If they keep testing ideas and don't falsify results it is still science, even if everything proves false or the ideas are crazy. There are an infinite number of things to test and while it saves a lot of resources to make educated guesses on what to test, sometimes the crazy stuff yields results... which is likely the main excuse to waste time in fringe areas that don't get attention because 'it's crazy.'
Of course, if the topic being explored is idiotic they are only going to have negative test results and that doesn't provide much in the way of guidance for future tests.
Science is done by humans, so you have the same issues as anywhere else-- systems where somebody's job is connected to signs of progress...
Canada's Fascist Prime Minister, Harper has been trying to sabotage their mail service as well. The same playbook in the USA is being played out in other western nations... makes one wonder who is orchestrating all this. It can't be they simply offer horrible ideas to each other at these G8 summits.
Before you think I'm exaggerating, go look up what a Fascist really is and how Harper would have been booted from office if it wasn't for a horrible loophole involving the Queen. He wants to privatize part of the healthcare system because the USA's is just so great...
Does any normal person need a device to tell them they are stressed and emotional? I have a solution: In your wallet or purse where you store your money... place a card saying "Are you eating out of stress? again?" maybe with a little photo of something motivational on it. Just in case you are not aware of your feelings at the time you are hungry.
Or instead of all that tech cost. pay somebody to explain how your anxiety makes you feel hungry.
The line between corporate and government has been severely blurred. It shouldn't be hard for you find retired operatives making statements on how they were doing the bidding of corporations far too often when that was not supposed to be their job. If you mess with the wrong private people or corps, you'll start feeling that force. There are so many things to choose from that you have to be really severe to have them pull out the big guns. Most threats can be squashed with proportional measures... there is probably a whole handbook of guidelines on measured responses.
People wonder why the USA ignores any law and gets foreign governments to ignore their own laws... You don't need force, you can use the CIA and NSA to wield the extremely powerful weapon of information. Just look at how Wikileaks and Snowden illustrate that "soft" power to upturn any EU legal system; the ones who do the bidding would go to jail if their actions were not sanctioned; thus, providing the illusion that the system works.
The good side of democracy is the public is not so easily suckered by legal technical trickery (but instead by many other kinds) and if the people don't buy an idiotic technical argument it won't work. Do not let them talk you out of your own ability to reason. There are technicalities (the letter) and then there are distortions of intent (the meaning.)
We all know aliens have a problem with abducting and then "probing" farm animals and humans - we probably inherited some of that behavior from them... (some of us more than others.)
Stop living in Flat Land / The Matrix, go to politicalcompass.org and wake up.
Socialism is so broad in definition and so loaded with propaganda the word is dead except to an educated minority.
Nearly everything can be described in Socialistic ideology; even the economic anarchists claim their beliefs result in the best situation for mankind (it is what they consider best that is in dispute. Fair is letting the weak and unfortunate starve to death for "the greater good".)
There is no left or right - it's a false dichotomy which is why people get confused trying to characterize things in the real world using something that fails miserably to describe it. You can't describe a sphere if you live in flatland.
Nearly every undergrad degree remains largely static over time; having old timers repeating the same thing is just fine as long as they don't get too bad at it. Bringing in adjunct is often covered by some false premise that they are up to date and out in the "real world" but that is not all that useful for most material-- some courses and probably more at higher levels like the graduate level. The real reason is they don't want to pay for a full timer. A big cost for full time employment is health benefits-- if you can decouple that from employment then you'll see a big shift in the actual motivation behind many of these policies.
There is always a small % who give simpletons some example to cite. Entrenched management, employees (relatives,) politicians does encourage abuse of their power - but this is education- there is not much money or power involved compared to those others. Sometimes solving a problem is more trouble than it is worse-- Perfect can be the enemy of good. Take the UK postal service-- 2% failure rate on delivery times or something like that-- and they spent billions trying to be perfect and made everything worse; now they've sold off and gutted the royal mail (the inventors of mail) and it will not get better than it was before they tried to perfect it. Often, the best attack is to use the enemy and their supporter's own nature against themselves... This is often done when destroying democratic/public organizations -- the terrorists sure beat the USA with the tactic.. the Americans win battles but they've lost the war (or if you are optimistic, they are still losing the war.)
I hope so! Maybe it exposes people to something informative and thought provoking; maybe they will wake up before the next multinational caused disaster smacks more people to wake. the. fuck. up!
We the people, in order to have an actually safer nation, ask the FCC to do it's job by requiring and allow certain avenues to remotely disable cell phone use. Terrorism was never a big threat; cell phone drivers are - and if you think that is exaggeration I'm wasting my time on you.
Jailbreak your phone and hack off the feature if you don't plan to crash while texting... and risk the heavy penalty when the (metadata) phone records betray you afterwards.
Why not pass a regulation on phones -- they have bluetooth, it's not like they couldn't make them disable when a certain device is present... that goes into the car. Failure to use the device would be easier to detect.
Nobody has any legitimate reason to receive texts while in traffic outside of EMT people. Or at least, there is ZERO reason for anybody to be able to send anything. Pagers are old-- they never caused troubles.
Not being able to use the phone everywhere is not a communist plot-- it's totally reasonable. You don't have to be that old to remember when you could live your life just fine (if not better) without carrying a cell phone everywhere. With the power of the MPAA you'd think we'd have something like this in place as soon as phones had reasonable video recording ability.
