A bit off-topic, but I've flown Lufthansa and Swiss Air from Boston and New York to destinations in Europe on 4 engine aircraft. I realize they are hard to come by, and I prefer them as well.
Warning: You have detached yourself from reality. It is recommended that you re-attach yourself as soon as possible to avoid future cognitive dissonance when the death panels do not materialize, and the CBO estimates prove to be relatively accurate.
See, we Americans have a widespread cultural mistrust of government.
Don't go accusing all of us Americans of being as paranoid as you. There are plenty of us who find it perfectly reasonable for the state to ensure that weapons are only owned by people who know how to properly and safely use them.
And it's not that hard to measure knowledge of guns, especially if you force people to take a course on them (or perhaps test out of the course). You could ask about safe storage methods, situations in which gun use is legal, etc. There's nothing arbitrary about it- we rely on certifications in almost every part of our society to ensure that somebody has the knowledge they claim they have, and there's no reason that gun ownership should be any different, given the consequences to the people around the gun owner should they not properly handle the weapon.
That much was completely obvious from your fist post. I would add you also don't know a damn thing about Germany (it's culture, people, or political system)
The idea that Germany is in any way less free than the US or anywhere else is laughable. They have tons of political parties to choose from in each election. We Americans get 2, 4 if you include the libertarians and greens who barely ever win anyway.
Your attempt to translate Staatsangehöriger is simply ridiculous. Although German involves combining words to form new ones, the sum of the parts does not necessarily equal the whole in any literal sense. Staatsangehöriger is the exact equivalent of the english word "citizen". There is no hidden meaning to the word that is somehow meant to allow the German government to lord over its citizens.
I assure you there is no nazi influence left on the German government, other than its resistance to those ideas.
"Materialism" is not a right. You do not have a right to stuff. Free speech, the right to bear arms, a common trait of all things that are actually rights is that they do not cost money. They are intangible.
If the common trait of all things that are actually rights is that they do not cost money, then why do you include the right to have weapons on your list? Last time I checked, they were far from free, and shouldn't be on your list at all. Furthermore, I'm going to ignore all of your god talk, because these rights were indeed invented by men. The idea of free speech is a concept dreamed up by man. It isn't tangible, so obviously man did not build it or make it, but I do not require God to have the right to free speech, life, etc.
I agree that materialism is not a right, but lumping electricity in with the right to buy stuff is a stretch. I have never seen an electric bill that doesn't include provisions for people who do not have to pay it under certain circumstances. For example, families with small children in the house, the elderly, (there are more exceptions) can request to not have their electricity cut off even if they can't pay the bill.
That example demonstrates that as a society we value electricity as something more than just a materialistic indulgence, and that's how it should be viewed. Electricity is necessary in the modern world to survive, and if we value some other rights such as the right to continue living, it is easy to extend a right to electricity to certain people in dire need of it to survive.
To bring this back onto the topic of broadband, in many ways it should be viewed as a right, but not in that everyone deserves to have access to it in their home. Internet access is an important and enriching aspect of our lives, and denying it to someone just because they are poor will simply create a knowledge gap between those who can afford internet and those who can't. But, as I said earlier, this doesn't mean everyone necessarily has a right to free internet in their home. We can satisfy the right to free internet by providing access in public libraries and schools, and ensuring that all communities and people have access to these resources.
Ultimately my argument comes down to one of a right to knowledge. Whether it is from books, classrooms, or the internet, this is an undeniable human right. And if the internet is the primary way to gain knowledge in our times, then we should ensure that people have access to it.
Figures that someone straw-manning my argument would then go and accuse me of ignorance. Taxing students is just one of many forms of regressive taxation in this country.
Property owners and business owners do not want to pay more taxes, so they are targeting a group who won't fight back that much. People with money simply have more time and resources to fight these kinds of battles, so it's not surprising that they do, and that they often win them.
Listen kid, it's the rich ppl who hire you or these skulls full of mush once you decide to grow up and work in the real world.
It's the rich ppl who provide goods & services to skulls full of mush consumers.
Ridiculous- I don't owe people with more money than me a damn bit of thanks for anything, in the same way they don't owe me any. They aren't the ones providing goods and services. Millions of workers are providing the goods and services you speak of, with many companies having some nice fat-cat CEO/other 3 letter titles at the making the big bucks pretending to be important.
