Obviously punishment doesn't eliminate crime, but if psycobabble was all we needed to prevent crime, we could eliminate the problem all together. Morality is the first line of defense against crime, but it's not enough, and it requires prevention (like locks) and deterrants (like punishment).
Think about it this way, observe the speed of cars in light traffic in a place like LA. Then, observe the same cars when a police officer is present and visible. You will notice a marked speed difference, which can only be due to fear of punishment.
In general, criminals are less likely to commit crimes when law enforcement is present and visible. This is true for murder, theft, assault, and everything else. Security cameras deter criminals for the same reason: it increases the chances of punishment. How can that be due to any factor other than fear of punishment?
Harsher laws, stricter enforcement, and greater consistency in the sentencing all increase the probability that a criminal will be punished severely, the same as having security cameras and law enforcement patrols. All of these things reduce crime.
Just because something isn't causing death now is no reason to be complacent. There weren't very many deaths from Nuclear weapons last year either, but that's partially because people are working to prevent that.
The same reason we are worried somewhat about bird flu. The regular flu kills many more people, but we can't do much about that. If we prevent bird flu outbreaks (if that's even possible) then that might save a lot of life.
Laws prohibiting otherwise law-abiding citizens from producing, modifying, purchasing, and transporting guns (or classifications of guns) have been consistently upheld. In California, you can't purchase a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds. There are waiting periods for purchasing weapons in many states. In Los Angeles, it's virtually impossible for a normal citizen to ever be able to legally carry a gun.
See Kelo v. New London for an example of judicial activism.
That's one of the worst SCOTUS decisions in history. However, it's not activism. Many localities were already confiscating private property, and this decision upheld that practice when it should have declared it a violation of the 5th Amendment.
I agreed with you that was a bad decision by Scalia. He didn't appear to write the opinion, but I would still call him an activist. Thank you for pointing that out, it changes my perception of him.
We don't *need* the Constitution to tell us what our rights are.
I think you're referring to the 9th Amendment.
An abortion is NOT a state issue; it is an issue between a woman and her doctor. Period.
There are all kinds of "private" things that can still be made illegal by the state. For instance, infanticide is illegal too. Privacy and legality are orthogonal issues. Something can be private an illegal, private and legal, public and legal, or public and illegal. If it's private and illegal, the cops have to get a search warrant based on some kind of probable cause before they can punish you.
It amazes me sometimes how the SCOTUS can read into the Constitution a right to abort a pregnancy, but not the right to bear arms.
I apologize for my inaccuracy. I was thinking of Thomas. In fact, that view was exactly what I was disagreeing with. I think my point still stands however.
There must be some hidden reason for the seemingly obvious misjudgment.
More like a misconception. This country really needs more so-called conservative justices. By "conservative", I don't mean conservatives pushing their agendas from the bench (like O'Connor), I mean justices who follow the Constitution (like Scalia).
It's no surprise that Kelo went the way it did. You're thinking is that "liberals are for the little guys, conservatives for business". But, in reality, having the power of central planning is crucial to the liberal agenda. Kelo was exactly what the liberals needed: the power for government officials to confiscate your personal property in the name of a "greater good" by calling it a "public purpose" (not public use, however, as the 5th Amendment says).
Scalia, on the other hand, follows the Constitutional principle that the federal government can only regulate interstate commerce ("commerce among the states," as is in the Constitution). Using that principle, it would be Unconstitutional for the federal government to prohibit the growing of Marijuana on private property. States could still outlaw it, of course, but the feds couldn't do a thing. Does that sound "conservative" to you? Nope, but it is what the Constitution says.
This is not about your party, the Constitution gets in the way of BOTH parties, but it's not for the parties, it's for the PEOPLE. So back the Constitution, because it's just in the way of the Democrats and the Republicans. It's time for both parties to face the hard truths: you can't execute unwarranted searchs (too bad, GOP). And Democrats: stop trying to control guns, unless you want to try to pass an Amendment. The Constitution says these things, plain and simple. Oh, and when you get a chance, read the 10th Amendment, too.
