What you are suggesting the police should do is simply not practical. Who would they ask for a stream url? Do you want everyone running a stream to register with the local police? Do you want police to begin doubting every report or threat of imminent violence, endangering everyone who legitimately needs help?
When you get a call reporting an active shooter followed by gunshots you don't check twitch, you go. You bring the amount of force necessary to deal with what may be occurring but you use the minimum amount of force necessary to take control of the situation. That no one has died yet as a result of swatting suggests that they're largely doing their jobs. Whether or not they're responding to every situation, real or fictitious with excessive force is an entirely separate issue.
Jail IS a deterrent as these people have no expectation they will be caught and believe sentences would be light anyway. If they can become more proficient at finding these people, and sentences become more severe, it will absolutely reduce the number of incidents.
Creating a system where buyers can extort and outright steal from you with little recourse and no mechanism for warning others of their behavior was a GREAT idea. I should be able to neg a guy for buying my item and not paying for it so that his identical item at a higher price could sell. I should be able to neg someone for a chargeback after the item's been delivered. I should be able to neg someone for trying to return their damaged item in place of the good working item I sent.
They've created an environment where the buyer has nothing to lose from bad behavior.
And in many of those silly European countries you can sue someone and prevail for making a factual statement. In the US, this commenter might have to spend money on his defense and win. In Europe, they could spend money and lose.
In the state I live in (Massachusetts) $3,333 won't even cover a year at a community college.
This table lists the estimated cost of in-state (i.e. subsidized) tuition and fees for all state supported colleges in Massachusetts for the last 10 years, without room and board. http://www.mass.edu/campuses/res_total.asp
In 2012-13, a year at community college was in the 4-6k range, state colleges 8-10k, and 11-12k for a UMass campus. Room and board goes for roughly 6-7k at a state college and 10k at UMass. Even if you find a job in college that covers all of your non tuition expenses (good luck), you're entering this job market with between 32k and 50k of debt, add room and board alone and that becomes 60-90k. And if you want to attend a more prestigious university, you're looking at 50-60k per year.
Add years of underemployment after graduation to that and it's easily a lifetime of crippling debt.
Thats strictly a paper loss, the Wilpons profited from their relationship with Madoff. They deposited about $700 million and withdrew about a billion over the course of 5 years, their only losses were the ficticious profits they hadn't yet withdrawn. A recent ruling limited their liability to only what was invested in the last 2 years, and likely only the profit they made of about $83 million.
If you can't speak frankly and candidly in your private, secret, and classified communications with the government you represent, how are you supposed to do your job? How do you give your government good information and an accurate assessment of the situation on the ground? If your impression of the President of Afghanistan is that he's corrupt and paranoid, your country needs to know.
Suggesting that we extend political correctness into classified communications is completely absurd. The expectation is that these documents will never see the light of day until they're only relevant in an historical context.
You follow orders because you don't have the big picture. It may be that the manner in which you accomplish your objective is more important than the outcome, something that you're not aware of could easily depend on how and not if.
The common failure among us geeks is that we tend to think we know more than everyone else. You don't always have all of the information in front of you, and thats an absolute necessity for the military.
You know, there is a school of thought which says that a stockpile of nuclear weapons big enough to kill every living thing on the planet is big enough, and any extra are probably unnecessary expense. A nuclear deterrent only needs to be large enough to completely and totally annihilate any country that may attack you. The British nuclear arsenal is big enough for that. The US has about an order of magnitude more.
In order to be an effective deterrent, you need a stockpile large enough to survive a nuclear first strike, and penetrate the enemy's defenses.
"Big enough to kill everything on the planet" is quite arbitrary, if your enemy thinks they can take out most or all of your nukes before you can retaliate, then you have no deterrent at all.
The problem is, nobody knows how many people downloaded from Ms. Thomas. Nobody. Not even Ms. Thomas. Could be nobody. Could be the entire Internet-using population of the world. Nobody can find out. According to some, this means her liability should be... nothing. I'm not sure that makes sense either.