The Mayor of Providence has proposed a similar tax in providence, although it would "only" be $150/student as opposed to $400. The arguments being made in both cities seem to be exactly the same: Students need to pay their "fair share". I'm kind of curious how we don't already pay our fair share, though, given that anyone who lives off campus pays property taxes and we bring millions into the local economy. (And in Providence, we're all the local economy has left)
Now I'm not one to go shouting about the Government and taxes, but student taxes are very clearly a form of regressive taxation. It just doesn't make sense to be trying to take money from a group of people who don't have all that much of it in the first place. But that seems to be the trend of taxation lately, more and more regressive so rich people can keep all of their "hard earned" money.
Oh, wow! Thanks for this insightful analysis. I'll go tell the climate scientists that they should just all go home, then. "Tontoman" figured it out! We just are too tiny a factor to have any effect! Hooray!
Except that voice calls aren't safe either. Your eyes may be on the road, but your brain is somewhere else. (See: NSC Factsheet. Several studies have shown that the distraction caused by a cell phone conversation can cause accidents in ways that in-car conversations do not.
You really live in one hell of a dream world. Where do I sign up? My image of you is a fat man blissfully stuffing cheeseburgers in his mouth while laughing as the children across the street slip and fall, then get sprayed by a sprinkler.
I'm not even bothering to respond to your entire post, except to point out some quick counter examples that you so hilariously demand, as if making some brilliant argument in which you'll come out on top:
Blatent disregard for international treaties: Torturing (waterboarding, sleep deprevation, etc) is clearly banned by the Geneva conventions and yet the US did it anyway.
Imposing its will on nations around the globe: Installing the Shah in Iran, assassinations in Latin America, assassination of Patrice Lumumba in Congo (US is generally thought to have been at least complicit) to name a few. The list goes on and on all over the world.
And note that I'm not suggesting other countries don't do these things too, but people in the US have to stop pretending they are so morally superior when, in fact, their country is hardly a model citizen on the world stage.
Probably because the descriptions of what caused the Great Depression are constantly changed to better fit current crises. Note that while the GP post is a pretty egregious example, the same is true of descriptions coming from Democrats and Republicans.
I don't have time to do a whole rebuttal, simply because the causes of the great depression come from numerous sources, government and free market. Suggesting that only one is completely responsible is a ridiculous re-writing of history.
But to at least provide one quick counter example to the GP: Anyone remember why the FDIC was founded? Bank runs. They happen when the government doesn't intervene in the banking system. Without the FDIC, we would have had bank runs again this time and things would have been a whole lot worse.
The grant money argument is one of the stupidest against global warming. Seriously, you believe there is some conspiracy of individuals furthering a false hypothesis and cooking data across several branches of science on the topic of global warming to get grant funding? I'm not going to claim grant funding is easy to get, because it isn't, but smart people will find plenty of good topics to study. We know very little about the climate, and the NSF would be funding lots of research even without the global warming tag attached to it.
Furthermore, the GP points out flaws in the paper that anybody can see. You don't need to be a climatologist to see that there is no causal link between lifespan, crop yield and global warming despite a correlative link.
I think calling George Soros a communist is the highlight of your post. That, right there, shows that at some point you lost your grip on reality and need to cool off and consider your positions a bit more carefully before spouting off on/. or anywhere else. Otherwise nobody will take you seriously.
What an incredible bunch of nonsense. The response by governments so far has actually be surprisingly good- the disease barely spread outside of North America so far, and even within North America its reach is rather limited. Had governments not acted this wouldn't be the case at all. The infections in New York City alone would have spread out of control.
Where do you come off accusing the officials of being inept or corrupt (or slow despite preparations)? You give absolutely no examples, but there are plenty of examples of officials rising to the challenge (Quickly closing schools in New York that were effected by the virus to stop the spread, quickly quarantining people who had visited Mexico who were ill with the disease and notifying passengers near them that they are at risk, having stocks of tamiflu and other drugs ready for distribution)
While the health response in Mexico clearly leaves a lot to be desired, they did eventually act, and it appears they were at least somewhat effective. If anything this indicates the need for the US to do more to ensure countries who don't have as well funded disease control centers have the resources necessary to identify these sorts of diseases before they spread all over the place.
And so although it appears the whole ordeal with this strain of flu was fairly overblown, it offered (and continues to offer) a training exercise for officials for when the real thing happens. Of course mistakes were made, but at least they can identify them and try to fix them so that we are better prepared should a pandemic come our way in the future.
(And for all the talk about how "mild" this strain is, sure it won't kill you, but having the flu with the added bonus of potential vomiting and diarrhea don't sound all that fun to me, so I'm quite happy with the continued vigilance in stopping the spread of the disease)
Although I feel like I shouldn't respond to such a blatant troll, since your post was modded up I have no choice but to respond here. (Since nobody else has gotten it right so far)
Calling the GP post BS is just plain wrong. Toxic waste was dumped in their waters, this is a fact. In addition, illegal fishing of their waters is a fact. Your response for the GP to "STFU" is simply uncalled for.
