Paraphrasing Madeleine Albright: "What's the point of having such a powerful military, if we never use it?"
The Founders were smart enough to realize the temptations of a standing army, and tried to put safeguards against one into the Constitution. That's part of what the Second Amendment is about -- not just the RKBA, but a structural defense against the formation of a military-industrial complex by relying on a militia rather than a large standing army. Too bad we opted for an empire instead; they never end well.
Corporations are children of the government -- who do you think issues those charters? They are artificial people created by the government specifically to allow a certain group of natural and artificial people (the corporation's "owners") to have special powers and to avoid certain responsibilities.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
First: the text says "Authors". Not publishers, not employers of authors, not people to whom the author sold "rights", not descendents of authors.
Second: Congress has the power to secure this exclusive right, not a mandate to do so.
Third: Congress has the power to secure this exclusive right only for a limited time.
Fourth: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". Given that, the "exclusive Right" mentioned in Article I Section 8 cannot be the exclusive right to speak, perform, or publish a piece; only the exclusive right to sell it. Laws against non-commercial sharing and use are a violation of the First Amendment.
Maybe newer Android ones have fixed this, but I can't get spell check working on my Epic 4G. But spell check is irrelevant here, because "fist" is a properly spelled word.
"Eye have a spelling chequer, / It came with my Pea Sea. / It plane lee marks four my revue / Miss Steaks I can knot sea."
You do not educate students - you share with whoever you want to "teach" what you know, show them (if it's possible) the process, and they pick up on that, just like they pick up, by themselves, how to walk, how to talk, et cetera
In a word: bullshit.
Walking is a pre-programmed function of the human nervous system. So is, to a large degree, talking.
OTOH things like integral calculus or advanced martial arts require stacking one skill upon another upon another over a long period. Complex cognitive and psychomotor skills require a long-term plan of study. You don't learn to read and write, or smash concrete with your hands, by trial and error. Developing and implementing such a learning plan is what we call education.
Now, an determined autodidact may, to some degree, be able to learn how to develop and implement such a plan for themselves; they'll still need someone to give them the base education that makes that possible,
So, what exactly are you babbling on about? Why post this ridiculous (and shamefully incoherent) rant?
Some people have a hatred for education. Sometimes it's because they experienced it done wrong, and can't imagine it done right; that's sad but understandable. Others have a preference that people remain ignorant. That, I don't understand.
So I should pay higher taxes to ensure that I only see ads for stuff I am not interested in?
Tax funding would replace ad funding.
It's worth noting that ads are effectively a form of tax. Not only do they consume your time and bandwidth, but when, say, Pepsi, buys an ad, they jack up the price of a soda to pay for it. So you end up paying. And they then write the cost of that ad off on their taxes, meaning that the rest of us have to pay more tax to make up the difference.
Ada foundation was perfectly reasonable in making a recommendation they were ASKED to make given the limited information that was available to them.
Ada Initiative confused a hacker convention -- which, as hackers are a subculture, includes cultural elements -- with a technical conference. They got upset about a planned discussion of sex and drugs in that culture.
Save the name Vulcan for a desert exoplanet.
The Legion of Space, classic space opera by Jack Williamson, mentions a moon of Pluto named Cerberus. It's the only correct choice.
No, but unless you're a 14 year old bedroom coder , programming is almost always a team activity.
"Programming is a team activity" is a mantra espoused by managers who think good code can arise from uncreative grunt-work performed by interchangeable code monkeys operating under regimented conditions. No. The development of any serious software involves creative acts of problem-solving, of the sort that can't be done when a manager or fellow coders are constantly interrupting your deep hack mode.
Yes, developing code requires coordination, since it's divided into pieces that have to interoperate; but it ultimately comes down to individual acts of creation. And that coordination should, as much as possible, be done in written form, through forums and documentation that can be reviewed years later; rather than through informal desk-walking.
Ad rates have gotten so low that Google would probably be as poor as Yahoo if they weren't keeping tabs on you wherever you go and offering that profiling to advertisers. Facebook as well.
