Welcome to America where (in the media, at least) you can kill whoever you like in as messy a fashion as you like as long as you don't show any genitals or say anything offensive while doing it.
I count at least five off the top of my head. If you count former military, then the number goes way up.
But, you are correct. The government would not send the army to suppress the population. They would use law enforcement forces. And, they would find a way to label their targets as "terrorists" or some other category of "unamerican". Enough Americans would go along with it that the use of the military would probably never be needed.
I have never indicated that I trusted the government to not try to infringe on your liberties. But those who feel the best way to defend those liberties is to be well armed are deluding themselves. Reality is seldom as simple as the movies. If you want to protect your rights, you need be paying attention to politics now. The "Great Battle" is never going to happen because the government will never take a large enough step to trigger it. But, a series of little steps will go just as far without causing the turmoil.
Freedom is lost through inattention. I don't care which end of the political spectrum you are on, if you fail to pay attention, you will loose.
While I attempted to make the point that my "little army" was made up of the people of the U.S. and therefore unlikely be attempt to enslave their own family and friends, Your assertion that LA could not be handled by a modern army is a little silly.
Even if we assume that the idea is to capture LA, and not just destroy it (otherwise, this is a very short exercise), any thinking army would just cut off LA and disrupt the water supply. Sure, you could live off of bottled water for a little while, but LA is very vulnerable in this way.
Anyway, you just got me thinking about how that would work. It is a little silly to speculate on, since so much would have to change before such an event would take place. For now, there is no senario that pits the "American people" against the "U. S. Military" on a large scale (can't forget about Kent State) because the military is made up of the american people.
I would be far more uptight about this situation if the government continued to contract out security duties to corporations. While one could argue that they too are the american people, they are also mercenaries, and therefore their motivations and loyalties come into doubt. Also, they are not subject to the same laws restricting how and where the military operates. For example, the military is forbidden to maintain a list of graduating high school students, but now they are contracting with a company to do just that. They are barred from doing it themselves, but have no restriction on getting someone else to do it.
If I recall correctly (and I mostly just know about the purchase of military aircraft), US military weapons cannot be purchased directly from the government within the US. For some reason you can buy pretty much whatever you like, but you have to buy it from a foreign company. At least, that is the way it was explained to me by some folks who had a Korean vintage jet.
Sweet! Where can I buy an M1-A2? If the government has them, don't I need one in order to defend myself? Sadly, I could probably afford the tank easier than I could afford to operate one. (Yeah, I know, I can't afford to do either one.)
Seriously, I always found this attitude funny. As a former member of the military, let me fill you in on something. If it comes down to you against the US military, the ammo you use is not going to make a difference. Luckily, despite what the bunker-building whackos will tell you, the military is made up of your relatives and neighbors, not bloodthirsty robots.
If you are worried about the direction the government is heading and wish to protect yourself, you are far better off becoming active in politics (like voting) than collecting weapons.
If this company showed off the application at a convention, and is loosing sales because of iTunes, then where is the screenshot? Why is there just a hand drawn image of the interface? They must be still marketing the software, or else they can't be loosing sales, right?
And you reckon that the US is more civilized than anyone else? How many countries have you initiated military action on in recent years, again?
Well... 2. But, only one of thoses was purely driven by the selfish desires of greedy businessmen and an ignorant manchild. What's your point?
Disclamer for the Impared : The preceeding post was intended to be funny. If it turns out not to be funny, please consider that I can had only once can of Diet Coke so far today.
What if there is advanced life in our galaxy, but it turns out that the speed of light is an actual hard limit that cannot be circumvented? Even if another civilization spent out probes with the correct equipment to detect our EM radiation. They would have to get within 100LY (or so, I am guessing at this) to detect any.
Then, if the probe was able to detect the emissions, it would have to relay that information back, which would be somewhat silly, since the emissions it detected would arrive at the home planet around the same time.
As it turns out, if the speed of light is the absolute limit, it doesn't matter if life does exist elsewhere in the universe. The distances are too far for any real interaction to take place. Our sun will go red giant before we could have even a short conversation.
I worked for a company (now defunct) that developed large-scale teleconferencing solutions. It was working out ok when we were concentrating on the small number of education networks that were willing to invest in expensive landlines. But the attempt to develop the market for businesses to use the technology failed. Until someone like Apple comes up with conferencing for "the rest of us", the experience remains more about the technology than whatever the conference is supposed to be about.
In order for the technology to work, it needs to become invisible. I should have known the future was bleak when our own company didn't like using the technology.
No one has ever been defeated in a US election for being too hard on sex offenders or drug users. I am no great defender of either, but I am real sick of the transparent a$$-kissing from the politicians. I am actually at the point where I get nauseous when I witness such obvious pandering.
If sex offenders remain a threat upon release, why are they being released. At some point someone will need to fix the system. This is like applying a work-around patch to software.
I have always had a problem with the "alien transplant" creation story. The problem with it is that it isn't really a creation story. All it does is transplant the problem. Any creation by a sentient entity involves an iterative problem. If a creator is required for complex life to develop, then who created the creator? It doesn't matter which planet life started on, the problem remains the same.
