For comparison, the total GDP of the country is a little under $17 trillion.
Labor force participation is low, the levels it was in the 1970s. There's a recent uptick in jobs, but the graph is notoriously noisy, and it'll be at least 6 months to a year before we can tell whether this is a trend.
GDP per capita (amount of GDP per person) has about doubled since 1995. Quadrupled since 1970.
Despite these gains, household income has dropped by about 8% in the last 10 years.
So in summary, since 1995 (ish) we doubled our GDP (both per person and in absolute terms), and household income right now is about the level it was at the start of the doubling.
Oh, and everyone who works still has to put in 40hrs/week.
Interesting that politicians appeal mostly to people's fears and insecurities. Fear of criminals, mass murders, fear of losing your job, xenophobia, fear of any number of disasters which each claims the other will bring if you don't elect the opposite as leader. Terror is just another word for fear, and one who uses terror to achieve political goals is a terrorist. Break the cycle, vote for somebody who doesn't need to scare you to get your support.
Damn! Nice post.
It's rare to find an actual flash of insight on this subject. Keep up the good work.
There's a really obvious reason why Trump is so popular.
A lot of people are facing complete ruin and are scared, holding their breath hoping that something will change.
Trump is the candidate for "change", and Clinton is the candidate for "stay the course".
I'm not a Clinton supporter, but I don't think that statement about Hillary is particularly controversial even among her supporters. She's definitely a political insider, is funded by moneyed interests, and her website has a list of issues that give a sense of "direction" without promising anything concrete. Typical of politicians for the last 50 years - nothing bad or unusual about that.
Trump has a list of 7 things that he will change, with a concrete list of changes for each. All of his proposed changes are aimed at making peoples' lives better.
People who are secure in their position, who have a job and don't see themselves being laid off or expect to find a new job quickly if they are laid off, should vote for Hillary. There are a lot of these people in the country, and "stay the course" is the least risky choice for them to make.
People who are unemployed, struggling, or in fear of losing their situation should vote for Trump, because he's proposing to make changes.
As the theory goes, when you're doing well you should minimise risk - don't do anything that could change your situation. When you're doing poorly, you can tolerate more risk in the hopes that it might help.
So it really all boils down to the proportion of people in the country who are at-risk and scared, versus the proportion who think the current situation is "pretty good".
We're presented with a never-ending stream of depressing news about this here on Slashdot, and you really can't trust the MSM any more, so it's easy to believe that majority of the country might be shivering in fear hoping for something to change, but that might not be an accurate view.
"Change" or "stay the course"? The voters will probably decide this November.
Trump could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody. And he wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's like incredible.
There's a really obvious reason why he's so popular, so I don't think "incredible" is the right word to use.
A lot of people are facing complete ruin and are scared, holding their breath hoping that something will change.
Trump is the candidate for "change", and Clinton is the candidate for "stay the course".
I'm not a Clinton supporter, but I don't think that statement about Hillary is particularly controversial even among her supporters. She's definitely a political insider, is funded by moneyed interests, and her website has a list of issues that give a sense of "direction" without promising anything concrete. Typical of politicians for the last 50 years - nothing bad or unusual about that.
Trump has a list of 7 things that he will change, with a concrete list of changes for each. All of his proposed changes are aimed at making peoples' lives better.
People who are secure in their position, who have a job and don't see themselves being laid off or expect to find a new job quickly if they are laid off should vote for Hillary. There are a lot of these people in the country, and "stay the course" is the least risky choice for them to make.
People who are unemployed, struggling, or in fear of losing their situation should vote for Trump, because he's proposing to make changes.
As the theory goes, when you're doing well you should minimise risk - don't do anything that could change your situation. When you're doing poorly, you can tolerate more risk in the hopes that it might help.
So it really all boils down to the proportion of people in the country who are at-risk and scared, versus the proportion who think the current situation is "pretty good".
We're presented with a never-ending stream of depressing news about this here on Slashdot, so it's easy to believe that majority of the country might be shivering in fear hoping for something to change, but that might not be an accurate view.
"Change" or "stay the course"? The voters will probably decide this November.
Not only was he such a bad-ass that he kicked Hitler's ass, but he led this country into an era when we actually became great, and did not give one single fuck about the fact that he was losing his hair.
To be fair, it was easy to become great when the manufacturing centers of Europe, the UK, Japan, and parts of China had been totally destroyed.