The reason that ad rates are low is because anyone in an industrialized society is so constantly bombarded with ads that the ads fade to an incomprehensible background hum that does nothing but interfere with the transmission of the information people actually want. Collapse of this system is inevitable; and when it does, it might be replaced with something saner where ads are rare and subtle.
Other available options are even more evil (Verizon) and/or incompetent (Comcast). My Sprint/Clear service isn't a fat pipe, but it's a good price and mostly satisfies my needs, other than this one boneheaded incident.
I got a nasty letter from my ISP telling me "No peer-to-peer". I called them, and said "WTF guys? I download Linux distros and OpenOffice ISOs via torrent, all kinds of 100% legal and legitimate content." "We don't care. No peer-to-peer."
By the customs department, not the company or the private individual.
So he says. I'm not sure how he could know whether the error was Customs' or the shipper's. But either way, what did he expect? "There's a error here. Your colleagues at another office must have filled this form out wrong." "Oh, thanks sir, I'll just take your word for that without further investigation and we'll proceed."
Look, people have problems with bureaucrats every day. I had a heck of a time getting my title and tags for my car last time. It's not news, it's not theft, it's not seizure. It's part of the annoyance of living on a planet so crowded with monkeys that they've had to appoint some monkeys to keep order.
If what happened was "I pointed out that the paperwork the DHS had written was incorrect and the agent said they couldn't correct it now and would have get a higher up to fix it which will take a few days and they'll hold the boat until that is done", then yes you would have a point and he would be being a "whiny rich asshole".
But that is, minus the temper tantrum, what happened. Customs is holding the boat. He'll call his lawyer, and he'll get the paperwork straightened out and have his boat after a couple of days. BFD.
It's not like the feds just took it -- they have to pretend drugs are involved in order to do that. That's the worse part of this whine, pretending that this minor snafu somehow compares with the actual seizures of property that the feds have been engaged in for decades.
The "they wouldn't let me have my boat right this second" wasn't the point of the whine
Take the emotional content and subjective reporting out of his post, and that is exactly all that remains: due to a paperwork error, he couldn't get his boat that day. "A person with a gun [in some U.S. states that could be anyone] and a government badge [that's all government agents] asked me to swear in writing that a lie [not a lie, an error] was true today. And when I didn't do what she wanted she simply took my boat [it's not yours until the paperwork's done] and asked me to leave [your business there is done for the moment, of course you should leave]." In other words: due to a paperwork error, the transaction could not be completed at that time.
The customs paperwork on a shipment was screwed up.
The Customs department impounded the shipment until the paperwork gets straightened out.
WTF did you expect to happen?
Sounds to me like a whiny rich asshole didn't get his way when importing an expensive toy. Cry me a fscking river. (And maybe buy American next time, dude, then you won't have to worry about Customs.)
It's a widespread idiom in American English. "I wouldn't hold my breath that X" means "I do not expect that X will occur soon" or "I do not believe that X has a high probability of occurring at all".
The U.K.'s gun ban has been an absolute and total failure, and gun banners who cite it as an example of why the U.S. should go down the same road prove only their unfamiliarity with the facts.
In the UK, handguns are banned for civilians. And most police don't carry firearms either. So in your mind, everyone is helpless. Result? A homicide rate a quarter of the USA.
The U.S.'s homicide rate has fallen by 50% since the early 90s, while the number of guns in private hands has risen and many states have liberalized CCW laws.
I suspect that even with that taken into account,though, the U.K.'s homicide rate may be lower -- not for any reason involving firearms, but because the U.S. has more of a problem with economic stratification, and a greater lead pollution problem thanks to our car culture.
Contrast this with any dirty bomb material. If you get enough of that together and blow it up, you've simply provided contractors with 3 months of decontamination work with pressure washers.
Slashdot Mirror
The Founders were smart enough to realize the temptations of a standing army, and tried to put safeguards against one into the Constitution. That's part of what the Second Amendment is about -- not just the RKBA, but a structural defense against the formation of a military-industrial complex by relying on a militia rather than a large standing army. Too bad we opted for an empire instead; they never end well.
