Is a would-be terrorist going to tell the flight-crew that the dropped his bomb-laden i-pod in the toilet?
"Pardon me, ma'am, I dropped my i-bomb in the toilet. Can someone help me retrieve it so I can put it where I really wanted it?"
We could all go around with giant styrofoam bubble-suits to keep us from getting hurt when we fall down and sure, it would be "safer"... but I think most of us would agree that it would be "too safe", and rather ludicrous.
When security people don't use common sense when it comes to security then the populace ends up with a general disregard and disrespect for what security people are doing.
Here's an analogy: Let's say that your neighbor trespasses through your backyard and, in doing so, happens to look through your window and sees you molesting a child. If he goes to the police and says what he saw, should they be able to act on it?
There's a key distinction. In one case a guy is doing one illegal thing incidentally (trespassing) and witnessing another illegal act and reporting it. They guy could still be prosecuted for trespassing. In another, the police are giving the guy a pass on tresspassing in people's yards in the hope that he'll dig up stuff to find. Now he's working as an agent of the police. And at the moment, they should not be able to benefit from his criminal acts.
Heck, if he had that much control of the pedophile's computer, he could just send an email from the pedophile to the FBI saying "I just wanted to show you what I have stored on my computer" and attaching a picture. Should the FBI ignore leads like that as well?
Or, if he had that much control over the computer, what's to say he's not working from Turkey cause problems for people, yet be immune to prosecution in the US? With that control, what's to keep him from planting photos, or causing his computer to obtain child porn and create logs at the ISP? How reliable is this evidence now? Has there been any "standards of evidence" maintained to ensure that the data found on the computer was NOT planted?
This could be a very convenient business. Working as a tech hitman, you could be paid to take out political opponents, assist in custody cases, and character assassinations by hacking computers and planting evidence... then reporting it to the police. It wouldn't even have to stick... just be enough damage to lose the election or the custody case.
Should the FBI ignore leads like that as well? They should ignore any evidence or leads that are not forensically sound. And they should not encourage others to break the law to help them get the evidence they want.
Best for the bottom line... but over what time-period?
Monthly book closing? Quarterly reporting? Annual reporting? Reign of the current CEO? Life of the company?
Too often, managers make the decision to make short-term measurements look good at the sacrifice of the long-term viability and profitablity of the company.
Taken to the absurd extreme, anyone can make a company profitable for a short period of time: fire the employees, sell all the IP, and liquidate all inventory and assets. You'll be incrediblly profitable, but only for the first quarter.
As Deming once said: If management sets the targets and makes people's jobs depend on meeting them, people will do whatever is needed to hit the targets, including destroying the company to get there.
This clearly happens when the targets are all centered around coming up with a good filing at the quarter or year end.
And actually, the obligation is not to do what's best for the bottom line, but to maximize share-holder value. This means your decisions need to maximize that value in a sustainable way, not just for the next quarter's financial filings.
But most likely, they don't make the parts replaceable because the guy who's designing it is told to make it as cheap as possible, regardless of what that means for aftermarket replacement sales. Businesses too often try to maximize each little part of their system without looking at the overall effect on the entire system. It's a fallacy that you can attain an optimum system by optimizing all the individual parts. This is the difference between Toyota and GM.
I can't dispute your facts, and they agree with what I've heard in the past.
But if this is the case, why would paper companies not be bribing our congresspeople to allow this? Wouldn't it cost them less than the bribes to cut down forests?
Can it really be the "anti-drug" fervor is keeping these huge corporations from reaping (pun intended) immensely higher profits without the need to deal with "enviro-nuts"?
The answer entirely depends on deciding what you really want to do and where you want to do it. So many people bumble about thinking that getting just one more degree will bring them their dream job happiness. $50k later, they're working at Burgerville with a Masters in Fine Arts and wondering how they're going to make their student loan payment.
Do some soul searching and try to figure out what kind of job you really want to do and the kinds of industries and businesses you want to do it. If you can't get a good bead on that then you're just trusting your life to fate.
So, once you figure out what you want to do or where you want to do it, do everything you can to learn about it. Contact professionals in the field/business and arrange informational interviews. If you're still in school, try to get some kind of internship or "special project" with that business/industry - your profs are your friends here and probably know someone in industry who can help you.