The MSDS for the product says sulfuric acid and Rodine.
Rodine is an acid inhibitor that attempts to prevent corrosion of metals by acids.
The liquid fire MSDS doesn't say specifically the concentrations (I hate that), but other drain cleaners of that type can be nearly 100% sulfuric acid.
It wouldn't come as a surprise if the thing was almost pure H2SO4.
Sulfuric acid is essentially sulfur trioxide gas dissolved in water. If the atmospheric pressure goes down, the SO3 gas comes out of solution, where it can hang around and then redissolve on moist surfaces, such as mucous membranes and moist eye tissue.
What would happen if they sell a game for the wrong nonzero price? Can they later force you to "un-buy" that game and repurchase it at the correct price?
Here's a hypothetical situation.
Suppose Microsoft chooses two test subsets of customers and sells the game for two different prices: BasePrice and BasePrice+$5. They do this for a time, and it gives them a differential of games sold versus price.
If the differential reward is higher at the lower price, they stop selling at the higher price and list the lower price for all buyers from then on.
However, if the differential reward is higher, they un-purchase the games at the lower price with the excuse that "it was listed at the wrong price, you have to repurchase at the correct price".
Hmmmm... I think I've discovered a new way to increase market liquidity!
(Any economist should agree that increasing market liquidity is a good thing!)
Organ transplant patients have to spend the rest of their lives gobbling immunosuppressive drugs. Could this technique be used to remove and reboot the immune system, including in the replacement organ, for such patients?
I believe the answer to your question is "no", although I'm not a biologist.
Cells have a specific molecule, the "major histocompatibility complex", which lives in the cell wall and presents bits of broken-down proteins to the outside. The immune system checks these proteins to determine the health of the cell and to determine whether a response is needed.
Each MHC complex also has its own particular code, and the immune system of the body is trained to recognize these codes as "self" and not trigger a response to the MHC itself. This happens in the thymus, where developing T-cells are culled if they show any response to the "self" MHC codes. There are about 16 total code variables per MHC molecule, and some individual variables can have 600 or so variations. If two people are not identical twins, then their different MHC proteins would trigger an autoimmune response.
If you remove and reboot the immune system, the thymus will still be making cells that expect the "self" MHC codes, and will show a response to foreign cells. Most of the cells in the body would present "self" MHC molecules, and the transplants would still present a "non-self" molecule.
Unless you take some type of further step, such as adjusting the Thymus or cleansing the transplanted organ of MHC molecules, you'll still get a response when you reboot the immune system.
Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
It was thrown out with the bathwater for the war on drugs.
The perception was that drug dealers were living high off of their ill-gotten gains: owning houses, boats, off-road trucks... and flaunting their wealth in the community.
We didn't have enough evidence to charge them with drug-related crimes, so we invented civil asset forfeiture to compensate: if you even *looked* like you could be a drug dealer, you could have your assets confiscated and sold.
And the proceeds can go directly to the police department to further their anti-drug campaign. Under this new law, drug crime became a self-correcting problem as the proceeds went to fund ever-more expanded police operations....except that it didn't. Drug use is as high as it ever was, police can confiscate anything you own on a whim, and the action is not tied to evidence or charges, and neither the police nor the prosecutors can be held liable for mistakes and errors.
This was a problem for 20 years, and eventually the US attorney general made a ruling that in general, you can't sieze cash as civil-asset forfeiture.
(But the OP is apparently about state-sponsored seizure, not federal.)
This will to go to the supreme court, will cost about $2 million in wasted effort for some poor schmuck, cost about 10 years wasted time for some poor schmuck, and be overturned. In the meantime, OK state cops get a free pass to steal money from anyone.
And of course, when the government is eventually found doing something illegal, they are told to stop. When a company is found doing something illegal, they pay a small fine and don't admit to any wrongdoing. When a citizen is found doing something illegal, they go to jail.
And when a citizen is wrongly accused, it costs a lifetime of wages and a year or two of life effort just to escape the state's error.
What I don't understand is why more police aren't being shot in this nation. The police are trashing lives on a whim, and some of those trashed lives will have nothing to lose. I haven't had a polite interaction with a cop in 20 years, and most people say that the best policy is to avoid them at all costs. Parents are starting to teach their children not to call the police for help.
The police hurt a lot of people, unnecessarily, and a lot of people are getting desperate.
