So, how does that work? They charge you a tax based on what your billing address, your shipping address, your IP geolocation? I wonder if there is a business opportunity in offering re-shipping services out of states with no Amazon tax for Amazon customers...
You're almost getting to the actual problem.
The reality is that brick and mortar stores use local services, local police protection, local roads, etc. and so they pay the local taxes. Most local taxes work (that is, people are amenable to them) because they are pretty close approximations of user fees, and because the citizens nearby find the government accessible and relevant to them.
Amazon's model dispenses with most of the physical presence. They're accomplishing the same end, getting the thing from point A to point B, but without a big brick and mortar building and all the associated expense. They're only getting a fraction of those services that the brick and mortar store is getting because they only *need* a fraction of those services.
The reason this doesn't work is because it penalizes the efficient, nimble competitor in favor of the big bloated obsolete business model. The established stores are using the government to wipe out their competitor's marketplace advantage.
I'd prefer names that I can easily pronounce while drunk.:p
I prefer names that I can communicate to people with a high school education or less, or who speak English as a second language. You know, like, most users.
They certainly aren't clever, endearing, appealing, interesting, useful, memorable, straightforward, likable, notable, distinctive, marketable or easy to spell.
About the only redeeming quality they have is that they bring up that version in a search engine, so they aren't entirely useless, but again, you have to get the spelling right. It's actually frustrating reading it over the phone.
Open Source has always struggled with naming things in ways that aren't patently terrible, like the whole tradition of Something's Not Something Else.
But I think Ubuntu has managed to set the bar even lower.
There is a surprisingly high overlap between XKCD fans and Ron Paul fans.
I really would be surprised as xkcd seems to market itself to center-smug wing of liberalism, whereas Ron Paul markets itself to Ron Paul Ron Paul Ron Paul.
Managing to disparage both at once isn't the worth effort, as the gain in population of pissed-off-people is marginal, at best.
The part that confuses me is that I got modded up.
The disturbing thing is that someone out there agrees with me, but only when I phrase it in the most trollish and asshole-ish way possible.
There's trolling and there's trolling. The fact is that xkcd fans are basically like Ron Paul fans; you say something about their beloved comic / the Fed and they go ballistic. Are you really a troll, or are they simply a hoard of thin-skinned losers?
Actually, that would be true of most of Java's peers too - In C++, you'd be able to do this if you could somehow get the address of the private function (by looking at the binary's layout or whatever), and in C#, I think reflection allows you to do the same...
It's like hanging a curtain and saying "this is private", but someone can come along and rip it off and it's no longer private...
Right, the only truly private method is one running on a system you physically control access to. And make sure you didn't play any Sony CDs on it...
So private-method compatibility is desirable, and can be produced with a clean-room process.
I'd like to believe no one would go to that much trouble to call a private method like this one, but from what I've seen at work lately, some coders really are deliberately perverse.
I make my coffee by pouring boiling water on ground coffee beans in a cup
Gaah! You may as well buy a fucking percolator.
Americans, on average, want to be responsible for themselves and dislike when the government starts making decisions for them (national health care etc) saying that it is "nanny state" and bad. Yet, they become really irresponsible and want companies to take care of them
Common misunderstanding. America is not like some little European city-state. We have 350 million people, 50 states, plus a dozen territories, scores of distinct cultures, dozens of home-grown religions, even hundreds of indigenous languages.
Amazingly, some Americans vote for Democrats, while others vote for Republicans, some live in heavily regulated states like New York while others live in very hands-off states like Alabama. I know where you're from is probably very homogenous, where everyone is closely related and has similar attitudes, but it's just not like that here.
If you have the function prototype per the java doc and you test the limit cases to see what exceptions are thrown, how else can you implement that array range check in a non-trivial way?
That's just lawyer bullshit.
My first thought, too, but it's a private method, not implementing any API.
What's funny is that they're highlighting this trivial function while inadvertently showing that Android uses TimSort, whereas the Java standard library which, according to the docs, uses a tuned quicksort, adapted from Jon L. Bentley and M. Douglas McIlroy's "Engineering a Sort Function".
But you have to look at it from the cop's perspective: they don't see a dispute with a good person and a bad person. It's almost invariably two lying assholes, and if one person looks honest, he's probably just a better liar.