For example, if you want to be a supply chain analyst for a sportswear company then you should see if any of your profs know someone at a sportswear company and see if you can do some kind of class-related project. Find out who they use for temp staff and get work there when you can.
Check to see if your school has an alumni program where you can find alumni out in the world and see if any of them are working in a field/company you're interested.
Once you get in, make contacts. Ask LOTS of questions. Find out what THEY look for when they are hiring. My current job at a place pretty much requires an MBA. The previous job I did as a temp employee didn't care what my degree was or if I even had one.
If you know you want to be a software developer for IBM, then find out what IBM looks for. They're the ones you need to impress. That answer is totally different than if you want to be a systems administrator at a university.
But, until you can answer "what do you want to do", there's not much point in going for a higher degree unless you feel like you'll be lucky.
If they can get you to "give yourself up" then you must be doing something wrong. I can't give anything up if I haven't done anything.
That's a pretty naive view of how the legal system works. There are plenty of people who are accused of things they did not do but the only practical choice is to plead guilty or no contest. Many people want to fight on the principle of "I'm innocent, and I'm not going to say otherwise". But then you are stuck for days in jail with "real" criminals. You have to keep taking days off work to be present for your defense - only to find they've postponed your trial yet again. You can't wear this system down, but it can grind you down until you give up.
You should never consent to a search, even if there is nothing to find. The cops will still search you if they want and they may even find something. If they REALLY want to search you, and use the evidence, they'll get a warrant.
Be polite, yes. But be assertive about maintaining your rights. They are precious and one of the things many people have died to protect. Don't be so passive in simply giving them up.
If you are arrested, you are entitled to a lawyer whether you can afford one or not.
The point is not so much that you're getting a lawyer or not - it's that you're asserting your right to have one. The cops, my friend says, will do whatever they do. This is all to protect you when you are in court. If you didn't assert your rights when dealing with the cops then it allows for more of their "illegal" activity to slide and for more evidence to be used against you.
I have a friend who is nearly a lawyer and she has been involved in lots of protests in her life.
*** _I_ am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Always get your legal advice from a lawyer. ***
When approached by a cop, you only have to identify yourself. You really don't have to answer any other questions.
Anything you say before you are arrested can be used against you. Don't admit to anything. If he asks "have you been drinking/fucking/...", she recommends answering with something like "isn't it a nice day, officer", or "can I help you with anything, officer".
If they ask you if they can search your purse, car, pants, etc. You should always answer, "I'm sorry officer, I do not consent to this search." They will probably do the search - illegally probabably. But if you have not given consent, any evidence most likely cannot be used against you. The trick is that they want to find something and get you to talk. They might not be able to use the evidence they found, but if you then confess about that evidence, you're fucked.
But more importantly, say very early in the dialogue:
"Am I under arrest?" This forces the cop's hand... at this point he either has to arrest you or not. Once you are arrested, he is required to read you your miranda rights.
This should be followed by (if you're not under arrest):
"Am I free to go."
If you ARE under arrest, the next thing you need to say is: "I want my lawyer NOW".
It's very important to state it in no uncertain terms. Saying things like "I think I should have a lawyer", or "maybe I should have a lawyer", or "can I have a lawyer" are not good enough and don't invoke your protections.
After this, SHUT YOUR TRAP!
REMEMBER... THE COPS ARE ***NOT*** ON YOUR SIDE. THEY ARE ***NOT*** YOUR FRIEND. They will LIE, CHEAT, and do anything they can to get you to give yourself up. Don't fall for it. They do this all day, every-day. You probably never have. Would you play one-on-one with a pro ball player in a wager for your life? It's the same thing here... the cops and DAs are well practiced pro-level players. They will grind you up and dispose of you before you know what hit you.
And the best way to keep from being rail-roaded by the "justice" system is to avoid getting into it in the first place. Know your rights and exercise them.
So remember: I do not consent to this search. Am I under arrest? Am I free to go? I want my lawyer NOW. then SHUT UP!
I'll agree with you there. I have a good example when I (with a degree in Middle East studies) worked as a sysadmin in an Engineering/CS school. I was good friends with one of the CS profs. He could barely tell the difference between the CPU and the power supply if you opened up a computer. But, at the same time, he was writing algorithms and computational models for quantum computers - which barely even existed yet.
