No, that wasn't the anti-trust issue, that was exclusivity partner agreements.
And that was what I consider the real issue. I don't give a damn if MS installed IE on those computers I was forced to buy with an MS operating system on them. It was trivial enough to install another browser, but unless I wanted to take the time to build my own computers from parts and then have basically no warranty on the system as a whole, I had to pay MS for their OS. And that points out that having an MS OS on the system wasn't the issue, it was having to PAY for the privilege.
And you ought to know that I was buying those systems with grant money, which means the taxpayer was actually paying for an OS that was going to be deleted as soon as the system got here.
MS also installs 'explorer' on all their systems, but you could buy Norton commander. Is the fact that 'explorer' was part of the MS bundle a problem? No.
You need to uninstall updates to get it back to a lower version, and then disable it.
I've seen several of the core Google apps which can't simply be disabled.
It's kind of annoying.
If you are disabling an app so it cannot be used at all, why do you care that you have to remove an update to the very app you don't want in the first place? Others have pointed out the technical reason for the way it is.
The real issue back then was Microsoft offered IE for free and Netscape charged a fee for their browser.
The real issue back then was that MS required OEMs to install MS OS on every computer they sold if they wanted to install it on ANY computer they sold. That's why you didn't have an option of buying a pre-built computer without Windows. I ought to know, I had to buy alot of them.
IIRC there are plenty of places where TCAS is mandatory. Even for light aircraft which intend to use that airspace.
You may be thinking of transponders with Mode C. I don't know of any airspace where TCAS is required for all aircraft, but class B requires Mode C. At least in the US.
So you've established that all the male scientists made of straw are corrupt.
I don't see how you could have gotten that from anything I wrote. I didn't talk about male scientists, and I didn't prove anyone was corrupt, I spoke about the impression that the public can get when one group of scientists points the finger at another group.
Lets see some actual evidence of corruption in that 'good chunk' of 'real' scientists.
Parent has seen all the proof he needs in "Die Hard II".
And in "Scorpion", where we learned that nobody can land anything if the tower software is out of operation, that transcontinental aircraft carry a copy of the ATC routing software, that those aircraft have a cat5 cable hanging around in the equipment bay that can be dropped out a wheel well so a hacker can download the software, that an ATC software failure can disable the red/green light guns that are installed in towers explicitly to deal with communications failures, that the data archive disk for the ATC software has a label "FAA" on it, that right handed data server managers put their important servers on the right side of the room, that a 500,000 kW glitch in the power grid will cause data center doors to open,... OMG.
The only reason to watch that show is for the mom. I recorded it and I'm keeping it, if for no other reason that to have something to point at as an example of really really really bad technical content in a prime time program. I can't wait to see what they slaughter tonight.
It's the getting the clearance which is the issue. Because of the problem the FAA might reject your flight plan.
The FAA cannot reject your flight plan. The clearance they give you may not match what you ask for, but they'll give you something. And, as you continued, you'll definitely get something if you are an FAA-operated aircraft transporting FAA personnel to repair an out-of-service FAA facility.
And most of those are the ones actively discrediting the 'good' ones because they've been paid off by the fossil fuel industry.
You know, that statement right there shows why the public has no problem believing that scientists can be just as corrupt as politicians. It's not the "bad ones" who have created the problem, it is the "good ones" who dismiss anything any scientist who is "paid off by the fossil fuel industry" says just because of who they work for.
Once you have one part of a group pointing fingers at the others saying "they're corrupt", it is not very hard at all to think that all of them could be. I mean, if who pays you determines what your results are, then why wouldn't someone being paid on a grant to study one aspect of climate change be likely to find just what he's being paid to find? Even if it is nothing more than unidentified confirmation bias, if who pays you can point you to your results, then that applies no matter who pays you.
Why would none of the academics publish biased results?
1. There's no profit. Of course there is. Grants go to people studying new and/or important things. If you say "there's nothing to see here" your grant doesn't get renewed. You have to go find something else to work on so you'll get paid. Unlike people with real jobs, academics don't get paid with their employer's money, they get paid from grant money.
2. Someone would snitch. Of course. And then that someone would wind up without HIS grant because a) nobody likes a snitch, and b) "there's nothing to see here" applies. Unlike someone with a real job, academic grants go through "peer review" and if your peers decide that your work is banal and obvious, you don't get your grant.
Of course, the bias may not be deliberate, it may just influence what "outliers" get thrown out.
If you don't think there are egos involved in academic science, you've never worked in academia. If you don't think there is back scratching going on all the time, ditto. There is a limited amount of money being pulled in a large number of directions. Anyone who says "there's nothing to see here" jeopardizes everyone working in that field, and those humans called "scientists" can still do what humans tend to do when something jeopardizes their income.