The problem is that it is worse than that. A cops motivation is not tied to you being innocent, rather once they make the decision to arrest someone they now have put their career on the line to make sure that person is found GUILTY.
Wow, the depth of ignorance (and the resulting paranoia) on/. about how our justice system works is breathtaking. Like all government employees, cops don't actually have to do their job to draw a paycheck, they just have to show up. Cops are promoted based on how successfully they kiss ass and check boxes. "Suspect was cleared" is just as good a checkbox as "suspect was brought to trial." And whether or not suspect is guilty is handled by the prosecutors, an entirely separate branch of the government!
1) While it's in use by a lot of people, _most_ people don't use it.
Yes, most governments have simply issued edicts forcing people to use one system or another. The US government simply doesn't have that power, and for good reason.
2) It's about a scientific article, so we're talking about science. It just makes sense to use celsius or kelvin in a science topic. If we're talking about the distance between planets, we use AU or light years. If we're talking temperature, fahrenheit is not the first choice.
I can understand scientists preferring Kelvin for small temperatures, or cases where you honestly need to compare two temperatures by magnitude.
But to relate temperatures to human experience, which is physiologically determined by water, any measuring system that is demarcated by water is equally good. But Farenheit not only has useful points for freezing and boiling, but 100 degrees is very close to body temperature, so it's even more relatable to actual human experience. Celsius is actually a worse system for everything lay people use it for, so being in the minority is not the same as being wrong.
I dissagree... the police are fine to talk to through a lawyer
FTFY. Basic principle: if there's no tangible benefit that outweighs the risks / costs, don't bother. In most situations, the question that makes it clearest is, "is it worth paying a lawyer or some professional to discuss this?"
The reason isn't that cops are bad or crooked. Your mistake is you think, well, I'm a good person, so I should report bad people to the cops, and the end result will be Justice!
But you have to look at it from the cop's perspective: they don't see a dispute with a good person and a bad person. It's almost invariably two lying assholes, and if one person looks honest, he's probably just a better liar.
And from your perspective, this other person is a bad person; you tried handling it like adults, but they are so anti-social that you want to call the cops on them! Base on prior behavior, you would expect that they're going to lie their asses off with the intent of using the law against you as a weapon.
But let's look at your examples:
a basic (but not legally binding) opinion/clarification of a specific criminal law
I think this perfectly illustrates the principle. You're wasting your time and theirs. "Not legally binding" means "worthless." You also undervalue actual legal advice. At my present job, I took my employment contract to a lawyer and we went over it for an hour. For $250, I've got a professional opinion of what I've legally agreed to, not what the HR guy thinks I agreed to. The practical benefit is that if we get into a dispute, there's a much greater chance that we can resolve it like adults, and I can say, "no, this is what my lawyer says it means."
a break in in your home
After you've consulted your homeowner's insurance company, sure, file a police report. Your insurance company actually has extensive experience with that area of the law and can advise you on how to safely report the break in. And the report may be necessary to collect the insurance, so there's a tangible benefit.
a stalker
Stalking is invariably a case where two parties have a history of grievances against each other, and that's *exactly* the case where you want a lawyer to help resolve it as quickly as possible. The police are useless: they just want you to quit bothering them. (And, to be fair, can you imagine anything more awful than dealing with domestic squabbles?)
reporting unsafe drivers
Which is going to accomplish what? Again, if it's not worth the hassle and expense of a lawsuit, don't bother. And, again, driving is an area where you routinely get grievances on both sides. On the odd chance the police actually do something about it, this driver can lie to them and get you in trouble for filing a false report.
a lost purse you found on a sidewalk
Hell no! Good God, what if there are drugs (or any kind of residue) in the purse?! Or it was related to a serious crime? And there are *no* benefits, to you or anyone else. Most likely, that person is going to do the logical thing of retracing their steps, or someone else who is capable of not randomly dropping things they've strapped to their body can make use of it.
I might ask a cop for directions or report a traffic light being out, because that's something that is immediately useful.
Classic example that I actually did: I once called a police station because a buddy of mine had gotten drunk the night before and disappeared. What did they do? Told me to call hospitals to see if anyone checked in, and that they weren't going to do anything because (you have to admit this is true) idiots get drunk all the time and disappear. Call us again if he's gone for 72 hours or more.
