So far as I can tell, Latitude is no different from Buddy Beacon, Loopt, Whrrl, or any of a dozen other GPS-enabled "social networking" apps that'll happily send out your location to whomever you allow. But Latitude, specifically, and apparently only Latitude, is evil and dangerous.
I know hating on Google is the trendy thing these days, but come on.
How about prosecution for filing a false police report, or whatever the equivalent is in the airport's jurisdiction? I sure as hell hope that at the very least a civil suit for slander is in the works as well.
Who knows. But I think every state has criminal laws about making false reports to law enforcement. And I know there's a federal law about lying to agents. Plus, there's slander... not criminal but civil, and still a way to strike back at the racist little prig. Frankly, I hope they take the SOB for every penny he/she is worth. This sort of thing should never be tolerated. Heh... It'd be nice if EACH of the nine sued separately and consecutively.
> Agreed, stipulating that he never even bothered to look at or play the other %90 of the game.
To be fair though, that's all you'll ever see in the trial period.
Except maybe for Goonswarm... which does favor insane masses of disposable frigates and clones... and even there you have to already me an established member of Something Awful... a new character is isn't worth more than a bucket of warm spit to anybody anywhere. No one wants anything to do with you until you hit at least the 2-3 month mark. It's practically suicide to enter loSec during the trial period, to say nothing of 0.0. And what little PvE there is in the game is little more than an afterthought. So the other 90% of the game that he didn't review was completely closed off to him anyway... it's completely closed off to ANY new player.
> SMS is for times when a reply is not needed, and when timing isn't critical. > I don't really care if that message takes 5 seconds or 5 minutes to arrive, > and if the recipient takes an additional 10 minutes until reading it.
We already have a vastly superior solution for that problem. It's called email. Not only does it do everything that SMS does, let's have a quick looksie at its other advantages:
1) No 160 character limit per message 2) All my filters and rules work with email 3) Multiple accounts per phone 4) Since I use IMAP, the same email that's on my phone is on all of my computers. 5) Real attachments. Not that idiotic MMS kludge... REAL email attachments.
That's enough for me; though I'm sure I could think of more. Whereas the only advantage I can think of that SMS has over mail is that since it comes in over the GSM control channel, it's not reliant on a connection to the data network. But that's not really even an issue. Though I have my complaints about AT&T's G3 coverage, I can't think of any place where I don't get EDGE, except for underground areas where I get no signal at all.
See, that's exactly why I DON'T use text messages. I quit after a friend and I spent about ten text messages and twenty minutes of total elapsed time deciding when and where to meet for lunch one day. If either one of us had CALLED the other, the entire exchange would have taken less than a minute. That's the day I decided that the vast majority of text messaging is just a stupid and obnoxious waste of everyone's time.
I keep only the minimum plan now for: 1) those rare occasions where texting actually IS the most effective way of communicating (loud nightclubs, concerts, and the like) and 2) so I don't get charged for those handful of people who STILL insist on sending texts when calling would be more appropriate. I swear though... some people should really just get twitter accounts.
And you DO realize that you can just mute your phone, yes? I do it all the time. In fact, I can reach into my pocket and mute either one call or the entire phone by touch.
Leave the Admiral out of this! He's a naval officer in a legitimately uniformed combat unit which limits its engagements to legitimate military targets (the possibility of contractors notwithstanding).
Consider, though, is that the film in question is a right-wing propaganda piece. That's fairly outrageous and ironic in itself, considering that the message in "Imagine" is practically the polar opposite of republicanism; especially when you get the parts about no countries, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.
If I were in Yoko's place, I'd probably have sued as well; if only to make it damn clear that I was not affiliated with, and in no way endorsed, the drivel spouted by those people.
> Also, I'm kind of pissed that "a PC" means Windows...
> it means personal computer, does it not? Isn't my Linux
> machine a personal computer?
The term you're looking for is microcomputer. Your Linux box, my Macintosh, and some windows drone's PC are all microcomputers. But the Linux box and Macintosh are not PCs.