Personally, I just wish those "good ones" would stop accusing their colleagues of being bought off, because it besmirches the entire process of science. If you can't counter their science with your own, then maybe you need to look at your own science first. This "you've been bought off so you are wrong" argument throws mud on the recipient, but a lot of it splashes back on the thrower.
Seriously though, what evidence do you have that 'a good chunk' are corrupt?
The same evidence the "good one" have regarding the "bad ones".
What about debit cards that can be used like credit cards? What's the liability on those.
It's a debit card. The fact you can use it to pay for something at the checkout doesn't make it a credit card. There is no credit involved.
except that the money is pulled directly from my checking account. I really don't like this feature, but all their cards are like that now.
All debit cards are like that. And that's why even if your card issuer promises low liabilities for lost or stolen cards, you may have an empty checking account for the entire time it takes to resolve the problem. Compare that to a credit card where the issuer is prohibited by law from acting on any charge that you are disputing.
See and avoid doesn't work so well when you're in the clouds.
No, but commercial aircraft in high traffic areas tend to have TCAS and similar to alert them to traffic, and if on a proper clearance won't run into anyone anyway.
Also, you might not see an aircraft coming at you until it's too late.
Like I said, they are humans in the cockpit, and their failure to be perfect at see-and-avoid doesn't mean ATC is the only person keeping them apart.
So, yeah, the OP was right.
No, he was wrong. The pilots are also there to keep planes from running into each other. If you are going to discount their presence because they are imperfect at it and think only ATC has that job, then you better discount ATC as well because they are not perfect, either.
In many (most?) situations, controllers are the only people stopping planes from running into each other.
Not even barring inclement weather. The navigation aids were not impacted by this, only center. Departure and approach were still functional, too. Get an IFR clearance and fly it. You don't have to talk to a center to do that.
oh and are the only people stopping planes from running into eachother.
Believe it or not, there are other people who stop planes from running into "each other". They're called "pilots". Actual human beings who control the airplanes and where they go.
Of course they aren't perfect at keeping airplanes from running into each other. They're humans. (And computers aren't perfect at it either.) Just like the ATC humans aren't perfect at keeping minimum separation.
I would think that the major hubs in the US didn't operate with this poor of a practice. Honestly, I'm flabbergasted.
Huh? What "poor of a practice"? Evacuating a building that is on fire? My God! How stupid can that be? Leave them in the building and let them burn, just as long as no flights are delayed.
I wonder how many other airports are using a system with similar vulnerability.
You mean a "system" where people work in buildings where there could be a fire? I think I can answer this one: ALL of them.
Seems like lighting or other natural events could have the same impact.
Buildings are rarely evacuated because of lighting. The centers are usually operated at reduced lighting levels anyway. They are also not usually evacuated because of lightning, and while a lightning strike can take out commercial power, the backups will come online quickly.
Can "natural events" take out a radio transmitter? Of course. That's why there are backups for those, too.
Now, what happens when a nutter cuts the cable going out of the building, or sets it afire? Yeah, it has a serious impact.
This isn't a glaring example of government mismanagement. Dial it back a few notches, ok?
The Federal government (specifically the FCC) has this neat little thing about being able to record anything entering YOUR PROPERTY and being able to do what you will with it.
I think you're referring to the Communications Act of 1934 and amendments thereto. Can't tell. If not, citation required.
The Communications Act has never said that you can "do what you will" with things you record off the air. It allows personal use of a lot of things you can record, but not commercial use. You cannot record a TV show at your house and then distribute it commercially, for example.
More recent amendments have changed the environment considerably, especially in the area of telecommunications (listening to cellular phone calls, for example) and other non-broadcast transmissions.
You have picked an edge case and sneakily tried to present it as anything but.
That's why I said "many" and not "most", or "all". Saving water is nice, except that for many people it simply goes back into the local water table and their well just sucks it back up to be reused.
In order to share, we have to limit how much each person can draw.
No, we don't. We can allow people to use what they want to pay for.
The soft-drinks thing was pretty silly, but again - a shared resource is being depleted by muppets.
I'm sorry, what? Soft drinks are not a "shared resource", they are a commercially made product, and if a store runs out they order more. Any argument that you shouldn't be able to buy a 32 oz soft drink because it is abusing a shared resource is just nuts.
The resource in this case is healthcare.
Ahhh, so you think that every person who drinks a 32 oz soft drink has to go to the hospital to, umm, what, pee? Sorry. That's also nuts.
There's a difference between a person who's gone (and who continues to go) out of their way to demonstrate their responsibility enough to own a device whose only reason for existing is to put holes in usually-living things,
I think you're referring to guns here, but I can't tell for sure. You flamed me for what you thought was an overstatement about how many times a low-flow toilet needed to be flushed and now you drop this gem about the "only reason for existing" for guns.