No benefit to me or anyone else whatsoever, and if he actually had disappeared, their primary lead would have been the idiot who called them.
Excellent technology frightened the merely mediocre. Who we let gain power. Handcuffs were applied by pigs. Who we let to gain power. That's all there is to be said....
Could you please strip them off their right to vote?
Call it the vast conspiracy of the vaguely literate, but before you can strip anyone of any rights, you're going to need to be able to form complete sentences in order to write up the amendment.
There's no way that I'd be traveing to the US anytime soon.
Great thing about open borders: I generally like the people who arrive and don't miss the people who leave.
Apparently the joke is still "funny" and that we should "lighten up". At least that's what I've been told. Maybe I lack humor?
An analogy: they sound like the old man who still wears corduroys. Buddy, you want to wear them, no problem, it's your ass and they're your pants. But the stores don't sell them, and I don't buy that they're fashionable.
OneNote is simply the best piece of software Microsoft has ever released. I'd like to know who they bought it from. If you use a convertible notebook with a stylus, it can't be beat.
I'm glad that they've still got good stuff coming out, but just a historical nitpick: better than Word 5? Or the concurrent version of Excel? If you had used them, you'd know they beat Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, both of which were excellent pieces of software in their time, on the merits.
I strongly suspect that this laser is intended as a replacement for existing point-defense systems(Phalanx). For longer ranges the navy also has a railgun scheme going, along with existing missiles and aircraft.
The Phalanx really is "the fart that was heard around the world." You're at least half right, because the way the guys who work on this stuff think, they are very much interested in what it can do rather than what it can't, and they're very good at finding people who can make use of something before it's fully Marine-proofed.
Basically, we have the world's largest investment in aircraft carriers, and stuff for them to carry, and they've been the navy's force-projecting pride and joy since approximately the point in WWII where it became clear that battleships were overpriced floating coffins against even fairly paltry aircraft.
No doubt, the brass worry way too much about looking bad, and that's an unfortunate fact that's built in to the way the officer corps manages promotions. And, I'm more familiar with the Army side of things, but the whole military has been pushing towards the faster, lighter concept. (The following isn't supposed to be a criticism or defense of the Bush admin, to be clear.) Rumsfeld was quite famously criticized for faster and lighter because he was a big supporter of it as the Sec. of Defense early during Bush's tenure. When the strategy in Iraq became one of occupation, it turned out that our more mobile force that had punched straight through to Baghdad was not prepared for the follow on mission. You'll recall the long debate about the lack of an "exit strategy." So this notion of a more mobile military has been put into actual practice and has had mixed results.
Also, unless you're an officer or someone who has seen (let alone comprehended) the ridiculously complicated org charts that denote how the divisions and such are set up, you might not know that over the past 10 years, there's been a significant restructuring with all sorts of units being redrawn and reworked. When I got in in '04, people were being shuffled out of specific jobs into more general fields. And when I was getting out, they were getting ready to move the entire Armor school to Fort Benning, which basically put all the combat arms under one roof. There are new terms, brigades are out, "brigade combat teams" are in.
So the military does change, though it's hard to see because it takes decades and, frankly, they don't want you to see it clearly. Part of understanding this stuff is that you have to judge the decisions they make against the wars we *don't* fight as well as the ones we do.
It's a simple fact that 11 supercarriers enable us to project force globally. That means that, conventionally, going against us is a losing proposition, so it simply never becomes an issue. The dynamic that confuses people is that any adversaries are going to look at what we do and make strategic decisions based on that, and there are quite a few of them, many of whom identify as friends simply because they don't want an ass-kicking at the moment.
That dynamic means that we're right to retain enough conventional power that no one wants to go to war with us, and it's also true that as a consequence we're vulnerable to unconventional means. Don't underestimate how important conventional war still is. It's how most war is still made. And if the numbers on global poverty are any indicator, our big, stupid conventional approach is still contributing to a world that is slowly but surely getting more prosperous and freer.
There is a difference between Google, M$, and Apple. Google still condones having fun.
You're still doing the $ thing with MS? Really? The 90s called, etc etc, no I didn't bother to warn them, etc etc.
I thought all three of those companies were known for being pretty fun places to work. (Maybe not at the Apple Stores, but that's retail...) If you were to compare them to Oracle or IBM, at least that would make sense: fair or not, they're known for a suit and tie culture.
