Of course it's possible. And on single instances it's entirely plausible and excusable. Lord knows, I don't double check everything I write to see if someone else has said the exact same thing elsewhere. Coincidences happen.
However, apparently this guy made a habit of being coincidental pretty regularly...to the point that once you knew to look for it, it was obvious he was plagiarizing other people's words and presenting them as his own.
How hard is it to get the original text, use a thesaurus, change out some of the wording and phrasing and, essentially, paraphrase it? If I were wanting to plagiarize someone else's thoughts and present them as my own, the extra couple of minutes of swapping out a word or phrase here and there and mixing the order of the sentences makes the effort, essentially, bulletproof. It's still unethical as hell but damn, it's not all that hard.
This isn't about laziness...it's about Olympic class, gold medal winner laziness.
I did remote contract dev work for a long time. My solution was to host the work on a server I controlled. I'd give them access to use and test it...but until they paid, the source code was mine. Once payment was confirmed, they get a zip file with instructions or I do an install for them (usually the latter). I've only ever had a couple of contracts balk or outright refuse that setup...and I'm glad they did because it told me immediately they had no intention of paying me.
Pretty much my take as well. If the product tasted like meat, looked like meat but perhaps lacked the cholesterol and fat that can accompany meat products but still deliver protein, taste and texture...and do it for a similar price point...I can see how people might be enticed to go with this.
...they thought they had discovered evidence of actual life...not just organics.
NASA had three separate experiment modules on the Viking lander. One of them was a labelled release (LR) experiment that worked by collecting Martian soil and adding a drop of liquid water that contained nutrients and radioactive carbon atoms. The experiment was that if the soil contained microbes those microbes would metabolize the water with nutrients and release either radioactive carbon dioxide or methane gas which would be detected by a radiation detector on the experiment module...and voila, you have proof of living organisms. This was one of the three experiments and the science standard for the mission was to crosscheck results of each experiment with the others.
The LR experiment came back strongly positive and, at the time, made the news as "possible life on Mars" only to be dialed back as a false positive because the other two experiments came back negative.
But this is all old news. National Geographic did a story on this several years back (edit: 2012). As I wrote this I Googled and found it here: https://news.nationalgeographi...
I was 10 at the time the Viking lander arrived at Mars and wanted to be an Astronaut so this stuff was very much on my radar back then. I recall the news that they found life on Mars as being quite exciting for 2 or 3 days until they retracted the claim.
Uh...no kidding? That's like saying your grandparents never had issues with phishing or robocallers 70 years ago.
I get that you WISH they didn't use the data they collect from your voluntary usage of their services...but they have ALWAYS used the data they collected for their business purposes. I did note how you cleverly slid the goalposts there a little with the "selling to advertisers" angle but, again, that something that personally pisses YOU off. Selling the data they own and collected is still their choice and, as odious as it is to you, that is another legit business practice. However, if you live in the EU their new law means you can likely ask them to purge that info uniquely associated to you.
I trust that the companies I do business with will keep that and any other data confidential and not sell or disclose it to advertisers or law enforcement unless they have a warrant.
And that's where your argument leaves the rails and moves from the province of how things are to the province of how some people wish they'd be. What did they ever do to give you the impression that usage statistics that every other service industry collects and uses to maintain, monitor, improve and expand their products isn't in play in telecom?
You can indeed trust them...it's just that that trust is naive and ill-placed. There has never been a promise, suggestion or even hint that the condition you'd like to place your trust in exists or has ever existed.
Your "this is no longer the case"...never was. That information was always collected and was never yours to begin with.
If there were a compelling business case for this setup (say a customer demand for such) then any cell carrier that doesn't have a solid business reason for keeping a record of cell tower use would bow to that demand as a competitive measure to separate themselves from their competition (or offer it as an added privacy fee).
You can't legislate every single thing. Keep in mind, people that sign up for cell service do so with no built in expectation that their use of that service comes with either anonymity or location privacy. Indeed, "roaming" is a term because there are places that are not covered by your carrier but are by others...which means the carriers have a rough idea where you are.
If you don't want the government knowing where you are via this method, your solutions are simple: forego cellphone use altogether or buy burner phones and discard them after their included usage minutes expire. Sometimes you have to DO something to safeguard things you find valuable.
