enough.
But that was definitely a case of people being misled by PR/manufactured consent to support what was clearly not in their own rational interests. Just like I tried to explain earlier, as a "disconencted observer" scrying into my "crystal ball" and all of that...
I'm always amazed how disconnected observers can somehow determine when someone is voting or buying against their interest. Your crystal ball is much more powerful than mine. Or perhaps you don't understand that economic value is personal and subjective.
The classic economic case is Betamax vs. VHS (VHS had better marketing), though certainly there are others. A recent voting case is the passage and public support of the PATRIOT Act and all of the people who don't have a problem with massive warrantless surveillance and are, in fact, apologists for it. The whole Prohibition fiasco is another, especially if you actually understand why it happened (alcohol was Ford's fuel of choice for his automobiles, and unlike oil, it could easily be produced independently on a small scale, a position that Standard Oil didn't like -- but even if you didn't know that, trading some drunks for gangsters like Al Capone was a bad deal).
Value of any sort can have personal and subjective elements. A piece of artwork you think is beautiful might be ugly to me, for instance. That such cases exist does not mean there are never any objective observations that can and do also contribute to a rational notion of "value". I believe you might be inclined to agree that buying, say, a lawnmower with a terrible reliability record is a bad deal when it costs 30% more than an equally capable and more dependable model. Although if you are some sort of economic masochist, well then, I'm not here to judge...
I find this is usualy because legislation has been pushed through by some religiously motivated people who don't think you should be drinking at all.
... who tend to worship a God of love and forgiveness who turned water into wine and teaches them not to judge others ... which they learn about in a New Testament, most of which was written by an apostle who said that what goes into a person's mouth does not defile them, but rather, what comes out of their mouth.
Apparently they have no sense of irony. I do wish more religious people would read and understand their own holy book, at least if they are going to participate in local politics.
The problem is the tool set of advance electronics tracking, on going maintenance costs of "free" military hardware at a city, state and local level is starting to catch up with traditional wage based/over time policing budgets. The new federal mil toys have real federal budget support budgets and upgrade costs over the years that a city or state did not fully understand. Add in over time, pensions, fancy out sourced "private" sector training and the costs are getting more interesting every decade. How to cover the costs? Civil forfeiture in the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... that no longer goes to the victim or into state, city funds but can flow in part into a department with not much oversight or controls on what the cash is spent on. The constant need to top up limited funds becomes the mission.
Yet another force making sure that self-respecting people with integrity who really care about their community don't want to become police officers.
As I understand it (see other posts for the official line sold to the public) the purpose is to deprive people of the ability to hire lawyers to defend themselves.
So the intention is to rob the accused (who is innocent until proven guilty) of a chance to confront his accusers and achieve the good representation that true due process requires?
This intention is already manifest in other ways. The worst of which is the prosecutorial abuse of the system. The prosecutor completely throws the book at someone, tacking on multiple charges leading to years of imprisonment for a comparatively minor offense, but then offers a reasonable sentence if the accused pleads guilty. Many criminal cases never even go to trial because of this, making a mockery of the foundational concept that government carries the burden of proof.
Every county gets to make it's own laws. in NY that is generally how it is handled at the state level, however each county can add it's own fees to cover court and processing costs.
So you pay your fine and then another $30-$100 to cover the cost of court.
It is why gun laws are so poorly defined, and enforced. every county has it's own gun laws. not just state, but county.
I never understood the concept of tacking a "court cost" onto the amount of a ticket. If not for things like the courts and criminal justice system, why are we paying taxes? If they want to move away from taxation and adopt usage fees instead, we can have that debate, but right now they seem to want to do both. It's effectively double-dipping.
Now it's just another greedy 0.1%er nomming up cash and playing a good game of sociopathic prisoner's dilemma. Boring.
You say that as if 1%'ers somehow behave differently from the other 99%? *Everyone* acts in their self-interest, you act surprised that having money would somehow change the laws of nature?
I don't know about that. People vote against their own self-interest all the time, both at voting booths and with their money in the marketplace. All it takes to get them to do that is a little propaganda (or PR, or whatever you like to call it - I prefer the old term "manufactured consent" because it's more honest). It works all too well, even in the case of advertising in which the bias of the message is obvious.
Oh good, my post got labeled as a troll. How the FUCK is anything that I said in my original post trolling? A gun can't do a fucking thing without the user. I am NOT a gun nut and I hate gun violence, but I also have a functioning brain and therefore understand that putting silly new feel-good laws in place like banning magazines that hold more than 10 rounds won't do a god-damned thing because, guess what, there are MILLIONS of these in the U.S. already. Anybody who thinks my post is trolling is truly a fucking dumbass in denial about why mass shootings really happen. The stupid assholes who don't like my post because it doesn't fit nicely into their worldview just proves my original point. Fucking morons, you're part of the problem, not the solution. Seriously, take your heads out of your asses and wake the fuck up.
Only the abortion topic brings out the "emotional thinkers" (not really thinking at all) more than the gun control issue does. If they were rational and wanted to do something about this problem, they would look deeply at the fundamental causes of violence in all of its forms and lose their psychotic fixation on this particular weapon of violence.