1) They are spending money locally instead of banking it off shore. (expect the new CEO to ruin Apple in the same vein of other corps; "investing" money in casino games instead of the real economy.)
2) You can't just put money into things and expect faster results or new inventions - like it was a linear correlation.
3) Free advertizing to promote themselves; the whole innovator image thing helps them. That isn't cheap; and it lasts longer than an ad campaign. Plus it may help attract and retain the kind of employees they need; it adds to the subculture / tribalism that some like to promote in a business (see Pixar.) You can't put simplistic metrics on this sort of thing other than to look at successful creative companies.
4) Cupertino is in CA. They have no weather in CA except fire. If there is anywhere on earth all-glass can be done...
5) Urban sprawl and waste of land is sooo American. Since they are doing it anyway and the city wouldn't allow them to go against the culture they may as well aim for the 1950's utopia futurism where everybody is in the center of their own park-like land... but still lack the flying cars that make up for the wasted space.
The data source seems flawed from the start. Changes to it may be documented but the initial proposals before the leak; that is, the ones who drafted it initially, have a huge influence. Knowing that information would likely end up in huge changes. The USA likely would have the most proposals and that would be a good reason for them having fewer of them at this phase of the process.
The approach and tool use is interesting. It highlights another way to analyze or summarize such things; although, I'm not sure it should be used in this realm. Negotiations are so subtle and complicated no metrics and charts can do it justice. That said, it's probably harmless because few people will use it in this way... unless somebody takes the newer US house/senate rules that puts names with amendments and starts drawing graphs on the politicians... (The dyads for them could be quite use useful.)
Could one use apply this in a more practical way so we can bring in game theory computation? I can't think of one; which is why i ask.
I suggest you do some homework. There are many people in Gitmo still to this day who are innocent; a few reporters I can think of, one is still in there, I heard about him months ago. As for high profile, in the USA the media is inept at best - we barely get coverage on Assange and only probably because of the attention he gets from the internet. In other countries they made other victims get a higher profile (especially if it's one of their innocent victims-- Canada even payed for damages to one of their own for their complacency, it got coverage there.) Another issue is the other innocents are not extremely political and controversial; they are much more innocent and were/are not actively political, like most normal people are.
Due process in the USA is broken, if you have not noticed. It's much more hit or miss. Assange is clearly a flight risk, he'd be in jail from day 1 until his trial YEARS later and be prevented from doing his day job-- which is keeping his tiny organization going and funding the lawyers. The case will be bogus if they can't invent something to stick because they want to make an example out of him; they have the power to mess you up good without breaking any laws. Today they can bend the laws or break them without much trouble; it's unlikely you end up vindicated let alone having them punished for their actual legal infractions after a decade of court time.
You must have noticed the politicians and government lawyers mentioning severe terms and references to ancient laws that don't reasonably apply... but technically could apply if you have the warped reasoning of a lawyer or politician. They've been doing it on many other fronts in the name of security... You did hear them justifying the NSA stuff, no?
GOVERNMENT DOES WORK! most the time! Any form of government can work well -- all that matters is how it is administered. (Ben Franklin said as much.) If you let corporations and the powerful run the government, it will work just fine; FOR THEM! A healthy democracy is going to have inefficiency by the nature of that system but it is worth the price of having the most people served fairly - in that they get what they want; now they may want stupid things-- but then it is serving the most people the best way we know of, right? I find it almost laughable when I read of "tyranny by the majority" because that is not so horrible; one can do better, but it's still not that bad. How does the majority have their will determined and implemented? Well, that is not a simple or clean process in itself so it's not going to "work" like every individual would like.
Just believing in a democratic government is like believing in your driving skills while you are texting on your phone. If we don't have enough people paying attention at the wheel bad things happen. It doesn't help when idiots elect incompetent officials who wreck everything then campaign against the mess they created (and likely profited from in the process.)
Again, as Franklin also said all democracies fall into despotism and it's the probably majority's fault. Unless we can wake up the majority it's hopeless and will need a total reboot. The whole principle they based it upon was to civilize revolutions that naturally occur throughout human history. It's still the goal today; but the difference is that it's about prolonging the illusion for as long as possible while positioning the elite to survive the inevitable collapse (if well managed, it'll be less of a collapse and more of a morph into something else. which is what we've been having so far.)
Given the history of "intelligent" filtering software; I would NEVER trust it. You'd think anybody experienced in Computers would have heard of 1337 speak or are aware of the concepts. Filtering should NOT be allowed for any reason and apparently we need laws to enforce this before we become China.
Children, Religion and War justifications should ALWAYS get extra skepticism to compensate for all the blinding hate/fear associated with them.
Google and the others already monitor and track you. I am surprised they've moved away from tracking.... well maybe not-- they may not like the FBI and NSA forcing them to spy on us using those justifications... if they can filter out the people motivating... nah, there will always be an easy excuse. What should be done is instead of merely profiling you for marketing they should try to spot these people and when you rank high enough they can flag you for officials... silently, like an anonymous tipster. Nobody then knows how they drew attention to themselves. Oh, and don't think the police haven't done this for generations - they can legally start paying attention to you without ANY legal justification (including things dismissed in court or obtained illegally just because they can't touch you doesn't mean you are not on their radar.) Homeland security may have monitored you briefly as a follow up to something you said on the phone or at the airport - you wouldn't know and they are being so bad with freedom of information requests... you'll probably never know - especially those situations where a few board cops take an interest in you for an afternoon; it's nothing to report.