Right now the idea that we are following the Constitution is a joke. We cling to a few scraps of the Bill of Rights, and ignore much of the rest of it. Congress "Authorized the use of force"?! What is that supposed to mean? What about a declaration of war? Meanwhile the Supreme Court passes arbitrary edicts fabricated out of thin air, like "privacy" meaning that it's Unconstitutional to ban abortions. I don't think it's a good idea to ban abortions, but why did 9 people make that decision for the entire country, when it's clearly a state issue?
Finally, as for keeping guns in drawers - the primary reason for this right in the US is to kill government types who overstep their bounds.
Another reason is that you have the right to protect yourself. Otherwise, the government can arbitrarily punish people by denying them any form of physical protection. "Oh, this neighborhood didn't vote for me. Well, I'll just release all the murderers there, give the cops a paid vacation, and see what happens."
The cliche way to break out of prison is to have someone bake you a cake with a file (a metal file, not a nuch of bytes) in it. The cake hides the file. Then, after you eat the cake, you use the file to break out of prison. This probably would not actually work, but I'm sure it's happened before.
You will then find that the practice totally negates the benefit of a relational database and sql (language) to easily and quickly retrieve relational data.
Keep in mind that relational databases were adopted not because of their good performance, but in spite of their bad performance. Relational databases, by definition, create a logical layer of abstraction over the physical representation of your data. You can operate on this logical layer according to the relational model.
Heck, you could have a relational database that represents its tables as XML documents, and you can probably even make it fast. You can create secondary indexes to index the data, just like with normal tables.
However, the whole point of having a seperate package do it is so I dont have to work more than needed.
Not only that, if write all the consistency code yourself, and you make mistakes in one application that inserts bad data, that can cause other applications to fail. Try tracking down THAT bug. It's not fun.
However, if you know the data in your database is consistent, that narrows your bug hunt to one application. Usually, it means that the database will report a nice, useful error to the offending application at an earlier stage of development.
Re:SQL book recommendation?
on
Pro MySQL
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I read and enjoyed both An Introduction to Database Systems and The Third Manifesto, both also by Date. Would you say that book would add something, or would it be redundant with his other writings?
Re:DBA, please. "unique pluggable"?
on
Pro MySQL
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
For each "feature" of the database, the MySQL advertisers (or advocates) use a different storage engine. For example, if you want the feature "easy to use, right out of the box" you get MyISAM, which means no ACID. If you want ACID, you use InnoDB. Full-text search and you're back to MyISAM. Cluster, you need a memory database that won't survive a power failure. If you like all the apps currently written for MySQL, you can't use strict mode and you're stuck with the least compatible dialect of SQL anywhere. If you want SQL compatibility, turn on strict and you can't use those other applications. In order to tell if MySQL actually meets the needs of your application (today), you have to build a huge matrix of compatibility. I hope you don't need ACID compliance and full text indexes at once! So much for easy to use...
I think of MySQL as tradeoff-DB. Usually it's bad tradeoffs that you don't have to make in any other database.
In my opinion, it's a great marketing ploy. People pay attention to claims, not caveats. Shout loud that you have a feature X, Y, and Z. That will work, even if the small print says you can't use X and Y simultaneously, and Z has some huge drawback. Nobody can ever "win" an argument against MySQL because the person you're arguing with can always claim features X, and downplay the importance of Y. Then, when you point out the importance of Y, someone else claims that it supports Y, and downplays X. And then they claim Z is just an extra feature for special use, and there's no really logical way to argue against including an option. MySQL is horribly misleading in its advertising.
If the press is protected in the way you describe, that gives criminals all the advantages of anonyminity and none of the disadvantages. If the criminal wanted to speak anonymously, he can do it already via the internet and nobody will believe him. However, if they speak with a credible, "protected" reporter, the reporter can use their credibility to say that they checked their source's facts and have determined the anonymous criminal to be credible. That means that someone can leak a government secret without fear of punishment, and the reporter can make money. The people who lose are the people that secret may have protected, perhaps our armed forces.
In order to protect the reporters you have to lose any possibility of protecting secrets legally. This extends all the way from that NDA someone signed for a startup to a military secret.
Theres a bit of a consumer protection thing going on here.
So you are saying that they are breaking the law? If they are, they should be punished. If not, they should not be punished. If this is not illegal, perhaps we should make a law, but we can't apply laws retroactively.
