For a more concrete analogy, treat copyright violations like traffic violations. File trading would be like speeding - almost universally ignored, and when you get caught it's a citation, not a misdemeanor or a felony.
Selling unauthorized copyrighted material? That's a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the magnitude. Think of the point at which "speeding" becomes "reckless driving".
Manufacturing bootlegs for fraudulent sale/counterfeiting? Felony. Call it drunk driving.
Note how these are all crimes against the state, not civil matters. Just like in traffic, individuals don't get to sue unless they are ACTUALLY damaged - I don't get to sue a guy speeding past me just because he may have caused me damage in come incalculable way.
"Get three pieces of black construction paper and a roll of scotch tape.
Tape them together top to bottom, creating one long sheet. On the bottom, place a piece of tape half over the edge.
Insert the long sheet into the fax machine, and dial the number. As it begins to feed through, quickly affix the top to the bottom sheet, creating a long loop.
Go get a cup of coffee."
You forgot to change your own fax settings to "Fax Directly" instead of "Fax from Memory". VERY important point.
The Albanians and the Serbs have been fighting over Kosovo for HUNDREDS of years.
"If you hold it together that long, you create a new cultural identity."
Suppression increases the tendency to identify with one's religion or ethnicity - it doesn't just "go away" in 4 generations. Children are raised on the stories of how horrible their grandparents had it, and great-grandparents, and ancestors. They internalize that, and the division continue.
I don't disagree that people CAN come together blurring ethnic and religious lines; only that it cannot be forced.
More likely too toxic; a liquid sodium spill would be bad, but a spill of that much mercury would have the pantywaists that run this state evacuating the whole county.
"For what it is worth, Yugoslavia under Marshall Tito worked out fairly well."
For a while - until he died and the lid blew off.
One of the reasons that Yugoslavia "worked" is that Tito ruthlessly suppressed sectarianism and ethnicities. While it appeared to be a good thing, especially to the eyes of Western liberals who regard religion as evil, it had the effect of building a pressure cooker which blew apart in the 90's, causing violence far in excess of whatever Tito did. Iraq is the same way - Saddam suppressed the Kurds and Shia, and "kept the peace". But in doing so, he set the seeds for the situation we see now, with the US popping the cork prematurely.
You can't take large populations of ethnically and religiously diverse populations, put them in close contact, and tell them "Get along - or else". It just doesn't work over the long term.
I gotta wonder if they thought about installing and FM-20 or other extinguisher system in the room, and disabled the sprinklers. If they didn't, someone let me know what building it's in so I can stay away. Far away.
Is such behavior normal? Absolutely, in every government that has ever existed in human history, ESPECIALLY democracies. And if you think such doings are unthinkable in your country - whatever country that is - you are shockingly naive. Or just a troll.
From your low estimation of the importance of the office of President ("It's/just/ a presidential nomination"), one can surmise that you under a parliamentary government, where the executive is chosen by, and serves at the pleasure of, the winning party or parties in the legislature. So you get to vote for your MP, and then you can rest easy knowing that he will take care of everything. If you do elect a "president", it is a position of limited, almost ceremonial power.
But the US doesn't do it that way. The President of the United States has enormous power, both domestically and internationally. And the legislature only has the power to remove him for "high crimes and misdemeanors", not because they just disagree with his policies - there is no such thing as a "no confidence" vote in the US, or at least one that's not political theater.
So political skulduggery has entered the digital age - BFD. Are you going to pretend that intra- party conflict is somehow unique to the US? Ask Brown and Blair about back room deals, betrayals, and conflict.
A friend of mine was a competitive pistol shooter, and one match the gut to his left had tuned the ejector to throw brass at the shooter on the right. My friend tends to get REALLY focussed, so he didn't notice until after the round and he saw the casing stuck to the inside of his right forearm.
The conversation he had with the other guy was not a pleasant one.
For the rifles, my understanding is that it is irritating, but not dangerous. As for the pistols, huh? If you are holding it so that the cartridge casings are hitting your body you are doing it wrong - the stance for left handed and right handed shooting doesn't put the pistol at a substantially different location with regard to the rest of your body.
"As for rifles... they do make plenty of left handed rifles, but learning to shoot right-handed would probably be a valuable skill, simply because you may have to use the equipment at hand, which will probably be right handed. I learned to golf RH for the same reason - my Dad wouldn't buy a set of left handed clubs to so I could hack around as a kid.