Can you say, "burden of proof"? Should we start convicting people based on the possibility of a crime potentially occuring?
Its not so much a flying car as it is a conventional airplane you can drive. You still need an airport to take off and land, it can't hover and you can't fly locally. What it gives you is the ability to drive to the airport, take off, land at another airport, and drive to your destination in the same vehicle.
Its also intended for pilots, its not a solution for the masses.
Games like Under Defeat, Radilgy, and Trizeal were originally on the Naomi arcade systems, and were very cheap to port, requiring only modest sales to become profitable. Additionally, many of these games sold relatively well, Under Defeat sold out in under a week and prompted a second print. Many of these titles also saw such popularity that they were later picked up and published on PS2 and Gamecube. Radilgy, Ikaruga, Chaos Field, and Trizeal are all examples of this.
If you're a small company with limited funds, this seems like a perfectly reasonable way to get your product out there, make a little money, and maybe draw enough attention to yourself to get it published on a current system. Sega still gets paid, plus the format is used for both the Dreamcast and the Naomi arcade systems. They could just start releasing official games on CD's, which are supported by the system anyway.
The way I heard it, around the end of season 4, they had no idea if there would be a season 5 or not. Scifi was interested, but since it was so late, their budget was already spent. They weren't picked up until very late in the game by TNT. The actors had to either commit to the 5th season before knowing if it would ever happen, and risk passing on other opportunities, or they could take the other opportunities. Claudia and her agent didn't want to commit with the show in limbo, so she moved on. They also seemed to be under the impression that she would be back, JMS made some comments to the effect of, they would've killed off Ivanova instead of Marcus if they knew she wouldn't be back.
They actually taped the series finale in season 4, just in case there was never a 5. I can't blame her for leaving, its a tough position for anyone to be in. I hadn't heard anything about any hard feelings or a miscommunication, though, but it would be interesting to find out more.
Mexicans do it all the time. But if I dare criticize them, I'm a racist.
I fully agree with your statement, by the way. Mexico would be a far better place if more stayed and tried to make it a better place. By leaving, they only ensure that their corrupt government stays in power, this is why they encourage it so much (not to mention remittances). Not that I can blame them, leaving is certainly the path of least resistance.
I don't think I was commenting on terrorism at all, nukes don't solve your terrorism problem.
What I was referring to was mainly President (of Iran) Ahmadinejad. If a madman or religious fanatic has access to nukes, and he's not afraid of sacrificing his country to destroy you, then mutually assured destruction is not going to be much of a deterrent. My point is only that it won't help you in that circumstance, its not a perfect deterrent or defense, but it helps a great deal against countries and leaders who are interested in self preservation.
Nukes don't really help you fight terrorism, what could you possibly target and what would you gain other than breeding more terrorism? And that was partially the OP's point. Terrorism is the threat du jour. We don't know what'll happen in 20 years, so we shouldn't assume that terrorism will forever be the #1 threat.
Only thinking about today's threats is a shortsighted way to run your military, we've already paid a price for not thinking beyond the USSR. There isn't another superpower around today, but what about 20 years from now?
Having 6000 nuclear bombs does not mean you are going to use 6000 nuclear bombs. Its about survivability. The more bombs you have, and the more spread out they are, the less likely it is than an enemy can neutralize them all in a preemptive strike. You can destroy every inch of the continental US, but some submarine somewhere is going to make you pay.
Simply having nuclear weapons is not an effective deterrent in itself. Having many of them, in so many locations that you couldn't possibly destroy them all before being destroyed yourself, is a great deterrent. Mutually Assured Destruction, if you nuke the United States, you will be annihilated. It won't work on someone who is willing to sacrifice his entire country and all of his people (potentially Iran), but it'll work on everyone else.
Taiwan is effectively its own country. China says its not. China will not trade with any country that recognizes Taiwan's statehood, therefore most countries don't, but also don't recognize China's (PRC) rule over Taiwan (ROC).
In 1949, the communists (PRC) fought a civil war with the then Chinese government (ROC), the communists won, and the ROC fled to Taiwan. China (PRC) claims Taiwan, and Taiwan (ROC) until recently claimed all of China.