I hate to burst your bubble, but clay targets have never been alive so "usually-living" doesn't apply, and by the time a paper target is tacked up to something it is long-dead wood. I supposed you are opposed to bow and arrow enthusiasts because the paper targets (and bales of hay) they use were "usually-living"?
Don't like the cops knowing where you are when you call 911?
I'm sorry, did you read me saying that anywhere?
A truly civilised society wouldn't need these rules,
A civilized society doesn't need these rules, and we got along for a very long time without them. Trying to claim that you can't have a civilized society without them is, well, you used the word "sneakily" when you misinterpreted what I wrote. I'd call what you're doing less than sneaky, and pretty disingenuous.
rules have to be put in place to stop them from seriously screwing everyone over through their sheer selfishness
Right. You are SO seriously screwed over because I own a 15 round magazine, or because I drink a 32 oz diet soft drink every so often, or because my cell phone doesn't have a GPS in it. Yeah. It is such an inconvenience to you that I have some freedom to make my own choices about what I do.
Throwing an apple away isn't going to get you a fine.
Did you not even bother to read the summary? Putting compostable items in the trash can result in a fine. Or don't you know that an apple core is compostable?
Oh well. You get the country you deserve. Have fun!
No, I don't get the country I deserve, because "people like you" (as you so civilly put it) think they're being so inconvenienced by other people having the ability to choose how they run their own lives. How did you put it? "seriously screwing everyone over through their sheer selfishness". Right. It absolutely ruins your life because I have an incandescent bulb where you think I ought to have an environmentally destructive CFL.
Guess what? I bought into the CFL nonsense and now I have a couple of places in my house that I have to predict when I'll need light because the damn CFL lighting takes several minutes to warm up and start emitting enough light. And I've got to worry about where I dispose of the dead ones (that didn't last as long as the last incandescent
You've happily chosen to compare glass to trash, which isn't the proper ordering of the problem. The question is, is putting glass in aluminum recycling container similar to putting food scraps in the trash, and would laws treating both in a similar way be reasonable?
Were the question on the table whether laws covering the placement of glass in the trash justifiable on the similarity to putting food scraps in the trash, you'd have a point.
Why is it bad that federal law mandates that toilets not be wasteful?
That's not what federal law mandates. It doesn't say "thou shall not be wasteful", it says "thou may use only X gallons per flush". The result is, in many cases, people have to flush twice to get one dump handled properly. Sometimes three or four times. What is being wasted? Water, which goes either to the septic tank and back into the local water table, or to the waste processing plant to be recycled back into the global water cycle.
Why is it bad that federal law mandates listing the wattage used on a bulb?
Who said it was? The problem is the LIMIT, not the listing.
I don't live in NYC. I don't care about soft drink sizes.
When they came for the soft drinks, I didn't say anything because I didn't drink soft drinks. When they came for the twinkies...
magazine rounds. WGAS? If you need to go on a killing spree just bring more magazines....
Why yes, because the only use for guns are to go on killing sprees.
Air bags are a good thing. So are helmets. So... what's your point?
Government mandates for "good things" to "protect us from ourselves".
No they don't.... I can turn my GPS off...
The moment you call 911 the GPS turns on. AND they track the cell tower.
Welcome to a civilized society. We have rules.
Your problem appears to be that you equate "civilized society" with "government rules". It is possible to have the former without a ridiculous amount of the latter.
There's no micromanaging of your life.
If the government can fine you because you threw an apple core in the trash, yes, there is micromanagement.
It would be very similar to an ordinance that fines people for putting glass in the aluminum recycle bin.
Not that similar. It is pretty clear that "glass" is not "aluminum", and "glass" has never been "aluminum", so putting glass into someone else's container that says "aluminum only" could reasonably be a crime.
But food scraps and other bio-waste certainly are trash, so putting "trash" into your own "trash" container should not be a crime.
In the general sense, this kind of regulation is nanny-state micromangement.
You win the pedant of the day award. Ok, here's a better way of putting it. Why should I pay taxes on money that I'm not getting to put in savings or exchange for goods or services that I get to keep and/or use? Most people would call that money which is not taken from them by the government what they get to keep, but I guess you're not one of them.
Sooner or later. Money isn't for keeping.
There is a natural time frame for talking about "keep", and that's a tax year. I have lots of money that I've kept a lot longer than a tax year, so yes, money is for "keeping", even if eventually I'll either spend it or it is inherited by my progeny.
What you're describing is welfare. Why does this have to be mixed up in the tax system? We already have countless welfare programs.