However, none of these facts justifies kidnapping and ransoming people who had nothing to do with those crimes. Many of the first Somali pirates probably started off with noble intentions, but after seeing the potential money that could be made by simply hijacking ships (rather than telling people to get lost) most pirates joined in and the ransoming we see today was born.
At the same time, the GP's suggestion that simply stopping people from illegally fishing and dumping waste in Somalia's waters will end piracy is obviously wrong. As the parent correctly points out, the motivation has become greed. With that said, that means the solution to piracy needs to be a two pronged approach: Stop pirates from hijacking ships, and expel foreign fishermen/polluters from Somalia's exclusive economic zone. If there are fish to catch and punishments for piracy, people will go back to legal methods of income.
So in the future, the GP and P should consider thinking about the other sides argument a bit and coming up with a more logical solution than their gut-reactions ("evil international community" vs. "evil pirates")
Either way, I could imagine creating a fingerprint based on different sections of a song has the same problems doing an MD5 hash would- each fingerprint would be entirely different. If you don't just compare bit-to-bit, it'll be impossible to catch ALL permutations. And the fact is, that's a lot of computing power anyhow.
To be honest, I'd be fairly surprised if they used a method that boiled down to a hash for exactly the problem you point out. I would make a bet they either currently use, or will use, a method that stems from Broder's method of identifying near duplicate documents (Paper: Identifying and filtering near-duplicate documents). Using such a method, removing the first 30 seconds of a song won't necessarily fool the fingerprinting method. It might, but there is a high probability that enough of the "shingles" will match between the song and the fingerprint to raise an alarm.
But who knows, I'm not an expert in song fingerprinting (IANAEISF?)!
I think the line about the "guard at the door" and "metal detectors" was the first indication that the AC has absolutely no idea what (s)he is talking about.
This scenario is complete crap, because the main reason for not torturing people is a practical, rather than an ethical one. The information gained is simply unreliable, meaning that in the "24" situation, not torturing the supposed terrorist could yield the critical information for stopping an attack.
The entire point here is that someone going ahead and torturing someone under the guise of saving lives is actually doing exactly the opposite: Endangering the lives of the people they seek to protect.
Slashdot Mirror
Alumnus shout out from Colony Manor :)
A bit off-topic, but I've flown Lufthansa and Swiss Air from Boston and New York to destinations in Europe on 4 engine aircraft. I realize they are hard to come by, and I prefer them as well.
Warning: You have detached yourself from reality. It is recommended that you re-attach yourself as soon as possible to avoid future cognitive dissonance when the death panels do not materialize, and the CBO estimates prove to be relatively accurate.
Don't go accusing all of us Americans of being as paranoid as you. There are plenty of us who find it perfectly reasonable for the state to ensure that weapons are only owned by people who know how to properly and safely use them.
And it's not that hard to measure knowledge of guns, especially if you force people to take a course on them (or perhaps test out of the course). You could ask about safe storage methods, situations in which gun use is legal, etc. There's nothing arbitrary about it- we rely on certifications in almost every part of our society to ensure that somebody has the knowledge they claim they have, and there's no reason that gun ownership should be any different, given the consequences to the people around the gun owner should they not properly handle the weapon.
What a jolly, friendly person you must be.
That much was completely obvious from your fist post. I would add you also don't know a damn thing about Germany (it's culture, people, or political system)
The idea that Germany is in any way less free than the US or anywhere else is laughable. They have tons of political parties to choose from in each election. We Americans get 2, 4 if you include the libertarians and greens who barely ever win anyway.
Your attempt to translate Staatsangehöriger is simply ridiculous. Although German involves combining words to form new ones, the sum of the parts does not necessarily equal the whole in any literal sense. Staatsangehöriger is the exact equivalent of the english word "citizen". There is no hidden meaning to the word that is somehow meant to allow the German government to lord over its citizens.
I assure you there is no nazi influence left on the German government, other than its resistance to those ideas.
USA Today is a piece of junk newspaper that has no original insight and practically no actual reporting. It is in no way a substitute for the NYT.
If the common trait of all things that are actually rights is that they do not cost money, then why do you include the right to have weapons on your list? Last time I checked, they were far from free, and shouldn't be on your list at all. Furthermore, I'm going to ignore all of your god talk, because these rights were indeed invented by men. The idea of free speech is a concept dreamed up by man. It isn't tangible, so obviously man did not build it or make it, but I do not require God to have the right to free speech, life, etc.