No conspiracy necessary if you're in the American south. Police there will already be preconditioned to believe the darkie had it coming.
Except that most of the south is like most of the north: blacks tend to be overrepresented in large cities. Atlanta, New Orleans, Jackson, Memphis, Montgomery, Savannah, are all examples from the deep South; you can decide for yourself if you want to include Baltimore or DC. Except for Landrieu in New Orleans (who succeeded a black mayor), and Todd Strange in Montgomery, the mayors of all the cities I mentioned are all black, and the chiefs of police are mostly black as well.
And blacks tend to be quite successful, by and large, in law enforcement (and military, incidentally) so they tend to be overrepresented as police and corrections officers. And smaller towns get their training and resources from bigger cities, so often times even hick white cops will work with urban black cops.
Yet when blacks are pulled over, they will still accuse even the black cops of being racist to them. And they'd entirely agree with your assessment that cops are racist, even when blacks are well represented in LE from the top to the bottom and every stage in between.
Why? Because they are told from all sources that racism is a huge ongoing problem: myths like the claim that blacks are pulled over more than whites are kept alive, and stories like Trayvon Martin are exploited for political gain. And all this damage is done by incredibly short-sighted people, like you, to score points, for a cheap headline or just to cling to office for another term.
Now if you're Hispanic, I wouldn't recommend trying this in Arizona if you forgot to carry your drivers license that day.
Perfect example: complete bullshit, but you just perpetuate a myth that is racially divisive because you're too lazy to look it up, and to score points.
Slashdot Mirror
You know that there is a always far more demand then availability.
No matter what happens it probably saved a life.
There's an adequate supply, it's just illegal to sell organs.
Apple just needs to make the iPad into a phone and they will easily be the biggest handset manufacturer.
So, how does that work? They charge you a tax based on what your billing address, your shipping address, your IP geolocation? I wonder if there is a business opportunity in offering re-shipping services out of states with no Amazon tax for Amazon customers...
You're almost getting to the actual problem.
The reality is that brick and mortar stores use local services, local police protection, local roads, etc. and so they pay the local taxes. Most local taxes work (that is, people are amenable to them) because they are pretty close approximations of user fees, and because the citizens nearby find the government accessible and relevant to them.
Amazon's model dispenses with most of the physical presence. They're accomplishing the same end, getting the thing from point A to point B, but without a big brick and mortar building and all the associated expense. They're only getting a fraction of those services that the brick and mortar store is getting because they only *need* a fraction of those services.
The reason this doesn't work is because it penalizes the efficient, nimble competitor in favor of the big bloated obsolete business model. The established stores are using the government to wipe out their competitor's marketplace advantage.
Much more dangerous, and this seems less than functional.
I'd prefer names that I can easily pronounce while drunk. :p
I prefer names that I can communicate to people with a high school education or less, or who speak English as a second language. You know, like, most users.
The code names are just priceless
They certainly aren't clever, endearing, appealing, interesting, useful, memorable, straightforward, likable, notable, distinctive, marketable or easy to spell.
About the only redeeming quality they have is that they bring up that version in a search engine, so they aren't entirely useless, but again, you have to get the spelling right. It's actually frustrating reading it over the phone.
Open Source has always struggled with naming things in ways that aren't patently terrible, like the whole tradition of Something's Not Something Else.
But I think Ubuntu has managed to set the bar even lower.
There is a surprisingly high overlap between XKCD fans and Ron Paul fans.
I really would be surprised as xkcd seems to market itself to center-smug wing of liberalism, whereas Ron Paul markets itself to Ron Paul Ron Paul Ron Paul.
Managing to disparage both at once isn't the worth effort, as the gain in population of pissed-off-people is marginal, at best.
I'll try anything... for science.
And, to the rest of the world America doesn't matter so get that into your heads.
America matters so little that the "rest of the world" comes to American websites to remind us on a daily basis.
The part that confuses me is that I got modded up.
The disturbing thing is that someone out there agrees with me, but only when I phrase it in the most trollish and asshole-ish way possible.
There's trolling and there's trolling. The fact is that xkcd fans are basically like Ron Paul fans; you say something about their beloved comic / the Fed and they go ballistic. Are you really a troll, or are they simply a hoard of thin-skinned losers?