"PC", short for "Personal Computer", as you mention, is a marketing term coined by IBM for their entry into the microcomputer market, and later appropriated for clones of their architecture. That architecture, of course, is a microsoft OS running on Intel hardware. So Macs and Linux boxes don't qualify. It gets kind of fuzzy now that Macs run on Intel hardware too. They can be made into PCs by removing MacOS and installing windows; and then there's the whole Bootcamp/Parallels/MVware issue to fuzzy up the matter even more.
But out of the box, a Macintosh is not a mere PC; it is a Macintosh. Nor is your Linux box just a lowly PC. It is much more than that. But all three are microcomputers.
Bands, singers, musicians, and whatnot have been releasing "albums" that consist of one or two decent songs, and a remainder of utter crap, since long before digital music ever caught on. It's not the fault of Apple or iTunes, It's the "artists" themselves who get lazy, or who were never as creative as they sold themselves in the first place.
I don't know when the term "one hit wonder" was coined. But I do remember hearing it when I was just a wee tyke learning to program on the Apple ][+.
If you wanted Apple to MAIL it to you, they charged you the $20 for shipping and handling. If you were actually willing to get up, leave the house, and go to an Apple Store; they handed it to you for free just for asking. I got my copy, along with a cool T-Shirt and some other swag, at the grand opening of the Palo Alto location.
> Use another form of authentication, like color of vehicle, plate > number, or something else easily identifiable on the car.
The insufferable thing is... they already HAVE cameras with character recognition at the tolls gates. If you blow through the lane without paying the toll, fast-track or otherwise, the system snaps a photo of your license plate and you get a ticket for the violation in the mail a few days later. So if they were to just change their software, they could dispense with the expense and hassle of fast-track and the toll lanes, and just photo the license plates that use the bridges and bill you at the end of the month for that usage.
But that would mean giving up the ticket income for toll violations, the toll collectors are no doubt unionized, and someone is getting kickbacks on fast-track. Gotta love the government, eh?
I don't see why there is such the enmity between the Mac and Linux communities. Does no one else recall the old concept that: "The enemy of the enemy is my ally?". As a Mac user, I'm happy with every advance that Linux makes against gates and his minions. And Linux users should certainly be happy with every stride Apple makes against gates.
> The government against which war was declared collapsed five years ago
Incorrect. The US never legally declared war on iraq. That's a power that *does* reside solely with the congress, and no one else. Various executive branches have undermined this, of course. We've had "conflicts" and "police actions" and "operations" and "surges" and such. But the US hasn't actually been involved in a real and legal and declared war since WW2.
Well... Pelosi makes all the right promises, and then totally fails to carry them out. I, for one, don't get it. As Speaker of the House she has a tremendous amount of power, if only she'd grow enough of a pair to use it. But she has utterly failed to represent her constituents' wishes (I'm one on them, and will NOT be voting for her again.).
But her power is not that of a prime mover. She had the power to STOP Bush, to STOP the war, to STOP the more vile legislation. She was not the one who INITIATED any of that. So, while she's a failure, she's not the actual source of the malignancy. And no, that doesn't give her a free pass. But it also doesn't earn her the kind of enmity that must be directed toward the bushies.
Harry Reid... well... not my senator and not my particular thorn in the side. And the Senate Majority Leader doesn't have nearly so much power as the Speaker of the House anyway. He's just kind of... there. He's also a disappointment and a failure, don't get me wrong. But not to the degree as Pelosi.
But neither one of them are the SOURCE of what's been going terribly wrong these last eight years. So neither one deserves anywhere near the degree of blame.
Moreover, those thuggish minions with which he stacked the supreme court will be there fore DECADES. And the damage they will continue to do, during that time, will most probably take GENERATIONS to undo.
So yeah, I think it will be quite appropriate to loath bush and company for the damage they did and are doing to the contry for many MANY years to come.
I'll put aside my past experiences and conceptions about your profession and assume, just this once, that a police officer is speaking here in good faith.