Like someone else said, I was working under the assumption that each customer would need to have their own copy of matlab to run the product. So in a sense, you need to bundle it - or at least from the customer point of view, the cost of the product inlcludes the matlab.
In my (possibly incorrect) view, the choice seemed to be to develop using matlab and spend less time developing, or to develop in C++ and spend more time developing. I was saying that it may be cheaper on a per-unit basis to pay the developers to do the c++ work since you won't have to bundle the cost of matlab with your product. That, of course, depends on whether it is indeed necessary to bundle matlab, and how much it's going to take to develop in c++.
As for in-house, I was then approaching it from the point of view that possibly they weren't selling the system, but building it for in-house use. At that point, it becomes an issue of not having multiple units to spread your fixed costs across.
So, it's not nearly so absolute. It depends on how many units you really think you can sell and how much money you would spend developing the c++ compared to the matlab license and whether you have to bundle it with a product you intend to sell.
If you do have to bundle matlab, then the advantage of the c++ route is that the marginal cost of the nth unit is nearly 0. If you do have to bundle matlab, then it is nearly $10,000...
That's only true if they're developing for their own in-house work. But if they're trying to sell this product to other people, going the Matlab route just took $10,000 off their margin. If they want to make a profit, they need to sell their product for $10,000 + [developer time per unit] + [desired profit].
If they go the c++ route, they only have to sell it for [developer time per unit] + [desired profit]. The developer time might be more, but with the lower price, they have a better chance of selling more copies and driving down the developer time per unit sold...
Again, as with any project, the decisions need to be made based on the requirements and the desired output.
True, but I'm not so sure the Earth will scale to handle a typical sedan for every person. It might be best to re-scale our expectations from our transportation and living options.
What I love is hte irony of using laptop batteries to power a car as a way to reduce dependence on fossil fuel... while laptops are opting for fuel-cell technology using fossil fuels to get away from batteries...
If I'm a good example of the casual user of lyrics, this will only cost them money.
A vast majority of the time when I'm looking for lyrics it's because I have just heard (or remember) a fragment of a song and want to know who wrote/performed it so I can buy it.
I sure as hell am not going to pay to search a database of lyrics just so I can then turn around to buy it. Why bother?
They're just going to lose sales from people like me.
From a pragmatic view, the soldier is important because he's the guy who will go to the battlefield and kill people for you. If you don't need him to do that, then he's no more important than anyone else. But if you like to wage wars (even if you did everything you could to avoid going yourself), then soldiers willing to fight are very important.
If huge life-saving measures are only done on certain people (high ranking, I presume), that's going to cause a lot of dissention and foster mistrust.
I'm not saying that these herculean efforts should be made or that they shouldn't. I'm only saying that if they are available, but withheld, it will damage the morale of the troops.
You might be right. But a key point to maintaining soldier morale is making sure they think everything will be done to save them if they are injured.
If you start withholding care that could save their buddies, they'll quickly realize that the care will be withheld from them too - and they're less likely to fight so well.
I seem to recall an article on NPR once about the state of Louisianna issuing free cookbooks for cooking nutria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutria) because they were breeding so fast. They resemble a beaver with a rat's tail.
While many of us see Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Animal Farm as warnings of what could be. The real problem comes from the people in power (or want to be in power) who see these books as instruction manuals.
I love the Daily Show... but since I don't have cable, I only get to watch it when I go drinking with a friend of mine who has Tivo. It's particularly sad that real information has to come through the form of comedy and satire. But then, maybe it's always been that way.
Then again, it's probably safest to check out audiobooks from the library... time to work through Harry Potter again..:)
is it better to send rockets at Spain than Morocco? I hope it's not because you think Morocco is filled with radical muslims who would see such rockets as an attack from the evil west...
If so, you do realize that Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States as a nation - and is still considered the longest-standing ally of the United States?
I think it is important to remember that the Kingdom of Morocco is our oldest and most enduring ally. The relationship between Morocco and the United States of America has existed throughout the history of our country. In December of 1777, when war raged between the American Colonies and Britain, Sultan Sidi Mohammed boldly recognized our young and not yet free Republic. That magnanimous act of recognition was cemented in a Treaty of Peace and Friendship between our countries, ratified in July of 1787. And that enduring document remains the oldest unbroken treaty in the history of the foreign relations of the United States.