I vastly prefer the big numbers theory. There is a huge number of planets in the universe. Each has a slightly different environment. If life is possible at all, through whatever means, the sheer number of possible starting places yield pretty good odds of life developing.
I am surrounded by people who seem to think that the fact that life on Earth is perfectly suited to the environment is a sign of intelligent design. There is a real resistance to accept the idea that any life that was not well suited would never be able to develop. Once all the branches on the decision tree have been pruned, the last one looks like fate.
My little sister had velcro straps on her shoes when she was a kid (around 9 years old). She would cry and scream because she couldn't get the straps to line up perfectly. Should have been a warning sign, I guess. Not the shoes for obsessive compulsives.
Dumb question, but if this is the case, why did you get married?
I may have overstated the case, but I lived alone for nine years before getting married. We have not yet hit the two year mark, so I am still getting used to it.
I'm sure that in ten years we will be in the same house all day and barely get a chance to talk (once we have kids running around). Then I will be very happy to spend time with her. I am just suffering from culture shock (sort of).
It is no wonder that so many marriages end in the first couple of years. There is a pretty large learning curve when you actually live with someone for more than a year. It has nothing to do with her personally.
My wife works 12 hour shifts on rotating days. I would love to work from home if I could do it alone, but there is no way that my wife would leave me alone for 8 hours every day. She already calls me around six times a day when she is off. I even go into the office when I am sick when she is off. She CANNOT be in the house with me and leave me by myself. It is nice, I guess, that she likes spending time with me. But, I am a geek with the requisite history of long periods of isolation. I am not used to being around people 24 hours a day. At least at work I can wear headphones and tune everyone out while I work.
Did I miss something? The only reference I found to OSX installation was this:
We installed Windows XP and Mac OS X without partitioning the hard drive. Both operating systems include partitioning software that deletes your existing operating system and data. Both installations were straightforward but Windows XP lost marks because of the installation time (90 minutes). The other products only took 10-20 minutes.
Oh come on! I have one wife and that is more that enough for me! No wonder the Mormons were so religious. They had to believe in heaven because with multiple wives they were looking forward to death.
I have the Audiovox portable tuner for Sirius with the boombox accessory. This thing drains enough juice that it may as well be a portable pizza oven. Eight D cell batteries last around six hours! The tuner itself gets very hot. Unless you plan on wearing a car battery around your neck, they will need to change some things.
Perhaps this push for wearable units will force the manufacturers to update the technology. I don't understand why the tuner cannot be the size of a Palm Pilot and run cool. I have to imagine that much of the power drain is lost in heat.
The "Patriot" Missile [umn.edu], as though you are not patriotic unless you are in favor of a particular weapon of mass destruction.
While I agree with most of your points, I do have one correction. The Patriot missile is an anti-air missile, not a weapon of mass destruction (in the normal sense of WOMD). Still an odd name, though.
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Welcome to America where (in the media, at least) you can kill whoever you like in as messy a fashion as you like as long as you don't show any genitals or say anything offensive while doing it.
I count at least five off the top of my head. If you count former military, then the number goes way up.
But, you are correct. The government would not send the army to suppress the population. They would use law enforcement forces. And, they would find a way to label their targets as "terrorists" or some other category of "unamerican". Enough Americans would go along with it that the use of the military would probably never be needed.
I have never indicated that I trusted the government to not try to infringe on your liberties. But those who feel the best way to defend those liberties is to be well armed are deluding themselves. Reality is seldom as simple as the movies. If you want to protect your rights, you need be paying attention to politics now. The "Great Battle" is never going to happen because the government will never take a large enough step to trigger it. But, a series of little steps will go just as far without causing the turmoil.
Freedom is lost through inattention. I don't care which end of the political spectrum you are on, if you fail to pay attention, you will loose.
While I attempted to make the point that my "little army" was made up of the people of the U.S. and therefore unlikely be attempt to enslave their own family and friends, Your assertion that LA could not be handled by a modern army is a little silly.
Even if we assume that the idea is to capture LA, and not just destroy it (otherwise, this is a very short exercise), any thinking army would just cut off LA and disrupt the water supply. Sure, you could live off of bottled water for a little while, but LA is very vulnerable in this way.
Anyway, you just got me thinking about how that would work. It is a little silly to speculate on, since so much would have to change before such an event would take place. For now, there is no senario that pits the "American people" against the "U. S. Military" on a large scale (can't forget about Kent State) because the military is made up of the american people.
I would be far more uptight about this situation if the government continued to contract out security duties to corporations. While one could argue that they too are the american people, they are also mercenaries, and therefore their motivations and loyalties come into doubt. Also, they are not subject to the same laws restricting how and where the military operates. For example, the military is forbidden to maintain a list of graduating high school students, but now they are contracting with a company to do just that. They are barred from doing it themselves, but have no restriction on getting someone else to do it.