They'd also realize that making it easy for people who are not driven by violence to legally arm themselves for the purpose of last-resort self-defense would (at least) reduce the body count and reduces criminal violence everywhere it's tried.
It might also occur to them that criminals who are willing to commit murder, who are not afraid of arrest, imprisonment, potential death penalties, potentally getting shot by cops, etc., are not going to be scared of going to jail for illegally possessing a firearm. Productive law-abiding people with families, lives, and standing in the community who don't want to go to jail (who have a lot to lose from it) are the people who obey weapons restrictions. They're also the people who tend to be the victims in these shootings.
Trolling is an intentional act. It involves knowingly posting things you don't really believe in order to stir people up. Posting your on-topic actual beliefs about an issue is not an act of trolling. To mod otherwise because the mod dislikes something, or finds it "offensive", is a form of self-delusion, an effort to censor with the approval of his or her own conscience.
This is how far America has come? 14 dead is no longer considered a "mass" shooting, just a plain old everyday event?
If you can prevent yourself from reacting emotionally to it (which with dead bodies, grieving families, and the injustice, is quite understandable) you realize that in any other context, the word "mass" or "massive" is used to describe a quantity much larger than 14. That, and ignorance of the legal definition of a mass murder (3 or more bodies) are the only reasons anyone would question the use of that word.
The entire nation is a "murder-free zone". Doesn't seem like they are too concerned about murder charges either. So while I understand your desire to deflect from the situation, your argument is pretty silly.
If some sections were "murder-free zones" and others weren't, yet most of the mass murders kept happening in the ones that were declared "murder-free zones", would you fault someone for noticing the connection?
You see, you're having an emotional reaction to a factual matter. The whole guns topic seems to produce a lot of that. That's why you're using faulty reasoning that's easy to debunk.
Dumb asses think banking guns is the solution. Chicago has strict gun control. I assume you're unaware of how many died there Thanksgiving weekend. Criminals don't obey laws shit head! They'll have guns while your dumb ass is unarmed!
Support capital punishment, prisons that punish, and remove the psycho drugs from society! Problem solved!
When they can keep drugs out of prisons that last suggestion of yours might even work.
If you're tired of living in the U.S. of A., you're free to leave at any point.
Also, the word you are looking for is "fewer". Your ridiculous claim should be phrased as "less guns means fewer violence".
It's "fewer guns means less violence". "Fewer" is quantitative while "less" is qualitative. I suppose you could also say "fewer guns means fewer cases of violence". If you're going to correct someone, do it correctly.
I understand that this is important news, but it doesn't really seem to fit with Slashdot's theme of news for nerds. I suppose if it were at some event that was tech/nerd related there would be enough of a reason, but this apparently has nothing to do with either of those things. But I suppose it will generate a lot of page views and ad impressions for Dice as people rehash the same arguments over and over again.
It will also give talking points to people who seem to believe that, even though the gun control laws didn't stop this attack, somehow doing more of the same will work.
But I am yet to see anyone change their pre-existing opinion as a result of these discussions.
Many seem to have great difficulty even acknowledging easily verified facts. From the article:
"At this point, I know one of your questions is going to be 'Is this a terrorist incident?' I will tell you right now we do not know if this is a terrorist incident," David Bowdich, an assistant director for Los Angeles FBI's office told reporters.
No, I personally haven't bought into the "everything must be terrorism" hysteria (although I understand it's extremely useful for passing onerous laws). Actually my own question: did this happen in a "gun free zone"? Because mass shootings overwhelmingly happen in such zones. It would seem that criminals willing to commit mass murder are not afraid of weapons charges.
We call that mantitory gun control.
"Gun control" is hitting what you aim at.
That's a lot like saying, "Some people don't like freedom."
A lot of people really don't like freedom. Real liberty might mean that other people can do things you don't approve of. They might adopt a lifestyle you don't like. They might want to marry a same-sex partner. They might want to smoke a joint in their own home. They might want to have consentual sex between adult people in which money is involved, or a position other than missionary. A willing buyer might want to purchase alcohol from a willing seller on a Sunday. Someone might want to own a gun in certain areas, or carry that gun concealed, both with no intention of shooting anyone unless mortally threatened. They might want to buy raw milk with a full understanding of any risk involved. They might want to collect rainwater. They might want to install roll bars (a safety feature) on their vehicle. They might want to generate their own electricity and go off-grid without the city condemning their property.
In some parts of the world they might want to practice an unapproved religion, educate their daughters, hear a woman sing, or explore their feelings for another consenting adult of the same sex.
All of these things are illegal somewhere. The urge to pry into the lives of others and worry about what other people are doing, how they are living, and find ways to stop them is rampant. There are large numbers of small-minded busybodies who seem to have no lives of their own, thus they need a piece of someone else's. Achieving the force of law is their ultimate wet dream. They like "freedom" when it means "things I personally approve of", which makes a mockery of what freedom actually is. Yes, one can reasonably conclude that lots and lots of people really don't like freedom.
