Could you please clarify what you mean by "the guns will be available"? are you saying that after a strict gun-control president gets in power, that the ease of firearm availability will be totally unchanged?
I am saying that if the populace is so angry that they are willing to take up violent opposition to the government, that people will find a way to get guns, regardless of what actions the government has taken. I make this claim because I have never heard of any kind of civil strife where one side was armed with guns and the other with sticks and clubs because they couldn't find any guns. Also because I can't imagine how the government could keep 300 million people from getting guns, other than just massacreing them, and that's not going to happen.
Unless, of course, eBay doesn't show anybody who the winning bidder is until after it's over. Then all the shill problems disappear...
I'm not sure that's true. If you can still retract bids, then all the shill needs to know is, do I have the high bid or not? If so, retract. If not, bid higher. You have to tell the bidder whether they have the high bid, so it seems disallowing the retracting of bids is a better solution. But I think we've established that eBay has little or no incentive to solve this problem.
Few know about the fire bombings on Dresden, even though more people were killed that night than in both Atomic bombings combined.
Wikipedia (I know, I know) disagrees, citing 145,000 for Hiroshima and 25,000 to 35,000 for Dresden. That would have to be way, way off for you to be correct - do you have any references?
It's really taking credit that burns people, not releasing the bug/hack/exploit. It would have been trivial for this guy to release his code, anonymously or even pseudonymously, and keep it firewalled from his real-world identity. If he had done that, there might have been some attempts to uncover who he really was, but I doubt anyone would try that hard
I don't doubt they would try hard. If this code is real and gets out, I don't think MS is going to feel any less burned if it's done anonymously. And the RIAA has filed many "John Doe" lawsuits where they don't initially have any idea who they're going after. If MS were willing to sue over this (I don't know if they would be, or if they would take other avenues) I doubt a little matter such as not knowing who did it would deter them.
Security researcher Alex Ionescu claims to have successfully bypassed the much discussed DRM protection in Windows Vista
I have to go down to the corner and see my neighborhood gaming law researcher and get down a bet on the superbowl. After that I'll go see the drug law researcher and score some weed.
You're suggesting that security researchers shouldn't be researching whether or not commercial security systems are vulnerable? They should rather just leave them alone and hope for the best, or what?
Re:The right to privacy is underrated
on
The Privacy Candidate
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· Score: 2, Insightful
With a strong 2nd Amendment, they have to at least consider just how much they afford to piss us off.
It's not much, but it's something.
What you're talking about is a large scale, violent resistance movement. If it's not large, the government can easily suppress it regardless of the Constitution, and if it's not violent there's no need for guns or the 2nd Amendment anyway. If things got so bad that hundreds of thousands of people all across the country were angry enough to take up arms against the government, do you think they would pause to consider, "are there laws that actually allow me to have this weapon?" No, if you're rebelling against the government, why would you care about the government's gun restriction laws? The guns will be available, and they'll be used.
I'm not saying we should get rid of the 2nd amendment, I'm just wondering why people consider it important as a deterrent to the government.
So, they just pretend they made a typographical error and the possible suspension is irrelevant, because it's a shill account anyway. It happens all the time.
Still lame (not that you're claiming it isn't lame). There's a confirmation page after you enter a bid, and you have to then click another button before it's submitted. If you're dumb enough not to review the information when money is involved, you deserve to get stuck with the wrong bill. For number 2, they shouldn't allow sellers to change the description after it's listed (other than the section where they respond to questions). If the item is not what was described, de-list it and start over. The third one seems a valid reason to retract a bid.
It's the withdrawing of the topping bid that causes the trouble.
This is amazing. Does eBay have some legitimate reason for allowing people to withdraw bids? What happened to the whole thing about a bid being a contract and you're agreeing to pay that price? Or is this just another eBay policy designed to encourage fraud so they can profit more?
You're conflating two issues. One is giving a discount in exchange for signing a contract, and the other is raising their prices. Obviously raising prices faster than inflation without improving service is a problem (though certainly their right), but I don't see how it's related to the other practice. Also, how do they have you by the balls, because you made a committment? If you don't want to be had by the balls, don't sign the contract. Also you have them by the balls too, since they can't raise their price for the duration of the contract (or if they can you shouldn't sign it).
The idea that spanking your child for discipline is abuse is nonsense too.
I don't think so. The position that it's wrong to strike children is (I hope we can agree) not nonsense. For someone who holds this position, spanking would be an abuse of parental power. Anybody who says it's equivalent to hitting a child in the face is way off base, but I don't think it's nonsense to call spanking abuse.
Some kids only learn when they suffer pain.
That is possible, but I would be surprised if it were true of any child without a history of abuse, or some kind of mental handicap.