If I had moderator points today I'd upvote this comment.
The sad and sorry truth is that if the Trump AG did the right thing (and whether you like or loathe either Hillary or Trump, it IS the right thing) and brought charges against Hillary it would be seen as solely a political move. The person who needed to act was Obama's AG at the time. Unfortunately for all of us (Americans) that person did nothing and that decision was solely motivated by opinion polls and politics. Americans increasingly don't have faith in their own government and it's because of things like this. The law is the law and while J Edgar was a cross dressing power monger, he also didn't much allow the law to slide on stuff like this. As a country we have slid so far into the morass that we now take into account a person's politics (and, if on the left, their particular identity pigeonhole) before we decide to apply the laws that we're all supposed to abide by. We bitch and moan about how our politicians don't represent us anymore...and yet half of us are fine with not charging Hillary because she is a Democrat and a woman.
But yeah, if this did indeed shave a few thousand votes off her totals in places where it mattered that IS karma...because the only just alternative is that she stand trial after winning the election...and then we'd have our first sitting president convicted of a federal felony and forceably removed from office...because you know damn well she'd never go the Nixon route and resign.
Moderators who aren't upvoting this comment are committing a disservice.
This was exactly one those "cake and eat it too" situations...and, like the OP, I DESPISE Comcast/Xfinity.
Oh. So AT&T bought the trial judge? Really? I mean, I get that throwing out anti-establishment kneejerk phrases establishes your street cred with all the cool kids but aside from the same old tired cynical excuses when things run contrary to your worldview...do you have any proof whatsoever of such a claim?
Listen, I know going that extra micrometer is just another way "the man" is keeping you down but if you had bothered to look around some, you'd have run across articles where the trial judge was pretty much epically pissed at how little the government brought to the trial. According to him, virtually nothing to support their claim.
Pardon me but how does an election affect this whatsoever? The judge was appointed by W, the suit was initially brought by Obama's DOJ and continued and supported by Trump's. If you're keeping score that's one Republican appointed judge (which, of course, doesn't necessarily mean the judge is a Republican as well) ruling against the Republican president's DOJ whose lawsuit was originally brought by the preceding Democrat's DOJ.
The sad and sorry truth is that anti-monopoly regulations are sufficient here...but the DOJ STILL has to actually bring SOMETHING to court. If you read articles about this online today, the DOJ case was nearly entirely absent of any actual evidence or proof that this merger will stifle competition.
Yes, I know, to most that seems absolutely counter-intuitive and, thus, unbelievable. BUT...just because YOU believe it doesn't mean you can prove it. And proof is what our justice system currently works on.
Pretty sure it won't sneak up on the financial markets (which is what would actually effect your retirement scenario). In fact, since energy use will persist and it's a swap of energy sources, it seems like the financial markets, while divesting slowly from carbon source investments, will re-invest in those replacing them. Because, you know, that's how market economies work.
Thank you for that! That was a very interesting talk! So, we top out at 10B and will do that if we can lift some of those high birth rate countries out of poverty.
Watching the charts on that video I was struck by a really obvious trend: how much more money people make compared to 60 years ago. With capitalism being the dominant, driving force (especially in China...wow), birth rates have declined and people are better off. It's not explicitly mentioned in the video but it seems pretty obvious if you look for it and watch the progression of the dots as he animates his chart.
Interesting stuff.
Hacked or not hacked isn't the issue. The issue is that there are rules and laws that were ignored and/or flat out broken by the very existence of an unsecured email server handling sensitive US State Department information.
But, if you like, feel free to omit the email scandal. The rest of the list I recited is hardly comprehensive. They're just the highlights of a demonstrated pattern of behavior. There are tons more. The same party who used the IRS to stifle contrary political speech. The same party who actively works against US immigration laws. The same party who uses every excuse imaginable to erode Americans' right to defend themselves. The list is literally inexhaustible.
I have a different idea. Rather than the government developing the drug (something they're not in the business of doing) perhaps the Congress passes a law that allows the government to buy out the patent and license production of the drug to many manufacturers. The buyout allows the original company to recoup their R&D costs, they continue to produce the drug and the spread out competition drives the price down.
The government has a one time cost investment in the drug (which is virtually no-risk as the drug has already passed trials and has been shown to be effective) and can act in the public's interest without needing to be involved in producing or researching drugs.
