In practice it isn't so clear cut. The soldiers could simply choose to do nothing, as happened in Serbia.
Interesting. So if the soldiers aren't likely to fire on citizenry, why do so many people consider guns as necessary for keeping the govt in check?
Like I said, there may be many good reasons for owning guns, but the idea of resistance against an oppressive government is hopelessly obsolete in this day and age of technology and astonishing defence budgets. If the military aligned themselves with the people against said oppressive government, then the people wouldn't need guns anyway.
Oh, come on. The 'fully-equipped' English army hardly benefitted from the colossal gulf in capabilities that exists today between armed civilians and the military. In fact, I seem to recall learning that the English soldiers were completely surprised by the tactic of taking potshots out of trees - they considered it 'unsporting' and were simply not prepared for it.
Regarding armies who refuse to hurt their peers - define 'peers'. Seems to me that all it takes is for the powers-that-be to dehumanise the 'enemy' (by calling them communists, hippies, terrorists, or whatever the boogeyman-du-jour is) and they'll shoot them down just fine.
There may well be more gunowners, though I doubt all of them would stand up and fight. Plus, I wouldn't fancy my chances against an Apache gunship, no matter how many guns I had. Training counts too - I'd back a special-ops team against a civilian unit with 10 times as many members, every time. I doubt it'll ever actually happen, of course.
Consider: If you could be shot at any time by a conscientious objector to wars of aggression, would you feel free to invade non-agressing nations and slaughter hundreds of thousands of people in order to seize their natural resources? Of course not. Therefore, it is crucial to disarm, monitor, subdue and desensitize the populace.
Consider: What happens when a fully-equipped, trained, and organised army is deployed in response to a bunch of 'conscientious objectors' armed with pistols and rifles who have started assassinating members of state? I'll give you a clue - the phrase "fish in a barrel" will undergo a statistically unlikely surge in usage.
There may or may not be many fine reasons for allowing citizens to carry guns, but the idea that it allows 'the people' to keep their (or anyone else's) astonishingly well-armed goverment in check is hilariously deluded.
Despite explaining her situation during the interview, the manager she interviewed with seemed to conclude that with her education and background, she'd be a better fit for one of their accounting positions.
Look, I'm sorry your friend didn't get the job and everything, but the furniture store doesn't owe her a living. Her 'situation' is a reason for her to look for a high-paying job; it's not a reason for her to be given a high-paying job. You're quick to jump on the guy doing the hiring, and maybe you've read the situation correctly and the guy's a complete asshole, but have you stopped to consider that maybe your friend's qualifications weren't suitable, and she was offered the accounting position with the best of intentions? In which case, getting angry and aggressive about it was a pretty shit way to behave.
You're right, but then if I was running a poker bot I wouldn't let it anywhere near the high stakes games with good players. I'd have it roaming the small-fry tables with casual players, and clean up on the margins. Even if it only makes a few percent profit by playing conservatively, if I run it 24hrs a day it'll soon add up, at the direct expense of the 'average' players.
Even the bookmakers couldn't figure those odds right, and when they gave 100-1 at half, many took them up on it, including one punter who bet 50 pounds. That result did to the bookmakers what Katrina did to Biloxi.
Slightly tasteless analogy, but I agree with your point. Interestingly, the in-play exchange odds at half-time were closer to 1000-1 than 100-1 - whoever laid those odds had a miserable night...and a lot of that money will have lost by bots programmed to gamble on near-certainties. Sports betting is inherently more unpredictable than poker, which is why it's harder for the bots to wreck it.
With all the poker-bots and it being morally indefensible to allow suckers to keep their money, it stands to reason there is only a finite number of suckers, and even if there's a new one every minute, it takes suckers longer than a handfull of minutes to scrape togther enough money to get taken to the cleaners often enough to prop up such an industry.
I still don't understand why online poker is so damn popular - any game where the odds can be calculated with any degree of accuracy is ideal fodder for bots, which can patiently calculate hands until the heat death of the universe. Unfortunately US gambling laws prevent Americans from using sports betting sites like http://www.betfair.com/, which matches up bets between users, and though there are plenty of bots there they can't fleece people like poker bots because it's impossible to work out accurate odds for, say, Liverpool coming back from 3-0 down at half time to win the Champion's League.