We've not even begun to see what private uses of these things will cause.
PEOPLE who still run the corporations still want POWER; you missed one. Some power plays are not solely for greater profit (since money is a big source of power the two are intertwined.) Power attracts evil bastards anywhere it is available to attain, government or corporate.
Governments historically can do a lot of things but one does have to remember that Fascism is a government and private partnership... They are merely institutions which wield more power than individuals. Government is not really the problem or even it's design structure, it's the people running it. As Ben Franklin said, any government well managed is good government and cannot remain that way forever (because good management can't stay around for long.) Democratic systems always fall into despotism. History proves it.
Me, I think more structural changes could help... however, I realize as a programmer I have a bias in thinking good design can save the day. It can not compensate for a gradual increase in incompetence and/or malice of the users.
Whom ever controls the might (police, military) is the real government. A puppet leader or organization is just a middle man; and a legal system is just bureaucracy and propaganda which supplements (and reduces the need for physical) might.
Government workers might be lazy and a few might pocket some cash before they serve jail time for it but the cost is nothing compared with privatized contractors who have a profit margin which they turn around and use to corrupt the government for the next contract and when they get caught swiping money it is "just good business" or if they swipe too much they get... well, nothing if they "bribe" the right people they just make even more money! Best case, some people get fined a drone takes the fall and the company goes bankrupt; then they re-incorporate and get contracts again under another name. Tax payers indirectly funding the downfall of their own government; the best way to destroy a nation!
All one needs to do to get this in the UK is to get corporations to contribute to industry lobby groups and PR firms (aka "think tanks") to sell the gullible public on their own self destruction... that and getting rid of the BBC.
If these were community owned (government) power services, like water, sewer and the roads we'd not have these troubles. As private monopolies they funnel our money to undermine and corrupt democracy by larger amounts than we give to our local officials to run for office -- and with our own money! You've already got publicly funded elections-- but with a middleman controlling your money!
They have no incentive to promote alternative energy sources or reduce power consumption and play clever tricks to maximize profits. My power company has promos on conservation which amount to being marketing and merely placate the already ineffective and captured regulators so they can APPEAR to be doing the right thing. We have high connection fees with low power costs which discourage anybody from investing in alternatives themselves... plus again, it makes them APPEAR to look good because simpletons only notice the price per kWh.
If they managed the ROADs, you'd pay a high monthly fee to have a road to your house, you'd pay a rate per mile traveled; they'd add higher fees for other kinds of transit (bicycles, buses, light rail) because they simply would want to compensate for their profit lost -- with a made up excuse, naturally.
This was only a new crime politically, it was not breaking new ground in computer crime. If he did something non-political the results would be different.
Furthermore, it is unusual punishment - they openly admit it when they make the punishment severe to "set an example." If it is a new crime then they lack a reference point; but in the years following, other example sentences will exist in which case the punishment should be revised upon appeal to keep it in line with the new norm. There should be legal repercussions such that they never openly admit unusual special punishments that discriminate against creative new crimes... and especially politically motivated ones. It won't stop, they just won't openly admit it (just like racists wouldn't admit their unequal treatment.)
Finally, this culture is uncivilized (corruption is another issue.) Everything is about punishment, revenge, and dehumanization. A prison's only practical purpose is to keep society safe from people unable to live in society. Yes, that mature perspective means that some people would be locked up for life for minor crimes... If they can't conform to society's laws then they shouldn't be allowed in society - giving them a "time out period" is foolish. It is like giving a child time out and promptly letting them in on schedule without asking the child if they are going to behave first - no competent adult lets the child out if they refuse to correct the behavior simply because the timer ran out. Should they be abused and dehumanized when in prison? should we have only 1 kind of prison for all types? No. But we do.
Some prisons should be nice communities for dysfunctional people to live out their lives... similar to insane asylums (we hardly have those anymore- they are in prison carving their names into teenage foreheads of their "tried as adult" bitches.) People who contribute to society but LACK some necessary characteristic should be able to contribute in a controlled safe community outside of normal society. A technical mind should be put to constructive (but supervised or limited) use. If Einstein was convicted of statutory rape as a young man because his girl was 17 and he was 18-- we'd never have benefited. What does one do in such cases? Well, be creative; don't ruin his life and rob society of not only potential contributions but the COSTS involved in caging and dehumanization. Monetary fines make an impact in many situations; but only if they are relative.
Sure, dismiss me as some liberal or whatever - it won't change the harm you do to yourself and society for having such an empty head.
You can't be a traitor if it is not your country. Wikileaks wasn't American. Manning who did the big document dump was arguably a traitor (but only arguably, the motive of treason is clearly missing.)
Even in the case of treason, people die for nothing all the time; like for every war since since WW2. Self sacrifice for a noble cause is a trait we want in our military; as well as being mindless psychopathic drones. Great effort is put into fostering both, but you can't have everything you want; at least not until robots take over, they are well suited to our needs.
Does it not seem childish and silly? I don't care if they lit it yet.