We have eminent domain for the government to seize property for the public good...this would be the drug patent equivalent of that.
I find it incredibly ironic that the party of the candidate that had an entire foundation whose sole essential purpose was to sell influence to foreign governments and interests in opposition to the interests of the United States has the utter gall to do this. This is the same party whose candidate was passed the answers for nationally televised debates before the event, the candidate whose email server that was hacked by those same Russians (and, apparently, anyone else who cared to try) was in direct contravention of the laws of the United States that she swore to uphold, the same party's candidate whose husband directly interfered with an active FBI investigation of his wife by meeting with the attorney general...the list is nearly inexhaustible.
I have, for some months now, wondered: who are the Democrats going to run in 2020? Biden? Bernie? Hillary again? I heard Holder's name mentioned the other day. All absolute jokes to be chief executive (although that bar HAS indeed been substantially lowered by the election of Trump).
The Democratic Party is in real danger of being rendered irrelevant since they abandoned the working middle class in this country in favor of every whackjob fringe cause they could champion as the oppressed victim. Identity politics will be the downfall of the Democratic Party...and, even though I personally would never vote Democrat (and, for the record, I didn't vote Trump either), we need some kind of sane counterbalance to the Republican Party in this country. One party effective rule is a bad thing every single place it's been tried...and the Democrats are not a viable alternative anymore.
When you have Google committing censorship over on YouTube and deciding that some viewpoints they disagree with get axed...they're not fit to be steward of anything.
This is the same Google that caved to Chinese authorities versus political activists and critics of the communist regime there, right? Yeah, they don't need this kind of power.
Your assertion starts with a false assumption so I can't really engage any of it. The false assumption is that every job down the lowest skilled is supposed to provide a "living wage". They're not. There are jobs that are entry level for unskilled labor, new workers entering the workforce (read: "kids") and so on. The positions they're qualified to work aren't supposed to provide a "living wage". Therefore, when you start your premise on that basis, you're already off on the wrong path.
And no, I do not support a basic income either. At least not in the sense in which I'm sure you're thinking of it. If a person is effectively going to cede their participating as a productive member of society and decide to become a net drain on that same society then, I'd suggest, they are no better than a ward of the state and, as such, are unqualified to receive the privileges of that society such as voting, driving, entering into contracts and so on. Essentially, if you've attained adulthood and find yourself no more use to society than someone judged incompetent, then you get to be adjudged to be equally incompetent and have no privileges other than your "basic income".
Sorry, but the productive and contributing members of society should have a greater say in how that society functions than the ones whose totality of life decisions renders them incapable of functioning as an independent, self-supporting adult. Minus that, you've doomed a productive society to destruction under the weight of those who choose to do nothing to support themselves other than relentlessly and recklessly breed.
Idiocracy come to full, vibrant life.
Because replacing the cooking method for the primary item on your menu costs substantially more than $60K? Consider for a moment the only change they're making is replacing a person with a machine that imitates the action the person should be doing. That's it.
In this case, Caliburger is open 72 hours per week. The general trend of late is for people to demand $15/hr for this type of labor (I disagree with this but that's a personal opinion). The math here is simple. Flippy works the 72 hours per week that they're open replacing one employee (possibly more than 1 but let's be generous and assume just 1). Flippy costs $60K, Employee hours at $15/hr costs the employer $17.32/hr when you add the FICA and Cali's state payroll employer contribution. That means that Flippy's $60K cost is roughly paid for in 3464 employee cost hours...or 48 weeks and 1 day. I say roughly because Flippy is new tech, is working in harsh environment (grease, heat, abuse by the ignorant human workers, etc) and will have maintenance costs associated with it.
Point is, on a simple cost benefit analysis, Flippy won't be calling in sick (he may break though), he won't be causing drama in the workplace, won't be spitting in the food, won't be stealing cash from the register but will be performing his tasks to a uniform perfection. The product will be the same or arguably better, certainly more consistent and, after 48 weeks of service, will be cheaper on the surface than the human employee option.