Actually, that would be true of most of Java's peers too - In C++, you'd be able to do this if you could somehow get the address of the private function (by looking at the binary's layout or whatever), and in C#, I think reflection allows you to do the same...
It's like hanging a curtain and saying "this is private", but someone can come along and rip it off and it's no longer private...
Right, the only truly private method is one running on a system you physically control access to. And make sure you didn't play any Sony CDs on it...
So private-method compatibility is desirable, and can be produced with a clean-room process.
I'd like to believe no one would go to that much trouble to call a private method like this one, but from what I've seen at work lately, some coders really are deliberately perverse.
I make my coffee by pouring boiling water on ground coffee beans in a cup
Gaah! You may as well buy a fucking percolator.
Americans, on average, want to be responsible for themselves and dislike when the government starts making decisions for them (national health care etc) saying that it is "nanny state" and bad. Yet, they become really irresponsible and want companies to take care of them
Common misunderstanding. America is not like some little European city-state. We have 350 million people, 50 states, plus a dozen territories, scores of distinct cultures, dozens of home-grown religions, even hundreds of indigenous languages.
Amazingly, some Americans vote for Democrats, while others vote for Republicans, some live in heavily regulated states like New York while others live in very hands-off states like Alabama. I know where you're from is probably very homogenous, where everyone is closely related and has similar attitudes, but it's just not like that here.
That "copied" code is a joke.
If you have the function prototype per the java doc and you test the limit cases to see what exceptions are thrown, how else can you implement that array range check in a non-trivial way?
That's just lawyer bullshit.
My first thought, too, but it's a private method, not implementing any API.
What's funny is that they're highlighting this trivial function while inadvertently showing that Android uses TimSort, whereas the Java standard library which, according to the docs, uses a tuned quicksort, adapted from Jon L. Bentley and M. Douglas McIlroy's "Engineering a Sort Function".
But you have to look at it from the cop's perspective: they don't see a dispute with a good person and a bad person. It's almost invariably two lying assholes, and if one person looks honest, he's probably just a better liar.
The problem is that it is worse than that. A cops motivation is not tied to you being innocent, rather once they make the decision to arrest someone they now have put their career on the line to make sure that person is found GUILTY.
Wow, the depth of ignorance (and the resulting paranoia) on /. about how our justice system works is breathtaking. Like all government employees, cops don't actually have to do their job to draw a paycheck, they just have to show up. Cops are promoted based on how successfully they kiss ass and check boxes. "Suspect was cleared" is just as good a checkbox as "suspect was brought to trial." And whether or not suspect is guilty is handled by the prosecutors, an entirely separate branch of the government!
So, in a reasonable country, it would still be useful to bring such item to the lost & found office.
In an unreasonable country, cops might just assume that you stole any money that might be missing from the item.
The US is a perfectly reasonable country. You have a constitutional right not to speak to the police. If you choose not to exercise it, that's on you.
1) While it's in use by a lot of people, _most_ people don't use it.
Yes, most governments have simply issued edicts forcing people to use one system or another. The US government simply doesn't have that power, and for good reason.
2) It's about a scientific article, so we're talking about science. It just makes sense to use celsius or kelvin in a science topic. If we're talking about the distance between planets, we use AU or light years. If we're talking temperature, fahrenheit is not the first choice.
I can understand scientists preferring Kelvin for small temperatures, or cases where you honestly need to compare two temperatures by magnitude.
But to relate temperatures to human experience, which is physiologically determined by water, any measuring system that is demarcated by water is equally good. But Farenheit not only has useful points for freezing and boiling, but 100 degrees is very close to body temperature, so it's even more relatable to actual human experience. Celsius is actually a worse system for everything lay people use it for, so being in the minority is not the same as being wrong.
I dissagree... the police are fine to talk to through a lawyer
FTFY. Basic principle: if there's no tangible benefit that outweighs the risks / costs, don't bother. In most situations, the question that makes it clearest is, "is it worth paying a lawyer or some professional to discuss this?"
The reason isn't that cops are bad or crooked. Your mistake is you think, well, I'm a good person, so I should report bad people to the cops, and the end result will be Justice!
But you have to look at it from the cop's perspective: they don't see a dispute with a good person and a bad person. It's almost invariably two lying assholes, and if one person looks honest, he's probably just a better liar.