Why do good cops tolerate the bad ones in your ranks? Why do you protect the Joey Williams's and the Salvatore Rivieri's when they choke-slam little kids into concrete? Why to you allow the Patrick Pogan's and Daniel Guzman's to get away with attacking adult bicyclists and news reporters?
Like it or not, as a member of a uniformed service, you not only are a representative of that service; but you also ARE REPRESENTED BY everyone else who wears that uniform. If you don't like that, if you want to protest to the public: "But I'm an individual.", you picked the wrong profession. You lost that right the instant you first dressed in the uniform and strapped on the badge. And it would go a long way toward the rehabilitation of your profession... your uniform... if, instead of closing ranks and protecting abusers like these, you disavowed yourselves of them, cast them out, and saw to it that they were punished every bit as severely* as any normal citizen who committed such acts.
( *And actually, I'm of the personal opinion that abusive and criminal cops should be punished much MORE severely than the general public. Police are entrusted by the public with greater power and authority. And I know it sounds like a comic book cliche and all, but with greater power comes greater responsibility. And if you break your trust with the public and abuse that power, the consequences should be extraordinarily severe.)
Yeah... slightly better than the crap that the likes of verizon and comcast are fond of pulling. But it IS still pretty evil, and a damn good argument for network neutrality legislation.
At the end of the day, the role of the bandwidth provider is to provide the bandwidth; not to play the role of censor, and dictate to people how to use that bandwidth. If AT&T can't deliver the service they sold to all the people to whom they've sold it; the onus is on THEM to upgrade their network so that they can do so. It is NOT the responsibility of the customer to refrain from using the bandwidth which they purchased in good faith.
In the short term, it's all academic anyway. So far as I'm aware, there's no Bittorrent client available for either my iPhone or Blackberry anyway. Hopefully, by the time there is, neutrality will have come through and congress or the FCC will do their job, and slap AT&T, an the rest, down into their place.
> employers are going to see Yale, Harvard, and Princeton degrees coming > across their desks with no way of determining whether the coursework > was completed on site or over the Internet.
Employers already have to deal with Yale, Harvard, and Princeton degrees coming across their desks with no way of determining wether the applicant was actually a top-tier student who earned his way in and aced the coursework; or the spoilt child of an alumnus, whose daddy paid their way into the student body and settled for "gentlemen's C's" across the board.
If an applicant's degree is your sole, or even primary, criteria; then you're a fool.
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm not familiar with the naval traditions of every country out there. But the US and UK, at least, (And those two have about the strongest naval triditions out there.) have no particular problem naming new ships after ones that sank.
After the first aircraft carrier iteration of the USS Yorktown (CV-5) sank after the battle of Midway, we named a new one after her just five carriers later (CV-10), and we have a guided missile cruiser in commission by the name right now. Also, the USS Indianapolis was sunk quite famously and horrifically. But we have a 688 class submarine with the name now.
Sometimes, the best way to honor a fallen vessel, is to continue its tradition.
You're on the wrong website to be spouting that tripe...
Gates, Allen, Ballmer,Bezos, Jobs, Wozinak, Ellison, Page, Brin, Yang... the lost goes on and on and none of them were born into their wealth. A good number of them even dropped out of college and still got rich. Sure, not all of us are going to get rich. But none of us are doomed to forever be poor.
> c) Below average students who now that we wasted our smart kids' talent can > now solve for x where x+2 = 5. They then drop out half way through, and end > up at a fast-food joint, or at a technical college where they will learn how to fix > cars, agricultural sciences, or other low-academic high-skill work.
You have a decent point otherwise. But please don't lump mechanics in with the burger-flippers, register-jockeys, and ditch-diggers there. Diagnosing and fixing an automobile is every bit as skilled a job as diagnosing and fixing a network. My mechanic just goes home dirtier than I do, is all.
Sure, there's no formal education system for his profession, and he doesn't have a BS or CCNA or anything. But the man's a genius with cars... every bit as good with them as I am with computers. He can usually tell what's wrong just by the sound! And it's a good thing too; because I'm a complete klutz, hate getting dirty, and am really just very much not mechanically inclined.