Tax the shit out of it.
Sure, I agree, as long as the U.S. has jurisdiction. But these people are claiming that the U.S. does not have jurisdiction on that money, since it was made by an overseas corporation. If one of the owners is living in the U.S., they would be liable for capital gains taxes and income taxes on their share, but not corporate taxes on a non-US corporation.
I really think the main issue here is campaign finance contributions from Indian casinos and political pressure from state lotteries. The reason that I suspect this is because online gambling has been going on for years and they haven't done anything about it before. Also, with the extremely high profits, it seems unlikely that the gambling sites had any motivation to break other laws or rig the games.
Joe: "Hey, can I borrow $10,000?" You: "Ok, that works out to be a payment of $500/mo until you pay me back, including all interest." Joe: "I have a better idea, we can just add the monthly payment to the principle each month." You: "Hahahahahaha!!!!!!" [ pause ] You: "Oh, you were serious. If we do that, when do I get my money back?" Joe: "Don't worry, it's a free market. If you ever need your money back fast, just sell the loan to someone else. You're getting such a great interest rate, anyone would pay you a premium!"
Joe is selling the same story as the growth stock companies. The only real difference is that with stocks you get a vote. But if you don't know enough about the company or care enough to find out, the vote becomes an idle threat. And big investment houses aren't protecting you as much as you'd like to believe. If you have a growth stock, you better make sure the company is on a clear path toward profit, and when they get there, you better start getting dividends. You should use your vote to make sure those two things happen. The alternative outcome is that the company starts to fail, and the board pays themselves big bonuses and salaries, and then by the time of liquidation there is nothing left.
It's time we put responisbility square on the investors. It's easy for the board of directors and the CEO to sell you a line of BS when they don't have to show you a single penny along the way. For most stocks, you should expect dividends. If they don't offer dividends (growth stock), you should look very carefully before you invest, and during the entire time you hold the stock.
Think about it this way: with dividend-issuing stocks, you have the option of re-investing the dividends. They give you a return on your investment, and it goes as cash into your pocket. If, at that point, you are so happy with your investment that you'd like to take those dividends and pump them back into the company, you can. Stocks which do not issue dividends give you no option: all your money is tied up in the company indefinitely.
Investing in stocks is a responsibility. If you aren't willing to put the time in, just put your money in bonds, CDs, IRAs, etc.
and that they're not just pandering to right-wing nutcases.
"Pandering" only generates enough political points to be worth maybe some rhetoric during a campaign, but not enough for any action to take place.
In this case, there are major arrests and major charges. That means that something much more important is going on. Either:
(a) Actual crimes took place (b) There is a lot of money involved.
My money is on (b). In this case it's from other forms of gambling like Indian Casinos and state lotteries. Can't blame the right-wingers for everything. In this case, it's just more bought-and-paid-for politicians on both sides of the line.
the federal government has no business in regulating or controlling education in any way, shape, or form
I agree. However, that means that no federal money goes to schools either. None.
the focus is on improving test scores which then can lead to the decline of areas of study
True. However, I would demand in my local district or state two results from my tax dollars:
(1) High test scores (2) Availability of classes such as art, music, woodshop, etc.
It's not perfect, but I think it's better than what we have now. Tests are important. And what you can't test, just make it avialable, see if you get any complaints from the kids. If you don't hear anything bad, assume that some level of creativity is encouraged.
I especially hate the new "No Child Left Behind" from Bush. It stresses teaching for tests not learning and neglects subjects that are harder to measure progress in like arts, and music.
Testing is the only way to measure progress. We need some kinds of tests. You can argue that a test should be changed to be a better test, but there's no way I want to send my tax money to something without any way to tell what it's doing. Music and art are great, but we don't have a way to test the progress effectively. English, Math, and Science we do have a way to test the progress, so let's use it.
"Teaching to the test" is just rhetoric. If a student can answer a math problem they haven't seen before, that indicates some level of understanding whether you like it or not. The tests are usually so basic that if anyone is learning the subject at all, they will generally pass. And if not, they need to catch up fast or repeat the grade.
You seem to be constructing some scenario in which the student learns a lot from a teachers special way of teaching, and knows a lot, and then somehow can't answer the basic questions in front of them. That is just not the case.