They way they start the thing and carry it around trying to not let it go out... then put it out later. I mean aside from all the expense related to the silly flame thing... completely ignoring the all the crass commercialization, massive corporate welfare, extreme training, and the fact it they lost every scrap of politics which was the point of bringing it back in the first place. I won't even go into how sporting events can be used to get the masses try to act more civilized; which doesn't make one feel hopeful for humanity.
There is a war being waged against the USPS by corrupt and ideological fanatics (who ignore the constitutional mandate for the USPS.)
They NEVER had money problems, they will run at a loss if they have to - it's a constitutional required service of government (aka non-profit.) The idiotic things going on are part of the political war against them, the pensions for the unborn being a fake budgetary disaster invented by the enemy so they can exploit the "crisis."
1st moves were to cut costs, since management is required to abide by the laws passed to destroy themselves. These were known to fail because they had enough allies in government to prevent the plans from happening, it was a political move to gain public attention and to legally meet the ridiculous demands being placed upon them. Sadly, the idiotic media didn't inform the public that the crisis was BS so people think email is killing the USPS and that it has to make a profit like a business (the media get advertizing from the USPS and UPS and FedEx so one wonders why it can't be fair.)
2nd moves were to EXPAND instead of shrink. Cutting saturday service was a transition or hybrid solution in that they were keeping package delivery. This new plan is a full-on expansion -- doubly enjoyable because it is EXACTLY the opposite of what the enemy wanted! Any major change is going to have to be phased in. Plus anything that WORKS is going to be under heavy attack to prevent it from happening, just as the attacks were heavily defended against. By focusing on Amazon in major cities they'll have a quick trail run that CANT BE STOPPED with amazing results to defend further expansion of the plan. You know they are serious when they are so strategic about implementation; the Saturday plan seemed a bit heavy handed which made me think it was a compromise gesture to illustrate a point.
Despotism != Dictatorship. All democracies fall into despotism, Ben Franklin was right.
1) Prosperous people have more to lose; therefore, more to fear. (not boredom) The wealthy fear any changes to the status quo despite their relatively high security; it's a historic trend which characterizes them. A middle class could be expected inherit a tiny bit of those traits. A proper Buddhist for example, is largely free from such fears for good reason (one could argue that the fears help motivate the accumulation of wealth.)
2) Post WW2 was the biggest rise in propaganda in history, social engineering was proven highly effective as the techniques from WW1 were so brilliantly demonstrated and refined before and during WW2. Commercialization of the science made it into an industry (it renamed itself "P.R.".) Fundamental concept tracing all the way (formally) back to Freud is the appeal to "base emotions" - FEAR being a huge one.
3) Culture of fear: Government, Industry... P.R. exploited FEAR for it's powerful influence over rational thought like never before on multiple fronts post WW2. This founded a culture of fear; and the benefactors having every motivation to promote and continue that state of fear to maintain their power/influence. Politically, this meant a never ending supply of ghosts but economically, it ALSO was employed with arguably greater negative impacts on society. Economics is a good one; our witch doctors (economists) shouldn't be upset and we can't address problems because it might destroy all the prosperity etc. (even if it has logical and historical backing, don't upset the "gods" continue to sacrifice virgins to the volcano.)
4) Ignorance breeds fear. Overconfidence breeds ignorance. Americans are embarrassingly overconfident and there are plenty of studies...
5) Distractions... again appeal to "base emotions" but also combined with the promotion selfishness (also a result of a socially engineered consumer society.) This greatly increases willful ignorance. Also, it adds to a feeling of powerlessness due to the lack of participation and observation. All that combined with the never ending list of pleasant escapes from reality.... One doesn't even need to try to make things unpleasant to get people to tune out; but they DO often resort to making issues unpleasant and more so today as things get worse to keep people retreating back to their escapes (which is a huge industry in itself, which doesn't have to advertize misery; that is free... and luckily for them it is a relative perspective for the human brain.)
Just when I think adults can't act even more childish and silly, they go do something like this. Whatever symbolism it may have had is gone when they just stop the reaction and start it again-- why as well put the Olympic logo on cigarette lighters and let everybody start and stop the branded "special" flame.
Wastes energy and pollutes. The best way is to have thermal storage and burn it hot and quickly with good mixing and an afterburner. I've seen such a setup; it puts out so much heat you never imagined there was so much heat in such a small amount of wood. A day's worth of heat could be done in under an hour but it would have to be stored and it took electricity during the burn for the blower. Water makes for a cheap storage medium; so I don't think the costs would be so bad... But the coolest part was the afterburner and the fluid dynamics used on it--- you could touch the thin metal case while it ran due to the over-engineering of the design (which also supported LP as a fuel too, it also did that well - not ideal, but well enough.. )
I've seen an ideal LP gas pulse burner too. Made a simple one for fun too! Mine was like building a rocket and sounded like a big truck idling - which was the downside. I had no interest in heating a warehouse and my lack the skill to scale it down to house size is the reason I didn't fix the noise problems (which could be resolved.)
It's not like this stuff is rocket science... well, actually, if you apply rocket science from the 60s you'd make wood and LP gassifiers far better than they have been; so far very little has been applied, because the industry has done fine without utilizing the brain power out there. Rocket-type science was used (physics by fluid dynamics profs who worked in plasma) in the two designs I mentioned; being the only interested person in a long time they were eager to share.