And from your perspective, this other person is a bad person; you tried handling it like adults, but they are so anti-social that you want to call the cops on them! Base on prior behavior, you would expect that they're going to lie their asses off with the intent of using the law against you as a weapon.
But let's look at your examples:
a basic (but not legally binding) opinion/clarification of a specific criminal law
I think this perfectly illustrates the principle. You're wasting your time and theirs. "Not legally binding" means "worthless." You also undervalue actual legal advice. At my present job, I took my employment contract to a lawyer and we went over it for an hour. For $250, I've got a professional opinion of what I've legally agreed to, not what the HR guy thinks I agreed to. The practical benefit is that if we get into a dispute, there's a much greater chance that we can resolve it like adults, and I can say, "no, this is what my lawyer says it means."
a break in in your home
After you've consulted your homeowner's insurance company, sure, file a police report. Your insurance company actually has extensive experience with that area of the law and can advise you on how to safely report the break in. And the report may be necessary to collect the insurance, so there's a tangible benefit.
a stalker
Stalking is invariably a case where two parties have a history of grievances against each other, and that's *exactly* the case where you want a lawyer to help resolve it as quickly as possible. The police are useless: they just want you to quit bothering them. (And, to be fair, can you imagine anything more awful than dealing with domestic squabbles?)
reporting unsafe drivers
Which is going to accomplish what? Again, if it's not worth the hassle and expense of a lawsuit, don't bother. And, again, driving is an area where you routinely get grievances on both sides. On the odd chance the police actually do something about it, this driver can lie to them and get you in trouble for filing a false report.
a lost purse you found on a sidewalk
Hell no! Good God, what if there are drugs (or any kind of residue) in the purse?! Or it was related to a serious crime? And there are *no* benefits, to you or anyone else. Most likely, that person is going to do the logical thing of retracing their steps, or someone else who is capable of not randomly dropping things they've strapped to their body can make use of it.
I might ask a cop for directions or report a traffic light being out, because that's something that is immediately useful.
Classic example that I actually did: I once called a police station because a buddy of mine had gotten drunk the night before and disappeared. What did they do? Told me to call hospitals to see if anyone checked in, and that they weren't going to do anything because (you have to admit this is true) idiots get drunk all the time and disappear. Call us again if he's gone for 72 hours or more.
No benefit to me or anyone else whatsoever, and if he actually had disappeared, their primary lead would have been the idiot who called them.
WordPerfect 5.1 beats all, hands down. That blue background... so soothing. Just the thing to get you in the mood to write.
Hey, it worked for the C64...
Excellent technology frightened the merely mediocre. Who we let gain power. Handcuffs were applied by pigs. Who we let to gain power. That's all there is to be said. ...
Could you please strip them off their right to vote?
Call it the vast conspiracy of the vaguely literate, but before you can strip anyone of any rights, you're going to need to be able to form complete sentences in order to write up the amendment.
There's no way that I'd be traveing to the US anytime soon.
Great thing about open borders: I generally like the people who arrive and don't miss the people who leave.
Apparently the joke is still "funny" and that we should "lighten up". At least that's what I've been told. Maybe I lack humor?
An analogy: they sound like the old man who still wears corduroys. Buddy, you want to wear them, no problem, it's your ass and they're your pants. But the stores don't sell them, and I don't buy that they're fashionable.
OneNote is simply the best piece of software Microsoft has ever released. I'd like to know who they bought it from. If you use a convertible notebook with a stylus, it can't be beat.
I'm glad that they've still got good stuff coming out, but just a historical nitpick: better than Word 5? Or the concurrent version of Excel? If you had used them, you'd know they beat Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, both of which were excellent pieces of software in their time, on the merits.
I strongly suspect that this laser is intended as a replacement for existing point-defense systems(Phalanx). For longer ranges the navy also has a railgun scheme going, along with existing missiles and aircraft.
The Phalanx really is "the fart that was heard around the world." You're at least half right, because the way the guys who work on this stuff think, they are very much interested in what it can do rather than what it can't, and they're very good at finding people who can make use of something before it's fully Marine-proofed.