I had a chance to try one of the first computers. Why the hell would any one want a computer? It was underpowered in the extreme, wobbling the rampack would lose all your data, and all the software you had to type in by hand out of 'listings' in magazines.
Yes, and do you miss that particular specific piece of unreliable, inconvenient technology? The point was that the EV1 was crap, not that electric cars in general are crap.
I've never lived in anywhere in England that wasn't served by at least three pizza delivery places. Where I am right now, there are also two Chinese places, three Indian restaurants, and two kebab shops that will all deliver. Although I don't live in London, I do work there, and we regularly have pizza and sushi delivered. Where does this ridiculous myth about delivery service come from?
And the only thing I showed the consultant is where the cafeteria is. I left him there as I went out to lunch with my other co-workers. I hope my ex-managers felt good paying the consultant $300 an hour to learn where the cafe was.
Maybe they would have kept you around a bit longer if you weren't so uncooperative and unhelpful? We get consultants in all the time where I work, and it never cost me my job. My manager would be none too pleased if I just snubbed them and left them to rot, though.
Are you suggesting that Silence of the Lambs was a good movie *because* the lights were off in the final sequence? It takes a lot more than darkness to make something scary, and Doom was a one-trick pony.
What? You're kidding, right? I'm lucky enough to have a coding job I really enjoy with a company I respect and within a market sector I find interesting, and on top of that I get paid well, but the day my boss points CCTV at the door of the bathroom is the day I hand in my notice. I wouldn't work anywhere that judges my performance on whether my average dump time is two minutes more or less than the guys from the infrastructure team. As long as I don't slack off and cause my team to miss our monthly iteration targets, then it shouldn't matter if I decide to take an extra 10 minutes and tackle the cryptic crossword instead of the coffee-break crossword.
Man, I wish I had your discipline. I can't leave it at a simple delete, I can only go a few days without succumbing to the temptation to knock up a quick perl script to fill in the fake form with junk data and leave it running in an infinite loop for a day or two. If I can swamp just one scamming bastard with noise, I feel my time was well spent. Try it, it's therapeutic.
I see where you're going with this, but it isn't quite the same. CherryOS aren't just redistributing the code, they're packaging it as their own and profiting from it. If you want to use a music analogy, it's like someone downloading a couple of Metallica (to pick an anti-sharing band) albums, burning them to CD, printing out their own sleeve, and selling it as their own work. Make no mistake, I can't stand people that download and distribute thousands of MP3s of tracks they haven't paid for, but this is much more insidious.
While I agree with you that performance is still an issue, even in these days of 2GHz workstaions on every desktop, your anecdote is actually an excellent example of why languages like Python are often an advantage. Your performance gains were achieved not by getting the most out of every last clock cycle, but by streamlining the user interface. In this case, speed of execution was not an issue - the important thing was that two coders could go into the codebase, identify the area needing modification, and make the changes quickly and with confidence. In fact, you touch on this point yourself.
As a code-monkey myself, in such situations I'd rather be dealing with Python or Ruby than C or C++. The important thing, always, is using the right tool for the job. C++ gets you high speed and flexibility at the cost of greater complexity, but if you're just responding to a button click every second or so, do you really need all that speed?
"What a horrible crime....who would want to kill the president of the RIAA?" "Did he have more than one enemy?" "More than one, sir?" "Well I think we can assume he had at least one"
Slashdot Mirror
In practice it isn't so clear cut. The soldiers could simply choose to do nothing, as happened in Serbia.
Interesting. So if the soldiers aren't likely to fire on citizenry, why do so many people consider guns as necessary for keeping the govt in check?
Like I said, there may be many good reasons for owning guns, but the idea of resistance against an oppressive government is hopelessly obsolete in this day and age of technology and astonishing defence budgets. If the military aligned themselves with the people against said oppressive government, then the people wouldn't need guns anyway.