Slashdot Mirror
If they keep testing ideas and don't falsify results it is still science, even if everything proves false or the ideas are crazy. There are an infinite number of things to test and while it saves a lot of resources to make educated guesses on what to test, sometimes the crazy stuff yields results... which is likely the main excuse to waste time in fringe areas that don't get attention because 'it's crazy.'
Of course, if the topic being explored is idiotic they are only going to have negative test results and that doesn't provide much in the way of guidance for future tests.
Science is done by humans, so you have the same issues as anywhere else-- systems where somebody's job is connected to signs of progress...
Canada's Fascist Prime Minister, Harper has been trying to sabotage their mail service as well. The same playbook in the USA is being played out in other western nations... makes one wonder who is orchestrating all this. It can't be they simply offer horrible ideas to each other at these G8 summits.
Before you think I'm exaggerating, go look up what a Fascist really is and how Harper would have been booted from office if it wasn't for a horrible loophole involving the Queen. He wants to privatize part of the healthcare system because the USA's is just so great...
Does any normal person need a device to tell them they are stressed and emotional?
I have a solution:
In your wallet or purse where you store your money... place a card saying "Are you eating out of stress? again?" maybe with a little photo of something motivational on it. Just in case you are not aware of your feelings at the time you are hungry.
Or instead of all that tech cost. pay somebody to explain how your anxiety makes you feel hungry.
The line between corporate and government has been severely blurred. It shouldn't be hard for you find retired operatives making statements on how they were doing the bidding of corporations far too often when that was not supposed to be their job. If you mess with the wrong private people or corps, you'll start feeling that force. There are so many things to choose from that you have to be really severe to have them pull out the big guns. Most threats can be squashed with proportional measures... there is probably a whole handbook of guidelines on measured responses.
People wonder why the USA ignores any law and gets foreign governments to ignore their own laws... You don't need force, you can use the CIA and NSA to wield the extremely powerful weapon of information. Just look at how Wikileaks and Snowden illustrate that "soft" power to upturn any EU legal system; the ones who do the bidding would go to jail if their actions were not sanctioned; thus, providing the illusion that the system works.
The good side of democracy is the public is not so easily suckered by legal technical trickery (but instead by many other kinds) and if the people don't buy an idiotic technical argument it won't work. Do not let them talk you out of your own ability to reason. There are technicalities (the letter) and then there are distortions of intent (the meaning.)
We all know aliens have a problem with abducting and then "probing" farm animals and humans - we probably inherited some of that behavior from them... (some of us more than others.)
Stop living in Flat Land / The Matrix, go to politicalcompass.org and wake up.
Socialism is so broad in definition and so loaded with propaganda the word is dead except to an educated minority.
Nearly everything can be described in Socialistic ideology; even the economic anarchists claim their beliefs result in the best situation for mankind (it is what they consider best that is in dispute. Fair is letting the weak and unfortunate starve to death for "the greater good".)
politicalcompass.org
There is no left or right - it's a false dichotomy which is why people get confused trying to characterize things in the real world using something that fails miserably to describe it. You can't describe a sphere if you live in flatland.
Nearly every undergrad degree remains largely static over time; having old timers repeating the same thing is just fine as long as they don't get too bad at it. Bringing in adjunct is often covered by some false premise that they are up to date and out in the "real world" but that is not all that useful for most material-- some courses and probably more at higher levels like the graduate level. The real reason is they don't want to pay for a full timer. A big cost for full time employment is health benefits-- if you can decouple that from employment then you'll see a big shift in the actual motivation behind many of these policies.
There is always a small % who give simpletons some example to cite. Entrenched management, employees (relatives,) politicians does encourage abuse of their power - but this is education- there is not much money or power involved compared to those others. Sometimes solving a problem is more trouble than it is worse-- Perfect can be the enemy of good. Take the UK postal service-- 2% failure rate on delivery times or something like that-- and they spent billions trying to be perfect and made everything worse; now they've sold off and gutted the royal mail (the inventors of mail) and it will not get better than it was before they tried to perfect it. Often, the best attack is to use the enemy and their supporter's own nature against themselves... This is often done when destroying democratic/public organizations -- the terrorists sure beat the USA with the tactic.. the Americans win battles but they've lost the war (or if you are optimistic, they are still losing the war.)
I hope so! Maybe it exposes people to something informative and thought provoking; maybe they will wake up before the next multinational caused disaster smacks more people to wake. the. fuck. up!
We the people, in order to have an actually safer nation, ask the FCC to do it's job by requiring and allow certain avenues to remotely disable cell phone use. Terrorism was never a big threat; cell phone drivers are - and if you think that is exaggeration I'm wasting my time on you.
Jailbreak your phone and hack off the feature if you don't plan to crash while texting... and risk the heavy penalty when the (metadata) phone records betray you afterwards.
Parent makes total sense.
Why not pass a regulation on phones -- they have bluetooth, it's not like they couldn't make them disable when a certain device is present... that goes into the car. Failure to use the device would be easier to detect.
Nobody has any legitimate reason to receive texts while in traffic outside of EMT people. Or at least, there is ZERO reason for anybody to be able to send anything. Pagers are old-- they never caused troubles.
Not being able to use the phone everywhere is not a communist plot-- it's totally reasonable. You don't have to be that old to remember when you could live your life just fine (if not better) without carrying a cell phone everywhere. With the power of the MPAA you'd think we'd have something like this in place as soon as phones had reasonable video recording ability.