Yes, we do, and at least one of them is implemented using the tax system. You want to make people pay a highly regressive tax and not have some kind of credit for them? You're going to have so many poor people and their advocates on your ass that you'll never get your new tax system passed.
Perhaps that's why one of the new tax systems I've seen proposed has a pre-loaded "credit" built in. That means a check mailed to every taxpayer to cover predicted tax payments for someone of a given base income level. I don't recall if this was the "fair tax" or some other variant.
What the proponent couldn't understand was two things. First, this turned the federal tax system into a blatant version of welfare instead of the implicit welfare it now has built in. Second, he simply could not understand how this system would not eliminate the IRS as he claimed. It would change the jobs of the driods therein from collecting money from people to both collecting money from retailers AND managing the largest welfare system in the world. He thought we'd save a lot of money by eliminating a large government agency; the truth is the agency would grow and morph. It would change from an agency everyone loves to hate into another agency handling entitlements and it would never go away.
The Best Way To Rob A Bank is an interesting talk, but the wrong process. There doesn't have to be any illegal activity when the laws themselves are the cause of the crisis.
The best way to rob a bank is to get nebulous regulations regarding "community investment" enacted, and then threaten to take the bank to court unless they donate money to your cause. Like Jessie Jackson and many other "community activists" did. Banks knew it was cheaper to donate to ACORN than to face even specious litigation that would take years to handle.
The correct book would be The Best Way to Make A Bank Fail, and that is to force it to make "community reinvestment" loans to people who cannot pay them back, based on ridiculously weak lending criteria, and then NOT bail them out when your policies have caused the problem.
If this guy is a professional economist and cannot see that simple result, then don't loan him money. Read "Architects of Ruin" and spend a bit more time looking into the causes than just sitting through a Ted talk. As "litigation director" Black was probably one of the people pushing banks into making more bad loans through enforcement of the CRA, so he would be part of the problem to start with. Those who created and furthered those kinds of laws have never admitted fault, with the classic example of Barney Frank claiming that Fannie Mae and Freddie Max were just fine and no new regulation was needed even as Rome burned.
Why not do charity donation like the UK ?
You sign when donating to say that you paid tax on the money you donated and the charity gets the tax refund, increasing the value of your donation
Ummm, because that means I'm still paying taxes on the money? Why would I want to pay taxes on money I'm not getting to keep?
Or how about we get rid of all the stupid tax credits in exchange for a lower base rate...
Because the people who have gotten used to the credits won't like it (many of them pay a zero effective rate anyway, and you can't go lower than that), and those who like to social engineer using the tax codes won't like it, either.
You are probably going to give your $1000 to the red cross anyways.
Nope. And I doubt I'm different than a lot of people. Charities will dry up because there is no incentive to give anymore.
If you pay a tax rate of 20% and you get a $1000 deduction, then the govt gives you back $200.
What do you mean the government gives me back $200? The government isn't giving me anything. It's MY MONEY to start with. A pox on you people who think the government owns all the money and only through largesse does it let us working folk have any of it.
Now you say that because the government won't give you $200 back, you will only donate $800.
You can say whatever you want but I know better, and you're being very generous with my money. I will donate 0. I won't need to, because there will be no late payment penalties for failing to file estimated tax on income I didn't know I was getting until the end of the year.
Personally I like the Fair Tax proposal. Consider this... do we really need to have an entire industry devoted solely to reducing people's tax burdens?
I've done the numbers and the "fair tax" is not, and it will cost me a bundle of money in taxes. Do you really imagine that there will not be an industry continuing to deal with the tax laws that pop up as a result of the next round of social engineering, and those that continue to exist because the social engineers won't want to let go of a large part of the economy? Believing that all tax matters will just go away, and the idea that the IRS will go away with it, is simply too naive. The concept of the "tax credit" under any tax system (fair or otherwise) mandates a federal office to deal with it.
I hadn't noticed you weren't the OP I responded to. Nothing I said suggested downloading and compiling source would produce truly identical binaries.
When the OP said it was notoriously difficult to generate identical binaries to a downloadable executable by compiling the source you told him he was wrong. All you have to do is use a specific environment, you said.
Well, that sounds like you claimed you could get the identical binaries, so yes, something you said did suggest that.
There's nothing "insightful" about raising this issue
Yes, if there are people like you who proclaim that it isn't hard to generate identical binaries to compare to downloadable ones, then it is insightful at least to point out the absurdity of that claim. At best you can download the source, review that, and then compile and run the executable from that. But to begin to think that you can take the provided executable and source and validate one against the other is just foolish and dangerous.
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No, that wasn't the anti-trust issue, that was exclusivity partner agreements.