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Obviously punishment doesn't eliminate crime, but if psycobabble was all we needed to prevent crime, we could eliminate the problem all together. Morality is the first line of defense against crime, but it's not enough, and it requires prevention (like locks) and deterrants (like punishment).
Think about it this way, observe the speed of cars in light traffic in a place like LA. Then, observe the same cars when a police officer is present and visible. You will notice a marked speed difference, which can only be due to fear of punishment.
In general, criminals are less likely to commit crimes when law enforcement is present and visible. This is true for murder, theft, assault, and everything else. Security cameras deter criminals for the same reason: it increases the chances of punishment. How can that be due to any factor other than fear of punishment?
Harsher laws, stricter enforcement, and greater consistency in the sentencing all increase the probability that a criminal will be punished severely, the same as having security cameras and law enforcement patrols. All of these things reduce crime.
Imprisonment should only be used if the inmate is a danger to the safety
Sometimes punishment acts as a deterrent. That protects the innocent also.
Just because something isn't causing death now is no reason to be complacent. There weren't very many deaths from Nuclear weapons last year either, but that's partially because people are working to prevent that.
The same reason we are worried somewhat about bird flu. The regular flu kills many more people, but we can't do much about that. If we prevent bird flu outbreaks (if that's even possible) then that might save a lot of life.
Refusing to hear a case is, for all practical purposes, the same as upholding the laws. As far as legal precedent, it's different, I know.
Ehh? Which case was that?
Laws prohibiting otherwise law-abiding citizens from producing, modifying, purchasing, and transporting guns (or classifications of guns) have been consistently upheld. In California, you can't purchase a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds. There are waiting periods for purchasing weapons in many states. In Los Angeles, it's virtually impossible for a normal citizen to ever be able to legally carry a gun.
You're like the 10th person to point out that I really meant Thomas.
See Kelo v. New London for an example of judicial activism.
That's one of the worst SCOTUS decisions in history. However, it's not activism. Many localities were already confiscating private property, and this decision upheld that practice when it should have declared it a violation of the 5th Amendment.
I agreed with you that was a bad decision by Scalia. He didn't appear to write the opinion, but I would still call him an activist. Thank you for pointing that out, it changes my perception of him.
We don't *need* the Constitution to tell us what our rights are.
I think you're referring to the 9th Amendment.
An abortion is NOT a state issue; it is an issue between a woman and her doctor. Period.
There are all kinds of "private" things that can still be made illegal by the state. For instance, infanticide is illegal too. Privacy and legality are orthogonal issues. Something can be private an illegal, private and legal, public and legal, or public and illegal. If it's private and illegal, the cops have to get a search warrant based on some kind of probable cause before they can punish you.
It amazes me sometimes how the SCOTUS can read into the Constitution a right to abort a pregnancy, but not the right to bear arms.
How is that activism? Activism is when judges take it upon themselves to create what is essentially law.
I apologize for my inaccuracy. I was thinking of Thomas. In fact, that view was exactly what I was disagreeing with. I think my point still stands however.
There must be some hidden reason for the seemingly obvious misjudgment.
More like a misconception. This country really needs more so-called conservative justices. By "conservative", I don't mean conservatives pushing their agendas from the bench (like O'Connor), I mean justices who follow the Constitution (like Scalia).
It's no surprise that Kelo went the way it did. You're thinking is that "liberals are for the little guys, conservatives for business". But, in reality, having the power of central planning is crucial to the liberal agenda. Kelo was exactly what the liberals needed: the power for government officials to confiscate your personal property in the name of a "greater good" by calling it a "public purpose" (not public use, however, as the 5th Amendment says).
Scalia, on the other hand, follows the Constitutional principle that the federal government can only regulate interstate commerce ("commerce among the states," as is in the Constitution). Using that principle, it would be Unconstitutional for the federal government to prohibit the growing of Marijuana on private property. States could still outlaw it, of course, but the feds couldn't do a thing. Does that sound "conservative" to you? Nope, but it is what the Constitution says.