> By the same token, crime rates DROP when people are allowed more
> effective means to defend themselves, and tend to increase when they aren't.
Oh really?
Funny that you mention Japan later on, after spouting the above line of nonsense. Contrary to that the gun nuts would have you believe, guns are NOT actually illegal in Japan. They are simply well regulated. Hmmmm... "well regulated". That sounds strangely familiar; like maybe I've heard or read it somewhere, specifically relating to bearing arms, before.
Sure, every now and again, someone simply flips their lid and kills a bunch of people. But that happens pretty much EVERYWHERE. Meanwhile, on average, Japan has a MUCH lowercrimerate than many, if not most other countries (At least the ones on which we bother keeping the stats.) Also note, that those graphs show crime rates in absolute numbers. Click the "per capita" tab (Japan has about half the population of the US.), and their place in those lists drops down to about the level of your floor.
> California ID's have several features that would be hard for any non-professional printer to pull off.
Not that hard. And you don't even have to be well-to-do. $50 in any college town will get you an ID that'll fool any check short of an actual phone call to the DMV. The guy I know who used to make them could even record a magstripe that would pass the portable scanners. When the heat got too hot and he quit, I'm sure there were tears in both Berkeley and Santa Cruz for about two months... But he did pass on his knowledge to a couple of other people before he left the business.
I used to tend bar, was pretty good at catching fakes, still have the book with what to look for, and sat down with a magnifying glass for ten minutes; and damned if I could tell his handiwork from the real thing. And when even the magstripe reader is fooled... just WTFH are we supposed to believe are the odds of the TSA knuckledraggers catching the things?!?!?
I'm quite happy with the performance of my AAPL, thank you very much. I'm certainly much happier than I would be with DELL. Let mikey dell make the beige boxes for the bottom-feeders of the market. By the standards I care about, Steve Jobs is running Apple just fine, and Apple is already winning. I enjoy having a better computer and a better OS on my desk. And I enjoy the higher share prices in my etrade account.
Slashdot Mirror
So far as I can tell, Latitude is no different from Buddy Beacon, Loopt, Whrrl, or any of a dozen other GPS-enabled "social networking" apps that'll happily send out your location to whomever you allow. But Latitude, specifically, and apparently only Latitude, is evil and dangerous.
I know hating on Google is the trendy thing these days, but come on.
cya,
john
Same treatment?
How about prosecution for filing a false police report, or whatever the equivalent is in the airport's jurisdiction? I sure as hell hope that at the very least a civil suit for slander is in the works as well.
cya,
john
Who knows. But I think every state has criminal laws about making false reports to law enforcement. And I know there's a federal law about lying to agents. Plus, there's slander... not criminal but civil, and still a way to strike back at the racist little prig. Frankly, I hope they take the SOB for every penny he/she is worth. This sort of thing should never be tolerated. Heh... It'd be nice if EACH of the nine sued separately and consecutively.
cya,
john
> Agreed, stipulating that he never even bothered to look at or play the other %90 of the game.
To be fair though, that's all you'll ever see in the trial period.
Except maybe for Goonswarm... which does favor insane masses of disposable frigates and clones... and even there you have to already me an established member of Something Awful... a new character is isn't worth more than a bucket of warm spit to anybody anywhere. No one wants anything to do with you until you hit at least the 2-3 month mark. It's practically suicide to enter loSec during the trial period, to say nothing of 0.0. And what little PvE there is in the game is little more than an afterthought. So the other 90% of the game that he didn't review was completely closed off to him anyway... it's completely closed off to ANY new player.
cya,
john
> SMS is for times when a reply is not needed, and when timing isn't critical.
> I don't really care if that message takes 5 seconds or 5 minutes to arrive,
> and if the recipient takes an additional 10 minutes until reading it.
We already have a vastly superior solution for that problem. It's called email. Not only does it do everything that SMS does, let's have a quick looksie at its other advantages:
1) No 160 character limit per message
2) All my filters and rules work with email
3) Multiple accounts per phone
4) Since I use IMAP, the same email that's on my phone is on all of my computers.