And that was what I consider the real issue. I don't give a damn if MS installed IE on those computers I was forced to buy with an MS operating system on them. It was trivial enough to install another browser, but unless I wanted to take the time to build my own computers from parts and then have basically no warranty on the system as a whole, I had to pay MS for their OS. And that points out that having an MS OS on the system wasn't the issue, it was having to PAY for the privilege.
And you ought to know that I was buying those systems with grant money, which means the taxpayer was actually paying for an OS that was going to be deleted as soon as the system got here.
MS also installs 'explorer' on all their systems, but you could buy Norton commander. Is the fact that 'explorer' was part of the MS bundle a problem? No.
You need to uninstall updates to get it back to a lower version, and then disable it. I've seen several of the core Google apps which can't simply be disabled. It's kind of annoying.
If you are disabling an app so it cannot be used at all, why do you care that you have to remove an update to the very app you don't want in the first place? Others have pointed out the technical reason for the way it is.
The real issue back then was Microsoft offered IE for free and Netscape charged a fee for their browser.
The real issue back then was that MS required OEMs to install MS OS on every computer they sold if they wanted to install it on ANY computer they sold. That's why you didn't have an option of buying a pre-built computer without Windows. I ought to know, I had to buy alot of them.
IIRC there are plenty of places where TCAS is mandatory. Even for light aircraft which intend to use that airspace.
You may be thinking of transponders with Mode C. I don't know of any airspace where TCAS is required for all aircraft, but class B requires Mode C. At least in the US.
So you've established that all the male scientists made of straw are corrupt.
I don't see how you could have gotten that from anything I wrote. I didn't talk about male scientists, and I didn't prove anyone was corrupt, I spoke about the impression that the public can get when one group of scientists points the finger at another group.
Lets see some actual evidence of corruption in that 'good chunk' of 'real' scientists.
Whoosh.
Parent has seen all the proof he needs in "Die Hard II".
And in "Scorpion", where we learned that nobody can land anything if the tower software is out of operation, that transcontinental aircraft carry a copy of the ATC routing software, that those aircraft have a cat5 cable hanging around in the equipment bay that can be dropped out a wheel well so a hacker can download the software, that an ATC software failure can disable the red/green light guns that are installed in towers explicitly to deal with communications failures, that the data archive disk for the ATC software has a label "FAA" on it, that right handed data server managers put their important servers on the right side of the room, that a 500,000 kW glitch in the power grid will cause data center doors to open, ... OMG.
The only reason to watch that show is for the mom. I recorded it and I'm keeping it, if for no other reason that to have something to point at as an example of really really really bad technical content in a prime time program. I can't wait to see what they slaughter tonight.
It's the getting the clearance which is the issue. Because of the problem the FAA might reject your flight plan.
The FAA cannot reject your flight plan. The clearance they give you may not match what you ask for, but they'll give you something. And, as you continued, you'll definitely get something if you are an FAA-operated aircraft transporting FAA personnel to repair an out-of-service FAA facility.
And most of those are the ones actively discrediting the 'good' ones because they've been paid off by the fossil fuel industry.
You know, that statement right there shows why the public has no problem believing that scientists can be just as corrupt as politicians. It's not the "bad ones" who have created the problem, it is the "good ones" who dismiss anything any scientist who is "paid off by the fossil fuel industry" says just because of who they work for.
Once you have one part of a group pointing fingers at the others saying "they're corrupt", it is not very hard at all to think that all of them could be. I mean, if who pays you determines what your results are, then why wouldn't someone being paid on a grant to study one aspect of climate change be likely to find just what he's being paid to find? Even if it is nothing more than unidentified confirmation bias, if who pays you can point you to your results, then that applies no matter who pays you.
Why would none of the academics publish biased results?
1. There's no profit. Of course there is. Grants go to people studying new and/or important things. If you say "there's nothing to see here" your grant doesn't get renewed. You have to go find something else to work on so you'll get paid. Unlike people with real jobs, academics don't get paid with their employer's money, they get paid from grant money.
2. Someone would snitch. Of course. And then that someone would wind up without HIS grant because a) nobody likes a snitch, and b) "there's nothing to see here" applies. Unlike someone with a real job, academic grants go through "peer review" and if your peers decide that your work is banal and obvious, you don't get your grant.
Of course, the bias may not be deliberate, it may just influence what "outliers" get thrown out.
If you don't think there are egos involved in academic science, you've never worked in academia. If you don't think there is back scratching going on all the time, ditto. There is a limited amount of money being pulled in a large number of directions. Anyone who says "there's nothing to see here" jeopardizes everyone working in that field, and those humans called "scientists" can still do what humans tend to do when something jeopardizes their income.