It surprises me that we're not in full-out revolt.
Because he has 7 clear positions with a plan to fix each, while Hillary has 31 nebulous "issues" and a vague attitude on each.
In an attempt to learn about a non-hot-potato issue, I checked out Trump's position on tax reform.
Basically, it says any individual earning under $25,000 pays no tax, couples under $50,000 pay no tax, and it gets rid of the marriage penalty and the estate tax. It's also revenue neutral(*).
That sounds pretty good to me: this would help out a lot of poor and underprivileged, and it would eliminate the huge chunk of bureaucratic effort low earners have to do each year. The amount of revenue from a poor person is negligible, so it makes sense not to expend the effort (on both sides) trying to collect it.
I couldn't find anything in Clinton's issues specifically about tax reform (let me know if I missed it), but her "economy" issue mentions a couple of tax 'gimmes such as this one:
Hillary will cut taxes for hard-working families to increase their take-home pay as they face rising costs from child care, health care, and sending their kids to college. She is calling for extending a tax cut of up to $2,500 per student to help deal with college costs as part of her New College Compact, and for cutting taxes for businesses that share profits with their employees.
Her position is nebulous ("Hillary will cut taxes for hard-working families") and makes you feel like she's on your side without anything concrete. She's adding yet another rule to an overly-complicated tax code, and it only helps families with college-bound students.
All her positions are like that: feel-good appeals to emotional problems, and a vague sense that she'll do something about it.
Donald Trump has 7 positions listed, each of which are high priority problems that should be fixed such as the current backlog of Veterans benefits. Clinton has a looooong list of issues, such as campus sexual assault. I'm not entirely certain that campus sexual assault rises to the same level as tax reform or Veteran's benefits, but I'm pretty certain it should not be dealt with at the federal level. It's there for emotional impact.
Trump notes 7 problems and has a plan to fix them.
Clinton lists all the problems she can find, and asks "won't someone think of the $whatever-gets-me-the-vote"?
(*) Whether you believe that it is actually revenue neutral makes no difference. You can always *make* it revenue neutral by adjusting the numbers as needed, and the government thinks nothing of going into debt by twice its revenue anyway, so they could make up the shortfall that way.
(**) I had to correct myself from typing "Clinton has issues".
I like to use the 1st letters of song lyrics and other phrases that are easy to remember.
For instance, the wireless password for my home is "luitsiabiapis". Which is an acronym of "look, up in the sky... it's a bird, it's a plane, it's superman".
Take any song lyric that you like and that matches the format. The geneaology website login might be "iodagos", which is "in olden days a glimpse of stocking".
I have pretty-much no problem remembering my passwords.
Relax everyone, we're nowhere close to having, what is commonly perceived to be, intelligent programs.
What we have, and what we have finely honed, are clockworks: algorithms that perform a single specific task.
Granted, a lot of what humans do can be replaced by a sufficiently well-designed clockwork. Lots of human tasks are repetitive, boring, and uncreative. Driving, for example, is repetitive, boring, and uncreative, and appears to be well suited to a clockwork.
And this will bring about massive changes in how we view human activity. We will eventually have to change our notions of entitlement and human worth, and found a new sect of economic theory.
But each of these is only a clockwork, suited to only a single task. Humans, the only example of intelligence we have, can learn to do any of these tasks, and as far as we can tell there is no wiring in the human brain specific to any of them. Humans can learn to play chess, checkers, poker, or any of a hundred other games, but so far as anyone can tell there's no wiring in the brain specific to chess.
A chess program can't learn to play checkers, but the human algorithm is universal.
The Feds are planning to raise interest rates at their next meeting in June.
From a previous post, you seem to be in touch with economics and financial matters. Here's a question for you, and I'm not trying to be snarky.
The fed lent out money at 0% interest for the last 7 years or so, in an attempt to kickstart the economy.
The loans went out to big banks, and I remember at the time that a lot of the loans were going to foreign banks, especially in Germany.
Question 1:
Many of those banks turned the money around and lent it back to the US at higher interest. This just about doubled the national debt over that period.
If we were giving out 0% loans, why couldn't we have repurchased our own debt with 0% loans? The amount of money would have been the same, but instead of profits going to the banks, we could have reduced our debt burden and increased net revenue for government spending.