Corporations are children of the government -- who do you think issues those charters? They are artificial people created by the government specifically to allow a certain group of natural and artificial people (the corporation's "owners") to have special powers and to avoid certain responsibilities.
First: the text says "Authors". Not publishers, not employers of authors, not people to whom the author sold "rights", not descendents of authors.
Second: Congress has the power to secure this exclusive right, not a mandate to do so.
Third: Congress has the power to secure this exclusive right only for a limited time.
Fourth: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". Given that, the "exclusive Right" mentioned in Article I Section 8 cannot be the exclusive right to speak, perform, or publish a piece; only the exclusive right to sell it. Laws against non-commercial sharing and use are a violation of the First Amendment.
Jobs knew how to manipulate people into wanting what he had to sell them. He was an excellent salesman.
I guess a bad sense is still a sense, so, ok.
Maybe newer Android ones have fixed this, but I can't get spell check working on my Epic 4G. But spell check is irrelevant here, because "fist" is a properly spelled word.
"Eye have a spelling chequer, / It came with my Pea Sea. / It plane lee marks four my revue / Miss Steaks I can knot sea."
In a word: bullshit.
Walking is a pre-programmed function of the human nervous system. So is, to a large degree, talking.
OTOH things like integral calculus or advanced martial arts require stacking one skill upon another upon another over a long period. Complex cognitive and psychomotor skills require a long-term plan of study. You don't learn to read and write, or smash concrete with your hands, by trial and error. Developing and implementing such a learning plan is what we call education.
Now, an determined autodidact may, to some degree, be able to learn how to develop and implement such a plan for themselves; they'll still need someone to give them the base education that makes that possible,
Some people have a hatred for education. Sometimes it's because they experienced it done wrong, and can't imagine it done right; that's sad but understandable. Others have a preference that people remain ignorant. That, I don't understand.
Tax funding would replace ad funding.
It's worth noting that ads are effectively a form of tax. Not only do they consume your time and bandwidth, but when, say, Pepsi, buys an ad, they jack up the price of a soda to pay for it. So you end up paying. And they then write the cost of that ad off on their taxes, meaning that the rest of us have to pay more tax to make up the difference.
A direct tax might well be cheaper.
Ada Initiative confused a hacker convention -- which, as hackers are a subculture, includes cultural elements -- with a technical conference. They got upset about a planned discussion of sex and drugs in that culture.
Ada Initiative Mega-Fail.
Save the name Vulcan for a desert exoplanet. The Legion of Space, classic space opera by Jack Williamson, mentions a moon of Pluto named Cerberus. It's the only correct choice.
No. It wasn't. Not in the least. You have completely misrepresented the research.
"Programming is a team activity" is a mantra espoused by managers who think good code can arise from uncreative grunt-work performed by interchangeable code monkeys operating under regimented conditions. No. The development of any serious software involves creative acts of problem-solving, of the sort that can't be done when a manager or fellow coders are constantly interrupting your deep hack mode.
Yes, developing code requires coordination, since it's divided into pieces that have to interoperate; but it ultimately comes down to individual acts of creation. And that coordination should, as much as possible, be done in written form, through forums and documentation that can be reviewed years later; rather than through informal desk-walking.
...and so we teach the addons to cheat on those tests.
The reason that ad rates are low is because anyone in an industrialized society is so constantly bombarded with ads that the ads fade to an incomprehensible background hum that does nothing but interfere with the transmission of the information people actually want. Collapse of this system is inevitable; and when it does, it might be replaced with something saner where ads are rare and subtle.
Meanwhile, Bill Hicks said it best: http://youtu.be/gDW_Hj2K0wo
Other available options are even more evil (Verizon) and/or incompetent (Comcast). My Sprint/Clear service isn't a fat pipe, but it's a good price and mostly satisfies my needs, other than this one boneheaded incident.