I agree that materialism is not a right, but lumping electricity in with the right to buy stuff is a stretch. I have never seen an electric bill that doesn't include provisions for people who do not have to pay it under certain circumstances. For example, families with small children in the house, the elderly, (there are more exceptions) can request to not have their electricity cut off even if they can't pay the bill.
That example demonstrates that as a society we value electricity as something more than just a materialistic indulgence, and that's how it should be viewed. Electricity is necessary in the modern world to survive, and if we value some other rights such as the right to continue living, it is easy to extend a right to electricity to certain people in dire need of it to survive.
To bring this back onto the topic of broadband, in many ways it should be viewed as a right, but not in that everyone deserves to have access to it in their home. Internet access is an important and enriching aspect of our lives, and denying it to someone just because they are poor will simply create a knowledge gap between those who can afford internet and those who can't. But, as I said earlier, this doesn't mean everyone necessarily has a right to free internet in their home. We can satisfy the right to free internet by providing access in public libraries and schools, and ensuring that all communities and people have access to these resources.
Ultimately my argument comes down to one of a right to knowledge. Whether it is from books, classrooms, or the internet, this is an undeniable human right. And if the internet is the primary way to gain knowledge in our times, then we should ensure that people have access to it.
Property owners and business owners do not want to pay more taxes, so they are targeting a group who won't fight back that much. People with money simply have more time and resources to fight these kinds of battles, so it's not surprising that they do, and that they often win them.
Ridiculous- I don't owe people with more money than me a damn bit of thanks for anything, in the same way they don't owe me any. They aren't the ones providing goods and services. Millions of workers are providing the goods and services you speak of, with many companies having some nice fat-cat CEO/other 3 letter titles at the making the big bucks pretending to be important.
The Mayor of Providence has proposed a similar tax in providence, although it would "only" be $150/student as opposed to $400. The arguments being made in both cities seem to be exactly the same: Students need to pay their "fair share". I'm kind of curious how we don't already pay our fair share, though, given that anyone who lives off campus pays property taxes and we bring millions into the local economy. (And in Providence, we're all the local economy has left)
Now I'm not one to go shouting about the Government and taxes, but student taxes are very clearly a form of regressive taxation. It just doesn't make sense to be trying to take money from a group of people who don't have all that much of it in the first place. But that seems to be the trend of taxation lately, more and more regressive so rich people can keep all of their "hard earned" money.
Oh, wow! Thanks for this insightful analysis. I'll go tell the climate scientists that they should just all go home, then. "Tontoman" figured it out! We just are too tiny a factor to have any effect! Hooray!
Except that voice calls aren't safe either. Your eyes may be on the road, but your brain is somewhere else. (See: NSC Factsheet. Several studies have shown that the distraction caused by a cell phone conversation can cause accidents in ways that in-car conversations do not.
Poutine is (roughly) french fries covered in gravy- served in the French areas of Canada.
You really live in one hell of a dream world. Where do I sign up? My image of you is a fat man blissfully stuffing cheeseburgers in his mouth while laughing as the children across the street slip and fall, then get sprayed by a sprinkler.
I'm not even bothering to respond to your entire post, except to point out some quick counter examples that you so hilariously demand, as if making some brilliant argument in which you'll come out on top:
Blatent disregard for international treaties: Torturing (waterboarding, sleep deprevation, etc) is clearly banned by the Geneva conventions and yet the US did it anyway.
Imposing its will on nations around the globe: Installing the Shah in Iran, assassinations in Latin America, assassination of Patrice Lumumba in Congo (US is generally thought to have been at least complicit) to name a few. The list goes on and on all over the world.
And note that I'm not suggesting other countries don't do these things too, but people in the US have to stop pretending they are so morally superior when, in fact, their country is hardly a model citizen on the world stage.
Perhaps /. should start requiring some sort of science test before allowing people to post as AC on climate change articles.
Probably because the descriptions of what caused the Great Depression are constantly changed to better fit current crises. Note that while the GP post is a pretty egregious example, the same is true of descriptions coming from Democrats and Republicans.
I don't have time to do a whole rebuttal, simply because the causes of the great depression come from numerous sources, government and free market. Suggesting that only one is completely responsible is a ridiculous re-writing of history.
But to at least provide one quick counter example to the GP: Anyone remember why the FDIC was founded? Bank runs. They happen when the government doesn't intervene in the banking system. Without the FDIC, we would have had bank runs again this time and things would have been a whole lot worse.