Question 2:
We're told that social security will go bankrupt in a few years, in our own lifetime, due to a temporary glut of baby boomers retiring. We have to adjust by accepting smaller payouts and working longer.
Why can't we just give the SSA a 0% interest loan to cover the shortfall for a few years? Social Security has almost always taken in more than it spends yearly, and if it can work through the glut it would become solvent a few years later.
I'm trying to understand economics, but I don't have the benefit of the standard curriculum.
Can you tell me why these things aren't just that simple?
Trump's tax plan would add at least $10T to the debt on top of the $10T expected under existing law. We could go from $19T under Obama to $39T under Trump. As Vice President Dick Cheney once said, "Deficits don't matter."
Those are the old estimates!
We won't be going $10 trillion into debt, most analysts are now predicting at least $40 trillion, and that figure could top $90 trillion before his term is through!
A Trump presidency would be unimaginably bad for the country, and plummet the world into catastrophe of biblical proportions! Not fall, mind you, plummet!!!
The country is at stake; nay, even the entire world! We have to stop him at any cost!
Screw what his supporters think, ignore democratic voting, the time for civil action is over.
We have to stop Trump by any means possible!!! By any means!!!!
(And if you can't get enough people to listen to you, add more rhetoric!)
One problem with media reporting today is the perceived need to get emotional involvement.
In it's economic zeal to get eyeballs on articles, the media has resorted to sensationalizing and emotionalism. They compete for the most outrageous, most shocking headlines in an attempt to lure readers.
...and because of this the media has lost all credibility. The readers have wised up, and most don't seem to fall for these tricks any more.
We only have to look at the Trump campaign to see how this happened. Taking one single issue as an example, we read all about how he hates and has a war against latinos. In reality, he said nothing of the sort, which is 'kinda why he's got such a huge support base right now.
The media is astonished that his supporters aren't leaving him in droves... he *is* the next Hitler, didn't you know?
Everything is a crisis, everything is a war on something, everything is a conflict.
(Note: You can learn how to get around this using this one weird trick!)
Voice recognition is AI. Connection the term "weather" with the location given by GPS and requesting the weather report is AI. So you were saying?
I'm an AI researcher working on strong AI.
Knowing what AI actually is would greatly help me in my research, but I'm having trouble interpreting your meaning, and was wondering if you could explain.
Did you mean to say:
Possible meaning A:
Intelligent people recognize voice input.
Siri recognizes voice input.
Therefore, Siri is intelligent!
Possible meaning B:
Everything and the kitchen sink can be considered AI.
We can extend possible meaning A above to include all sorts of intelligent behaviours. For example:
Intelligent people use lookhead when playing chess
Chess playing programs use lookahead to play chess
Therefore, chess-playing programs are intelligent!
We can extend possible meaning B above to include all sorts of algorithms. For example:
Since people make inferences from data, development and study of data mining techniques is part of AI!
Of course there's a third meaning that you didn't touch on, I'll note it here for completeness:
Possible meaning C:
AI will revolutionize the world
Calling this research an aspect of AI will get me funding.
This has got to be some of the most clueless garbage I've seen on Slashdot in years, obviously from someone whose only experience with aerospace is as self-loading cargo.
It could also be from a teenager trying to ask a legitimate question to a website full of smart people, or someone from an underdeveloped area who was taught about energy conservation but doesn't grasp the complexities of aircraft construction.
I'm not suggesting we be like StackExchange, but we're the smart people in the room and are known for +5 insightful posts that look at all sides of an issue.
The OP does have a point: we seem to spend a lot of time looking for planes when they go down, and there seems to be a lot of common-sense technological solutions that could be implemented.
I hear there are pilots and aircraft engineers on this site. Maybe we could, you know, discuss solutions?
Slashdot Mirror
New Algorithm Could Help Predict Future ISIS Attacks
How about a new policy that could help prevent future ISIS attacks?
Does a temporary ban on immigration from conflict areas still seem unreasonable?
I'm not a usability expert by any means, so can anyone tell me why only four identities?
That seems pretty limiting to me, it should be the end user's choice how many identities to use.
Why not something simple like each *window* have separate data that's shared between tabs? Then you don't have any UI changes or usability problems.
Or is "it just works" an Apple patent or something?
For comparison, the total GDP of the country is a little under $17 trillion.
Labor force participation is low, the levels it was in the 1970s. There's a recent uptick in jobs, but the graph is notoriously noisy, and it'll be at least 6 months to a year before we can tell whether this is a trend.
