That's all we need. The world population is growing too rapidly, and they may just have a solution to fix it. Well, I guess we can all be happy in knowing that it will increase violent crimes (and traffic accidents), which should help deal with all those pesky extra humans.
It may seem wrong to say that we shouldn't do it, but really should we screw with the natural controls on population any more than we already have?
I take the better option. I hand pick my parts, and build my machines. Sure, I spend a few extra bucks, but I get the best, and the OS I chose is free of all vendor supplied annoyances.
I can't suggest it for everyone though. My mom got an out-of-the-box machine, and a couple months later I spent time cleaning it up so it'd perform like an acceptable computer.
I actually end up doing the same for quite a few friends and family. Ya, I get the support calls later on, but at least they're easier to deal with. They're either calls about being infested with toolbars and other assorted malware that they did to themselves, they managed to forget to turn the computer on, or at about 5 years they need a new hard drive.
It's not just "get paid a fortune..." Every bit of space is advertising and real estate to be sold. Some of it is to instill name recognition. Does the average end user really care that the CPU is Intel or AMD? Nope. Do they care if it has a nVidia or ATI video card? Not really. They care about the price tag, and does it show web pages. If you ask your average consumer what they use their computer for, they'll tell you they check their email, and look at web pages.
The box and case are the initial advertising space.
The virtual space inside the box is worth an awful lot more. Some of the pay just to be included as part of the install. Some don't pay at all, but pay out on conversions. You don't think the 90 day "free" trial of Symantec/Norton [package of the week] if really free. Nope, when sucker consumer sees the warning of "oh my gosh, I'm not protected", and they whip out their credit card, part goes to the software vendor, and part goes to.. you guessed it, the hardware vendor. It makes selling that $99 computer for $499.95 that much easier on the profit margin. Who wants to only make a 400% markup, when they can get a 1000% markup through software conversions over the life of the machine. And whee, they get name loyalty to boot. I bought a HP computer, so I should have a HP camera, and HP printer, and HP dildonics port.... and that's why every freakin' inch of real estate, inside and outside of the machine is branded, logo'd, and sold to the highest bidder.
And hell, with enough crapware installed, you may be completely disappointed with your new purchase, and bring it right back to the store for the bigger, better, faster model instead. It'd be like buying a new subcompact car with lead weights in the trunk. Hell, who'd drive that? No one. So you'll upgrade to the faster "Urban Assault Battlewagoneer"(tm) !
Actually, with the heavy lifters, that's in the range of the exceptional jobs. I see absolutely no reason either a man or woman could be a teacher, daycare wroker, nurse, hair stylist, or housekeeper. Well, except were stereotyped long ago as "woman's work".
The discussion was originally regarding IT work at Wikipedia. Give me one good reason that a man is any more suited for any job there than a woman.
I work in an IT department of 5. 3 women, 2 men. Our new hire happens to be a man. Not because of his sex. We received about 25 good candidates, and he turned out the best of them. There was only one consideration in hiring. The best person for the job.
He babbled something about not liking gender quotas, and has something against hiring attractive women.
Really "gender quotas" shouldn't exist, because they shouldn't need to exist. Women are about 50% of the population (slight variations by region). Unless you're in a niche market, such as modeling women's clothing, or lifting heavy cargo/equiment, where the ratio will swing dramatically, but not completely eliminating the opposite gender, then your ratios should hit about 50/50.
Where I'm working now, I see it as slightly unusual that the ratio is more like 60/40 female to male. Dumb luck in applicants? Bias by previous management? Who knows. The only thing I see is that if the person can do the job, I don't care who are what they are. Hell, you could be a non-sexual species with gray skin. As long as I can understand you when you speak, and you get the work done, I could care less. Third arm? Great, it can probably type faster too.:)
Now compare that to how many vehicles you've seen over your lifetime.... or... compare the number of transactions any given station has, to how many hoses and nozzles they have to replace daily. Weekly? Monthly?
Auto body repair is a huge business. People mess their cars up in all kinds of creative ways all the time. If it was such a common occurrence, it would seem to be one of the top businesses in the country (except for the two states that require an attendant to do it).
I had to drive through Oregon a few times. The first few times, I got out of the car to pump gas. I may as well have been running around naked with an assault rifle screaming "the aliens are coming! Hide the women and children!"
In talking to the attendants, it was all about "safety". People don't know how to pump gas on their own. It's a highly skilled trade that us commoners wouldn't be able to comprehend. {sigh}
I've heard both arguments (safety and jobs). Both are empty arguments. I've been pumping my own fuel for over 20 years. Not I, nor anyone I know, has accidentally blown themselves up by pumping fuel. I've never seen a gas station on fire because someone didn't know how to pump their own gas. Most are unrelated incidents (car caught fire for other reasons, rocket scientist playing with a lighter near the fuel, etc) Some store owners I spoke with complained about the need to hire dedicated fuel dispensing engineers. It makes the fuel cost more, to cover the extra staff's wages. A reduction in fuel costs would be reflected in increases with other jobs. Take a service company for instance. They could hire more staff, if they didn't have to pay as much in fuel costs. There's plenty of other information on this, I don't have to explain it all to a bright audience like this. Simply put, the other 48 states that do allow pumping your own fuel haven't had total economic collapses because kids were being paid minimum wage to pump your gas for you.