It gets a little complicated with the Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances, but we're pretty much hoping the communists go away before a war breaks out over it. Taiwan has been assured that we (USA) will intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion. We've also been selling them a great deal of arms for the last 30 years, you always take care of your best customers. We've created a situation similar to the one in Korea, where our forces there are a deterrent, a tripwire for American intervention in case of an invasion. The 7th Fleet is very conveniently positioned for that reason.
I don't see anything changing until China is no longer ruled by an oppressive communist regime, the people of Taiwan should decide what to do after that. The US doesn't want Taiwan to fall into China's hands, Japan considers the prospect a grave threat as well. Taiwan certainly doesn't want to be under oppressive communist rule, either.
You assume the customer wants Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. You also assume that the customer that wants Blu-Ray would buy the cheaper version with no HDMI. Why would someone who wants Blu-Ray, buy the non-HDMI version and be subject to the Image Constraint Token? Yes, Sony won't be using it, but other studios such as Paramount and Warner are. Knock $100 off the 360 or add $100 to the PS3. If you've heard of some add-on HDMI cable for the cheaper PS3, I haven't seen it. Have you?
You assume that the customer wants XBL gold. You also assume Sony will have a service of equal quality, something they've yet to demonstrate to anyone.
Theres no need to go into which one is better. As of today, PS3 costs $200 more, and no amount of fuzzy logic will change that. Lets save the cost analysis with all features and optional add-ons included, until both consoles actually exist.
The argument is not, "There is no breakage on the internet therefore you can't have that 15%." The argument is, music downloads fall under the 'licensed music' portion of the contract and not 'record sales', which have different royalty structures. I don't know the terms of their contract and either do you, but they could have a case. Their label is not distributing the downloads, and certainly not on a physical medium, they're licensed to someone else, such as Apple. Its all about what a music download qualifies as under the terms of a contract written before there were such things.
so rather than complain about how little the guy in india is getting paid, why isn't the problem that you are getting too much money for what you do?
Because it costs us more to get the skills required for the job, and it costs us more to pay the bills.
Its easy for you to say that we make too much money. They don't have $50,000 in student loans to repay. They don't have to deal with the astronomical cost of living here. And when the market gets flooded with cheap labor, they won't have to take another 4 years and another $50,000 to get another degree.
Why do we have the obligation of allowing cheap foreign labor, when that country doesn't allow our workers and our students to go there, to enjoy the lower tuition and cost of living? If any other industry were so heavily subsidized as India subsidizes educating IT workers, it would be called protectionism. IT workers are a commodity. I bet you'd be 'wailing about the injustice of it all' if we demanded reciprocity in our trade and immigration agreements.
Personally, I don't have a problem with foreign workers. They're just trying to do the best they can, like anyone else. But the system is heavily stacked in their favor, and you have the balls to tell me its MY fault, that I'm simply a greedy American and that I want too much money.
I agree, the vast majority of people in the FBI, and all government agencies, are good people. But, all it takes is one bad guy. Look at John Connolly, H. Paul Rico, John Conditt, Robert Hanssen... FBI agents are still human beings, they're just as capable of corruption, or even simple mistakes, as anyone. This is why our government needs checks and balances. Every law enforcement agency needs to have some transparency and judicial oversight, they can't just go running around, doing whatever they want, spying on whoever they want, while only being accountable to themselves. We don't want to return to the bad old days of J. Edgar Hoover, the bad old days of Joseph McCarthy, or the bad old days of Nixon using the FBI and CIA as political tools.
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What you are suggesting the police should do is simply not practical. Who would they ask for a stream url? Do you want everyone running a stream to register with the local police? Do you want police to begin doubting every report or threat of imminent violence, endangering everyone who legitimately needs help?
When you get a call reporting an active shooter followed by gunshots you don't check twitch, you go. You bring the amount of force necessary to deal with what may be occurring but you use the minimum amount of force necessary to take control of the situation. That no one has died yet as a result of swatting suggests that they're largely doing their jobs. Whether or not they're responding to every situation, real or fictitious with excessive force is an entirely separate issue.