1) They are spending money locally instead of banking it off shore. (expect the new CEO to ruin Apple in the same vein of other corps; "investing" money in casino games instead of the real economy.)
2) You can't just put money into things and expect faster results or new inventions - like it was a linear correlation.
3) Free advertizing to promote themselves; the whole innovator image thing helps them. That isn't cheap; and it lasts longer than an ad campaign. Plus it may help attract and retain the kind of employees they need; it adds to the subculture / tribalism that some like to promote in a business (see Pixar.) You can't put simplistic metrics on this sort of thing other than to look at successful creative companies.
4) Cupertino is in CA. They have no weather in CA except fire. If there is anywhere on earth all-glass can be done...
5) Urban sprawl and waste of land is sooo American. Since they are doing it anyway and the city wouldn't allow them to go against the culture they may as well aim for the 1950's utopia futurism where everybody is in the center of their own park-like land... but still lack the flying cars that make up for the wasted space.
The data source seems flawed from the start. Changes to it may be documented but the initial proposals before the leak; that is, the ones who drafted it initially, have a huge influence. Knowing that information would likely end up in huge changes. The USA likely would have the most proposals and that would be a good reason for them having fewer of them at this phase of the process.
The approach and tool use is interesting. It highlights another way to analyze or summarize such things; although, I'm not sure it should be used in this realm. Negotiations are so subtle and complicated no metrics and charts can do it justice. That said, it's probably harmless because few people will use it in this way... unless somebody takes the newer US house/senate rules that puts names with amendments and starts drawing graphs on the politicians... (The dyads for them could be quite use useful.)
Could one use apply this in a more practical way so we can bring in game theory computation? I can't think of one; which is why i ask.
I suggest you do some homework. There are many people in Gitmo still to this day who are innocent; a few reporters I can think of, one is still in there, I heard about him months ago. As for high profile, in the USA the media is inept at best - we barely get coverage on Assange and only probably because of the attention he gets from the internet. In other countries they made other victims get a higher profile (especially if it's one of their innocent victims-- Canada even payed for damages to one of their own for their complacency, it got coverage there.) Another issue is the other innocents are not extremely political and controversial; they are much more innocent and were/are not actively political, like most normal people are.
Due process in the USA is broken, if you have not noticed. It's much more hit or miss. Assange is clearly a flight risk, he'd be in jail from day 1 until his trial YEARS later and be prevented from doing his day job-- which is keeping his tiny organization going and funding the lawyers. The case will be bogus if they can't invent something to stick because they want to make an example out of him; they have the power to mess you up good without breaking any laws. Today they can bend the laws or break them without much trouble; it's unlikely you end up vindicated let alone having them punished for their actual legal infractions after a decade of court time.
You must have noticed the politicians and government lawyers mentioning severe terms and references to ancient laws that don't reasonably apply... but technically could apply if you have the warped reasoning of a lawyer or politician. They've been doing it on many other fronts in the name of security... You did hear them justifying the NSA stuff, no?
GOVERNMENT DOES WORK! most the time! Any form of government can work well -- all that matters is how it is administered. (Ben Franklin said as much.) If you let corporations and the powerful run the government, it will work just fine; FOR THEM! A healthy democracy is going to have inefficiency by the nature of that system but it is worth the price of having the most people served fairly - in that they get what they want; now they may want stupid things-- but then it is serving the most people the best way we know of, right? I find it almost laughable when I read of "tyranny by the majority" because that is not so horrible; one can do better, but it's still not that bad. How does the majority have their will determined and implemented? Well, that is not a simple or clean process in itself so it's not going to "work" like every individual would like.
Just believing in a democratic government is like believing in your driving skills while you are texting on your phone. If we don't have enough people paying attention at the wheel bad things happen. It doesn't help when idiots elect incompetent officials who wreck everything then campaign against the mess they created (and likely profited from in the process.)
Again, as Franklin also said all democracies fall into despotism and it's the probably majority's fault. Unless we can wake up the majority it's hopeless and will need a total reboot. The whole principle they based it upon was to civilize revolutions that naturally occur throughout human history. It's still the goal today; but the difference is that it's about prolonging the illusion for as long as possible while positioning the elite to survive the inevitable collapse (if well managed, it'll be less of a collapse and more of a morph into something else. which is what we've been having so far.)
Given the history of "intelligent" filtering software; I would NEVER trust it. You'd think anybody experienced in Computers would have heard of 1337 speak or are aware of the concepts. Filtering should NOT be allowed for any reason and apparently we need laws to enforce this before we become China.
Children, Religion and War justifications should ALWAYS get extra skepticism to compensate for all the blinding hate/fear associated with them.
Google and the others already monitor and track you. I am surprised they've moved away from tracking.... well maybe not-- they may not like the FBI and NSA forcing them to spy on us using those justifications... if they can filter out the people motivating... nah, there will always be an easy excuse. What should be done is instead of merely profiling you for marketing they should try to spot these people and when you rank high enough they can flag you for officials... silently, like an anonymous tipster. Nobody then knows how they drew attention to themselves. Oh, and don't think the police haven't done this for generations - they can legally start paying attention to you without ANY legal justification (including things dismissed in court or obtained illegally just because they can't touch you doesn't mean you are not on their radar.) Homeland security may have monitored you briefly as a follow up to something you said on the phone or at the airport - you wouldn't know and they are being so bad with freedom of information requests... you'll probably never know - especially those situations where a few board cops take an interest in you for an afternoon; it's nothing to report.