5) Real attachments. Not that idiotic MMS kludge... REAL email attachments.
That's enough for me; though I'm sure I could think of more. Whereas the only advantage I can think of that SMS has over mail is that since it comes in over the GSM control channel, it's not reliant on a connection to the data network. But that's not really even an issue. Though I have my complaints about AT&T's G3 coverage, I can't think of any place where I don't get EDGE, except for underground areas where I get no signal at all.
cya,
john
"Value of our time"?
See, that's exactly why I DON'T use text messages. I quit after a friend and I spent about ten text messages and twenty minutes of total elapsed time deciding when and where to meet for lunch one day. If either one of us had CALLED the other, the entire exchange would have taken less than a minute. That's the day I decided that the vast majority of text messaging is just a stupid and obnoxious waste of everyone's time.
I keep only the minimum plan now for: 1) those rare occasions where texting actually IS the most effective way of communicating (loud nightclubs, concerts, and the like) and 2) so I don't get charged for those handful of people who STILL insist on sending texts when calling would be more appropriate. I swear though... some people should really just get twitter accounts.
And you DO realize that you can just mute your phone, yes? I do it all the time. In fact, I can reach into my pocket and mute either one call or the entire phone by touch.
cya,
john
Leave the Admiral out of this! He's a naval officer in a legitimately uniformed combat unit which limits its engagements to legitimate military targets (the possibility of contractors notwithstanding).
cya,
john
Consider, though, is that the film in question is a right-wing propaganda piece. That's fairly outrageous and ironic in itself, considering that the message in "Imagine" is practically the polar opposite of republicanism; especially when you get the parts about no countries, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.
If I were in Yoko's place, I'd probably have sued as well; if only to make it damn clear that I was not affiliated with, and in no way endorsed, the drivel spouted by those people.
cya,
john
> it means personal computer, does it not? Isn't my Linux
> machine a personal computer?
The term you're looking for is microcomputer. Your Linux box, my Macintosh, and some windows drone's PC are all microcomputers. But the Linux box and Macintosh are not PCs.
"PC", short for "Personal Computer", as you mention, is a marketing term coined by IBM for their entry into the microcomputer market, and later appropriated for clones of their architecture. That architecture, of course, is a microsoft OS running on Intel hardware. So Macs and Linux boxes don't qualify. It gets kind of fuzzy now that Macs run on Intel hardware too. They can be made into PCs by removing MacOS and installing windows; and then there's the whole Bootcamp/Parallels/MVware issue to fuzzy up the matter even more.
But out of the box, a Macintosh is not a mere PC; it is a Macintosh. Nor is your Linux box just a lowly PC. It is much more than that. But all three are microcomputers.
cya,
john
Bullocks!
Bands, singers, musicians, and whatnot have been releasing "albums" that consist of one or two decent songs, and a remainder of utter crap, since long before digital music ever caught on. It's not the fault of Apple or iTunes, It's the "artists" themselves who get lazy, or who were never as creative as they sold themselves in the first place.
I don't know when the term "one hit wonder" was coined. But I do remember hearing it when I was just a wee tyke learning to program on the Apple ][+.
cya,
john
Not quite.
If you wanted Apple to MAIL it to you, they charged you the $20 for shipping and handling. If you were actually willing to get up, leave the house, and go to an Apple Store; they handed it to you for free just for asking. I got my copy, along with a cool T-Shirt and some other swag, at the grand opening of the Palo Alto location.
cya,
john
> Use another form of authentication, like color of vehicle, plate
> number, or something else easily identifiable on the car.
The insufferable thing is... they already HAVE cameras with character recognition at the tolls gates. If you blow through the lane without paying the toll, fast-track or otherwise, the system snaps a photo of your license plate and you get a ticket for the violation in the mail a few days later. So if they were to just change their software, they could dispense with the expense and hassle of fast-track and the toll lanes, and just photo the license plates that use the bridges and bill you at the end of the month for that usage.