Jail IS a deterrent as these people have no expectation they will be caught and believe sentences would be light anyway. If they can become more proficient at finding these people, and sentences become more severe, it will absolutely reduce the number of incidents.
Creating a system where buyers can extort and outright steal from you with little recourse and no mechanism for warning others of their behavior was a GREAT idea. I should be able to neg a guy for buying my item and not paying for it so that his identical item at a higher price could sell. I should be able to neg someone for a chargeback after the item's been delivered. I should be able to neg someone for trying to return their damaged item in place of the good working item I sent.
They've created an environment where the buyer has nothing to lose from bad behavior.
And in many of those silly European countries you can sue someone and prevail for making a factual statement. In the US, this commenter might have to spend money on his defense and win. In Europe, they could spend money and lose.
In the state I live in (Massachusetts) $3,333 won't even cover a year at a community college.
This table lists the estimated cost of in-state (i.e. subsidized) tuition and fees for all state supported colleges in Massachusetts for the last 10 years, without room and board.
http://www.mass.edu/campuses/res_total.asp
In 2012-13, a year at community college was in the 4-6k range, state colleges 8-10k, and 11-12k for a UMass campus. Room and board goes for roughly 6-7k at a state college and 10k at UMass. Even if you find a job in college that covers all of your non tuition expenses (good luck), you're entering this job market with between 32k and 50k of debt, add room and board alone and that becomes 60-90k. And if you want to attend a more prestigious university, you're looking at 50-60k per year.
Add years of underemployment after graduation to that and it's easily a lifetime of crippling debt.
Thats strictly a paper loss, the Wilpons profited from their relationship with Madoff. They deposited about $700 million and withdrew about a billion over the course of 5 years, their only losses were the ficticious profits they hadn't yet withdrawn. A recent ruling limited their liability to only what was invested in the last 2 years, and likely only the profit they made of about $83 million.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/business/mets-ruling-may-reduce-payout-to-madoff-victims.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/madoff-ruling-a-big-win-for-mets-owners-2011-09-28
If you can't speak frankly and candidly in your private, secret, and classified communications with the government you represent, how are you supposed to do your job? How do you give your government good information and an accurate assessment of the situation on the ground? If your impression of the President of Afghanistan is that he's corrupt and paranoid, your country needs to know.
Suggesting that we extend political correctness into classified communications is completely absurd. The expectation is that these documents will never see the light of day until they're only relevant in an historical context.
You follow orders because you don't have the big picture. It may be that the manner in which you accomplish your objective is more important than the outcome, something that you're not aware of could easily depend on how and not if.
The common failure among us geeks is that we tend to think we know more than everyone else. You don't always have all of the information in front of you, and thats an absolute necessity for the military.
Maybe next they'll go after Coca-Cola for bundling their bottle and can hardware with proprietary liquids.
You know, there is a school of thought which says that a stockpile of nuclear weapons big enough to kill every living thing on the planet is big enough, and any extra are probably unnecessary expense. A nuclear deterrent only needs to be large enough to completely and totally annihilate any country that may attack you. The British nuclear arsenal is big enough for that. The US has about an order of magnitude more.
In order to be an effective deterrent, you need a stockpile large enough to survive a nuclear first strike, and penetrate the enemy's defenses.
"Big enough to kill everything on the planet" is quite arbitrary, if your enemy thinks they can take out most or all of your nukes before you can retaliate, then you have no deterrent at all.
Then don't grow cabbage. I'm not willing to accept depressed wages and lost tax revenue to save a buck on a head of cabbage.
So..... if Apple products are NOT so awesome, tell me why their customer satisfaction ratings simply blow away all others.
Brilliant marketing, and they don't sell Vista. Their products fail about as much as anyone else that sells hardware contracted out to China.