We've not even begun to see what private uses of these things will cause.
PEOPLE who still run the corporations still want POWER; you missed one. Some power plays are not solely for greater profit (since money is a big source of power the two are intertwined.) Power attracts evil bastards anywhere it is available to attain, government or corporate.
Governments historically can do a lot of things but one does have to remember that Fascism is a government and private partnership... They are merely institutions which wield more power than individuals. Government is not really the problem or even it's design structure, it's the people running it. As Ben Franklin said, any government well managed is good government and cannot remain that way forever (because good management can't stay around for long.) Democratic systems always fall into despotism. History proves it.
Me, I think more structural changes could help... however, I realize as a programmer I have a bias in thinking good design can save the day. It can not compensate for a gradual increase in incompetence and/or malice of the users.
Whom ever controls the might (police, military) is the real government. A puppet leader or organization is just a middle man; and a legal system is just bureaucracy and propaganda which supplements (and reduces the need for physical) might.
Government workers might be lazy and a few might pocket some cash before they serve jail time for it but the cost is nothing compared with privatized contractors who have a profit margin which they turn around and use to corrupt the government for the next contract and when they get caught swiping money it is "just good business" or if they swipe too much they get... well, nothing if they "bribe" the right people they just make even more money! Best case, some people get fined a drone takes the fall and the company goes bankrupt; then they re-incorporate and get contracts again under another name. Tax payers indirectly funding the downfall of their own government; the best way to destroy a nation!
All one needs to do to get this in the UK is to get corporations to contribute to industry lobby groups and PR firms (aka "think tanks") to sell the gullible public on their own self destruction... that and getting rid of the BBC.
If these were community owned (government) power services, like water, sewer and the roads we'd not have these troubles. As private monopolies they funnel our money to undermine and corrupt democracy by larger amounts than we give to our local officials to run for office -- and with our own money! You've already got publicly funded elections-- but with a middleman controlling your money!
They have no incentive to promote alternative energy sources or reduce power consumption and play clever tricks to maximize profits. My power company has promos on conservation which amount to being marketing and merely placate the already ineffective and captured regulators so they can APPEAR to be doing the right thing. We have high connection fees with low power costs which discourage anybody from investing in alternatives themselves... plus again, it makes them APPEAR to look good because simpletons only notice the price per kWh.
If they managed the ROADs, you'd pay a high monthly fee to have a road to your house, you'd pay a rate per mile traveled; they'd add higher fees for other kinds of transit (bicycles, buses, light rail) because they simply would want to compensate for their profit lost -- with a made up excuse, naturally.
This was only a new crime politically, it was not breaking new ground in computer crime. If he did something non-political the results would be different.
Furthermore, it is unusual punishment - they openly admit it when they make the punishment severe to "set an example." If it is a new crime then they lack a reference point; but in the years following, other example sentences will exist in which case the punishment should be revised upon appeal to keep it in line with the new norm. There should be legal repercussions such that they never openly admit unusual special punishments that discriminate against creative new crimes... and especially politically motivated ones. It won't stop, they just won't openly admit it (just like racists wouldn't admit their unequal treatment.)
Finally, this culture is uncivilized (corruption is another issue.) Everything is about punishment, revenge, and dehumanization. A prison's only practical purpose is to keep society safe from people unable to live in society. Yes, that mature perspective means that some people would be locked up for life for minor crimes... If they can't conform to society's laws then they shouldn't be allowed in society - giving them a "time out period" is foolish. It is like giving a child time out and promptly letting them in on schedule without asking the child if they are going to behave first - no competent adult lets the child out if they refuse to correct the behavior simply because the timer ran out. Should they be abused and dehumanized when in prison? should we have only 1 kind of prison for all types? No. But we do.
Some prisons should be nice communities for dysfunctional people to live out their lives... similar to insane asylums (we hardly have those anymore- they are in prison carving their names into teenage foreheads of their "tried as adult" bitches.) People who contribute to society but LACK some necessary characteristic should be able to contribute in a controlled safe community outside of normal society. A technical mind should be put to constructive (but supervised or limited) use. If Einstein was convicted of statutory rape as a young man because his girl was 17 and he was 18-- we'd never have benefited. What does one do in such cases? Well, be creative; don't ruin his life and rob society of not only potential contributions but the COSTS involved in caging and dehumanization. Monetary fines make an impact in many situations; but only if they are relative.
Sure, dismiss me as some liberal or whatever - it won't change the harm you do to yourself and society for having such an empty head.
You can't be a traitor if it is not your country.
Wikileaks wasn't American. Manning who did the big document dump was arguably a traitor (but only arguably, the motive of treason is clearly missing.)
Even in the case of treason, people die for nothing all the time; like for every war since since WW2. Self sacrifice for a noble cause is a trait we want in our military; as well as being mindless psychopathic drones. Great effort is put into fostering both, but you can't have everything you want; at least not until robots take over, they are well suited to our needs.
Does it not seem childish and silly? I don't care if they lit it yet.