The United States has had no better nor more constant friend and ally in the Maghreb, in North Africa, and in the Arab World, than Morocco.
But, isn't this service more like buying a book and then taking it to a service and paying them to cut out certain pages?
The only reason there is a "copy" is because a DVD cannot be edited.
To add that to the book analogy, what if you were to take a book to a service who then made a negative copy of each page, rebound those copies, then destroyed the original. Would this be illegal? Should it be?
If the service buys a bunch of movies and then sells edited copies, I see this as a problem. But, if you send them your own original and they then send you back an edited version, I don't see a problem with that. In one case, they're offering a product. In the other, they're offering a service.
Going back to the book, there should be no reason I couldn't take a book that I own to a service and pay them to remove the pages from a book. There would be a problem, though, if they bought a bunch of books and sold them in an edited form. Again, one is a service (and should be legal), and the other is a product, which is quite a bit shadier.
If I can edit the copy I have purchased rights to, why can't I pay someone else to do this?
Let's presume you could buy a movie in a 16mm reel version. You then pay someone to go through and cut and splice all the parts out you don't want.
This service is really no different than that. You take them an original DVD, and they space-shift it onto a new DVD. In the process, they cut out parts you've asked them to.
It would be different, however, if someone wants to run a video store with these modified movies. But why shouldn't individuals be able to pay for this service?
The judge definitely got it wrong in this case. Next thing you know, it will be illegal to pay someone make a CD out of your old 45's.
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Yes, you can be "safe" to a stupid degree.
Is a would-be terrorist going to tell the flight-crew that the dropped his bomb-laden i-pod in the toilet?
"Pardon me, ma'am, I dropped my i-bomb in the toilet. Can someone help me retrieve it so I can put it where I really wanted it?"
We could all go around with giant styrofoam bubble-suits to keep us from getting hurt when we fall down and sure, it would be "safer"... but I think most of us would agree that it would be "too safe", and rather ludicrous.
When security people don't use common sense when it comes to security then the populace ends up with a general disregard and disrespect for what security people are doing.
Here's an analogy: Let's say that your neighbor trespasses through your backyard and, in doing so, happens to look through your window and sees you molesting a child. If he goes to the police and says what he saw, should they be able to act on it?
There's a key distinction. In one case a guy is doing one illegal thing incidentally (trespassing) and witnessing another illegal act and reporting it. They guy could still be prosecuted for trespassing. In another, the police are giving the guy a pass on tresspassing in people's yards in the hope that he'll dig up stuff to find. Now he's working as an agent of the police. And at the moment, they should not be able to benefit from his criminal acts.
Heck, if he had that much control of the pedophile's computer, he could just send an email from the pedophile to the FBI saying "I just wanted to show you what I have stored on my computer" and attaching a picture. Should the FBI ignore leads like that as well?
Or, if he had that much control over the computer, what's to say he's not working from Turkey cause problems for people, yet be immune to prosecution in the US? With that control, what's to keep him from planting photos, or causing his computer to obtain child porn and create logs at the ISP? How reliable is this evidence now? Has there been any "standards of evidence" maintained to ensure that the data found on the computer was NOT planted?
This could be a very convenient business. Working as a tech hitman, you could be paid to take out political opponents, assist in custody cases, and character assassinations by hacking computers and planting evidence... then reporting it to the police. It wouldn't even have to stick... just be enough damage to lose the election or the custody case.
Should the FBI ignore leads like that as well?
They should ignore any evidence or leads that are not forensically sound. And they should not encourage others to break the law to help them get the evidence they want.
Best for the bottom line... but over what time-period?
Monthly book closing? Quarterly reporting? Annual reporting? Reign of the current CEO? Life of the company?
Too often, managers make the decision to make short-term measurements look good at the sacrifice of the long-term viability and profitablity of the company.
Taken to the absurd extreme, anyone can make a company profitable for a short period of time: fire the employees, sell all the IP, and liquidate all inventory and assets. You'll be incrediblly profitable, but only for the first quarter.