I was kind of wondering the same thing. Maybe, just maybe, if you were personal friends with someone in the store, they'd let you look through the tickets for the winners. There's very likely a law of some sort about that too. Most likely, you and the employee who assisted with, would end up in jail for conspiracy to defraud the state and/or lottery commission. I'm fairly sure they have to give you the next ticket, not let you pick through the stack until you find one you "like".
I'd say the best you could hope for is to ask to see the next ticket. After working through the numbers, you could then decide if you want it or not. As excited as I've seen clerks get about some guy who won $50 a few weeks before, I'd have to say that your chances are still shit. Most likely, he'll tell you to buy something or get the fuck out of his store.
Or the latency of it. A station wagon full of tapes is great if you want to transfer vast amounts of data over a comparatively long time, and compares favorably to network connections.
Well, compared to no connectivity, the "station wagon" is much better.
We were discussing an exercise on how the fastest way to move a terabyte of data would be. It could be sent over a T1 (the connectivity at the site). The better solution was FedEx. Copy it from the server to an external drive. FedEx it to the destination. Copy it from the external drive to the destination server.
If the T1 was gone (like in Egypt now), the "better" solution would now be the only viable solution.
Nah, he tried an experiment with a bunch of guys and a plane. That had a catastrophic flaw, The transit method crashed. That's one of the best things that could have ever happened to the Internet.
... Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes...
How far does the information have to travel, to get to the nearest border? About 250 miles. Less, if there's a point to point wireless relay. Sure, the "Internet" may be disabled. So all the fiber coming in country may be disabled. So all the ISP's may have downed their uplink interfaces. That doesn't mean an uplink isn't a tower climb away.
Then again, I wouldn't want to be the guy climbing a tower to set up an uplink directly against the government's will, in the middle of a freakin' revolution. It's either a way to find out what the real effective of a MPK (or M16, or M4, or M40A3, or M21, or M1A2, or T55E, or... or.... or... damn, they have a huge variety of weapons). Shot off a tower, or a tower shot out from under you. Neither sounds like a very good option. Twitter wouldn't seem to be the highest priority during combat.
Consider someone like Verizon. If every Verizon FiOS residential user were behind a NAT. There are 3.1 million users. By the ToS, you aren't suppose to be a content provider on a residential line. If even a/16 were used for them (65k IP's), that would still leave about 3 million IP's for their commercial customers. And yes, I am both. I use residential services, and I have a commercial line with servers on it. I have enough IP's for my servers, and I NAT everything that doesn't need a public IP.
Most commercial accounts that I've dealt with have too many IP's assigned to them. If you have a decent line, you have at least one/24. I've seen so many cabinets in datacenters with a handful of machines (say 10 machines), with maybe 15 or 20 IP's used, but they still have 256 IP's routed to the cabinet. Next time you go do work at a datacenter, count how many cabinets have any equipment, and then count how many units are in each. Say there are 100 cabinets, with 1000 machines total. There are probably about 25k IP's delegated, and real justification for 1500. Still, the real savings are in residential lines. Most houses don't need a public IP, and would do fine with a NAT address. If you *really* need one, they could delegate you a public address.
In traveling, I've seen a handful of hotels that offer a public IP. Most give you a NAT address right off. Their performance hit isn't from the NAT, it's from the fact that they have a few hundred rooms running off a single DSL, and all it takes then is one kid firing up a bittorrent client to ruin it for the rest of the hotel.
I've looked at those a few times. I'm actually a member of... umm... both, maybe? It's been a while since I looked at it.
I wanted to set up the tunnel for my web servers, so I could make my sites IPv6. I started out with the tunnel on my desktop first. This was only maybe a year ago. It was fun and games. I was all happy having my IPv6 block. I could go to all the IPv6 sites. All dozen or so of them. Hrm. Then the service was going bad. At best, I had maybe 6 hours of uptime at any given time. Since I wasn't really using anything for it, since... well... there's nothing to do on the uber 'leet IPv6 bone, I didn't really think much about it. Until it started getting worse uptime. Every couple minutes, it was up and down. It wasn't my connection. It was some routing issue between me and the gateway. Imagine that, transversing the entire US, there could be some issue. So I uninstalled it.
Even though you have the geek cred for having an IPv6 address, you still have to have the IPv4 address to use it. So in reality, it was completely fucking useless.
When ISP's start handing out IPv6 address, **AND** they are routed, **AND** there are sites using them, then I will be impressed.
Sorry, the infrastructure isn't there. It won't be there tomorrow. It won't be there by the end of the year.
We will see widespread NAT usage. And it won't destroy the Internet. It'll muck up your bittorrent traffic to some degree. Just about everyone works behind a NAT anyways. I've mucked about with some implementations that had 3 levels of NAT, and those worked fine. The only thing that didn't work was being able to directly access machines behind so many levels. Every modern protocol works.