They way they start the thing and carry it around trying to not let it go out... then put it out later. I mean aside from all the expense related to the silly flame thing... completely ignoring the all the crass commercialization, massive corporate welfare, extreme training, and the fact it they lost every scrap of politics which was the point of bringing it back in the first place. I won't even go into how sporting events can be used to get the masses try to act more civilized; which doesn't make one feel hopeful for humanity.
There is a war being waged against the USPS by corrupt and ideological fanatics (who ignore the constitutional mandate for the USPS.)
They NEVER had money problems, they will run at a loss if they have to - it's a constitutional required service of government (aka non-profit.) The idiotic things going on are part of the political war against them, the pensions for the unborn being a fake budgetary disaster invented by the enemy so they can exploit the "crisis."
1st moves were to cut costs, since management is required to abide by the laws passed to destroy themselves. These were known to fail because they had enough allies in government to prevent the plans from happening, it was a political move to gain public attention and to legally meet the ridiculous demands being placed upon them. Sadly, the idiotic media didn't inform the public that the crisis was BS so people think email is killing the USPS and that it has to make a profit like a business (the media get advertizing from the USPS and UPS and FedEx so one wonders why it can't be fair.)
2nd moves were to EXPAND instead of shrink. Cutting saturday service was a transition or hybrid solution in that they were keeping package delivery. This new plan is a full-on expansion -- doubly enjoyable because it is EXACTLY the opposite of what the enemy wanted! Any major change is going to have to be phased in. Plus anything that WORKS is going to be under heavy attack to prevent it from happening, just as the attacks were heavily defended against. By focusing on Amazon in major cities they'll have a quick trail run that CANT BE STOPPED with amazing results to defend further expansion of the plan. You know they are serious when they are so strategic about implementation; the Saturday plan seemed a bit heavy handed which made me think it was a compromise gesture to illustrate a point.
The USPS is ours; it belongs to the citizens.
Despotism != Dictatorship. All democracies fall into despotism, Ben Franklin was right.
1) Prosperous people have more to lose; therefore, more to fear. (not boredom) The wealthy fear any changes to the status quo despite their relatively high security; it's a historic trend which characterizes them. A middle class could be expected inherit a tiny bit of those traits. A proper Buddhist for example, is largely free from such fears for good reason (one could argue that the fears help motivate the accumulation of wealth.)
2) Post WW2 was the biggest rise in propaganda in history, social engineering was proven highly effective as the techniques from WW1 were so brilliantly demonstrated and refined before and during WW2. Commercialization of the science made it into an industry (it renamed itself "P.R.".) Fundamental concept tracing all the way (formally) back to Freud is the appeal to "base emotions" - FEAR being a huge one.
3) Culture of fear: Government, Industry... P.R. exploited FEAR for it's powerful influence over rational thought like never before on multiple fronts post WW2. This founded a culture of fear; and the benefactors having every motivation to promote and continue that state of fear to maintain their power/influence. Politically, this meant a never ending supply of ghosts but economically, it ALSO was employed with arguably greater negative impacts on society. Economics is a good one; our witch doctors (economists) shouldn't be upset and we can't address problems because it might destroy all the prosperity etc. (even if it has logical and historical backing, don't upset the "gods" continue to sacrifice virgins to the volcano.)
4) Ignorance breeds fear. Overconfidence breeds ignorance. Americans are embarrassingly overconfident and there are plenty of studies...
5) Distractions... again appeal to "base emotions" but also combined with the promotion selfishness (also a result of a socially engineered consumer society.) This greatly increases willful ignorance. Also, it adds to a feeling of powerlessness due to the lack of participation and observation. All that combined with the never ending list of pleasant escapes from reality.... One doesn't even need to try to make things unpleasant to get people to tune out; but they DO often resort to making issues unpleasant and more so today as things get worse to keep people retreating back to their escapes (which is a huge industry in itself, which doesn't have to advertize misery; that is free... and luckily for them it is a relative perspective for the human brain.)
Just when I think adults can't act even more childish and silly, they go do something like this. Whatever symbolism it may have had is gone when they just stop the reaction and start it again-- why as well put the Olympic logo on cigarette lighters and let everybody start and stop the branded "special" flame.
Wastes energy and pollutes. The best way is to have thermal storage and burn it hot and quickly with good mixing and an afterburner. I've seen such a setup; it puts out so much heat you never imagined there was so much heat in such a small amount of wood. A day's worth of heat could be done in under an hour but it would have to be stored and it took electricity during the burn for the blower. Water makes for a cheap storage medium; so I don't think the costs would be so bad... But the coolest part was the afterburner and the fluid dynamics used on it--- you could touch the thin metal case while it ran due to the over-engineering of the design (which also supported LP as a fuel too, it also did that well - not ideal, but well enough.. )
I've seen an ideal LP gas pulse burner too. Made a simple one for fun too! Mine was like building a rocket and sounded like a big truck idling - which was the downside. I had no interest in heating a warehouse and my lack the skill to scale it down to house size is the reason I didn't fix the noise problems (which could be resolved.)
It's not like this stuff is rocket science... well, actually, if you apply rocket science from the 60s you'd make wood and LP gassifiers far better than they have been; so far very little has been applied, because the industry has done fine without utilizing the brain power out there. Rocket-type science was used (physics by fluid dynamics profs who worked in plasma) in the two designs I mentioned; being the only interested person in a long time they were eager to share.