As Deming once said:
If management sets the targets and makes people's jobs depend on meeting them, people will do whatever is needed to hit the targets, including destroying the company to get there.
This clearly happens when the targets are all centered around coming up with a good filing at the quarter or year end.
And actually, the obligation is not to do what's best for the bottom line, but to maximize share-holder value. This means your decisions need to maximize that value in a sustainable way, not just for the next quarter's financial filings.
But most likely, they don't make the parts replaceable because the guy who's designing it is told to make it as cheap as possible, regardless of what that means for aftermarket replacement sales. Businesses too often try to maximize each little part of their system without looking at the overall effect on the entire system. It's a fallacy that you can attain an optimum system by optimizing all the individual parts. This is the difference between Toyota and GM.
I can't dispute your facts, and they agree with what I've heard in the past.
But if this is the case, why would paper companies not be bribing our congresspeople to allow this? Wouldn't it cost them less than the bribes to cut down forests?
Can it really be the "anti-drug" fervor is keeping these huge corporations from reaping (pun intended) immensely higher profits without the need to deal with "enviro-nuts"?
The answer entirely depends on deciding what you really want to do and where you want to do it. So many people bumble about thinking that getting just one more degree will bring them their dream job happiness. $50k later, they're working at Burgerville with a Masters in Fine Arts and wondering how they're going to make their student loan payment.
Do some soul searching and try to figure out what kind of job you really want to do and the kinds of industries and businesses you want to do it. If you can't get a good bead on that then you're just trusting your life to fate.
So, once you figure out what you want to do or where you want to do it, do everything you can to learn about it. Contact professionals in the field/business and arrange informational interviews. If you're still in school, try to get some kind of internship or "special project" with that business/industry - your profs are your friends here and probably know someone in industry who can help you.
For example, if you want to be a supply chain analyst for a sportswear company then you should see if any of your profs know someone at a sportswear company and see if you can do some kind of class-related project. Find out who they use for temp staff and get work there when you can.
Check to see if your school has an alumni program where you can find alumni out in the world and see if any of them are working in a field/company you're interested.
Once you get in, make contacts. Ask LOTS of questions. Find out what THEY look for when they are hiring. My current job at a place pretty much requires an MBA. The previous job I did as a temp employee didn't care what my degree was or if I even had one.
If you know you want to be a software developer for IBM, then find out what IBM looks for. They're the ones you need to impress. That answer is totally different than if you want to be a systems administrator at a university.
But, until you can answer "what do you want to do", there's not much point in going for a higher degree unless you feel like you'll be lucky.
If they can get you to "give yourself up" then you must be doing something wrong. I can't give anything up if I haven't done anything.
That's a pretty naive view of how the legal system works. There are plenty of people who are accused of things they did not do but the only practical choice is to plead guilty or no contest. Many people want to fight on the principle of "I'm innocent, and I'm not going to say otherwise". But then you are stuck for days in jail with "real" criminals. You have to keep taking days off work to be present for your defense - only to find they've postponed your trial yet again. You can't wear this system down, but it can grind you down until you give up.
A public defender wrote a very good book: http://www.davidfeige.com/
You should never consent to a search, even if there is nothing to find. The cops will still search you if they want and they may even find something. If they REALLY want to search you, and use the evidence, they'll get a warrant.
Be polite, yes. But be assertive about maintaining your rights. They are precious and one of the things many people have died to protect. Don't be so passive in simply giving them up.
If you are arrested, you are entitled to a lawyer whether you can afford one or not.
The point is not so much that you're getting a lawyer or not - it's that you're asserting your right to have one. The cops, my friend says, will do whatever they do. This is all to protect you when you are in court. If you didn't assert your rights when dealing with the cops then it allows for more of their "illegal" activity to slide and for more evidence to be used against you.
I have a friend who is nearly a lawyer and she has been involved in lots of protests in her life.
*** _I_ am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Always get your legal advice from a lawyer. ***
When approached by a cop, you only have to identify yourself. You really don't have to answer any other questions.
Anything you say before you are arrested can be used against you. Don't admit to anything. If he asks "have you been drinking/fucking/...", she recommends answering with something like "isn't it a nice day, officer", or "can I help you with anything, officer".