Oh, come on. The 'fully-equipped' English army hardly benefitted from the colossal gulf in capabilities that exists today between armed civilians and the military. In fact, I seem to recall learning that the English soldiers were completely surprised by the tactic of taking potshots out of trees - they considered it 'unsporting' and were simply not prepared for it.
Regarding armies who refuse to hurt their peers - define 'peers'. Seems to me that all it takes is for the powers-that-be to dehumanise the 'enemy' (by calling them communists, hippies, terrorists, or whatever the boogeyman-du-jour is) and they'll shoot them down just fine.
There may well be more gunowners, though I doubt all of them would stand up and fight. Plus, I wouldn't fancy my chances against an Apache gunship, no matter how many guns I had. Training counts too - I'd back a special-ops team against a civilian unit with 10 times as many members, every time. I doubt it'll ever actually happen, of course.
Consider: If you could be shot at any time by a conscientious objector to wars of aggression, would you feel free to invade non-agressing nations and slaughter hundreds of thousands of people in order to seize their natural resources? Of course not. Therefore, it is crucial to disarm, monitor, subdue and desensitize the populace.
Consider: What happens when a fully-equipped, trained, and organised army is deployed in response to a bunch of 'conscientious objectors' armed with pistols and rifles who have started assassinating members of state? I'll give you a clue - the phrase "fish in a barrel" will undergo a statistically unlikely surge in usage.
There may or may not be many fine reasons for allowing citizens to carry guns, but the idea that it allows 'the people' to keep their (or anyone else's) astonishingly well-armed goverment in check is hilariously deluded.
Despite explaining her situation during the interview, the manager she interviewed with seemed to conclude that with her education and background, she'd be a better fit for one of their accounting positions.
Look, I'm sorry your friend didn't get the job and everything, but the furniture store doesn't owe her a living. Her 'situation' is a reason for her to look for a high-paying job; it's not a reason for her to be given a high-paying job. You're quick to jump on the guy doing the hiring, and maybe you've read the situation correctly and the guy's a complete asshole, but have you stopped to consider that maybe your friend's qualifications weren't suitable, and she was offered the accounting position with the best of intentions? In which case, getting angry and aggressive about it was a pretty shit way to behave.
You're right, but then if I was running a poker bot I wouldn't let it anywhere near the high stakes games with good players. I'd have it roaming the small-fry tables with casual players, and clean up on the margins. Even if it only makes a few percent profit by playing conservatively, if I run it 24hrs a day it'll soon add up, at the direct expense of the 'average' players.
Even the bookmakers couldn't figure those odds right, and when they gave 100-1 at half, many took them up on it, including one punter who bet 50 pounds. That result did to the bookmakers what Katrina did to Biloxi.
Slightly tasteless analogy, but I agree with your point. Interestingly, the in-play exchange odds at half-time were closer to 1000-1 than 100-1 - whoever laid those odds had a miserable night...and a lot of that money will have lost by bots programmed to gamble on near-certainties. Sports betting is inherently more unpredictable than poker, which is why it's harder for the bots to wreck it.
With all the poker-bots and it being morally indefensible to allow suckers to keep their money, it stands to reason there is only a finite number of suckers, and even if there's a new one every minute, it takes suckers longer than a handfull of minutes to scrape togther enough money to get taken to the cleaners often enough to prop up such an industry.
I still don't understand why online poker is so damn popular - any game where the odds can be calculated with any degree of accuracy is ideal fodder for bots, which can patiently calculate hands until the heat death of the universe. Unfortunately US gambling laws prevent Americans from using sports betting sites like http://www.betfair.com/, which matches up bets between users, and though there are plenty of bots there they can't fleece people like poker bots because it's impossible to work out accurate odds for, say, Liverpool coming back from 3-0 down at half time to win the Champion's League.
My VW Bug is blue.
I had a chance to try one of the first computers. Why the hell would any one want a computer? It was underpowered in the extreme, wobbling the rampack would lose all your data, and all the software you had to type in by hand out of 'listings' in magazines.