Basically, we have the world's largest investment in aircraft carriers, and stuff for them to carry, and they've been the navy's force-projecting pride and joy since approximately the point in WWII where it became clear that battleships were overpriced floating coffins against even fairly paltry aircraft.
No doubt, the brass worry way too much about looking bad, and that's an unfortunate fact that's built in to the way the officer corps manages promotions. And, I'm more familiar with the Army side of things, but the whole military has been pushing towards the faster, lighter concept. (The following isn't supposed to be a criticism or defense of the Bush admin, to be clear.) Rumsfeld was quite famously criticized for faster and lighter because he was a big supporter of it as the Sec. of Defense early during Bush's tenure. When the strategy in Iraq became one of occupation, it turned out that our more mobile force that had punched straight through to Baghdad was not prepared for the follow on mission. You'll recall the long debate about the lack of an "exit strategy." So this notion of a more mobile military has been put into actual practice and has had mixed results.
Also, unless you're an officer or someone who has seen (let alone comprehended) the ridiculously complicated org charts that denote how the divisions and such are set up, you might not know that over the past 10 years, there's been a significant restructuring with all sorts of units being redrawn and reworked. When I got in in '04, people were being shuffled out of specific jobs into more general fields. And when I was getting out, they were getting ready to move the entire Armor school to Fort Benning, which basically put all the combat arms under one roof. There are new terms, brigades are out, "brigade combat teams" are in.
So the military does change, though it's hard to see because it takes decades and, frankly, they don't want you to see it clearly. Part of understanding this stuff is that you have to judge the decisions they make against the wars we *don't* fight as well as the ones we do.
It's a simple fact that 11 supercarriers enable us to project force globally. That means that, conventionally, going against us is a losing proposition, so it simply never becomes an issue. The dynamic that confuses people is that any adversaries are going to look at what we do and make strategic decisions based on that, and there are quite a few of them, many of whom identify as friends simply because they don't want an ass-kicking at the moment.
That dynamic means that we're right to retain enough conventional power that no one wants to go to war with us, and it's also true that as a consequence we're vulnerable to unconventional means. Don't underestimate how important conventional war still is. It's how most war is still made. And if the numbers on global poverty are any indicator, our big, stupid conventional approach is still contributing to a world that is slowly but surely getting more prosperous and freer.
There is a difference between Google, M$, and Apple. Google still condones having fun.
You're still doing the $ thing with MS? Really? The 90s called, etc etc, no I didn't bother to warn them, etc etc.
I thought all three of those companies were known for being pretty fun places to work. (Maybe not at the Apple Stores, but that's retail...) If you were to compare them to Oracle or IBM, at least that would make sense: fair or not, they're known for a suit and tie culture.
There are little soldiers in front of 10 Downing St.
Found a monsters near La Plata, MD and Scottsburg, VA. You can't see them if you're zoomed in more than 7 times.
Found Nessie!
No conspiracy necessary if you're in the American south. Police there will already be preconditioned to believe the darkie had it coming.
Except that most of the south is like most of the north: blacks tend to be overrepresented in large cities. Atlanta, New Orleans, Jackson, Memphis, Montgomery, Savannah, are all examples from the deep South; you can decide for yourself if you want to include Baltimore or DC. Except for Landrieu in New Orleans (who succeeded a black mayor), and Todd Strange in Montgomery, the mayors of all the cities I mentioned are all black, and the chiefs of police are mostly black as well.
And blacks tend to be quite successful, by and large, in law enforcement (and military, incidentally) so they tend to be overrepresented as police and corrections officers. And smaller towns get their training and resources from bigger cities, so often times even hick white cops will work with urban black cops.
Yet when blacks are pulled over, they will still accuse even the black cops of being racist to them. And they'd entirely agree with your assessment that cops are racist, even when blacks are well represented in LE from the top to the bottom and every stage in between.
Why? Because they are told from all sources that racism is a huge ongoing problem: myths like the claim that blacks are pulled over more than whites are kept alive, and stories like Trayvon Martin are exploited for political gain. And all this damage is done by incredibly short-sighted people, like you, to score points, for a cheap headline or just to cling to office for another term.
Now if you're Hispanic, I wouldn't recommend trying this in Arizona if you forgot to carry your drivers license that day.
Perfect example: complete bullshit, but you just perpetuate a myth that is racially divisive because you're too lazy to look it up, and to score points.