GDP per capita (amount of GDP per person) has about doubled since 1995. Quadrupled since 1970.
Despite these gains, household income has dropped by about 8% in the last 10 years.
So in summary, since 1995 (ish) we doubled our GDP (both per person and in absolute terms), and household income right now is about the level it was at the start of the doubling.
Oh, and everyone who works still has to put in 40hrs/week.
Interesting that politicians appeal mostly to people's fears and insecurities. Fear of criminals, mass murders, fear of losing your job, xenophobia, fear of any number of disasters which each claims the other will bring if you don't elect the opposite as leader. Terror is just another word for fear, and one who uses terror to achieve political goals is a terrorist. Break the cycle, vote for somebody who doesn't need to scare you to get your support.
Damn! Nice post.
It's rare to find an actual flash of insight on this subject. Keep up the good work.
I'd vote you up if I had points.
The reason Trump is so popular is that he's actually not popular at all.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelli...
It's like a zen koan for morons: "He's so popular that 70% of people can't stand him."
Gamergate logic.
Apropos of nothing, does your Gamergate logic explain why so many people voted for him?
Votes would seem to be a better measure, but then I'm not familiar with Gamergate logic.
There's a really obvious reason why Trump is so popular.
A lot of people are facing complete ruin and are scared, holding their breath hoping that something will change.
Trump is the candidate for "change", and Clinton is the candidate for "stay the course".
I'm not a Clinton supporter, but I don't think that statement about Hillary is particularly controversial even among her supporters. She's definitely a political insider, is funded by moneyed interests, and her website has a list of issues that give a sense of "direction" without promising anything concrete. Typical of politicians for the last 50 years - nothing bad or unusual about that.
Trump has a list of 7 things that he will change, with a concrete list of changes for each. All of his proposed changes are aimed at making peoples' lives better.
People who are secure in their position, who have a job and don't see themselves being laid off or expect to find a new job quickly if they are laid off, should vote for Hillary. There are a lot of these people in the country, and "stay the course" is the least risky choice for them to make.
People who are unemployed, struggling, or in fear of losing their situation should vote for Trump, because he's proposing to make changes.
As the theory goes, when you're doing well you should minimise risk - don't do anything that could change your situation. When you're doing poorly, you can tolerate more risk in the hopes that it might help.
So it really all boils down to the proportion of people in the country who are at-risk and scared, versus the proportion who think the current situation is "pretty good".
We're presented with a never-ending stream of depressing news about this here on Slashdot, and you really can't trust the MSM any more, so it's easy to believe that majority of the country might be shivering in fear hoping for something to change, but that might not be an accurate view.
"Change" or "stay the course"? The voters will probably decide this November.
If you are a Trump supporter it would not be a surprise. That's the kind of illiterate non-reasoning that Trump and his ignorant hoard specialize in.
"Hoard" is to stock or store something, "horde" is a group of people.
I'm a trump supporter.
Trump could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody. And he wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's like incredible.
There's a really obvious reason why he's so popular, so I don't think "incredible" is the right word to use.
A lot of people are facing complete ruin and are scared, holding their breath hoping that something will change.
Trump is the candidate for "change", and Clinton is the candidate for "stay the course".
I'm not a Clinton supporter, but I don't think that statement about Hillary is particularly controversial even among her supporters. She's definitely a political insider, is funded by moneyed interests, and her website has a list of issues that give a sense of "direction" without promising anything concrete. Typical of politicians for the last 50 years - nothing bad or unusual about that.
Trump has a list of 7 things that he will change, with a concrete list of changes for each. All of his proposed changes are aimed at making peoples' lives better.
People who are secure in their position, who have a job and don't see themselves being laid off or expect to find a new job quickly if they are laid off should vote for Hillary. There are a lot of these people in the country, and "stay the course" is the least risky choice for them to make.
People who are unemployed, struggling, or in fear of losing their situation should vote for Trump, because he's proposing to make changes.
As the theory goes, when you're doing well you should minimise risk - don't do anything that could change your situation. When you're doing poorly, you can tolerate more risk in the hopes that it might help.
So it really all boils down to the proportion of people in the country who are at-risk and scared, versus the proportion who think the current situation is "pretty good".