Some of it may have to do with the fact that the site screws with the aspect ratio of every picture. They squeeze whatever you submit into a square box on the main page, and search results. Even still, when you go to the profile you may see how hard they try to make themselves look good. Really, you have to be careful. I do prefer thin women, but some of the women... well... lets just say I'm surprised the camera didn't turn around and strangle the photographer for trying to take the picture.:)
Then again, I've met a few who just had a horrible picture, but were some of the most beautiful, and as you said, model quality, women I've ever met. They were also ditched for serious emotional or habitual problems. A little crazy, I can handle. A little drinking is fine. Lines of coke, heroin, not so good, and even worse if you want *me* to get it for you. Sorry, a hot chick on my arm isn't worth a felony possession charge.
But back to the fat and the ugly of it, no, if your face looks like the result of a mack truck hitting a water buffalo, and your 400 pounds of sweet lovin' wants to ride the 160 pounds of Smythe, I prefer to survive than to get laid.:) And when we go out, I don't like to be one of the few people left in the club, because everyone ran away scared that they'd be eaten. You may think that's mean. Try being the one to have her crying on your arm afterwards. It's really not a pretty sight.
Mr. Niemoller speech, in it's various forms, is a good example of what happens when you fail to stand up for what is right, even when it does not directly effect you. Mr Niemoller spent 1937 through 1945 in Nazi prisons. It's not just a random statement that people liked the sentiments of, but a factual one as they did come for him, and they did imprison him. He was to be executed, but was saved by American solders on May 5th, 1945.
Things could have been much different, if the population had acted differently. Hindsight is 20/20, but we must learn from history if we do not wish to repeat it.
So those people you stand before will simply point to their districts opinion polls and say, I AM representing the will of the people.
That is a calculated risk.
I'd be willing to bet when faced with a reality such as that, they would be as cowardly as they really are. They can talk shit from the relative safety of standing in front of a camera, or the closed Congressional rooms, or at a rally of only their own supporters. They aren't willing to stand in front of a mixed representative group of their constituents, and spew the same rhetoric.
The people also tend to show up for "their" candidate, so they have someone to cheer for. Those opposing them rarely show up, and if they do, they are a minority and if they voice their opinions at public meetings, they will quickly be ushered away by security.
I've noticed a trend at public speaking engagements, where those allowed to voice questions are hand selected or even seeded people who agree with the speakers agenda. You of course get the random person who makes too much noise just for the sake of doing it, such as the "Don't Taze Me Bro" guy, who attempted to grandstand when given the chance to speak. That's not to say that incident was completely appropriate, and even Mr. Kerry was disappointed with the outcome, as he was still trying to keep an open discussion, against the actions of the police.
Well, what I would see happening is a serious civil "unrest". It would be when the people take back their power from the government, and act in ways the people want.
Consider what has happened in the past. Not only in the short past of the United States of America, but all around the world.
It is all of us, forming to stand up against what is wrong. "Legal" methods may not be enough. A letter writing campaign, and a few hundred of your friends standing on the sidewalk in front of the Congressional buildings with signs and chanting the slogan of the moment obviously has no effect. The 60's style protests didn't work in the 60's. They are, and always will be, an ineffective form of protest.
I have to say the following disclaimer. Assume it's in huge bolt text, flashing at you. I AM NOT RECOMMENDING, SUGGESTING, OR OTHERWISE INCITING ANY ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES.
Before anyone reads any farther, go read that statement again. If you still don't get it, put down your gun and your beer, sober up, and read it again until it makes sense.
So what would it take to bring change?
60's sit-ins, peaceful protests, peaceful assemblies, petitions, letter writing campaigns, and free-love-ins, just won't work. Well, I'm still for the free-love-ins, but we'll save those for another conversation.:)
The "Rally to Restore Sanity" brought about 250,000 people to Washington DC, and countless others who couldn't attend who supported from home. I was one of the later, as I couldn't afford to drive, fly, or walk to DC.
With 250,000 people standing there wanting to make change, they made speeches, and went home. The folks in power may have noted that something happened, but really their appearance didn't do anything except raise the total tourism dollars for DC by a little for 2010.
If you have 250,000 people who believe in your side enough to even show up, you have an army. Imagine those people walking into the US Capitol Building (and other assorted buildings).
I would personally be proud to walk to the front of the group, stand in front of the representatives who are doing wrong and say "Sir, I represent these people, citizens of the United States of America. We do not believe that you are representing the needs, wants, and beliefs of the constituents who you have sworn to represent. We as the representatives of your constituents we respectively ask you to resign immediately and exit this building."
There are plenty of people among us, who would be excellent leaders. We wouldn't accept corruption. We have better morals than to take bribes in any form.
That sir, is how you make change in a totally non-violent way. Not one shot is fired. Not one person is injured (except for maybe the occasional trip and fall hazard). The only violence would come from the law enforcement professionals who some may take an unconstitutional stand against the people.
It is said that we have the "Four boxes of liberty", the soap, ballot, jury, and ammo boxes. There is no need to go to the fourth, unless the powers that be decide to use it against the citizens standing up for their rights. In reality, a couple hundred thousand people standing there saying "we want change", and really meaning it, do not have any reason to use violence. Well, except for possibly gently moving anyone who may try to block their way. You can be assured that someone in a uniform will
Most people ignore things that don't directly involve them. Who cares if [insert agency] commits [insert action] against [someone else]. Until someone finds out that a questionable legal wire tap implicated them in some sort of crime, which could lead to serious jail time through new means, they could care less. As you said, they'll flip over to American Idol and otherwise numb their brains to oblivion.