This is not about your party, the Constitution gets in the way of BOTH parties, but it's not for the parties, it's for the PEOPLE. So back the Constitution, because it's just in the way of the Democrats and the Republicans. It's time for both parties to face the hard truths: you can't execute unwarranted searchs (too bad, GOP). And Democrats: stop trying to control guns, unless you want to try to pass an Amendment. The Constitution says these things, plain and simple. Oh, and when you get a chance, read the 10th Amendment, too.
Right now the idea that we are following the Constitution is a joke. We cling to a few scraps of the Bill of Rights, and ignore much of the rest of it. Congress "Authorized the use of force"?! What is that supposed to mean? What about a declaration of war? Meanwhile the Supreme Court passes arbitrary edicts fabricated out of thin air, like "privacy" meaning that it's Unconstitutional to ban abortions. I don't think it's a good idea to ban abortions, but why did 9 people make that decision for the entire country, when it's clearly a state issue?
Another reason is that you have the right to protect yourself. Otherwise, the government can arbitrarily punish people by denying them any form of physical protection. "Oh, this neighborhood didn't vote for me. Well, I'll just release all the murderers there, give the cops a paid vacation, and see what happens."
The cliche way to break out of prison is to have someone bake you a cake with a file (a metal file, not a nuch of bytes) in it. The cake hides the file. Then, after you eat the cake, you use the file to break out of prison. This probably would not actually work, but I'm sure it's happened before.
You will then find that the practice totally negates the benefit of a relational database and sql (language) to easily and quickly retrieve relational data.
Keep in mind that relational databases were adopted not because of their good performance, but in spite of their bad performance. Relational databases, by definition, create a logical layer of abstraction over the physical representation of your data. You can operate on this logical layer according to the relational model.
Heck, you could have a relational database that represents its tables as XML documents, and you can probably even make it fast. You can create secondary indexes to index the data, just like with normal tables.
However, the whole point of having a seperate package do it is so I dont have to work more than needed.
Not only that, if write all the consistency code yourself, and you make mistakes in one application that inserts bad data, that can cause other applications to fail. Try tracking down THAT bug. It's not fun.
However, if you know the data in your database is consistent, that narrows your bug hunt to one application. Usually, it means that the database will report a nice, useful error to the offending application at an earlier stage of development.
I read and enjoyed both An Introduction to Database Systems and The Third Manifesto, both also by Date. Would you say that book would add something, or would it be redundant with his other writings?
For each "feature" of the database, the MySQL advertisers (or advocates) use a different storage engine. For example, if you want the feature "easy to use, right out of the box" you get MyISAM, which means no ACID. If you want ACID, you use InnoDB. Full-text search and you're back to MyISAM. Cluster, you need a memory database that won't survive a power failure. If you like all the apps currently written for MySQL, you can't use strict mode and you're stuck with the least compatible dialect of SQL anywhere. If you want SQL compatibility, turn on strict and you can't use those other applications. In order to tell if MySQL actually meets the needs of your application (today), you have to build a huge matrix of compatibility. I hope you don't need ACID compliance and full text indexes at once! So much for easy to use...
I think of MySQL as tradeoff-DB. Usually it's bad tradeoffs that you don't have to make in any other database.
In my opinion, it's a great marketing ploy. People pay attention to claims, not caveats. Shout loud that you have a feature X, Y, and Z. That will work, even if the small print says you can't use X and Y simultaneously, and Z has some huge drawback. Nobody can ever "win" an argument against MySQL because the person you're arguing with can always claim features X, and downplay the importance of Y. Then, when you point out the importance of Y, someone else claims that it supports Y, and downplays X. And then they claim Z is just an extra feature for special use, and there's no really logical way to argue against including an option. MySQL is horribly misleading in its advertising.
If the press is protected in the way you describe, that gives criminals all the advantages of anonyminity and none of the disadvantages. If the criminal wanted to speak anonymously, he can do it already via the internet and nobody will believe him. However, if they speak with a credible, "protected" reporter, the reporter can use their credibility to say that they checked their source's facts and have determined the anonymous criminal to be credible. That means that someone can leak a government secret without fear of punishment, and the reporter can make money. The people who lose are the people that secret may have protected, perhaps our armed forces.
In order to protect the reporters you have to lose any possibility of protecting secrets legally. This extends all the way from that NDA someone signed for a startup to a military secret.
Theres a bit of a consumer protection thing going on here.