What's interesting is how many people exclaim negatively about this development. This is just the tip of the iceberg too when it comes to reaction from demanding unrealistic wages for simple work. You can get your way today...but you just now priced your job into a category that is now plausibly doable by a machine. Vehicle assembly workers from the 1980's and 90's are wondering how some folks missed this memo. The good news is that with the burger flipper job dead and gone, the former burger flipper now has the opportunity to learn how to fix and maintain Flippy...until and unless he demands stupidly high wages for that in which case someone will build Flippy better and make him self maintaining.
"there's nothing that obligates me to like or respect most cops."
"Most"? Really? Not all? Because labeling them as "cop scum" comes with no qualifiers or disclaimers.
I'll guess since you walked your comment back even that much, you may have discerned the issue in your first comment. Investigating isn't "scum" action. I expect that if YOU were wrongly suggested to be a possible suspect in a robbery that you'd appreciate the police to do a competent and thorough investigation of you (assuming you DIDN'T do the crime) as opposed to hauling you in and beating a "voluntary" confession out of you, right? If you had video evidence that allowed them to cross your name off a list in under a minute, I'll go ahead and suggest that practicality will tell your attitude to shut up and sit down until after the nice officer has gone away satisfied you're not the droid they're looking for.
Seriously, nobody likes the police...until they need them. You, possibly, have been blessed with an existence that, so far, hasn't informed your opinion better in a moment of actual need. And if that's the case, good for you. But in a civil society with rules, there are those who are needed to enforce those rules and bring to justice those who break them. That is the implied covenant we all agree to in order to live in a civilized society...whether you consciously agree or not.
"cop scum"? You sure that's the term you want to use?
If so, does your answer change if they're investigating a robbery that YOU were the victim in? And before you answer, understand there is a difference between "investigating" and "charging". Further, while the OP may or may not have intended to use the word, "robbery" involves the use of violence or threat of violence...which is different than "theft".
If it was you who'd had a gun stuck into your face and relieved of your wallet, I'm confident you'd likely prefer the "cop scum" to investigate possible perpetrators.
Choosing your words wisely is one of the hallmarks of maturity.
Slashdot Mirror
...those same Senators agree to support legislation requiring proof of citizenship and residence for voting.
If the impetus is to truly secure our electoral process then let's not do half the job.
Of course it's possible. And on single instances it's entirely plausible and excusable. Lord knows, I don't double check everything I write to see if someone else has said the exact same thing elsewhere. Coincidences happen.
However, apparently this guy made a habit of being coincidental pretty regularly...to the point that once you knew to look for it, it was obvious he was plagiarizing other people's words and presenting them as his own.
How hard is it to get the original text, use a thesaurus, change out some of the wording and phrasing and, essentially, paraphrase it? If I were wanting to plagiarize someone else's thoughts and present them as my own, the extra couple of minutes of swapping out a word or phrase here and there and mixing the order of the sentences makes the effort, essentially, bulletproof. It's still unethical as hell but damn, it's not all that hard.
This isn't about laziness...it's about Olympic class, gold medal winner laziness.
I did remote contract dev work for a long time. My solution was to host the work on a server I controlled. I'd give them access to use and test it...but until they paid, the source code was mine. Once payment was confirmed, they get a zip file with instructions or I do an install for them (usually the latter). I've only ever had a couple of contracts balk or outright refuse that setup...and I'm glad they did because it told me immediately they had no intention of paying me.
Has the added benefit of several nations NOT trying to bomb MARSIS back to the Stone Age.
Or in Mars' case, forward into the Stone Age, I suppose.
Pretty much my take as well. If the product tasted like meat, looked like meat but perhaps lacked the cholesterol and fat that can accompany meat products but still deliver protein, taste and texture...and do it for a similar price point...I can see how people might be enticed to go with this.
But that's a lot of "ifs" to cover.
...they thought they had discovered evidence of actual life...not just organics.
NASA had three separate experiment modules on the Viking lander. One of them was a labelled release (LR) experiment that worked by collecting Martian soil and adding a drop of liquid water that contained nutrients and radioactive carbon atoms. The experiment was that if the soil contained microbes those microbes would metabolize the water with nutrients and release either radioactive carbon dioxide or methane gas which would be detected by a radiation detector on the experiment module...and voila, you have proof of living organisms. This was one of the three experiments and the science standard for the mission was to crosscheck results of each experiment with the others.