Anyway, with your situation, there should have been somewhere to notify. A web site, or even just a place they could call to leave information saying where they are. (Yes, I know they didn't have web sites back then, but now they do.)
I think you're close to having the right answer. Damn, two Slashdot people discussed it, and figured out the solution.
The problem would be, in the case of political refugees, who could you call that could be trusted with knowing where you are? I use friends and family. That's not necessarily a practical solution for everyone though. I do have some international contacts where messages could be left, so in the event of a national uprising in the United States, a contact in Europe could keep track of us.
Other than friends, who do we trust? I'm sure if there were a sociopolitical uprising , I wouldn't exactly trust calling any government hotline. I guess as far as that goes, and knowing what the government is already doing, calling anywhere isn't "safe". Calling a neutral 3rd party to even just say "The following people are safe..." would equate to "We aren't dead yet, send the brute squad to finish us off." I know, it wouldn't happen in America (ha), but say you were in Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan, and you are a citizen of that country, who happened to be on America's shit list, would you trust that your phone call wouldn't be an invitation for a UAV to target your location?
"I am JW Smythe. I'm at 14 Main Street in Baghdad, with 3 other survivors. What do you mean hold the line? Oh look, a little airplane."
Of course, the entire fact we still have refugees is pretty absurd also.
Well, there are always going to be refugees. By definition, it is anyone displaced, or seeking refuge, for reasons including political, social, economic, and environmental reasons.
So, anyone seeking refuge somewhere else, for whatever reason should be included. In my example, the building was a county owned building (a school). It was guarded by the local sheriffs department (4 deputies, if I remember correctly). Two Red Cross representatives were there. It was being staffed by just a few volunteers who showed up and offered to help, including me. If they didn't want the help, I would have turned around and driven home in the middle of a hurricane.:) I've lived through enough to know the basic facts. Stay away from anywhere that may get flooded, and avoid things falling on you, like trees, power lines, free-floating houses and flying cows.:) Just kidding on the last one. I've never seen a flying cow. And... well, never a whole flying house, but I've seen large enough parts of them, where they may as well be a whole house.
In another hurricane when I was younger, we had about a dozen "refugees" at our house. They were friends of the family. They stayed with us for about a week, until the flood waters went down and we had the opportunity to drive towards their houses, just to find their houses still under 4' of water. Well, the houses we could see. We couldn't get very close.
These refugees don't have a record anywhere. Their family wouldn't know where to call. Our phones were out the whole time, but we did have power and running water (private well), and plenty of food. During the same storm, the house was hit by three tornadoes. One tore down our TV antenna (ya, it was a while back). One ripped trees out of our front yard. Another ripped trees out of the back yard. I can confidentially say they were tornadoes, since the antenna (and top of the tower) and trees weren't anywhere to be found after looking around about 1/2 mile in any direction.
What if something happened? If the police got around to searching the flooded houses, and couldn't locate the owners/occupants, would they be presumed dead? If our house had been destroyed by a tornado, and the occupants (my family, and the dozen refugees) were tossed around into the surrounding woods, how long would the missing people simply be presumed to have left the area (or presumed dead)?
They are things you think of after the event. At the time, we were concerned with getting to the safest place possible. At the time, evacuation centers weren't generally available. The folks who came to us came there because we were 10 miles inland, and 30 feet AMSL. That was much better than their 20 feet inland and 2 feet AMSL. Needless to say, they learned how wonderful their waterfront property really was. It's all fun and games, until... well... a hurricane flooded their house and destroyed everything they owned. Well, except for their car and the suitcase they had with some clothes and family photos.
Sorry, I went off on a tangent.:) Myself, I make sure at least someone I personally trust knows where I am. The rest of the world still gets my disinformation.:) At least if I go missing, I'll make an effort to call my network of real friends and at least admit I'm still alive. Abandon in a strange land, no car, no cell phone, no Internet access? Be damned, I'll find a way back to civilization, even if I have to steal transportation and/or smuggle myself across some foreign and unfriendly border.
I had a quick look at the CIA world factbook for Rwanda. 70% literacy rate. So 3 in 10 people won't know how to spell their own names, much less how to go to http://refugee-registry.example.com./ Once there, they won't be able to read what it says.
There are 11 million people in the country. There are 2.9 million cell phones in use. There are 0.455 million Internet users. So, it would be fair to say that most of the population has had no exposure to the Internet. It would also be fair to say that if roaming, long distance tolls, and number portability were not a concern, cell phones would be the best method of letting people find each other.
Cell phones are a world wide network. You can call from any remote area that has phone service, to any other remote area that has phone service, regardless of how far apart those remote areas are. If a refugee were given a phone, and their old phone number assigned to it, and they were able to make calls to any of their friends and family, they have a fighting chance of finding them.
Since that's not the way it works, the subject of the beginning of the article, now living in Denmark, can't get a replacement phone with her old number (if she had one). She likely can't afford the long distance calls to friends and family, who themselves likely don't have phones with the same number, if they've re-established themselves elsewhere. If they've brought their phone to another country, they likely can't afford to use it, being that it would now be doing international roaming, assuming the phone is a GSM phone.
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That's all we need. The world population is growing too rapidly, and they may just have a solution to fix it. Well, I guess we can all be happy in knowing that it will increase violent crimes (and traffic accidents), which should help deal with all those pesky extra humans.