Personally, I just wish those "good ones" would stop accusing their colleagues of being bought off, because it besmirches the entire process of science. If you can't counter their science with your own, then maybe you need to look at your own science first. This "you've been bought off so you are wrong" argument throws mud on the recipient, but a lot of it splashes back on the thrower.
Seriously though, what evidence do you have that 'a good chunk' are corrupt?
The same evidence the "good one" have regarding the "bad ones".
What about debit cards that can be used like credit cards? What's the liability on those.
It's a debit card. The fact you can use it to pay for something at the checkout doesn't make it a credit card. There is no credit involved.
except that the money is pulled directly from my checking account. I really don't like this feature, but all their cards are like that now.
All debit cards are like that. And that's why even if your card issuer promises low liabilities for lost or stolen cards, you may have an empty checking account for the entire time it takes to resolve the problem. Compare that to a credit card where the issuer is prohibited by law from acting on any charge that you are disputing.
See and avoid doesn't work so well when you're in the clouds.
No, but commercial aircraft in high traffic areas tend to have TCAS and similar to alert them to traffic, and if on a proper clearance won't run into anyone anyway.
Also, you might not see an aircraft coming at you until it's too late.
Like I said, they are humans in the cockpit, and their failure to be perfect at see-and-avoid doesn't mean ATC is the only person keeping them apart.
So, yeah, the OP was right.
No, he was wrong. The pilots are also there to keep planes from running into each other. If you are going to discount their presence because they are imperfect at it and think only ATC has that job, then you better discount ATC as well because they are not perfect, either.
In many (most?) situations, controllers are the only people stopping planes from running into each other.
Bullshit.
Barring inclement weather,
Not even barring inclement weather. The navigation aids were not impacted by this, only center. Departure and approach were still functional, too. Get an IFR clearance and fly it. You don't have to talk to a center to do that.
oh and are the only people stopping planes from running into eachother.
Believe it or not, there are other people who stop planes from running into "each other". They're called "pilots". Actual human beings who control the airplanes and where they go.
Of course they aren't perfect at keeping airplanes from running into each other. They're humans. (And computers aren't perfect at it either.) Just like the ATC humans aren't perfect at keeping minimum separation.
I would think that the major hubs in the US didn't operate with this poor of a practice. Honestly, I'm flabbergasted.
Huh? What "poor of a practice"? Evacuating a building that is on fire? My God! How stupid can that be? Leave them in the building and let them burn, just as long as no flights are delayed.
I wonder how many other airports are using a system with similar vulnerability.
You mean a "system" where people work in buildings where there could be a fire? I think I can answer this one: ALL of them.
Seems like lighting or other natural events could have the same impact.
Buildings are rarely evacuated because of lighting. The centers are usually operated at reduced lighting levels anyway. They are also not usually evacuated because of lightning, and while a lightning strike can take out commercial power, the backups will come online quickly.
Can "natural events" take out a radio transmitter? Of course. That's why there are backups for those, too.
Now, what happens when a nutter cuts the cable going out of the building, or sets it afire? Yeah, it has a serious impact.
This isn't a glaring example of government mismanagement. Dial it back a few notches, ok?
The Federal government (specifically the FCC) has this neat little thing about being able to record anything entering YOUR PROPERTY and being able to do what you will with it.
I think you're referring to the Communications Act of 1934 and amendments thereto. Can't tell. If not, citation required.
The Communications Act has never said that you can "do what you will" with things you record off the air. It allows personal use of a lot of things you can record, but not commercial use. You cannot record a TV show at your house and then distribute it commercially, for example.
More recent amendments have changed the environment considerably, especially in the area of telecommunications (listening to cellular phone calls, for example) and other non-broadcast transmissions.
You have picked an edge case and sneakily tried to present it as anything but.
That's why I said "many" and not "most", or "all". Saving water is nice, except that for many people it simply goes back into the local water table and their well just sucks it back up to be reused.
In order to share, we have to limit how much each person can draw.
No, we don't. We can allow people to use what they want to pay for.
The soft-drinks thing was pretty silly, but again - a shared resource is being depleted by muppets.
I'm sorry, what? Soft drinks are not a "shared resource", they are a commercially made product, and if a store runs out they order more. Any argument that you shouldn't be able to buy a 32 oz soft drink because it is abusing a shared resource is just nuts.
The resource in this case is healthcare.
Ahhh, so you think that every person who drinks a 32 oz soft drink has to go to the hospital to, umm, what, pee? Sorry. That's also nuts.
There's a difference between a person who's gone (and who continues to go) out of their way to demonstrate their responsibility enough to own a device whose only reason for existing is to put holes in usually-living things,
I think you're referring to guns here, but I can't tell for sure. You flamed me for what you thought was an overstatement about how many times a low-flow toilet needed to be flushed and now you drop this gem about the "only reason for existing" for guns.