If these UFOs people keep reporting actually are advanced aliens from a distant star system, it's no wonder they don't make open contact. They're looking down at us and saying, "clearly they aren't ready yet. All they seem to care about is controlling each other. They most admire the ones who are best at it, calling them great leaders."
Reading reviews & comments on a couple other tech sites with similar article are calling B.S., there really is performance improvement even though certain promised features didn't appear. Hmmm, fanboys of other vendors?
I don't know about you, but I tend to be disappointed when promises are broken (especially by people who had the resources to keep them) and I rightly tend to take a dim view of people who make promises they won't keep. This doesn't make someone a "fanboy", it makes them a person with good judgment.
I use Linux on my desktop. It has an AMD card and uses AMD drivers. So I do have a vested interest in better performance and stability in their products. That being said, I am also a realist. AMD is a business, and they're there to make money. If they have to invest too much money into making Linux drivers, it hurts their profitability.
Yes but don't you have a vested interest in getting the best stability and performance you can get for your money, and in not rewarding a company that has decided you're not a priority? I want to like AMD. I want to have to really think about the next card I purchase because I want to have more than one really good option. That would be a healthy market. But I've stuck with nVidia and I've been very glad I did. That's been the single most effective way for me to avoid all of the problems I keep hearing about. But it shouldn't be that way.
Like I explained in more detail in this post, I have no idea why AMD doesn't unify their drivers the way nVidia did. That someone else has done it proves that it's feasible, and it just makes so much sense. It would eliminate this entire problem.
Likewise I only ever bought nVidia GFX cards.
As much as AMD is a company I want to love, I generally regret something about every purchase in the last 5 years (CPUs and occasionally a motherboard with integrated GFX chips from AMD). I want them to be successful because there should at least be a couple competent players in the market so that one doesn't bend everyone over completely. For linux I would only buy nVidia. Then in turn that means I only buy nVidia because I don't trust the AMD GFX cards at all.
I know exactly what you mean. Years ago AMD was great if you were on the market for CPUs and wanted the best value for your dollar. They weren't the very fastest possible CPUs but they were good and came at a really reasonable price. I used AMD CPUs for years. I would love to see AMD succeed more than they have lately. I don't want the market to be utterly dominated by Intel. I want Intel to feel lots of competitive pressure. But in my opinion, AMD just keeps finding ways to metaphorically shoot themselves in the foot. It seems like they can do better than this.
Back to graphics cards, I have no clue why AMD can't just do the same thing nVidia did: unify their drivers. Make the Linux driver use essentially the same codebase as the Windows driver, with the only significant differences being the parts that actually depend on the OS. This makes so much more sense than two different drivers maintained by two different teams and having one that's pretty good and another that seems half-assed and slapped together. I don't think they should do it because nVidia does it, but because it's a good idea. It would more effeciently utilize their developmental resources and it would fix the driver issues in Linux nearly "for free". I really want to know why they haven't done it this way.
What I *can* compare my experience to is the Linux users who did choose AMD and all the problems they have, both in terms of malfunctions/bugs and lower performance.
Or you can compare your experience to the Linux users who also chose nVidia and did run into a lot of problems.
Perhaps nVidia wasn't the best choice for those users? Maybe these were PEBKAC errors? Possibly their distro doesn't offer the best/latest drivers because of difficulties redistributing proprietary binaries? Maybe nVidia really screwed up and I'm just a really lucky guy to have always had reliability and good performance from my nVidia hardware? Without investigating specific cases, I don't know, and neither do you.
On the proprietary binary issue, Gentoo has a neat way of dealing with this. The Gentoo organization itself does not package and does not redistribute anything. The package manager (Portage) simply has instructions (ebuilds - text files) causing it to fetch the driver directly from nVidia's own servers, the same way you would if you were manually installing it by hand. It's just automated and kept track of so you can easily uninstall or upgrade it. That way the only thing you're downloading from Gentoo-controlled mirrors is a text file. It completely avoids any issues about redistributing closed-source software.
With several binary distros I've used, getting the nVidia driver is not nearly as simple and often the available driver is several versions behind the latest release. Maybe that's a factor in some of those problems and maybe it isn't, but it's something to consider. Whether you're using the latest driver is definitely one of the first things to check from a diagnostic or tech-support perspective.
A different graphics card that is still mediocre at best. You know what I love about Nvidia cards? Watching a movie and VDPAU freezing my entire system that I have to reboot the whole computer. I feel like I'm on Windows 98.
That must be really frustrating. This doesn't happen to me on Gentoo Linux with my nVidia card. What system are you using (OS and version)? Have you been able to narrow down the problem or diagnose exactly what's happening? Did you manage to catch any kernel panics or other error messages? I'm curious about this.
You could also try disabling vdpau as a workaround. The computation resources needed to decode HD MP4 streams is relatively insignificant these days, unless you have really old hardware. That might be a viable option for you, though I understand it sucks not being able to use the full capabilities of what you've got.