It may seem wrong to say that we shouldn't do it, but really should we screw with the natural controls on population any more than we already have?
I take the better option. I hand pick my parts, and build my machines. Sure, I spend a few extra bucks, but I get the best, and the OS I chose is free of all vendor supplied annoyances.
I can't suggest it for everyone though. My mom got an out-of-the-box machine, and a couple months later I spent time cleaning it up so it'd perform like an acceptable computer.
I actually end up doing the same for quite a few friends and family. Ya, I get the support calls later on, but at least they're easier to deal with. They're either calls about being infested with toolbars and other assorted malware that they did to themselves, they managed to forget to turn the computer on, or at about 5 years they need a new hard drive.
It's not just "get paid a fortune..." Every bit of space is advertising and real estate to be sold. Some of it is to instill name recognition. Does the average end user really care that the CPU is Intel or AMD? Nope. Do they care if it has a nVidia or ATI video card? Not really. They care about the price tag, and does it show web pages. If you ask your average consumer what they use their computer for, they'll tell you they check their email, and look at web pages.
The box and case are the initial advertising space.
The virtual space inside the box is worth an awful lot more. Some of the pay just to be included as part of the install. Some don't pay at all, but pay out on conversions. You don't think the 90 day "free" trial of Symantec/Norton [package of the week] if really free. Nope, when sucker consumer sees the warning of "oh my gosh, I'm not protected", and they whip out their credit card, part goes to the software vendor, and part goes to .. you guessed it, the hardware vendor. It makes selling that $99 computer for $499.95 that much easier on the profit margin. Who wants to only make a 400% markup, when they can get a 1000% markup through software conversions over the life of the machine. And whee, they get name loyalty to boot. I bought a HP computer, so I should have a HP camera, and HP printer, and HP dildonics port. ... and that's why every freakin' inch of real estate, inside and outside of the machine is branded, logo'd, and sold to the highest bidder.
And hell, with enough crapware installed, you may be completely disappointed with your new purchase, and bring it right back to the store for the bigger, better, faster model instead. It'd be like buying a new subcompact car with lead weights in the trunk. Hell, who'd drive that? No one. So you'll upgrade to the faster "Urban Assault Battlewagoneer"(tm) !
Actually, with the heavy lifters, that's in the range of the exceptional jobs. I see absolutely no reason either a man or woman could be a teacher, daycare wroker, nurse, hair stylist, or housekeeper. Well, except were stereotyped long ago as "woman's work".
The discussion was originally regarding IT work at Wikipedia. Give me one good reason that a man is any more suited for any job there than a woman.
I work in an IT department of 5. 3 women, 2 men. Our new hire happens to be a man. Not because of his sex. We received about 25 good candidates, and he turned out the best of them. There was only one consideration in hiring. The best person for the job.
Don't worry, it didn't get any better after that.
He babbled something about not liking gender quotas, and has something against hiring attractive women.
Really "gender quotas" shouldn't exist, because they shouldn't need to exist. Women are about 50% of the population (slight variations by region). Unless you're in a niche market, such as modeling women's clothing, or lifting heavy cargo/equiment, where the ratio will swing dramatically, but not completely eliminating the opposite gender, then your ratios should hit about 50/50.
Where I'm working now, I see it as slightly unusual that the ratio is more like 60/40 female to male. Dumb luck in applicants? Bias by previous management? Who knows. The only thing I see is that if the person can do the job, I don't care who are what they are. Hell, you could be a non-sexual species with gray skin. As long as I can understand you when you speak, and you get the work done, I could care less. Third arm? Great, it can probably type faster too. :)
Now compare that to how many vehicles you've seen over your lifetime. ... or ... compare the number of transactions any given station has, to how many hoses and nozzles they have to replace daily. Weekly? Monthly?
Auto body repair is a huge business. People mess their cars up in all kinds of creative ways all the time. If it was such a common occurrence, it would seem to be one of the top businesses in the country (except for the two states that require an attendant to do it).
I had to drive through Oregon a few times. The first few times, I got out of the car to pump gas. I may as well have been running around naked with an assault rifle screaming "the aliens are coming! Hide the women and children!"
In talking to the attendants, it was all about "safety". People don't know how to pump gas on their own. It's a highly skilled trade that us commoners wouldn't be able to comprehend. {sigh}
I've heard both arguments (safety and jobs). Both are empty arguments. I've been pumping my own fuel for over 20 years. Not I, nor anyone I know, has accidentally blown themselves up by pumping fuel. I've never seen a gas station on fire because someone didn't know how to pump their own gas. Most are unrelated incidents (car caught fire for other reasons, rocket scientist playing with a lighter near the fuel, etc) Some store owners I spoke with complained about the need to hire dedicated fuel dispensing engineers. It makes the fuel cost more, to cover the extra staff's wages. A reduction in fuel costs would be reflected in increases with other jobs. Take a service company for instance. They could hire more staff, if they didn't have to pay as much in fuel costs. There's plenty of other information on this, I don't have to explain it all to a bright audience like this. Simply put, the other 48 states that do allow pumping your own fuel haven't had total economic collapses because kids were being paid minimum wage to pump your gas for you.