I hate to burst your bubble, but clay targets have never been alive so "usually-living" doesn't apply, and by the time a paper target is tacked up to something it is long-dead wood. I supposed you are opposed to bow and arrow enthusiasts because the paper targets (and bales of hay) they use were "usually-living"?
Don't like the cops knowing where you are when you call 911?
I'm sorry, did you read me saying that anywhere?
A truly civilised society wouldn't need these rules,
A civilized society doesn't need these rules, and we got along for a very long time without them. Trying to claim that you can't have a civilized society without them is, well, you used the word "sneakily" when you misinterpreted what I wrote. I'd call what you're doing less than sneaky, and pretty disingenuous.
rules have to be put in place to stop them from seriously screwing everyone over through their sheer selfishness
Right. You are SO seriously screwed over because I own a 15 round magazine, or because I drink a 32 oz diet soft drink every so often, or because my cell phone doesn't have a GPS in it. Yeah. It is such an inconvenience to you that I have some freedom to make my own choices about what I do.
Throwing an apple away isn't going to get you a fine.
Did you not even bother to read the summary? Putting compostable items in the trash can result in a fine. Or don't you know that an apple core is compostable?
Oh well. You get the country you deserve. Have fun!
No, I don't get the country I deserve, because "people like you" (as you so civilly put it) think they're being so inconvenienced by other people having the ability to choose how they run their own lives. How did you put it? "seriously screwing everyone over through their sheer selfishness". Right. It absolutely ruins your life because I have an incandescent bulb where you think I ought to have an environmentally destructive CFL.
Guess what? I bought into the CFL nonsense and now I have a couple of places in my house that I have to predict when I'll need light because the damn CFL lighting takes several minutes to warm up and start emitting enough light. And I've got to worry about where I dispose of the dead ones (that didn't last as long as the last incandescent
Food scraps are "trash" in the same way that glass is "trash."
Perhaps. That's not the issue at hand. I'll try to put it in the ubiquitous ACT or SAT analogy:
True or false: glass : aluminum recycling :: food scraps : trash
You've happily chosen to compare glass to trash, which isn't the proper ordering of the problem. The question is, is putting glass in aluminum recycling container similar to putting food scraps in the trash, and would laws treating both in a similar way be reasonable?
Were the question on the table whether laws covering the placement of glass in the trash justifiable on the similarity to putting food scraps in the trash, you'd have a point.
Why is it bad that federal law mandates that toilets not be wasteful?
That's not what federal law mandates. It doesn't say "thou shall not be wasteful", it says "thou may use only X gallons per flush". The result is, in many cases, people have to flush twice to get one dump handled properly. Sometimes three or four times. What is being wasted? Water, which goes either to the septic tank and back into the local water table, or to the waste processing plant to be recycled back into the global water cycle.
Why is it bad that federal law mandates listing the wattage used on a bulb?
Who said it was? The problem is the LIMIT, not the listing.
I don't live in NYC. I don't care about soft drink sizes.
When they came for the soft drinks, I didn't say anything because I didn't drink soft drinks. When they came for the twinkies ...
magazine rounds. WGAS? If you need to go on a killing spree just bring more magazines....
Why yes, because the only use for guns are to go on killing sprees.
Air bags are a good thing. So are helmets. So... what's your point?
Government mandates for "good things" to "protect us from ourselves".
No they don't.... I can turn my GPS off...
The moment you call 911 the GPS turns on. AND they track the cell tower.
Welcome to a civilized society. We have rules.
Your problem appears to be that you equate "civilized society" with "government rules". It is possible to have the former without a ridiculous amount of the latter.
There's no micromanaging of your life.
If the government can fine you because you threw an apple core in the trash, yes, there is micromanagement.
It would be very similar to an ordinance that fines people for putting glass in the aluminum recycle bin.
Not that similar. It is pretty clear that "glass" is not "aluminum", and "glass" has never been "aluminum", so putting glass into someone else's container that says "aluminum only" could reasonably be a crime.
But food scraps and other bio-waste certainly are trash, so putting "trash" into your own "trash" container should not be a crime.
In the general sense, this kind of regulation is nanny-state micromangement.
You aren't going to "keep" any of your money.
You win the pedant of the day award. Ok, here's a better way of putting it. Why should I pay taxes on money that I'm not getting to put in savings or exchange for goods or services that I get to keep and/or use? Most people would call that money which is not taken from them by the government what they get to keep, but I guess you're not one of them.
Sooner or later. Money isn't for keeping.
There is a natural time frame for talking about "keep", and that's a tax year. I have lots of money that I've kept a lot longer than a tax year, so yes, money is for "keeping", even if eventually I'll either spend it or it is inherited by my progeny.