The LR experiment came back strongly positive and, at the time, made the news as "possible life on Mars" only to be dialed back as a false positive because the other two experiments came back negative.
But this is all old news. National Geographic did a story on this several years back (edit: 2012). As I wrote this I Googled and found it here: https://news.nationalgeographi...
I was 10 at the time the Viking lander arrived at Mars and wanted to be an Astronaut so this stuff was very much on my radar back then. I recall the news that they found life on Mars as being quite exciting for 2 or 3 days until they retracted the claim.
Uh...no kidding? That's like saying your grandparents never had issues with phishing or robocallers 70 years ago.
I get that you WISH they didn't use the data they collect from your voluntary usage of their services...but they have ALWAYS used the data they collected for their business purposes. I did note how you cleverly slid the goalposts there a little with the "selling to advertisers" angle but, again, that something that personally pisses YOU off. Selling the data they own and collected is still their choice and, as odious as it is to you, that is another legit business practice. However, if you live in the EU their new law means you can likely ask them to purge that info uniquely associated to you.
I trust that the companies I do business with will keep that and any other data confidential and not sell or disclose it to advertisers or law enforcement unless they have a warrant.
And that's where your argument leaves the rails and moves from the province of how things are to the province of how some people wish they'd be. What did they ever do to give you the impression that usage statistics that every other service industry collects and uses to maintain, monitor, improve and expand their products isn't in play in telecom?
You can indeed trust them...it's just that that trust is naive and ill-placed. There has never been a promise, suggestion or even hint that the condition you'd like to place your trust in exists or has ever existed.
Your "this is no longer the case"...never was. That information was always collected and was never yours to begin with.
If there were a compelling business case for this setup (say a customer demand for such) then any cell carrier that doesn't have a solid business reason for keeping a record of cell tower use would bow to that demand as a competitive measure to separate themselves from their competition (or offer it as an added privacy fee).
You can't legislate every single thing. Keep in mind, people that sign up for cell service do so with no built in expectation that their use of that service comes with either anonymity or location privacy. Indeed, "roaming" is a term because there are places that are not covered by your carrier but are by others...which means the carriers have a rough idea where you are.
If you don't want the government knowing where you are via this method, your solutions are simple: forego cellphone use altogether or buy burner phones and discard them after their included usage minutes expire. Sometimes you have to DO something to safeguard things you find valuable.
If I had moderator points today I'd upvote this comment.
The sad and sorry truth is that if the Trump AG did the right thing (and whether you like or loathe either Hillary or Trump, it IS the right thing) and brought charges against Hillary it would be seen as solely a political move. The person who needed to act was Obama's AG at the time. Unfortunately for all of us (Americans) that person did nothing and that decision was solely motivated by opinion polls and politics. Americans increasingly don't have faith in their own government and it's because of things like this. The law is the law and while J Edgar was a cross dressing power monger, he also didn't much allow the law to slide on stuff like this. As a country we have slid so far into the morass that we now take into account a person's politics (and, if on the left, their particular identity pigeonhole) before we decide to apply the laws that we're all supposed to abide by. We bitch and moan about how our politicians don't represent us anymore...and yet half of us are fine with not charging Hillary because she is a Democrat and a woman.
But yeah, if this did indeed shave a few thousand votes off her totals in places where it mattered that IS karma...because the only just alternative is that she stand trial after winning the election...and then we'd have our first sitting president convicted of a federal felony and forceably removed from office...because you know damn well she'd never go the Nixon route and resign.
Moderators who aren't upvoting this comment are committing a disservice. This was exactly one those "cake and eat it too" situations...and, like the OP, I DESPISE Comcast/Xfinity.
Oh. So AT&T bought the trial judge? Really? I mean, I get that throwing out anti-establishment kneejerk phrases establishes your street cred with all the cool kids but aside from the same old tired cynical excuses when things run contrary to your worldview...do you have any proof whatsoever of such a claim? Listen, I know going that extra micrometer is just another way "the man" is keeping you down but if you had bothered to look around some, you'd have run across articles where the trial judge was pretty much epically pissed at how little the government brought to the trial. According to him, virtually nothing to support their claim.