We're presented with a never-ending stream of depressing news about this here on Slashdot, so it's easy to believe that majority of the country might be shivering in fear hoping for something to change, but that might not be an accurate view.
"Change" or "stay the course"? The voters will probably decide this November.
Not only was he such a bad-ass that he kicked Hitler's ass, but he led this country into an era when we actually became great, and did not give one single fuck about the fact that he was losing his hair.
To be fair, it was easy to become great when the manufacturing centers of Europe, the UK, Japan, and parts of China had been totally destroyed.
The MSDS for the product says sulfuric acid and Rodine.
Rodine is an acid inhibitor that attempts to prevent corrosion of metals by acids.
The liquid fire MSDS doesn't say specifically the concentrations (I hate that), but other drain cleaners of that type can be nearly 100% sulfuric acid.
It wouldn't come as a surprise if the thing was almost pure H2SO4.
Sulfuric acid is essentially sulfur trioxide gas dissolved in water. If the atmospheric pressure goes down, the SO3 gas comes out of solution, where it can hang around and then redissolve on moist surfaces, such as mucous membranes and moist eye tissue.
What would happen if they sell a game for the wrong nonzero price? Can they later force you to "un-buy" that game and repurchase it at the correct price?
Here's a hypothetical situation.
Suppose Microsoft chooses two test subsets of customers and sells the game for two different prices: BasePrice and BasePrice+$5. They do this for a time, and it gives them a differential of games sold versus price.
If the differential reward is higher at the lower price, they stop selling at the higher price and list the lower price for all buyers from then on.
However, if the differential reward is higher, they un-purchase the games at the lower price with the excuse that "it was listed at the wrong price, you have to repurchase at the correct price".
Hmmmm... I think I've discovered a new way to increase market liquidity!
(Any economist should agree that increasing market liquidity is a good thing!)
Organ transplant patients have to spend the rest of their lives gobbling immunosuppressive drugs. Could this technique be used to remove and reboot the immune system, including in the replacement organ, for such patients?
I believe the answer to your question is "no", although I'm not a biologist.
Cells have a specific molecule, the "major histocompatibility complex", which lives in the cell wall and presents bits of broken-down proteins to the outside. The immune system checks these proteins to determine the health of the cell and to determine whether a response is needed.
Each MHC complex also has its own particular code, and the immune system of the body is trained to recognize these codes as "self" and not trigger a response to the MHC itself. This happens in the thymus, where developing T-cells are culled if they show any response to the "self" MHC codes. There are about 16 total code variables per MHC molecule, and some individual variables can have 600 or so variations. If two people are not identical twins, then their different MHC proteins would trigger an autoimmune response.
If you remove and reboot the immune system, the thymus will still be making cells that expect the "self" MHC codes, and will show a response to foreign cells. Most of the cells in the body would present "self" MHC molecules, and the transplants would still present a "non-self" molecule.
Unless you take some type of further step, such as adjusting the Thymus or cleansing the transplanted organ of MHC molecules, you'll still get a response when you reboot the immune system.
Apple's self-driving electric vehicle will need charging stations across the 50 states.
Expect them to partner with a roadside diner chain. charge car battery, get a bite to eat while a Genius services your iPad...
My God... it'll be beautiful!
Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
It was thrown out with the bathwater for the war on drugs.
The perception was that drug dealers were living high off of their ill-gotten gains: owning houses, boats, off-road trucks... and flaunting their wealth in the community.
We didn't have enough evidence to charge them with drug-related crimes, so we invented civil asset forfeiture to compensate: if you even *looked* like you could be a drug dealer, you could have your assets confiscated and sold.
And the proceeds can go directly to the police department to further their anti-drug campaign. Under this new law, drug crime became a self-correcting problem as the proceeds went to fund ever-more expanded police operations. ...except that it didn't. Drug use is as high as it ever was, police can confiscate anything you own on a whim, and the action is not tied to evidence or charges, and neither the police nor the prosecutors can be held liable for mistakes and errors.
This was a problem for 20 years, and eventually the US attorney general made a ruling that in general, you can't sieze cash as civil-asset forfeiture.
(But the OP is apparently about state-sponsored seizure, not federal.)
This will to go to the supreme court, will cost about $2 million in wasted effort for some poor schmuck, cost about 10 years wasted time for some poor schmuck, and be overturned. In the meantime, OK state cops get a free pass to steal money from anyone.