The problem is, nobody knows how many people downloaded from Ms. Thomas. Nobody. Not even Ms. Thomas. Could be nobody. Could be the entire Internet-using population of the world. Nobody can find out. According to some, this means her liability should be ... nothing. I'm not sure that makes sense either.
Can you say, "burden of proof"? Should we start convicting people based on the possibility of a crime potentially occuring?
Its not so much a flying car as it is a conventional airplane you can drive. You still need an airport to take off and land, it can't hover and you can't fly locally. What it gives you is the ability to drive to the airport, take off, land at another airport, and drive to your destination in the same vehicle. Its also intended for pilots, its not a solution for the masses.
The B-52 will likely outlast it, too. Its planned to be in active service until the 2040s.
The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state
What rights were those again?
Games like Under Defeat, Radilgy, and Trizeal were originally on the Naomi arcade systems, and were very cheap to port, requiring only modest sales to become profitable. Additionally, many of these games sold relatively well, Under Defeat sold out in under a week and prompted a second print. Many of these titles also saw such popularity that they were later picked up and published on PS2 and Gamecube. Radilgy, Ikaruga, Chaos Field, and Trizeal are all examples of this.
If you're a small company with limited funds, this seems like a perfectly reasonable way to get your product out there, make a little money, and maybe draw enough attention to yourself to get it published on a current system. Sega still gets paid, plus the format is used for both the Dreamcast and the Naomi arcade systems. They could just start releasing official games on CD's, which are supported by the system anyway.
The way I heard it, around the end of season 4, they had no idea if there would be a season 5 or not. Scifi was interested, but since it was so late, their budget was already spent. They weren't picked up until very late in the game by TNT. The actors had to either commit to the 5th season before knowing if it would ever happen, and risk passing on other opportunities, or they could take the other opportunities. Claudia and her agent didn't want to commit with the show in limbo, so she moved on. They also seemed to be under the impression that she would be back, JMS made some comments to the effect of, they would've killed off Ivanova instead of Marcus if they knew she wouldn't be back.
They actually taped the series finale in season 4, just in case there was never a 5. I can't blame her for leaving, its a tough position for anyone to be in. I hadn't heard anything about any hard feelings or a miscommunication, though, but it would be interesting to find out more.
Mexicans do it all the time. But if I dare criticize them, I'm a racist.
I fully agree with your statement, by the way. Mexico would be a far better place if more stayed and tried to make it a better place. By leaving, they only ensure that their corrupt government stays in power, this is why they encourage it so much (not to mention remittances). Not that I can blame them, leaving is certainly the path of least resistance.
I don't think I was commenting on terrorism at all, nukes don't solve your terrorism problem.
What I was referring to was mainly President (of Iran) Ahmadinejad. If a madman or religious fanatic has access to nukes, and he's not afraid of sacrificing his country to destroy you, then mutually assured destruction is not going to be much of a deterrent. My point is only that it won't help you in that circumstance, its not a perfect deterrent or defense, but it helps a great deal against countries and leaders who are interested in self preservation.
Nukes don't really help you fight terrorism, what could you possibly target and what would you gain other than breeding more terrorism? And that was partially the OP's point. Terrorism is the threat du jour. We don't know what'll happen in 20 years, so we shouldn't assume that terrorism will forever be the #1 threat.
Who are we trying to scare? Anyone and everyone.
Only thinking about today's threats is a shortsighted way to run your military, we've already paid a price for not thinking beyond the USSR. There isn't another superpower around today, but what about 20 years from now?
Having 6000 nuclear bombs does not mean you are going to use 6000 nuclear bombs. Its about survivability. The more bombs you have, and the more spread out they are, the less likely it is than an enemy can neutralize them all in a preemptive strike. You can destroy every inch of the continental US, but some submarine somewhere is going to make you pay.
Simply having nuclear weapons is not an effective deterrent in itself. Having many of them, in so many locations that you couldn't possibly destroy them all before being destroyed yourself, is a great deterrent. Mutually Assured Destruction, if you nuke the United States, you will be annihilated. It won't work on someone who is willing to sacrifice his entire country and all of his people (potentially Iran), but it'll work on everyone else.