If they ask you if they can search your purse, car, pants, etc. You should always answer, "I'm sorry officer, I do not consent to this search." They will probably do the search - illegally probabably. But if you have not given consent, any evidence most likely cannot be used against you. The trick is that they want to find something and get you to talk. They might not be able to use the evidence they found, but if you then confess about that evidence, you're fucked.
But more importantly, say very early in the dialogue:
"Am I under arrest?" This forces the cop's hand... at this point he either has to arrest you or not. Once you are arrested, he is required to read you your miranda rights.
This should be followed by (if you're not under arrest):
"Am I free to go."
If you ARE under arrest, the next thing you need to say is:
"I want my lawyer NOW".
It's very important to state it in no uncertain terms. Saying things like "I think I should have a lawyer", or "maybe I should have a lawyer", or "can I have a lawyer" are not good enough and don't invoke your protections.
After this, SHUT YOUR TRAP!
REMEMBER... THE COPS ARE ***NOT*** ON YOUR SIDE. THEY ARE ***NOT*** YOUR FRIEND. They will LIE, CHEAT, and do anything they can to get you to give yourself up. Don't fall for it. They do this all day, every-day. You probably never have. Would you play one-on-one with a pro ball player in a wager for your life? It's the same thing here... the cops and DAs are well practiced pro-level players. They will grind you up and dispose of you before you know what hit you.
And the best way to keep from being rail-roaded by the "justice" system is to avoid getting into it in the first place. Know your rights and exercise them.
So remember:
I do not consent to this search.
Am I under arrest?
Am I free to go?
I want my lawyer NOW.
then SHUT UP!
It seems the Goa'uld are big on apostrophes.
Nah... English simply lacks a written letter for the glottal stop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop
Arabic has such a consonnant, but I suppose that makes sense if the Goa'uld were so active in North Africa in the early dawn of man...
I'll agree with you there. I have a good example when I (with a degree in Middle East studies) worked as a sysadmin in an Engineering/CS school. I was good friends with one of the CS profs. He could barely tell the difference between the CPU and the power supply if you opened up a computer. But, at the same time, he was writing algorithms and computational models for quantum computers - which barely even existed yet.
My lawyer tells me a verbal contract is as good as the paper it's written on...
Like someone else said, I was working under the assumption that each customer would need to have their own copy of matlab to run the product. So in a sense, you need to bundle it - or at least from the customer point of view, the cost of the product inlcludes the matlab.
In my (possibly incorrect) view, the choice seemed to be to develop using matlab and spend less time developing, or to develop in C++ and spend more time developing. I was saying that it may be cheaper on a per-unit basis to pay the developers to do the c++ work since you won't have to bundle the cost of matlab with your product. That, of course, depends on whether it is indeed necessary to bundle matlab, and how much it's going to take to develop in c++.
As for in-house, I was then approaching it from the point of view that possibly they weren't selling the system, but building it for in-house use. At that point, it becomes an issue of not having multiple units to spread your fixed costs across.
So, it's not nearly so absolute. It depends on how many units you really think you can sell and how much money you would spend developing the c++ compared to the matlab license and whether you have to bundle it with a product you intend to sell.
If you do have to bundle matlab, then the advantage of the c++ route is that the marginal cost of the nth unit is nearly 0. If you do have to bundle matlab, then it is nearly $10,000...
That's only true if they're developing for their own in-house work. But if they're trying to sell this product to other people, going the Matlab route just took $10,000 off their margin. If they want to make a profit, they need to sell their product for $10,000 + [developer time per unit] + [desired profit].
If they go the c++ route, they only have to sell it for [developer time per unit] + [desired profit]. The developer time might be more, but with the lower price, they have a better chance of selling more copies and driving down the developer time per unit sold...
Again, as with any project, the decisions need to be made based on the requirements and the desired output.
This won't scale into a typical sedan.
True, but I'm not so sure the Earth will scale to handle a typical sedan for every person. It might be best to re-scale our expectations from our transportation and living options.
What I love is hte irony of using laptop batteries to power a car as a way to reduce dependence on fossil fuel... while laptops are opting for fuel-cell technology using fossil fuels to get away from batteries...
If I'm a good example of the casual user of lyrics, this will only cost them money.