Pardon me but how does an election affect this whatsoever? The judge was appointed by W, the suit was initially brought by Obama's DOJ and continued and supported by Trump's. If you're keeping score that's one Republican appointed judge (which, of course, doesn't necessarily mean the judge is a Republican as well) ruling against the Republican president's DOJ whose lawsuit was originally brought by the preceding Democrat's DOJ. The sad and sorry truth is that anti-monopoly regulations are sufficient here...but the DOJ STILL has to actually bring SOMETHING to court. If you read articles about this online today, the DOJ case was nearly entirely absent of any actual evidence or proof that this merger will stifle competition. Yes, I know, to most that seems absolutely counter-intuitive and, thus, unbelievable. BUT...just because YOU believe it doesn't mean you can prove it. And proof is what our justice system currently works on.
Pretty sure it won't sneak up on the financial markets (which is what would actually effect your retirement scenario). In fact, since energy use will persist and it's a swap of energy sources, it seems like the financial markets, while divesting slowly from carbon source investments, will re-invest in those replacing them. Because, you know, that's how market economies work.
Thank you for that! That was a very interesting talk! So, we top out at 10B and will do that if we can lift some of those high birth rate countries out of poverty. Watching the charts on that video I was struck by a really obvious trend: how much more money people make compared to 60 years ago. With capitalism being the dominant, driving force (especially in China...wow), birth rates have declined and people are better off. It's not explicitly mentioned in the video but it seems pretty obvious if you look for it and watch the progression of the dots as he animates his chart. Interesting stuff.
One of the few occasions I'm glad my rock sometimes has sporadic access to the intarwebz.
Hacked or not hacked isn't the issue. The issue is that there are rules and laws that were ignored and/or flat out broken by the very existence of an unsecured email server handling sensitive US State Department information. But, if you like, feel free to omit the email scandal. The rest of the list I recited is hardly comprehensive. They're just the highlights of a demonstrated pattern of behavior. There are tons more. The same party who used the IRS to stifle contrary political speech. The same party who actively works against US immigration laws. The same party who uses every excuse imaginable to erode Americans' right to defend themselves. The list is literally inexhaustible.
I have a different idea. Rather than the government developing the drug (something they're not in the business of doing) perhaps the Congress passes a law that allows the government to buy out the patent and license production of the drug to many manufacturers. The buyout allows the original company to recoup their R&D costs, they continue to produce the drug and the spread out competition drives the price down. The government has a one time cost investment in the drug (which is virtually no-risk as the drug has already passed trials and has been shown to be effective) and can act in the public's interest without needing to be involved in producing or researching drugs. We have eminent domain for the government to seize property for the public good...this would be the drug patent equivalent of that.
I find it incredibly ironic that the party of the candidate that had an entire foundation whose sole essential purpose was to sell influence to foreign governments and interests in opposition to the interests of the United States has the utter gall to do this. This is the same party whose candidate was passed the answers for nationally televised debates before the event, the candidate whose email server that was hacked by those same Russians (and, apparently, anyone else who cared to try) was in direct contravention of the laws of the United States that she swore to uphold, the same party's candidate whose husband directly interfered with an active FBI investigation of his wife by meeting with the attorney general...the list is nearly inexhaustible. I have, for some months now, wondered: who are the Democrats going to run in 2020? Biden? Bernie? Hillary again? I heard Holder's name mentioned the other day. All absolute jokes to be chief executive (although that bar HAS indeed been substantially lowered by the election of Trump). The Democratic Party is in real danger of being rendered irrelevant since they abandoned the working middle class in this country in favor of every whackjob fringe cause they could champion as the oppressed victim. Identity politics will be the downfall of the Democratic Party...and, even though I personally would never vote Democrat (and, for the record, I didn't vote Trump either), we need some kind of sane counterbalance to the Republican Party in this country. One party effective rule is a bad thing every single place it's been tried...and the Democrats are not a viable alternative anymore.
When you have Google committing censorship over on YouTube and deciding that some viewpoints they disagree with get axed...they're not fit to be steward of anything. This is the same Google that caved to Chinese authorities versus political activists and critics of the communist regime there, right? Yeah, they don't need this kind of power.