If I recall correctly (and I mostly just know about the purchase of military aircraft), US military weapons cannot be purchased directly from the government within the US. For some reason you can buy pretty much whatever you like, but you have to buy it from a foreign company. At least, that is the way it was explained to me by some folks who had a Korean vintage jet.
That was a number of years ago, though.
Sweet! Where can I buy an M1-A2? If the government has them, don't I need one in order to defend myself? Sadly, I could probably afford the tank easier than I could afford to operate one. (Yeah, I know, I can't afford to do either one.)
Seriously, I always found this attitude funny. As a former member of the military, let me fill you in on something. If it comes down to you against the US military, the ammo you use is not going to make a difference. Luckily, despite what the bunker-building whackos will tell you, the military is made up of your relatives and neighbors, not bloodthirsty robots.
If you are worried about the direction the government is heading and wish to protect yourself, you are far better off becoming active in politics (like voting) than collecting weapons.
If this company showed off the application at a convention, and is loosing sales because of iTunes, then where is the screenshot? Why is there just a hand drawn image of the interface? They must be still marketing the software, or else they can't be loosing sales, right?
Well ... 2. But, only one of thoses was purely driven by the selfish desires of greedy businessmen and an ignorant manchild. What's your point?
Disclamer for the Impared : The preceeding post was intended to be funny. If it turns out not to be funny, please consider that I can had only once can of Diet Coke so far today.
You may have been the first one to hit F12 on that machine. There is a noticable startup time when Dashboard is invoked for the first time.
What if there is advanced life in our galaxy, but it turns out that the speed of light is an actual hard limit that cannot be circumvented? Even if another civilization spent out probes with the correct equipment to detect our EM radiation. They would have to get within 100LY (or so, I am guessing at this) to detect any.
Then, if the probe was able to detect the emissions, it would have to relay that information back, which would be somewhat silly, since the emissions it detected would arrive at the home planet around the same time.
As it turns out, if the speed of light is the absolute limit, it doesn't matter if life does exist elsewhere in the universe. The distances are too far for any real interaction to take place. Our sun will go red giant before we could have even a short conversation.
In order for the technology to work, it needs to become invisible. I should have known the future was bleak when our own company didn't like using the technology.
No one has ever been defeated in a US election for being too hard on sex offenders or drug users. I am no great defender of either, but I am real sick of the transparent a$$-kissing from the politicians. I am actually at the point where I get nauseous when I witness such obvious pandering. If sex offenders remain a threat upon release, why are they being released. At some point someone will need to fix the system. This is like applying a work-around patch to software.
I vastly prefer the big numbers theory. There is a huge number of planets in the universe. Each has a slightly different environment. If life is possible at all, through whatever means, the sheer number of possible starting places yield pretty good odds of life developing.
I am surrounded by people who seem to think that the fact that life on Earth is perfectly suited to the environment is a sign of intelligent design. There is a real resistance to accept the idea that any life that was not well suited would never be able to develop. Once all the branches on the decision tree have been pruned, the last one looks like fate.
My little sister had velcro straps on her shoes when she was a kid (around 9 years old). She would cry and scream because she couldn't get the straps to line up perfectly. Should have been a warning sign, I guess. Not the shoes for obsessive compulsives.
I may have overstated the case, but I lived alone for nine years before getting married. We have not yet hit the two year mark, so I am still getting used to it.
I'm sure that in ten years we will be in the same house all day and barely get a chance to talk (once we have kids running around). Then I will be very happy to spend time with her. I am just suffering from culture shock (sort of).
It is no wonder that so many marriages end in the first couple of years. There is a pretty large learning curve when you actually live with someone for more than a year. It has nothing to do with her personally.
My wife works 12 hour shifts on rotating days. I would love to work from home if I could do it alone, but there is no way that my wife would leave me alone for 8 hours every day. She already calls me around six times a day when she is off. I even go into the office when I am sick when she is off. She CANNOT be in the house with me and leave me by myself. It is nice, I guess, that she likes spending time with me. But, I am a geek with the requisite history of long periods of isolation. I am not used to being around people 24 hours a day. At least at work I can wear headphones and tune everyone out while I work.
How about the 20th Anniversary Mac? It was pretty cool, but offered at a wacky price and never really sold. http://tam.axon.net/spartimage.htm
I put the word "programming" in quotes because we were learning BASIC from the basketball coach.
Of course, this may be an attempt to discredit theories about the theories about conspiracy theories, so take it with a grain of salt.
Well now you can't use any of your mod points. Doh! :)
Shame on you people!
Oh come on! I have one wife and that is more that enough for me! No wonder the Mormons were so religious. They had to believe in heaven because with multiple wives they were looking forward to death.
Perhaps this push for wearable units will force the manufacturers to update the technology. I don't understand why the tuner cannot be the size of a Palm Pilot and run cool. I have to imagine that much of the power drain is lost in heat.
You can't return it! You have to break the seal on the door to see the EULA. Once you do that, you can't return it.
While I agree with most of your points, I do have one correction. The Patriot missile is an anti-air missile, not a weapon of mass destruction (in the normal sense of WOMD). Still an odd name, though.