And of course, when the government is eventually found doing something illegal, they are told to stop. When a company is found doing something illegal, they pay a small fine and don't admit to any wrongdoing. When a citizen is found doing something illegal, they go to jail.
And when a citizen is wrongly accused, it costs a lifetime of wages and a year or two of life effort just to escape the state's error.
What I don't understand is why more police aren't being shot in this nation. The police are trashing lives on a whim, and some of those trashed lives will have nothing to lose. I haven't had a polite interaction with a cop in 20 years, and most people say that the best policy is to avoid them at all costs. Parents are starting to teach their children not to call the police for help.
The police hurt a lot of people, unnecessarily, and a lot of people are getting desperate.
It surprises me that we're not in full-out revolt.
Why do you want to vote for him?
Because he has 7 clear positions with a plan to fix each, while Hillary has 31 nebulous "issues" and a vague attitude on each.
In an attempt to learn about a non-hot-potato issue, I checked out Trump's position on tax reform.
Basically, it says any individual earning under $25,000 pays no tax, couples under $50,000 pay no tax, and it gets rid of the marriage penalty and the estate tax. It's also revenue neutral(*).
That sounds pretty good to me: this would help out a lot of poor and underprivileged, and it would eliminate the huge chunk of bureaucratic effort low earners have to do each year. The amount of revenue from a poor person is negligible, so it makes sense not to expend the effort (on both sides) trying to collect it.
I couldn't find anything in Clinton's issues specifically about tax reform (let me know if I missed it), but her "economy" issue mentions a couple of tax 'gimmes such as this one:
Hillary will cut taxes for hard-working families to increase their take-home pay as they face rising costs from child care, health care, and sending their kids to college. She is calling for extending a tax cut of up to $2,500 per student to help deal with college costs as part of her New College Compact, and for cutting taxes for businesses that share profits with their employees.
Her position is nebulous ("Hillary will cut taxes for hard-working families") and makes you feel like she's on your side without anything concrete. She's adding yet another rule to an overly-complicated tax code, and it only helps families with college-bound students.
All her positions are like that: feel-good appeals to emotional problems, and a vague sense that she'll do something about it.
Donald Trump has 7 positions listed, each of which are high priority problems that should be fixed such as the current backlog of Veterans benefits. Clinton has a looooong list of issues, such as campus sexual assault. I'm not entirely certain that campus sexual assault rises to the same level as tax reform or Veteran's benefits, but I'm pretty certain it should not be dealt with at the federal level. It's there for emotional impact.
Trump notes 7 problems and has a plan to fix them.
Clinton lists all the problems she can find, and asks "won't someone think of the $whatever-gets-me-the-vote"?
(*) Whether you believe that it is actually revenue neutral makes no difference. You can always *make* it revenue neutral by adjusting the numbers as needed, and the government thinks nothing of going into debt by twice its revenue anyway, so they could make up the shortfall that way.
(**) I had to correct myself from typing "Clinton has issues".
I like to use the 1st letters of song lyrics and other phrases that are easy to remember.
For instance, the wireless password for my home is "luitsiabiapis". Which is an acronym of "look, up in the sky... it's a bird, it's a plane, it's superman".
Take any song lyric that you like and that matches the format. The geneaology website login might be "iodagos", which is "in olden days a glimpse of stocking".
I have pretty-much no problem remembering my passwords.
Relax everyone, we're nowhere close to having, what is commonly perceived to be, intelligent programs.
What we have, and what we have finely honed, are clockworks: algorithms that perform a single specific task.
Granted, a lot of what humans do can be replaced by a sufficiently well-designed clockwork. Lots of human tasks are repetitive, boring, and uncreative. Driving, for example, is repetitive, boring, and uncreative, and appears to be well suited to a clockwork.
And this will bring about massive changes in how we view human activity. We will eventually have to change our notions of entitlement and human worth, and found a new sect of economic theory.
But each of these is only a clockwork, suited to only a single task. Humans, the only example of intelligence we have, can learn to do any of these tasks, and as far as we can tell there is no wiring in the human brain specific to any of them. Humans can learn to play chess, checkers, poker, or any of a hundred other games, but so far as anyone can tell there's no wiring in the brain specific to chess.
A chess program can't learn to play checkers, but the human algorithm is universal.
We're starting to automate our world, that's all.
The reason why the federal government has budget deficits is [...]