Your assertion starts with a false assumption so I can't really engage any of it. The false assumption is that every job down the lowest skilled is supposed to provide a "living wage". They're not. There are jobs that are entry level for unskilled labor, new workers entering the workforce (read: "kids") and so on. The positions they're qualified to work aren't supposed to provide a "living wage". Therefore, when you start your premise on that basis, you're already off on the wrong path. And no, I do not support a basic income either. At least not in the sense in which I'm sure you're thinking of it. If a person is effectively going to cede their participating as a productive member of society and decide to become a net drain on that same society then, I'd suggest, they are no better than a ward of the state and, as such, are unqualified to receive the privileges of that society such as voting, driving, entering into contracts and so on. Essentially, if you've attained adulthood and find yourself no more use to society than someone judged incompetent, then you get to be adjudged to be equally incompetent and have no privileges other than your "basic income". Sorry, but the productive and contributing members of society should have a greater say in how that society functions than the ones whose totality of life decisions renders them incapable of functioning as an independent, self-supporting adult. Minus that, you've doomed a productive society to destruction under the weight of those who choose to do nothing to support themselves other than relentlessly and recklessly breed. Idiocracy come to full, vibrant life.
Because replacing the cooking method for the primary item on your menu costs substantially more than $60K? Consider for a moment the only change they're making is replacing a person with a machine that imitates the action the person should be doing. That's it. In this case, Caliburger is open 72 hours per week. The general trend of late is for people to demand $15/hr for this type of labor (I disagree with this but that's a personal opinion). The math here is simple. Flippy works the 72 hours per week that they're open replacing one employee (possibly more than 1 but let's be generous and assume just 1). Flippy costs $60K, Employee hours at $15/hr costs the employer $17.32/hr when you add the FICA and Cali's state payroll employer contribution. That means that Flippy's $60K cost is roughly paid for in 3464 employee cost hours...or 48 weeks and 1 day. I say roughly because Flippy is new tech, is working in harsh environment (grease, heat, abuse by the ignorant human workers, etc) and will have maintenance costs associated with it. Point is, on a simple cost benefit analysis, Flippy won't be calling in sick (he may break though), he won't be causing drama in the workplace, won't be spitting in the food, won't be stealing cash from the register but will be performing his tasks to a uniform perfection. The product will be the same or arguably better, certainly more consistent and, after 48 weeks of service, will be cheaper on the surface than the human employee option. What's interesting is how many people exclaim negatively about this development. This is just the tip of the iceberg too when it comes to reaction from demanding unrealistic wages for simple work. You can get your way today...but you just now priced your job into a category that is now plausibly doable by a machine. Vehicle assembly workers from the 1980's and 90's are wondering how some folks missed this memo. The good news is that with the burger flipper job dead and gone, the former burger flipper now has the opportunity to learn how to fix and maintain Flippy...until and unless he demands stupidly high wages for that in which case someone will build Flippy better and make him self maintaining.
"there's nothing that obligates me to like or respect most cops." "Most"? Really? Not all? Because labeling them as "cop scum" comes with no qualifiers or disclaimers. I'll guess since you walked your comment back even that much, you may have discerned the issue in your first comment. Investigating isn't "scum" action. I expect that if YOU were wrongly suggested to be a possible suspect in a robbery that you'd appreciate the police to do a competent and thorough investigation of you (assuming you DIDN'T do the crime) as opposed to hauling you in and beating a "voluntary" confession out of you, right? If you had video evidence that allowed them to cross your name off a list in under a minute, I'll go ahead and suggest that practicality will tell your attitude to shut up and sit down until after the nice officer has gone away satisfied you're not the droid they're looking for. Seriously, nobody likes the police...until they need them. You, possibly, have been blessed with an existence that, so far, hasn't informed your opinion better in a moment of actual need. And if that's the case, good for you. But in a civil society with rules, there are those who are needed to enforce those rules and bring to justice those who break them. That is the implied covenant we all agree to in order to live in a civilized society...whether you consciously agree or not.
"cop scum"? You sure that's the term you want to use? If so, does your answer change if they're investigating a robbery that YOU were the victim in? And before you answer, understand there is a difference between "investigating" and "charging". Further, while the OP may or may not have intended to use the word, "robbery" involves the use of violence or threat of violence...which is different than "theft". If it was you who'd had a gun stuck into your face and relieved of your wallet, I'm confident you'd likely prefer the "cop scum" to investigate possible perpetrators. Choosing your words wisely is one of the hallmarks of maturity.