How does the military account for handedness? Or is everybody just right handed, (like everybody is straight)?"
I have the opposite problem - I'm right handed, but due to a skeletal problem I must act lefthanded at anything that involves a 2-handed swing - baseball, hockey, golf. Once in high school the wrestling team challenged the field hockey team to a game (yes, we wore kilts and no, they didn't reciprocate). I get to the field and ask for a left handed stick and get told that there is no such thing. WTF? Then I get told that being left handed is an advantage in field hockey because of the method of manipulating the stick. "But I'm right handed. I just need a left handed stick!" Dumb looks. "Fine, whatever" and just chased teh ball flailing wildly until a fellow wrestler took a golf swing at the ball and hit me right in the small of my back. "And he's dowwwwwnnnnn".
As for the military, the M9 pistol is basically ambidextrous on major controls. The M4 carbine is semi-auto, so shooting left handed isn't that big of a deal, except for the charging lever.
He's not a troll because he didn't like the Model M. He's a troll because he generalized his bad experience to all users, and then accused anyone who disagreed with him of being a "fanboi" who never actually used the keyboard, thereby inviting negative reaction. That's pretty much the definition of a troll.
A quibble - Das Keyboard does NOT use buckling springs. It uses a different type of keyswitch - I'd guess Alps or similar. The old Northgate keyboards, also a cult fave, were similar. Similar tactile feel, but less of everything - less noise, less force feedback. Some prefer them over the stiffer and louder IBM keyboards.
That runs contrary to most other's experience and ergonomic principles. The buckling spring keyboard offers 3 types of feedback - visual (character on a screen), tactile (when the electrical contact is made, the key "gives"), and auditory (the famed "click"). Rubber dome keyboards only really offer 1 of these - visual. The tactile and the audible are generated by the key hitting the bottom of the stroke and are dependent on the force with which the key is struck, so typists tend to continue the stroke until the key bangs into the stop, then return the finger. In a buckling spring, it is possible to type without ever making contact with the physical limit of key travel, so finger motion and shock is reduced.
"Wow, you actually feel oppressed by Consumer Reports."
Huh? How did you get that?
I was a CU subscriber for many years, and most of their product reviews - mainly for consumer products - are very useful. But after a while, I got the strong impression that they had an agenda beyond providing unbiased information. It is clear that their editorial staff believes that the government and corporations have no purpose other than to fuck people over. OK, fine. But the Suzuki fiasco showed that the editorial bias had gotten well into the review process itself. Although CU was found not liable for their "review" of the Samurai, the evidence presented permanently damaged their credibility, putting them in the same league as 60 Minutes and Dateline.
There's one little flaw to your scheme which I'm somewhat shocked that you aren't considering: under a single payer plan, health care providers get paid whatever the Government decides. Cost of rent for your office went up? Tough shit. You, as a health care provider, have absolutely zero choice in your market. Under the current system, if insurance plan A reimburses at too low a rate, you can drop them - it's happened to me a couple of times. But under single payer, you take what the single payer decides or find a new line of work.
You are advocating a system where you become a cog in a machine even greater and harder to navigate than even the worst HMO out there. Yes, it's great for patients - they get their services for "free". For a while. But providers get fucked - they cannot deny services, but if they don't get reimbursed, they eat it. So providers leave, and then their is a shortage. So we come to the situation that exists in some of the other single payer systems - a patient doesn't have to pay for services, but it's totally irrelevant because the services simply aren't available.
What's even more disturbing is that, as a physician, you are supposed to be smart enough to figure this out yourself. the fact that you haven't makes me believe that you are not the physician for me.
Where they discover that the Wii remote can slip out of your hand, and then proceed to throw it at the TV as hard as they can. They repeat about 20 times until the TV tube shatters, and then send out a press release demanding a government recall.
Slashdot Mirror
For a more concrete analogy, treat copyright violations like traffic violations. File trading would be like speeding - almost universally ignored, and when you get caught it's a citation, not a misdemeanor or a felony.
Selling unauthorized copyrighted material? That's a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the magnitude. Think of the point at which "speeding" becomes "reckless driving".
Manufacturing bootlegs for fraudulent sale/counterfeiting? Felony. Call it drunk driving.
Note how these are all crimes against the state, not civil matters. Just like in traffic, individuals don't get to sue unless they are ACTUALLY damaged - I don't get to sue a guy speeding past me just because he may have caused me damage in come incalculable way.
"Sorry, but nostalgia is not a good stand-in for real-world superiority."