Its a very politicized situation.
Taiwan is effectively its own country. China says its not. China will not trade with any country that recognizes Taiwan's statehood, therefore most countries don't, but also don't recognize China's (PRC) rule over Taiwan (ROC).
In 1949, the communists (PRC) fought a civil war with the then Chinese government (ROC), the communists won, and the ROC fled to Taiwan. China (PRC) claims Taiwan, and Taiwan (ROC) until recently claimed all of China.
It gets a little complicated with the Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances, but we're pretty much hoping the communists go away before a war breaks out over it. Taiwan has been assured that we (USA) will intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion. We've also been selling them a great deal of arms for the last 30 years, you always take care of your best customers. We've created a situation similar to the one in Korea, where our forces there are a deterrent, a tripwire for American intervention in case of an invasion. The 7th Fleet is very conveniently positioned for that reason.
I don't see anything changing until China is no longer ruled by an oppressive communist regime, the people of Taiwan should decide what to do after that. The US doesn't want Taiwan to fall into China's hands, Japan considers the prospect a grave threat as well. Taiwan certainly doesn't want to be under oppressive communist rule, either.
Your analysis is flawed for several reasons.
You assume the customer wants Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. You also assume that the customer that wants Blu-Ray would buy the cheaper version with no HDMI. Why would someone who wants Blu-Ray, buy the non-HDMI version and be subject to the Image Constraint Token? Yes, Sony won't be using it, but other studios such as Paramount and Warner are. Knock $100 off the 360 or add $100 to the PS3. If you've heard of some add-on HDMI cable for the cheaper PS3, I haven't seen it. Have you?
You assume that the customer wants XBL gold. You also assume Sony will have a service of equal quality, something they've yet to demonstrate to anyone.
Theres no need to go into which one is better. As of today, PS3 costs $200 more, and no amount of fuzzy logic will change that. Lets save the cost analysis with all features and optional add-ons included, until both consoles actually exist.
The argument is not, "There is no breakage on the internet therefore you can't have that 15%." The argument is, music downloads fall under the 'licensed music' portion of the contract and not 'record sales', which have different royalty structures. I don't know the terms of their contract and either do you, but they could have a case. Their label is not distributing the downloads, and certainly not on a physical medium, they're licensed to someone else, such as Apple. Its all about what a music download qualifies as under the terms of a contract written before there were such things.
so rather than complain about how little the guy in india is getting paid, why isn't the problem that you are getting too much money for what you do?
Because it costs us more to get the skills required for the job, and it costs us more to pay the bills.
Its easy for you to say that we make too much money. They don't have $50,000 in student loans to repay. They don't have to deal with the astronomical cost of living here. And when the market gets flooded with cheap labor, they won't have to take another 4 years and another $50,000 to get another degree.
Why do we have the obligation of allowing cheap foreign labor, when that country doesn't allow our workers and our students to go there, to enjoy the lower tuition and cost of living? If any other industry were so heavily subsidized as India subsidizes educating IT workers, it would be called protectionism. IT workers are a commodity. I bet you'd be 'wailing about the injustice of it all' if we demanded reciprocity in our trade and immigration agreements.
Personally, I don't have a problem with foreign workers. They're just trying to do the best they can, like anyone else. But the system is heavily stacked in their favor, and you have the balls to tell me its MY fault, that I'm simply a greedy American and that I want too much money.
I agree, the vast majority of people in the FBI, and all government agencies, are good people. But, all it takes is one bad guy. Look at John Connolly, H. Paul Rico, John Conditt, Robert Hanssen... FBI agents are still human beings, they're just as capable of corruption, or even simple mistakes, as anyone. This is why our government needs checks and balances. Every law enforcement agency needs to have some transparency and judicial oversight, they can't just go running around, doing whatever they want, spying on whoever they want, while only being accountable to themselves. We don't want to return to the bad old days of J. Edgar Hoover, the bad old days of Joseph McCarthy, or the bad old days of Nixon using the FBI and CIA as political tools.