I was kind of wondering the same thing. Maybe, just maybe, if you were personal friends with someone in the store, they'd let you look through the tickets for the winners. There's very likely a law of some sort about that too. Most likely, you and the employee who assisted with, would end up in jail for conspiracy to defraud the state and/or lottery commission. I'm fairly sure they have to give you the next ticket, not let you pick through the stack until you find one you "like".
I'd say the best you could hope for is to ask to see the next ticket. After working through the numbers, you could then decide if you want it or not. As excited as I've seen clerks get about some guy who won $50 a few weeks before, I'd have to say that your chances are still shit. Most likely, he'll tell you to buy something or get the fuck out of his store.
Well, compared to no connectivity, the "station wagon" is much better.
We were discussing an exercise on how the fastest way to move a terabyte of data would be. It could be sent over a T1 (the connectivity at the site). The better solution was FedEx. Copy it from the server to an external drive. FedEx it to the destination. Copy it from the external drive to the destination server.
If the T1 was gone (like in Egypt now), the "better" solution would now be the only viable solution.
That's been replaced by LARP Unfortunately, they're using real bullets, and respawning has been disabled.
Nah, he tried an experiment with a bunch of guys and a plane. That had a catastrophic flaw, The transit method crashed. That's one of the best things that could have ever happened to the Internet.
How far does the information have to travel, to get to the nearest border? About 250 miles. Less, if there's a point to point wireless relay. Sure, the "Internet" may be disabled. So all the fiber coming in country may be disabled. So all the ISP's may have downed their uplink interfaces. That doesn't mean an uplink isn't a tower climb away.
Then again, I wouldn't want to be the guy climbing a tower to set up an uplink directly against the government's will, in the middle of a freakin' revolution. It's either a way to find out what the real effective of a MPK (or M16, or M4, or M40A3, or M21, or M1A2, or T55E, or... or .... or... damn, they have a huge variety of weapons). Shot off a tower, or a tower shot out from under you. Neither sounds like a very good option. Twitter wouldn't seem to be the highest priority during combat.
Consider someone like Verizon. If every Verizon FiOS residential user were behind a NAT. There are 3.1 million users. By the ToS, you aren't suppose to be a content provider on a residential line. If even a /16 were used for them (65k IP's), that would still leave about 3 million IP's for their commercial customers. And yes, I am both. I use residential services, and I have a commercial line with servers on it. I have enough IP's for my servers, and I NAT everything that doesn't need a public IP.
Most commercial accounts that I've dealt with have too many IP's assigned to them. If you have a decent line, you have at least one /24. I've seen so many cabinets in datacenters with a handful of machines (say 10 machines), with maybe 15 or 20 IP's used, but they still have 256 IP's routed to the cabinet. Next time you go do work at a datacenter, count how many cabinets have any equipment, and then count how many units are in each. Say there are 100 cabinets, with 1000 machines total. There are probably about 25k IP's delegated, and real justification for 1500. Still, the real savings are in residential lines. Most houses don't need a public IP, and would do fine with a NAT address. If you *really* need one, they could delegate you a public address.
In traveling, I've seen a handful of hotels that offer a public IP. Most give you a NAT address right off. Their performance hit isn't from the NAT, it's from the fact that they have a few hundred rooms running off a single DSL, and all it takes then is one kid firing up a bittorrent client to ruin it for the rest of the hotel.
I've looked at those a few times. I'm actually a member of ... umm ... both, maybe? It's been a while since I looked at it.
I wanted to set up the tunnel for my web servers, so I could make my sites IPv6. I started out with the tunnel on my desktop first. This was only maybe a year ago. It was fun and games. I was all happy having my IPv6 block. I could go to all the IPv6 sites. All dozen or so of them. Hrm. Then the service was going bad. At best, I had maybe 6 hours of uptime at any given time. Since I wasn't really using anything for it, since ... well ... there's nothing to do on the uber 'leet IPv6 bone, I didn't really think much about it. Until it started getting worse uptime. Every couple minutes, it was up and down. It wasn't my connection. It was some routing issue between me and the gateway. Imagine that, transversing the entire US, there could be some issue. So I uninstalled it.
Even though you have the geek cred for having an IPv6 address, you still have to have the IPv4 address to use it. So in reality, it was completely fucking useless.
When ISP's start handing out IPv6 address, **AND** they are routed, **AND** there are sites using them, then I will be impressed.
Sorry, the infrastructure isn't there. It won't be there tomorrow. It won't be there by the end of the year.
We will see widespread NAT usage. And it won't destroy the Internet. It'll muck up your bittorrent traffic to some degree. Just about everyone works behind a NAT anyways. I've mucked about with some implementations that had 3 levels of NAT, and those worked fine. The only thing that didn't work was being able to directly access machines behind so many levels. Every modern protocol works.
Something tells me you've never been to the site.
Some of it may have to do with the fact that the site screws with the aspect ratio of every picture. They squeeze whatever you submit into a square box on the main page, and search results. Even still, when you go to the profile you may see how hard they try to make themselves look good. Really, you have to be careful. I do prefer thin women, but some of the women ... well ... lets just say I'm surprised the camera didn't turn around and strangle the photographer for trying to take the picture. :)
Then again, I've met a few who just had a horrible picture, but were some of the most beautiful, and as you said, model quality, women I've ever met. They were also ditched for serious emotional or habitual problems. A little crazy, I can handle. A little drinking is fine. Lines of coke, heroin, not so good, and even worse if you want *me* to get it for you. Sorry, a hot chick on my arm isn't worth a felony possession charge.