OH REALLY? Hey, everybody, Korea isn't one country! Tell the neighbors and the kids! Call Grandma!!
The grant money argument is one of the stupidest against global warming. Seriously, you believe there is some conspiracy of individuals furthering a false hypothesis and cooking data across several branches of science on the topic of global warming to get grant funding? I'm not going to claim grant funding is easy to get, because it isn't, but smart people will find plenty of good topics to study. We know very little about the climate, and the NSF would be funding lots of research even without the global warming tag attached to it.
Furthermore, the GP points out flaws in the paper that anybody can see. You don't need to be a climatologist to see that there is no causal link between lifespan, crop yield and global warming despite a correlative link.
You better send this to the reviewers of Gentry's paper so that they have this important information!!!
I think calling George Soros a communist is the highlight of your post. That, right there, shows that at some point you lost your grip on reality and need to cool off and consider your positions a bit more carefully before spouting off on /. or anywhere else. Otherwise nobody will take you seriously.
What an incredible bunch of nonsense. The response by governments so far has actually be surprisingly good- the disease barely spread outside of North America so far, and even within North America its reach is rather limited. Had governments not acted this wouldn't be the case at all. The infections in New York City alone would have spread out of control.
Where do you come off accusing the officials of being inept or corrupt (or slow despite preparations)? You give absolutely no examples, but there are plenty of examples of officials rising to the challenge (Quickly closing schools in New York that were effected by the virus to stop the spread, quickly quarantining people who had visited Mexico who were ill with the disease and notifying passengers near them that they are at risk, having stocks of tamiflu and other drugs ready for distribution)
While the health response in Mexico clearly leaves a lot to be desired, they did eventually act, and it appears they were at least somewhat effective. If anything this indicates the need for the US to do more to ensure countries who don't have as well funded disease control centers have the resources necessary to identify these sorts of diseases before they spread all over the place.
And so although it appears the whole ordeal with this strain of flu was fairly overblown, it offered (and continues to offer) a training exercise for officials for when the real thing happens. Of course mistakes were made, but at least they can identify them and try to fix them so that we are better prepared should a pandemic come our way in the future.
(And for all the talk about how "mild" this strain is, sure it won't kill you, but having the flu with the added bonus of potential vomiting and diarrhea don't sound all that fun to me, so I'm quite happy with the continued vigilance in stopping the spread of the disease)
Although I feel like I shouldn't respond to such a blatant troll, since your post was modded up I have no choice but to respond here. (Since nobody else has gotten it right so far)
Calling the GP post BS is just plain wrong. Toxic waste was dumped in their waters, this is a fact. In addition, illegal fishing of their waters is a fact. Your response for the GP to "STFU" is simply uncalled for.
However, none of these facts justifies kidnapping and ransoming people who had nothing to do with those crimes. Many of the first Somali pirates probably started off with noble intentions, but after seeing the potential money that could be made by simply hijacking ships (rather than telling people to get lost) most pirates joined in and the ransoming we see today was born.
At the same time, the GP's suggestion that simply stopping people from illegally fishing and dumping waste in Somalia's waters will end piracy is obviously wrong. As the parent correctly points out, the motivation has become greed. With that said, that means the solution to piracy needs to be a two pronged approach: Stop pirates from hijacking ships, and expel foreign fishermen/polluters from Somalia's exclusive economic zone. If there are fish to catch and punishments for piracy, people will go back to legal methods of income.
So in the future, the GP and P should consider thinking about the other sides argument a bit and coming up with a more logical solution than their gut-reactions ("evil international community" vs. "evil pirates")
To be honest, I'd be fairly surprised if they used a method that boiled down to a hash for exactly the problem you point out. I would make a bet they either currently use, or will use, a method that stems from Broder's method of identifying near duplicate documents (Paper: Identifying and filtering near-duplicate documents). Using such a method, removing the first 30 seconds of a song won't necessarily fool the fingerprinting method. It might, but there is a high probability that enough of the "shingles" will match between the song and the fingerprint to raise an alarm.
But who knows, I'm not an expert in song fingerprinting (IANAEISF?)!
I think the line about the "guard at the door" and "metal detectors" was the first indication that the AC has absolutely no idea what (s)he is talking about.
This scenario is complete crap, because the main reason for not torturing people is a practical, rather than an ethical one. The information gained is simply unreliable, meaning that in the "24" situation, not torturing the supposed terrorist could yield the critical information for stopping an attack.
The entire point here is that someone going ahead and torturing someone under the guise of saving lives is actually doing exactly the opposite: Endangering the lives of the people they seek to protect.