I sense a great disturbance in the Force, as if thousands of Model M users cried out in rage, and then continued typing.
"Get three pieces of black construction paper and a roll of scotch tape.
Tape them together top to bottom, creating one long sheet. On the bottom, place a piece of tape half over the edge.
Insert the long sheet into the fax machine, and dial the number. As it begins to feed through, quickly affix the top to the bottom sheet, creating a long loop.
Go get a cup of coffee."
You forgot to change your own fax settings to "Fax Directly" instead of "Fax from Memory". VERY important point.
The Albanians and the Serbs have been fighting over Kosovo for HUNDREDS of years.
"If you hold it together that long, you create a new cultural identity."
Suppression increases the tendency to identify with one's religion or ethnicity - it doesn't just "go away" in 4 generations. Children are raised on the stories of how horrible their grandparents had it, and great-grandparents, and ancestors. They internalize that, and the division continue.
I don't disagree that people CAN come together blurring ethnic and religious lines; only that it cannot be forced.
"Mercury is probably too heavy"
More likely too toxic; a liquid sodium spill would be bad, but a spill of that much mercury would have the pantywaists that run this state evacuating the whole county.
"A new pair of running shoes?"
More likely a spare pair of underwear.
"For what it is worth, Yugoslavia under Marshall Tito worked out fairly well."
For a while - until he died and the lid blew off.
One of the reasons that Yugoslavia "worked" is that Tito ruthlessly suppressed sectarianism and ethnicities. While it appeared to be a good thing, especially to the eyes of Western liberals who regard religion as evil, it had the effect of building a pressure cooker which blew apart in the 90's, causing violence far in excess of whatever Tito did. Iraq is the same way - Saddam suppressed the Kurds and Shia, and "kept the peace". But in doing so, he set the seeds for the situation we see now, with the US popping the cork prematurely.
You can't take large populations of ethnically and religiously diverse populations, put them in close contact, and tell them "Get along - or else". It just doesn't work over the long term.
Oh, never mind - should have RTFA.
I gotta wonder if they thought about installing and FM-20 or other extinguisher system in the room, and disabled the sprinklers. If they didn't, someone let me know what building it's in so I can stay away. Far away.
Hey, here's a question - Who is Moveon.org supporting?
You are conflating "good" and "normal".
Is such behavior good? Of course not.
Is such behavior normal? Absolutely, in every government that has ever existed in human history, ESPECIALLY democracies. And if you think such doings are unthinkable in your country - whatever country that is - you are shockingly naive. Or just a troll.
From your low estimation of the importance of the office of President ("It's /just/ a presidential nomination"), one can surmise that you under a parliamentary government, where the executive is chosen by, and serves at the pleasure of, the winning party or parties in the legislature. So you get to vote for your MP, and then you can rest easy knowing that he will take care of everything. If you do elect a "president", it is a position of limited, almost ceremonial power.
But the US doesn't do it that way. The President of the United States has enormous power, both domestically and internationally. And the legislature only has the power to remove him for "high crimes and misdemeanors", not because they just disagree with his policies - there is no such thing as a "no confidence" vote in the US, or at least one that's not political theater.
So political skulduggery has entered the digital age - BFD. Are you going to pretend that intra- party conflict is somehow unique to the US? Ask Brown and Blair about back room deals, betrayals, and conflict.
Finally, "little country"? Are you stoned?
From the CIA Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
Geography: Third largest behind Russia and Canada
Population: Third behind China and India (No, the EU doesn't count as a country)
GDP: First
Yes, the US is first in some other categories as well, like debt, etc. so we certainly have our problems.
But little? Please.
You forgot the opportunity cost - NOT doing it might have resulted in an acute LOP (Loss Of Pussy).
A friend of mine was a competitive pistol shooter, and one match the gut to his left had tuned the ejector to throw brass at the shooter on the right. My friend tends to get REALLY focussed, so he didn't notice until after the round and he saw the casing stuck to the inside of his right forearm.
The conversation he had with the other guy was not a pleasant one.
For the rifles, my understanding is that it is irritating, but not dangerous. As for the pistols, huh? If you are holding it so that the cartridge casings are hitting your body you are doing it wrong - the stance for left handed and right handed shooting doesn't put the pistol at a substantially different location with regard to the rest of your body.