But back to the fat and the ugly of it, no, if your face looks like the result of a mack truck hitting a water buffalo, and your 400 pounds of sweet lovin' wants to ride the 160 pounds of Smythe, I prefer to survive than to get laid. :) And when we go out, I don't like to be one of the few people left in the club, because everyone ran away scared that they'd be eaten. You may think that's mean. Try being the one to have her crying on your arm afterwards. It's really not a pretty sight.
Shhh, the Facebook kids don't like being told that Facebook isn't an essential part of their lives.
Mr. Niemoller speech, in it's various forms, is a good example of what happens when you fail to stand up for what is right, even when it does not directly effect you. Mr Niemoller spent 1937 through 1945 in Nazi prisons. It's not just a random statement that people liked the sentiments of, but a factual one as they did come for him, and they did imprison him. He was to be executed, but was saved by American solders on May 5th, 1945.
Things could have been much different, if the population had acted differently. Hindsight is 20/20, but we must learn from history if we do not wish to repeat it.
That is a calculated risk.
I'd be willing to bet when faced with a reality such as that, they would be as cowardly as they really are. They can talk shit from the relative safety of standing in front of a camera, or the closed Congressional rooms, or at a rally of only their own supporters. They aren't willing to stand in front of a mixed representative group of their constituents, and spew the same rhetoric.
The people also tend to show up for "their" candidate, so they have someone to cheer for. Those opposing them rarely show up, and if they do, they are a minority and if they voice their opinions at public meetings, they will quickly be ushered away by security.
I've noticed a trend at public speaking engagements, where those allowed to voice questions are hand selected or even seeded people who agree with the speakers agenda. You of course get the random person who makes too much noise just for the sake of doing it, such as the "Don't Taze Me Bro" guy, who attempted to grandstand when given the chance to speak. That's not to say that incident was completely appropriate, and even Mr. Kerry was disappointed with the outcome, as he was still trying to keep an open discussion, against the actions of the police.
That's why I clarified that I am not suggesting to do it. The remainder was a hypothetical scenario.
Why yes, they could care a little, but likely not a lot. But...
I don't care much what David Mitchell, his dumb dog, or his soap box think.
I think you'll find this far more educational. Also, you may enjoy this video.
Well, what I would see happening is a serious civil "unrest". It would be when the people take back their power from the government, and act in ways the people want.
Consider what has happened in the past. Not only in the short past of the United States of America, but all around the world.
Those with the ability organize and do things for change. That isn't misguided attempts drawn from the rantings of a horrible example of a pseudo-leader.
It is all of us, forming to stand up against what is wrong. "Legal" methods may not be enough. A letter writing campaign, and a few hundred of your friends standing on the sidewalk in front of the Congressional buildings with signs and chanting the slogan of the moment obviously has no effect. The 60's style protests didn't work in the 60's. They are, and always will be, an ineffective form of protest.
I have to say the following disclaimer. Assume it's in huge bolt text, flashing at you. I AM NOT RECOMMENDING, SUGGESTING, OR OTHERWISE INCITING ANY ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES.
Before anyone reads any farther, go read that statement again. If you still don't get it, put down your gun and your beer, sober up, and read it again until it makes sense.
So what would it take to bring change?
60's sit-ins, peaceful protests, peaceful assemblies, petitions, letter writing campaigns, and free-love-ins, just won't work. Well, I'm still for the free-love-ins, but we'll save those for another conversation. :)
The "Rally to Restore Sanity" brought about 250,000 people to Washington DC, and countless others who couldn't attend who supported from home. I was one of the later, as I couldn't afford to drive, fly, or walk to DC.
With 250,000 people standing there wanting to make change, they made speeches, and went home. The folks in power may have noted that something happened, but really their appearance didn't do anything except raise the total tourism dollars for DC by a little for 2010.
If you have 250,000 people who believe in your side enough to even show up, you have an army. Imagine those people walking into the US Capitol Building (and other assorted buildings).
I would personally be proud to walk to the front of the group, stand in front of the representatives who are doing wrong and say "Sir, I represent these people, citizens of the United States of America. We do not believe that you are representing the needs, wants, and beliefs of the constituents who you have sworn to represent. We as the representatives of your constituents we respectively ask you to resign immediately and exit this building."
There are plenty of people among us, who would be excellent leaders. We wouldn't accept corruption. We have better morals than to take bribes in any form.
That sir, is how you make change in a totally non-violent way. Not one shot is fired. Not one person is injured (except for maybe the occasional trip and fall hazard). The only violence would come from the law enforcement professionals who some may take an unconstitutional stand against the people.
It is said that we have the "Four boxes of liberty", the soap, ballot, jury, and ammo boxes. There is no need to go to the fourth, unless the powers that be decide to use it against the citizens standing up for their rights. In reality, a couple hundred thousand people standing there saying "we want change", and really meaning it, do not have any reason to use violence. Well, except for possibly gently moving anyone who may try to block their way. You can be assured that someone in a uniform will
Too bad there isn't a "Sad but true" moderation.