Yes, and do you miss that particular specific piece of unreliable, inconvenient technology? The point was that the EV1 was crap, not that electric cars in general are crap.
I've never lived in anywhere in England that wasn't served by at least three pizza delivery places. Where I am right now, there are also two Chinese places, three Indian restaurants, and two kebab shops that will all deliver. Although I don't live in London, I do work there, and we regularly have pizza and sushi delivered. Where does this ridiculous myth about delivery service come from?
Well *done*. Funniest post I've seen in weeks.
Er, yes. Is that so difficult to believe? Frankly, I'd prefer it if *every* company simply ignored the gutter press.
And the only thing I showed the consultant is where the cafeteria is. I left him there as I went out to lunch with my other co-workers. I hope my ex-managers felt good paying the consultant $300 an hour to learn where the cafe was.
Maybe they would have kept you around a bit longer if you weren't so uncooperative and unhelpful? We get consultants in all the time where I work, and it never cost me my job. My manager would be none too pleased if I just snubbed them and left them to rot, though.
Are you suggesting that Silence of the Lambs was a good movie *because* the lights were off in the final sequence? It takes a lot more than darkness to make something scary, and Doom was a one-trick pony.
Or we could use the teleporter.
What? You're kidding, right? I'm lucky enough to have a coding job I really enjoy with a company I respect and within a market sector I find interesting, and on top of that I get paid well, but the day my boss points CCTV at the door of the bathroom is the day I hand in my notice. I wouldn't work anywhere that judges my performance on whether my average dump time is two minutes more or less than the guys from the infrastructure team. As long as I don't slack off and cause my team to miss our monthly iteration targets, then it shouldn't matter if I decide to take an extra 10 minutes and tackle the cryptic crossword instead of the coffee-break crossword.
Good vs Bad is subjective. Always. Doubt it? Give me an example of something that is universally 'good'.
Google. Apple.
Universally 'bad'.
Microsoft. You only have to spend 10 minutes here to work that one out...
Man, I wish I had your discipline. I can't leave it at a simple delete, I can only go a few days without succumbing to the temptation to knock up a quick perl script to fill in the fake form with junk data and leave it running in an infinite loop for a day or two. If I can swamp just one scamming bastard with noise, I feel my time was well spent. Try it, it's therapeutic.
Dr. Lurie said malarial cures had been ''relegated to the status of leeches.''
Although I hear leeches are making a comeback.....
Rubbish, that's just a plant by PR companies representing leech-manufacturers who want you to think leeches are coming back...
What's in a name? A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.>
Ob. Simpsons: Not if its name was crapweed. Or stench blossom.
I see where you're going with this, but it isn't quite the same. CherryOS aren't just redistributing the code, they're packaging it as their own and profiting from it. If you want to use a music analogy, it's like someone downloading a couple of Metallica (to pick an anti-sharing band) albums, burning them to CD, printing out their own sleeve, and selling it as their own work. Make no mistake, I can't stand people that download and distribute thousands of MP3s of tracks they haven't paid for, but this is much more insidious.
While I agree with you that performance is still an issue, even in these days of 2GHz workstaions on every desktop, your anecdote is actually an excellent example of why languages like Python are often an advantage. Your performance gains were achieved not by getting the most out of every last clock cycle, but by streamlining the user interface. In this case, speed of execution was not an issue - the important thing was that two coders could go into the codebase, identify the area needing modification, and make the changes quickly and with confidence. In fact, you touch on this point yourself.
As a code-monkey myself, in such situations I'd rather be dealing with Python or Ruby than C or C++. The important thing, always, is using the right tool for the job. C++ gets you high speed and flexibility at the cost of greater complexity, but if you're just responding to a button click every second or so, do you really need all that speed?
Or, to paraphrase PTerry:
"What a horrible crime....who would want to kill the president of the RIAA?"
"Did he have more than one enemy?"
"More than one, sir?"
"Well I think we can assume he had at least one"
Nah, I reckon Lister's just put another ball off the table and into someone's pint of beer.
Whiteholespewingtimeenginesdeadadviceplease.