But that would mean giving up the ticket income for toll violations, the toll collectors are no doubt unionized, and someone is getting kickbacks on fast-track. Gotta love the government, eh?
cya,
john
EXACTLY!!!
I don't see why there is such the enmity between the Mac and Linux communities. Does no one else recall the old concept that: "The enemy of the enemy is my ally?". As a Mac user, I'm happy with every advance that Linux makes against gates and his minions. And Linux users should certainly be happy with every stride Apple makes against gates.
cya,
john
... then you're as wrong as I am.
> The government against which war was declared collapsed five years ago
Incorrect. The US never legally declared war on iraq. That's a power that *does* reside solely with the congress, and no one else. Various executive branches have undermined this, of course. We've had "conflicts" and "police actions" and "operations" and "surges" and such. But the US hasn't actually been involved in a real and legal and declared war since WW2.
cya,
john
Well... Pelosi makes all the right promises, and then totally fails to carry them out. I, for one, don't get it. As Speaker of the House she has a tremendous amount of power, if only she'd grow enough of a pair to use it. But she has utterly failed to represent her constituents' wishes (I'm one on them, and will NOT be voting for her again.).
But her power is not that of a prime mover. She had the power to STOP Bush, to STOP the war, to STOP the more vile legislation. She was not the one who INITIATED any of that. So, while she's a failure, she's not the actual source of the malignancy. And no, that doesn't give her a free pass. But it also doesn't earn her the kind of enmity that must be directed toward the bushies.
Harry Reid... well... not my senator and not my particular thorn in the side. And the Senate Majority Leader doesn't have nearly so much power as the Speaker of the House anyway. He's just kind of... there. He's also a disappointment and a failure, don't get me wrong. But not to the degree as Pelosi.
But neither one of them are the SOURCE of what's been going terribly wrong these last eight years. So neither one deserves anywhere near the degree of blame.
cya,
john
Moreover, those thuggish minions with which he stacked the supreme court will be there fore DECADES. And the damage they will continue to do, during that time, will most probably take GENERATIONS to undo.
So yeah, I think it will be quite appropriate to loath bush and company for the damage they did and are doing to the contry for many MANY years to come.
cya,
john
I'll put aside my past experiences and conceptions about your profession and assume, just this once, that a police officer is speaking here in good faith.
Why do good cops tolerate the bad ones in your ranks? Why do you protect the Joey Williams's and the Salvatore Rivieri's when they choke-slam little kids into concrete? Why to you allow the Patrick Pogan's and Daniel Guzman's to get away with attacking adult bicyclists and news reporters?
Like it or not, as a member of a uniformed service, you not only are a representative of that service; but you also ARE REPRESENTED BY everyone else who wears that uniform. If you don't like that, if you want to protest to the public: "But I'm an individual.", you picked the wrong profession. You lost that right the instant you first dressed in the uniform and strapped on the badge. And it would go a long way toward the rehabilitation of your profession... your uniform... if, instead of closing ranks and protecting abusers like these, you disavowed yourselves of them, cast them out, and saw to it that they were punished every bit as severely* as any normal citizen who committed such acts.
( *And actually, I'm of the personal opinion that abusive and criminal cops should be punished much MORE severely than the general public. Police are entrusted by the public with greater power and authority. And I know it sounds like a comic book cliche and all, but with greater power comes greater responsibility. And if you break your trust with the public and abuse that power, the consequences should be extraordinarily severe.)
cya,
john
Yeah... slightly better than the crap that the likes of verizon and comcast are fond of pulling. But it IS still pretty evil, and a damn good argument for network neutrality legislation.
At the end of the day, the role of the bandwidth provider is to provide the bandwidth; not to play the role of censor, and dictate to people how to use that bandwidth. If AT&T can't deliver the service they sold to all the people to whom they've sold it; the onus is on THEM to upgrade their network so that they can do so. It is NOT the responsibility of the customer to refrain from using the bandwidth which they purchased in good faith.