So you are saying that they are breaking the law? If they are, they should be punished. If not, they should not be punished. If this is not illegal, perhaps we should make a law, but we can't apply laws retroactively.
Tax the shit out of it.
Sure, I agree, as long as the U.S. has jurisdiction. But these people are claiming that the U.S. does not have jurisdiction on that money, since it was made by an overseas corporation. If one of the owners is living in the U.S., they would be liable for capital gains taxes and income taxes on their share, but not corporate taxes on a non-US corporation.
I really think the main issue here is campaign finance contributions from Indian casinos and political pressure from state lotteries. The reason that I suspect this is because online gambling has been going on for years and they haven't done anything about it before. Also, with the extremely high profits, it seems unlikely that the gambling sites had any motivation to break other laws or rig the games.
Thank you! I couldn't agree more.
Joe: "Hey, can I borrow $10,000?"
You: "Ok, that works out to be a payment of $500/mo until you pay me back, including all interest."
Joe: "I have a better idea, we can just add the monthly payment to the principle each month."
You: "Hahahahahaha!!!!!!"
[ pause ]
You: "Oh, you were serious. If we do that, when do I get my money back?"
Joe: "Don't worry, it's a free market. If you ever need your money back fast, just sell the loan to someone else. You're getting such a great interest rate, anyone would pay you a premium!"
Joe is selling the same story as the growth stock companies. The only real difference is that with stocks you get a vote. But if you don't know enough about the company or care enough to find out, the vote becomes an idle threat. And big investment houses aren't protecting you as much as you'd like to believe. If you have a growth stock, you better make sure the company is on a clear path toward profit, and when they get there, you better start getting dividends. You should use your vote to make sure those two things happen. The alternative outcome is that the company starts to fail, and the board pays themselves big bonuses and salaries, and then by the time of liquidation there is nothing left.
It's time we put responisbility square on the investors. It's easy for the board of directors and the CEO to sell you a line of BS when they don't have to show you a single penny along the way. For most stocks, you should expect dividends. If they don't offer dividends (growth stock), you should look very carefully before you invest, and during the entire time you hold the stock.
Think about it this way: with dividend-issuing stocks, you have the option of re-investing the dividends. They give you a return on your investment, and it goes as cash into your pocket. If, at that point, you are so happy with your investment that you'd like to take those dividends and pump them back into the company, you can. Stocks which do not issue dividends give you no option: all your money is tied up in the company indefinitely.
Investing in stocks is a responsibility. If you aren't willing to put the time in, just put your money in bonds, CDs, IRAs, etc.
and that they're not just pandering to right-wing nutcases.
"Pandering" only generates enough political points to be worth maybe some rhetoric during a campaign, but not enough for any action to take place.
In this case, there are major arrests and major charges. That means that something much more important is going on. Either:
(a) Actual crimes took place
(b) There is a lot of money involved.
My money is on (b). In this case it's from other forms of gambling like Indian Casinos and state lotteries. Can't blame the right-wingers for everything. In this case, it's just more bought-and-paid-for politicians on both sides of the line.
I enthusiastically agree.
I agree. However, that means that no federal money goes to schools either. None.
True. However, I would demand in my local district or state two results from my tax dollars:
(1) High test scores
(2) Availability of classes such as art, music, woodshop, etc.
It's not perfect, but I think it's better than what we have now. Tests are important. And what you can't test, just make it avialable, see if you get any complaints from the kids. If you don't hear anything bad, assume that some level of creativity is encouraged.
Testing is the only way to measure progress. We need some kinds of tests. You can argue that a test should be changed to be a better test, but there's no way I want to send my tax money to something without any way to tell what it's doing. Music and art are great, but we don't have a way to test the progress effectively. English, Math, and Science we do have a way to test the progress, so let's use it.
"Teaching to the test" is just rhetoric. If a student can answer a math problem they haven't seen before, that indicates some level of understanding whether you like it or not. The tests are usually so basic that if anyone is learning the subject at all, they will generally pass. And if not, they need to catch up fast or repeat the grade.
You seem to be constructing some scenario in which the student learns a lot from a teachers special way of teaching, and knows a lot, and then somehow can't answer the basic questions in front of them. That is just not the case.