That wasn't the question.
The Feds are planning to raise interest rates at their next meeting in June.
From a previous post, you seem to be in touch with economics and financial matters. Here's a question for you, and I'm not trying to be snarky.
The fed lent out money at 0% interest for the last 7 years or so, in an attempt to kickstart the economy.
The loans went out to big banks, and I remember at the time that a lot of the loans were going to foreign banks, especially in Germany.
Question 1:
Many of those banks turned the money around and lent it back to the US at higher interest. This just about doubled the national debt over that period.
If we were giving out 0% loans, why couldn't we have repurchased our own debt with 0% loans? The amount of money would have been the same, but instead of profits going to the banks, we could have reduced our debt burden and increased net revenue for government spending.
Question 2:
We're told that social security will go bankrupt in a few years, in our own lifetime, due to a temporary glut of baby boomers retiring. We have to adjust by accepting smaller payouts and working longer.
Why can't we just give the SSA a 0% interest loan to cover the shortfall for a few years? Social Security has almost always taken in more than it spends yearly, and if it can work through the glut it would become solvent a few years later.
I'm trying to understand economics, but I don't have the benefit of the standard curriculum.
Can you tell me why these things aren't just that simple?
Daddy Trump got arrested after a 1927 KKK riot in Queens.
Really? One of Trump's ancestors got arrested 90 years ago? For brawling?
You know what's glaringly obvious? That you're not reporting that he was convicted.
What else you got?
Trump's tax plan would add at least $10T to the debt on top of the $10T expected under existing law. We could go from $19T under Obama to $39T under Trump. As Vice President Dick Cheney once said, "Deficits don't matter."
Those are the old estimates!
We won't be going $10 trillion into debt, most analysts are now predicting at least $40 trillion, and that figure could top $90 trillion before his term is through!
A Trump presidency would be unimaginably bad for the country, and plummet the world into catastrophe of biblical proportions! Not fall, mind you, plummet!!!
The country is at stake; nay, even the entire world! We have to stop him at any cost!
Screw what his supporters think, ignore democratic voting, the time for civil action is over.
We have to stop Trump by any means possible!!! By any means!!!!
(And if you can't get enough people to listen to you, add more rhetoric!)
One problem with media reporting today is the perceived need to get emotional involvement.
In it's economic zeal to get eyeballs on articles, the media has resorted to sensationalizing and emotionalism. They compete for the most outrageous, most shocking headlines in an attempt to lure readers.
We only have to look at the Trump campaign to see how this happened. Taking one single issue as an example, we read all about how he hates and has a war against latinos. In reality, he said nothing of the sort, which is 'kinda why he's got such a huge support base right now.
The media is astonished that his supporters aren't leaving him in droves... he *is* the next Hitler, didn't you know?
Everything is a crisis, everything is a war on something, everything is a conflict.
(Note: You can learn how to get around this using this one weird trick!)
Voice recognition is AI. Connection the term "weather" with the location given by GPS and requesting the weather report is AI. So you were saying?
I'm an AI researcher working on strong AI.
Knowing what AI actually is would greatly help me in my research, but I'm having trouble interpreting your meaning, and was wondering if you could explain.
Did you mean to say:
Possible meaning A:
Possible meaning B:
Everything and the kitchen sink can be considered AI.
We can extend possible meaning A above to include all sorts of intelligent behaviours. For example:
We can extend possible meaning B above to include all sorts of algorithms. For example:
Of course there's a third meaning that you didn't touch on, I'll note it here for completeness:
Possible meaning C:
This has got to be some of the most clueless garbage I've seen on Slashdot in years, obviously from someone whose only experience with aerospace is as self-loading cargo.
It could also be from a teenager trying to ask a legitimate question to a website full of smart people, or someone from an underdeveloped area who was taught about energy conservation but doesn't grasp the complexities of aircraft construction.
I'm not suggesting we be like StackExchange, but we're the smart people in the room and are known for +5 insightful posts that look at all sides of an issue.
The OP does have a point: we seem to spend a lot of time looking for planes when they go down, and there seems to be a lot of common-sense technological solutions that could be implemented.
I hear there are pilots and aircraft engineers on this site. Maybe we could, you know, discuss solutions?
When are legitimate IP and patent holders going to band together and take out the courts in Texas?
Apropos of nothing, how does one go about "taking out" a federal court?
Just curious...