In the short term, it's all academic anyway. So far as I'm aware, there's no Bittorrent client available for either my iPhone or Blackberry anyway. Hopefully, by the time there is, neutrality will have come through and congress or the FCC will do their job, and slap AT&T, an the rest, down into their place.
cya,
john
> employers are going to see Yale, Harvard, and Princeton degrees coming
> across their desks with no way of determining whether the coursework
> was completed on site or over the Internet.
Employers already have to deal with Yale, Harvard, and Princeton degrees coming across their desks with no way of determining wether the applicant was actually a top-tier student who earned his way in and aced the coursework; or the spoilt child of an alumnus, whose daddy paid their way into the student body and settled for "gentlemen's C's" across the board.
If an applicant's degree is your sole, or even primary, criteria; then you're a fool.
cya,
john
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm not familiar with the naval traditions of every country out there. But the US and UK, at least, (And those two have about the strongest naval triditions out there.) have no particular problem naming new ships after ones that sank.
After the first aircraft carrier iteration of the USS Yorktown (CV-5) sank after the battle of Midway, we named a new one after her just five carriers later (CV-10), and we have a guided missile cruiser in commission by the name right now. Also, the USS Indianapolis was sunk quite famously and horrifically. But we have a 688 class submarine with the name now.
Sometimes, the best way to honor a fallen vessel, is to continue its tradition.
cya,
john
You're on the wrong website to be spouting that tripe...
Gates, Allen, Ballmer,Bezos, Jobs, Wozinak, Ellison, Page, Brin, Yang... the lost goes on and on and none of them were born into their wealth. A good number of them even dropped out of college and still got rich. Sure, not all of us are going to get rich. But none of us are doomed to forever be poor.
cya,
john
> c) Below average students who now that we wasted our smart kids' talent can
> now solve for x where x+2 = 5. They then drop out half way through, and end
> up at a fast-food joint, or at a technical college where they will learn how to fix
> cars, agricultural sciences, or other low-academic high-skill work.
You have a decent point otherwise. But please don't lump mechanics in with the burger-flippers, register-jockeys, and ditch-diggers there. Diagnosing and fixing an automobile is every bit as skilled a job as diagnosing and fixing a network. My mechanic just goes home dirtier than I do, is all.
Sure, there's no formal education system for his profession, and he doesn't have a BS or CCNA or anything. But the man's a genius with cars... every bit as good with them as I am with computers. He can usually tell what's wrong just by the sound! And it's a good thing too; because I'm a complete klutz, hate getting dirty, and am really just very much not mechanically inclined.
cya,
john
> effective means to defend themselves, and tend to increase when they aren't.
Oh really?
Funny that you mention Japan later on, after spouting the above line of nonsense. Contrary to that the gun nuts would have you believe, guns are NOT actually illegal in Japan. They are simply well regulated. Hmmmm... "well regulated". That sounds strangely familiar; like maybe I've heard or read it somewhere, specifically relating to bearing arms, before.
Sure, every now and again, someone simply flips their lid and kills a bunch of people. But that happens pretty much EVERYWHERE. Meanwhile, on average, Japan has a MUCH lower crime rate than many, if not most other countries (At least the ones on which we bother keeping the stats.) Also note, that those graphs show crime rates in absolute numbers. Click the "per capita" tab (Japan has about half the population of the US.), and their place in those lists drops down to about the level of your floor.
cya,
john
> California ID's have several features that would be hard for any non-professional printer to pull off.
Not that hard. And you don't even have to be well-to-do. $50 in any college town will get you an ID that'll fool any check short of an actual phone call to the DMV. The guy I know who used to make them could even record a magstripe that would pass the portable scanners. When the heat got too hot and he quit, I'm sure there were tears in both Berkeley and Santa Cruz for about two months... But he did pass on his knowledge to a couple of other people before he left the business.
I used to tend bar, was pretty good at catching fakes, still have the book with what to look for, and sat down with a magnifying glass for ten minutes; and damned if I could tell his handiwork from the real thing. And when even the magstripe reader is fooled... just WTFH are we supposed to believe are the odds of the TSA knuckledraggers catching the things?!?!?
cya,
john
cya,
john