I got a nasty letter from my ISP telling me "No peer-to-peer". I called them, and said "WTF guys? I download Linux distros and OpenOffice ISOs via torrent, all kinds of 100% legal and legitimate content." "We don't care. No peer-to-peer."
So I signed up for a VPN, of course.
So he says. I'm not sure how he could know whether the error was Customs' or the shipper's. But either way, what did he expect? "There's a error here. Your colleagues at another office must have filled this form out wrong." "Oh, thanks sir, I'll just take your word for that without further investigation and we'll proceed."
Look, people have problems with bureaucrats every day. I had a heck of a time getting my title and tags for my car last time. It's not news, it's not theft, it's not seizure. It's part of the annoyance of living on a planet so crowded with monkeys that they've had to appoint some monkeys to keep order.
But that is, minus the temper tantrum, what happened. Customs is holding the boat. He'll call his lawyer, and he'll get the paperwork straightened out and have his boat after a couple of days. BFD.
It's not like the feds just took it -- they have to pretend drugs are involved in order to do that. That's the worse part of this whine, pretending that this minor snafu somehow compares with the actual seizures of property that the feds have been engaged in for decades.
Take the emotional content and subjective reporting out of his post, and that is exactly all that remains: due to a paperwork error, he couldn't get his boat that day. "A person with a gun [in some U.S. states that could be anyone] and a government badge [that's all government agents] asked me to swear in writing that a lie [not a lie, an error] was true today. And when I didn't do what she wanted she simply took my boat [it's not yours until the paperwork's done] and asked me to leave [your business there is done for the moment, of course you should leave]." In other words: due to a paperwork error, the transaction could not be completed at that time.
The customs paperwork on a shipment was screwed up.
The Customs department impounded the shipment until the paperwork gets straightened out.
WTF did you expect to happen?
Sounds to me like a whiny rich asshole didn't get his way when importing an expensive toy. Cry me a fscking river. (And maybe buy American next time, dude, then you won't have to worry about Customs.)
Unfortunately, "legitimate" e-mail is known to use links where the href's domain is different than the link's text.
It almost certainly won't have a "D" or an "R" next to it -- check for a "G" or an "L". But you may have to write it in.
It's a widespread idiom in American English. "I wouldn't hold my breath that X" means "I do not expect that X will occur soon" or "I do not believe that X has a high probability of occurring at all".
I assume it originates from the common act of a child throwing an tantrum, threatening to hold their breath until they pass out. "I want a cookie!" "You're not getting one, and if I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for one."
HTH.
Except that they are. The U.K.'s violent victimization rate of 31/1000 is larger than the U.S.'s of 16.9/1000.
After the 2011 London riots, many in the U.K. started to wonder if maybe that gun ban was a bad idea after all -- especially since it didn't reduce gun crime.
The U.K.'s gun ban has been an absolute and total failure, and gun banners who cite it as an example of why the U.S. should go down the same road prove only their unfamiliarity with the facts.
The UK's overall violent crime rate is almost twice that of the U.S.
The U.S.'s homicide rate has fallen by 50% since the early 90s, while the number of guns in private hands has risen and many states have liberalized CCW laws.
On the other hand, the U.K.'s gun ban had no impact on the murder rate -- in fact the homicide and gun crime rates went up the first few years after it was instituted. Gun crime in the U.K. roughly doubled between 1999 and 2009.
There are also serious problems with crime being under-reported in the U.K.. And some allege (I'm less certain about this claim) that even murder is undercounted in the U.K. versus the U.S., because U.K. rates are based on final disposition of cases (i.e., someone was convicted) while U.S. rates are based on reports (i.e., there's a dead body).
I suspect that even with that taken into account,though, the U.K.'s homicide rate may be lower -- not for any reason involving firearms, but because the U.S. has more of a problem with economic stratification, and a greater lead pollution problem thanks to our car culture.
"The Federation of American Scientists...says a bomb made using just one piece of radioactive cobalt [of the sort used in food irradiation] could make [New York] city uninhabitable for decades, and seriously contaminate one thousand square kilometres of the states of New Jersey, Connecticut and New York."