Do you cook? If so are you careful so you don't burn yourself? If so why?
That is a really terrible analogy. Getting burned is a natural consequnce of touching something hot. Getting spanked is a natural consequence of absolutely nothing. It is artificial discipline. Just because we are careful not to burn ourselves does not prove that spanking is effective.
People play MMORPGs compulsively. I've never heard of anyone buying MMORPG stuff online compulsively. I think we need another explanation for the phenomenon.:-) Personally, I think it's quite simple. There are benefits to having the stuff, but actually getting it is not fun (for everyone). Once you put those together, it's obvious that somebody would be willing to pay money for the stuff.
Just as easy to say, "Any game that has cheat codes is fundamentally flawed," but it's not any more true there.
Any game that has cheat codes is fundamentally flawed - if the cheat code can be used in multiplayer play. That's why people who operate multiplayer game sites (such as Bungie) take cheating very seriously, because it ruins the experience for everyone else. Buying MMORPG crap is not as bad as true cheating, because AFAICT it doesn't substitute something else for skill but rather for time.
I don't understand why cell phone rates have gone up when all other technology prices have gone down.
Yeah, totally different problem. I don't know why either - I would have thought with number portability, prices would drop. It sounds tinfoil hat, but there are few enough players that it could be price collusion. I have no evidence of course, I'm just saying it's possible. Either costs to the providers have gone up in some way I'm not aware of, or there's some reason nobody* is offering lower prices even though it could be done at a profit.
*I'm not counting prepaid or regional providers, just national monthly plans
For all of Apple's design strengths, physical UI is not one of them. I could go into
a million examples but take Apple's history of the mouse for one:
I had an argument about that with my Mac fanboy brother-in-law. He has one of the mouses that looks like it has only one button, but you can actually right-click it. The thing is, you have to do it right, and my 6-year-old was having a heck of a time doing it right. He defended it, but my position is that for something like a mouse, if using it incorrectly can be even remotely as easy as using it correctly, it's inferior. If you can understand the concept of right-clicking at all, there's just no way to mess it up with a standard 2-button mouse. IMO there's no excuse for a mouse that requires user training, even (maybe especially) for a 6-year-old or a grandma who's never used a computer. I hope iPhone is better.
Even if your phone is "paid off", most carriers now have one monthly fee if you agree to a 2-year contract and another, higher, fee if you want month-to-month.
What is all the bile about this practice? If you sign the contract, you're giving something of value to the provider - an assurance that you will continue to pay their monthly fee. In exchange, they give you something of value - lower prices. If you do not sign the contract, this exchange does not occur, and instead each party keeps the valuable thing. You keep your ability to switch to another carrier, and they keep their higher prices. What is the problem, other than "I want it all and I want it for cheap"?
But you did understand there were consequences for misbehaving, and you did heed your parents after those times, right?
Probably. But for an argument for spanking to work, it has to have such effects when no other solution would. I don't believe that physical hitting was the only possible meaningful consequence for misbehaving, or the only one that would have led to better obedience (if it even had such an effect).
Flash forward to now, they don't listen (or in my estimate) respect my wife as an "authority" figure, no matter what she does, but they do respect me and do seem to be able to see me both as an authority figure AND someone who they can come to with problems for help.
I am skeptical of your conclusions. It sounds quite possible that you were generally more consistent or strict than your wife and this could be the cause of the effect that you're seeing, rather than the spanking in particular. Also, the fact that you say you spanked until they were around five makes me wonder if the spanking had no effect at all, and the kids were simply in that rebellious, selfish, disobedient toddler phase, and now they've come out of it. My younger son is in it now, and I cannot imagine that spanking him would make him more obedient. It's hard enough to explain the rules to him now, how could I explain to him why I'm hitting him? And if he doesn't understand why I'm doing it, how can it help? My older son started coming out of it when he was around 3 or so and has been very obedient since then. You see, he started shaping up earlier than your kids (that's the problem with anecdotal evidence)!
Bottom (hah!) line is, I don't want to spank them, so the only way I would do it is if I couldn't find any other method of discipline that worked, and I could find some reason to think that spanking would. So far neither has been the case.
If your kids had continued with whatever was causing the spanking, would you keep up the spanking? How long? Do you spank a 12-year-old? A 16-year-old? I'd rather use techniques that the kids will get used to and will continue to work for a long time.
... And I'm certain you'd be saying the same thing if your bank or credit card agency had a security flaw in its system and your privacy was at stake. Wouldn't you want them to correct the situation asap?