A vast majority of the time when I'm looking for lyrics it's because I have just heard (or remember) a fragment of a song and want to know who wrote/performed it so I can buy it.
I sure as hell am not going to pay to search a database of lyrics just so I can then turn around to buy it. Why bother?
They're just going to lose sales from people like me.
From a pragmatic view, the soldier is important because he's the guy who will go to the battlefield and kill people for you. If you don't need him to do that, then he's no more important than anyone else. But if you like to wage wars (even if you did everything you could to avoid going yourself), then soldiers willing to fight are very important.
If huge life-saving measures are only done on certain people (high ranking, I presume), that's going to cause a lot of dissention and foster mistrust.
I'm not saying that these herculean efforts should be made or that they shouldn't. I'm only saying that if they are available, but withheld, it will damage the morale of the troops.
You might be right. But a key point to maintaining soldier morale is making sure they think everything will be done to save them if they are injured.
If you start withholding care that could save their buddies, they'll quickly realize that the care will be withheld from them too - and they're less likely to fight so well.
Soldiers can be pretty pragmatic too...
I seem to recall an article on NPR once about the state of Louisianna issuing free cookbooks for cooking nutria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutria) because they were breeding so fast. They resemble a beaver with a rat's tail.
The best I can find about it is: http://www.nutria.com/site9.php
While many of us see Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Animal Farm as warnings of what could be. The real problem comes from the people in power (or want to be in power) who see these books as instruction manuals.
Didn't some congressman complain about getting a whole cellphone network in his voice mail?
I love the Daily Show... but since I don't have cable, I only get to watch it when I go drinking with a friend of mine who has Tivo. It's particularly sad that real information has to come through the form of comedy and satire. But then, maybe it's always been that way.
:)
Then again, it's probably safest to check out audiobooks from the library... time to work through Harry Potter again..
Sorry about that... I need to dial back on the talk radio - both left & right.
And thanks for expanding that cool bit of US history.
is it better to send rockets at Spain than Morocco? I hope it's not because you think Morocco is filled with radical muslims who would see such rockets as an attack from the evil west...
/ dia111705.pdf
If so, you do realize that Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States as a nation - and is still considered the longest-standing ally of the United States?
From testimony in the congressional record: http://wwwa.house.gov/international_relations/109
I think it is important
to remember that the Kingdom of Morocco is our oldest and most enduring ally.
The relationship between Morocco and the United States of America has existed
throughout the history of our country. In December of 1777, when war raged
between the American Colonies and Britain, Sultan Sidi Mohammed boldly
recognized our young and not yet free Republic. That magnanimous act of
recognition was cemented in a Treaty of Peace and Friendship between our
countries, ratified in July of 1787. And that enduring document remains the oldest
unbroken treaty in the history of the foreign relations of the United States.
The United States has had no better nor more constant friend and ally in the
Maghreb, in North Africa, and in the Arab World, than Morocco.
But, isn't this service more like buying a book and then taking it to a service and paying them to cut out certain pages?
The only reason there is a "copy" is because a DVD cannot be edited.
To add that to the book analogy, what if you were to take a book to a service who then made a negative copy of each page, rebound those copies, then destroyed the original. Would this be illegal? Should it be?
If the service buys a bunch of movies and then sells edited copies, I see this as a problem. But, if you send them your own original and they then send you back an edited version, I don't see a problem with that. In one case, they're offering a product. In the other, they're offering a service.
Going back to the book, there should be no reason I couldn't take a book that I own to a service and pay them to remove the pages from a book. There would be a problem, though, if they bought a bunch of books and sold them in an edited form. Again, one is a service (and should be legal), and the other is a product, which is quite a bit shadier.
If I can edit the copy I have purchased rights to, why can't I pay someone else to do this?
Let's presume you could buy a movie in a 16mm reel version. You then pay someone to go through and cut and splice all the parts out you don't want.
This service is really no different than that. You take them an original DVD, and they space-shift it onto a new DVD. In the process, they cut out parts you've asked them to.
It would be different, however, if someone wants to run a video store with these modified movies. But why shouldn't individuals be able to pay for this service?
The judge definitely got it wrong in this case. Next thing you know, it will be illegal to pay someone make a CD out of your old 45's.