"As for rifles... they do make plenty of left handed rifles, but learning to shoot right-handed would probably be a valuable skill, simply because you may have to use the equipment at hand, which will probably be right handed. I learned to golf RH for the same reason - my Dad wouldn't buy a set of left handed clubs to so I could hack around as a kid.
How does the military account for handedness? Or is everybody just right handed, (like everybody is straight)?"
I have the opposite problem - I'm right handed, but due to a skeletal problem I must act lefthanded at anything that involves a 2-handed swing - baseball, hockey, golf. Once in high school the wrestling team challenged the field hockey team to a game (yes, we wore kilts and no, they didn't reciprocate). I get to the field and ask for a left handed stick and get told that there is no such thing. WTF? Then I get told that being left handed is an advantage in field hockey because of the method of manipulating the stick. "But I'm right handed. I just need a left handed stick!" Dumb looks. "Fine, whatever" and just chased teh ball flailing wildly until a fellow wrestler took a golf swing at the ball and hit me right in the small of my back. "And he's dowwwwwnnnnn".
As for the military, the M9 pistol is basically ambidextrous on major controls. The M4 carbine is semi-auto, so shooting left handed isn't that big of a deal, except for the charging lever.
IBM made an ergo model M, and Northgate made an ergo Unicomp.
Of course, both are now rare as hen's teeth and hideously expensive, but they do exist - see another post of mine with links.
He's not a troll because he didn't like the Model M. He's a troll because he generalized his bad experience to all users, and then accused anyone who disagreed with him of being a "fanboi" who never actually used the keyboard, thereby inviting negative reaction. That's pretty much the definition of a troll.
Another source for Model M's:
http://www.clickykeyboards.com/
And for Northgate Omnikey's
http://www.northgate-keyboard-repair.com/
So sayeth the Internet.
A quibble - Das Keyboard does NOT use buckling springs. It uses a different type of keyswitch - I'd guess Alps or similar. The old Northgate keyboards, also a cult fave, were similar. Similar tactile feel, but less of everything - less noise, less force feedback. Some prefer them over the stiffer and louder IBM keyboards.
That runs contrary to most other's experience and ergonomic principles. The buckling spring keyboard offers 3 types of feedback - visual (character on a screen), tactile (when the electrical contact is made, the key "gives"), and auditory (the famed "click"). Rubber dome keyboards only really offer 1 of these - visual. The tactile and the audible are generated by the key hitting the bottom of the stroke and are dependent on the force with which the key is struck, so typists tend to continue the stroke until the key bangs into the stop, then return the finger. In a buckling spring, it is possible to type without ever making contact with the physical limit of key travel, so finger motion and shock is reduced.
In other words, you're a troll.
"Wow, you actually feel oppressed by Consumer Reports."
Huh? How did you get that?
I was a CU subscriber for many years, and most of their product reviews - mainly for consumer products - are very useful. But after a while, I got the strong impression that they had an agenda beyond providing unbiased information. It is clear that their editorial staff believes that the government and corporations have no purpose other than to fuck people over. OK, fine. But the Suzuki fiasco showed that the editorial bias had gotten well into the review process itself. Although CU was found not liable for their "review" of the Samurai, the evidence presented permanently damaged their credibility, putting them in the same league as 60 Minutes and Dateline.
There's one little flaw to your scheme which I'm somewhat shocked that you aren't considering: under a single payer plan, health care providers get paid whatever the Government decides. Cost of rent for your office went up? Tough shit. You, as a health care provider, have absolutely zero choice in your market. Under the current system, if insurance plan A reimburses at too low a rate, you can drop them - it's happened to me a couple of times. But under single payer, you take what the single payer decides or find a new line of work.
You are advocating a system where you become a cog in a machine even greater and harder to navigate than even the worst HMO out there. Yes, it's great for patients - they get their services for "free". For a while. But providers get fucked - they cannot deny services, but if they don't get reimbursed, they eat it. So providers leave, and then their is a shortage. So we come to the situation that exists in some of the other single payer systems - a patient doesn't have to pay for services, but it's totally irrelevant because the services simply aren't available.
What's even more disturbing is that, as a physician, you are supposed to be smart enough to figure this out yourself. the fact that you haven't makes me believe that you are not the physician for me.
Where they discover that the Wii remote can slip out of your hand, and then proceed to throw it at the TV as hard as they can. They repeat about 20 times until the TV tube shatters, and then send out a press release demanding a government recall.
"Barak Obama consistently evaluates situations and sets goals in a dynamic and networked way. "
For the buzzwords alone I'd vote against him.