Yes, where "correct the situation" means immediately informing me that my has been compromised, and that a free replacement will be in the mail the next day, or I need to call customer support to verify my identity and reset my password, whatever is appropriate. And apologizing. If you assume that all the information on the page is compromised and must be immediately invalidated and replaced, then there's no hurry in getting it taken down, because you'll make sure it's all useless anyway. Therefore, placing a high priority on removing the offending page implies that the will continue using it as if nothing had happened. So it's even more scary that MySpace considered it important to have this information removed.
However, the Speaker of the House (or whoever is acting Chair) rules on which amendments are relevant. There is a process to object to the Chair's ruling, but it's rigged to almost always side with the majority party.
Many of us did debate it and determined it was not necessary. Democratic Senators offered amendments to strip out the REAL ID act. These were voted down or struck via procedural means. Unfortunately, the whole Senate voted to pass the bill, most likely because it was a military appropriations bill and voting against it would not be "supporting the troops".
Yeah, there's the problem. The critters have the ability to stick anything they want onto a military spending bill, or an emergency budget bill, or whatever other bill is political suicide to vote against. The dream is that each bill would deal with one and only one topic, but the problems are 1) the people who would have to enact such a rule are the same people who would lose some of their power because of it and 2) who decides whether an amendment is on the same topic as the bill? The courts I guess, so then it's a matter of years later that anything can happen to fix a problem. So, this will remain a dream.
Physically striking anyone is abuse in my book. If you have an employee and he misbehaves can you hit him for punishment? Of course not, you will be charged with assault. Why doesn't this same rule apply to children who are even less able to defend themselves?
Thank you, well said. This idea that not hitting your children means you're not disciplining them is nonsense. I have never and will never hit* my children, but I assure you they know when they have broken the rules. I was spanked growing up, and I remember the spankings but I sure don't remember the lessons they were intended to teach.
* spanking is just a subset of hitting
Won't work. It just means the owners of zombie PCs get big bills.
Not if it's prepay. Email costs $.005 apiece, and you put $1 in your account. You send email to someone who accepts it, you get the money back. You don't have money in your account, your email doesn't get sent. If someone loads their account and the first email they send 5 minutes later bounces because their account is empty, presumably they'll figure out something is going on. This scheme would not work (currently) for various other reasons, but at least big bills for zombie PC owners isn't one of them.
I've you've had chemistry, physics, or even the slightest idea of how microwaves work you'd be fine.
Most people in the US (maybe other places too) have not learned chemistry or physics or have the slightest idea of how microwaves work. So we shouldn't be surprised that more than one person set a sponge on fire.
This also means that once we're on this path, more intelligence is the trait most advantageous to advance, absent really extreme selective pressure on our ability to maintain homeostasis (e.g. asteroid impact, nuclear war, runaway Venus-like global warming, etc.). Even then, evolving the ability to colonize other planets seems like our DNA's best shot at continuing to propagate.
I'm not really sure what you're going for here. Evolution by natural selection doesn't "care" about advancing (whatever that is). It only cares about propagating genes. Does higher intelligence lead to a greater chance of passing genes along in today's world? I don't see how. Are the smart people having more kids than the dumb people? Seems like the reverse, if anything. As far as colonizing other worlds, that will be true when we start having trouble reproducing on Earth for some reason. I'm wondering if you're thinking of intelligence as the species' best chance for survival. That could very well be true, but that doesn't mean it's being selected for. Only the things that lead to a better chance of reproducing more are selected for, which means we could have selection pressures that are working against our species' long-term survival, since selection pressure cannot foresee any upcoming changes in the environment and plan for them. Bummer (if true).
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I'm not saying we should get rid of the 2nd amendment, I'm just wondering why people consider it important as a deterrent to the government.
You're conflating two issues. One is giving a discount in exchange for signing a contract, and the other is raising their prices. Obviously raising prices faster than inflation without improving service is a problem (though certainly their right), but I don't see how it's related to the other practice. Also, how do they have you by the balls, because you made a committment? If you don't want to be had by the balls, don't sign the contract. Also you have them by the balls too, since they can't raise their price for the duration of the contract (or if they can you shouldn't sign it).
That is possible, but I would be surprised if it were true of any child without a history of abuse, or some kind of mental handicap.
That is a really terrible analogy. Getting burned is a natural consequnce of touching something hot. Getting spanked is a natural consequence of absolutely nothing. It is artificial discipline. Just because we are careful not to burn ourselves does not prove that spanking is effective.
*I'm not counting prepaid or regional providers, just national monthly plans
Bottom (hah!) line is, I don't want to spank them, so the only way I would do it is if I couldn't find any other method of discipline that worked, and I could find some reason to think that spanking would. So far neither has been the case.
If your kids had continued with whatever was causing the spanking, would you keep up the spanking? How long? Do you spank a 12-year-old? A 16-year-old? I'd rather use techniques that the kids will get used to and will continue to work for a long time.
* spanking is just a subset of hitting