Most people ignore things that don't directly involve them. Who cares if [insert agency] commits [insert action] against [someone else]. Until someone finds out that a questionable legal wire tap implicated them in some sort of crime, which could lead to serious jail time through new means, they could care less. As you said, they'll flip over to American Idol and otherwise numb their brains to oblivion.
I think you're close to having the right answer. Damn, two Slashdot people discussed it, and figured out the solution.
The problem would be, in the case of political refugees, who could you call that could be trusted with knowing where you are? I use friends and family. That's not necessarily a practical solution for everyone though. I do have some international contacts where messages could be left, so in the event of a national uprising in the United States, a contact in Europe could keep track of us.
Other than friends, who do we trust? I'm sure if there were a sociopolitical uprising , I wouldn't exactly trust calling any government hotline. I guess as far as that goes, and knowing what the government is already doing, calling anywhere isn't "safe". Calling a neutral 3rd party to even just say "The following people are safe ..." would equate to "We aren't dead yet, send the brute squad to finish us off." I know, it wouldn't happen in America (ha), but say you were in Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan, and you are a citizen of that country, who happened to be on America's shit list, would you trust that your phone call wouldn't be an invitation for a UAV to target your location?
"I am JW Smythe. I'm at 14 Main Street in Baghdad, with 3 other survivors. What do you mean hold the line? Oh look, a little airplane."
Well, there are always going to be refugees. By definition, it is anyone displaced, or seeking refuge, for reasons including political, social, economic, and environmental reasons.
So, anyone seeking refuge somewhere else, for whatever reason should be included. In my example, the building was a county owned building (a school). It was guarded by the local sheriffs department (4 deputies, if I remember correctly). Two Red Cross representatives were there. It was being staffed by just a few volunteers who showed up and offered to help, including me. If they didn't want the help, I would have turned around and driven home in the middle of a hurricane. :) I've lived through enough to know the basic facts. Stay away from anywhere that may get flooded, and avoid things falling on you, like trees, power lines, free-floating houses and flying cows. :) Just kidding on the last one. I've never seen a flying cow. And ... well, never a whole flying house, but I've seen large enough parts of them, where they may as well be a whole house.
In another hurricane when I was younger, we had about a dozen "refugees" at our house. They were friends of the family. They stayed with us for about a week, until the flood waters went down and we had the opportunity to drive towards their houses, just to find their houses still under 4' of water. Well, the houses we could see. We couldn't get very close.
These refugees don't have a record anywhere. Their family wouldn't know where to call. Our phones were out the whole time, but we did have power and running water (private well), and plenty of food. During the same storm, the house was hit by three tornadoes. One tore down our TV antenna (ya, it was a while back). One ripped trees out of our front yard. Another ripped trees out of the back yard. I can confidentially say they were tornadoes, since the antenna (and top of the tower) and trees weren't anywhere to be found after looking around about 1/2 mile in any direction.
What if something happened? If the police got around to searching the flooded houses, and couldn't locate the owners/occupants, would they be presumed dead? If our house had been destroyed by a tornado, and the occupants (my family, and the dozen refugees) were tossed around into the surrounding woods, how long would the missing people simply be presumed to have left the area (or presumed dead)?
They are things you think of after the event. At the time, we were concerned with getting to the safest place possible. At the time, evacuation centers weren't generally available. The folks who came to us came there because we were 10 miles inland, and 30 feet AMSL. That was much better than their 20 feet inland and 2 feet AMSL. Needless to say, they learned how wonderful their waterfront property really was. It's all fun and games, until ... well ... a hurricane flooded their house and destroyed everything they owned. Well, except for their car and the suitcase they had with some clothes and family photos.
Sorry, I went off on a tangent. :) Myself, I make sure at least someone I personally trust knows where I am. The rest of the world still gets my disinformation. :) At least if I go missing, I'll make an effort to call my network of real friends and at least admit I'm still alive. Abandon in a strange land, no car, no cell phone, no Internet access? Be damned, I'll find a way back to civilization, even if I have to steal transportation and/or smuggle myself across some foreign and unfriendly border.
To further this...
I had a quick look at the CIA world factbook for Rwanda. 70% literacy rate. So 3 in 10 people won't know how to spell their own names, much less how to go to http://refugee-registry.example.com./ Once there, they won't be able to read what it says.
There are 11 million people in the country. There are 2.9 million cell phones in use. There are 0.455 million Internet users. So, it would be fair to say that most of the population has had no exposure to the Internet. It would also be fair to say that if roaming, long distance tolls, and number portability were not a concern, cell phones would be the best method of letting people find each other.
Cell phones are a world wide network. You can call from any remote area that has phone service, to any other remote area that has phone service, regardless of how far apart those remote areas are. If a refugee were given a phone, and their old phone number assigned to it, and they were able to make calls to any of their friends and family, they have a fighting chance of finding them.
Since that's not the way it works, the subject of the beginning of the article, now living in Denmark, can't get a replacement phone with her old number (if she had one). She likely can't afford the long distance calls to friends and family, who themselves likely don't have phones with the same number, if they've re-established themselves elsewhere. If they've brought their phone to another country, they likely can't afford to use it, being that it would now be doing international roaming, assuming the phone is a GSM phone.