You're not paying tax on it, you're donating the tax you would have paid to the charity
No, I'm paying the tax, and that's part of the certification. How can you say I'm not paying tax when I have to sign a form that says I have?
What you're describing is welfare. Why does this have to be mixed up in the tax system? We already have countless welfare programs.
Yes, we do, and at least one of them is implemented using the tax system. You want to make people pay a highly regressive tax and not have some kind of credit for them? You're going to have so many poor people and their advocates on your ass that you'll never get your new tax system passed.
Perhaps that's why one of the new tax systems I've seen proposed has a pre-loaded "credit" built in. That means a check mailed to every taxpayer to cover predicted tax payments for someone of a given base income level. I don't recall if this was the "fair tax" or some other variant.
What the proponent couldn't understand was two things. First, this turned the federal tax system into a blatant version of welfare instead of the implicit welfare it now has built in. Second, he simply could not understand how this system would not eliminate the IRS as he claimed. It would change the jobs of the driods therein from collecting money from people to both collecting money from retailers AND managing the largest welfare system in the world. He thought we'd save a lot of money by eliminating a large government agency; the truth is the agency would grow and morph. It would change from an agency everyone loves to hate into another agency handling entitlements and it would never go away.
The best way to rob a bank is to get nebulous regulations regarding "community investment" enacted, and then threaten to take the bank to court unless they donate money to your cause. Like Jessie Jackson and many other "community activists" did. Banks knew it was cheaper to donate to ACORN than to face even specious litigation that would take years to handle.
The correct book would be The Best Way to Make A Bank Fail, and that is to force it to make "community reinvestment" loans to people who cannot pay them back, based on ridiculously weak lending criteria, and then NOT bail them out when your policies have caused the problem.
If this guy is a professional economist and cannot see that simple result, then don't loan him money. Read "Architects of Ruin" and spend a bit more time looking into the causes than just sitting through a Ted talk. As "litigation director" Black was probably one of the people pushing banks into making more bad loans through enforcement of the CRA, so he would be part of the problem to start with. Those who created and furthered those kinds of laws have never admitted fault, with the classic example of Barney Frank claiming that Fannie Mae and Freddie Max were just fine and no new regulation was needed even as Rome burned.
Why not do charity donation like the UK ? You sign when donating to say that you paid tax on the money you donated and the charity gets the tax refund, increasing the value of your donation
Ummm, because that means I'm still paying taxes on the money? Why would I want to pay taxes on money I'm not getting to keep?
Or how about we get rid of all the stupid tax credits in exchange for a lower base rate...
Because the people who have gotten used to the credits won't like it (many of them pay a zero effective rate anyway, and you can't go lower than that), and those who like to social engineer using the tax codes won't like it, either.
You are probably going to give your $1000 to the red cross anyways.
Nope. And I doubt I'm different than a lot of people. Charities will dry up because there is no incentive to give anymore.
If you pay a tax rate of 20% and you get a $1000 deduction, then the govt gives you back $200.
What do you mean the government gives me back $200? The government isn't giving me anything. It's MY MONEY to start with. A pox on you people who think the government owns all the money and only through largesse does it let us working folk have any of it.
Now you say that because the government won't give you $200 back, you will only donate $800.
You can say whatever you want but I know better, and you're being very generous with my money. I will donate 0. I won't need to, because there will be no late payment penalties for failing to file estimated tax on income I didn't know I was getting until the end of the year.
Personally I like the Fair Tax proposal. Consider this... do we really need to have an entire industry devoted solely to reducing people's tax burdens?
I've done the numbers and the "fair tax" is not, and it will cost me a bundle of money in taxes. Do you really imagine that there will not be an industry continuing to deal with the tax laws that pop up as a result of the next round of social engineering, and those that continue to exist because the social engineers won't want to let go of a large part of the economy? Believing that all tax matters will just go away, and the idea that the IRS will go away with it, is simply too naive. The concept of the "tax credit" under any tax system (fair or otherwise) mandates a federal office to deal with it.
I hadn't noticed you weren't the OP I responded to. Nothing I said suggested downloading and compiling source would produce truly identical binaries.
When the OP said it was notoriously difficult to generate identical binaries to a downloadable executable by compiling the source you told him he was wrong. All you have to do is use a specific environment, you said.
Well, that sounds like you claimed you could get the identical binaries, so yes, something you said did suggest that.
There's nothing "insightful" about raising this issue
Yes, if there are people like you who proclaim that it isn't hard to generate identical binaries to compare to downloadable ones, then it is insightful at least to point out the absurdity of that claim. At best you can download the source, review that, and then compile and run the executable from that. But to begin to think that you can take the provided executable and source and validate one against the other is just foolish and dangerous.