Vancouver Island, I believe, sits on the pacific plate, while as we all know, mainland is on the north american plate. Now that project would be quite infeasible, and dangerous to boot.
That didn't stop the Japanese; although the Wikipedia article fails to mention it, the Akashi Strait Bridge is not only located in an earthquake-prone area, but actually spans a fault line!
I understand that many people here on slashdot have nothing in the way of engineering education, but your line of reasoning transcends engineering ignorance into pure lack of common fucking sense. It's a god damned hole in the ground, you moron. There are no subtle kinks to overlook. You point your digging machine at the ground and press the fucking "go" button. Honestly, can you even come up with a scenario that fits your flights of fancy about "overlooking the obvious"? IT'S A FUCKING TUNNEL!
I would say that I hope you die horribly in a tunnel collapse, but for the engineer's sake, I wouldn't wish a tunnel to collapse.
If that's true, then they ought to just all switch to Libertarian at once. Instead of acquring the stigma, they would eliminate it and legitimize the party (at least in that state).
Contrary to popular understanding, the Civil War was not fought for the purpose of ending slavery...
The Civil War was fought for the purpose of ending slavery in exactly the same way that Iraq was invaded for the purpose of ending terror and stopping the proliferation of WMDs.
Hint: It has nothing to do with particular geographical location
No kidding! I can just about guarantee it won't be in Georgia, unfortunately... we've got too many totalitarian "religious right" wackos around here for that!
Why couldn't whoever is saying "papers, please" be talking about a state ID?
It's still bad when it's about state IDs! The only differences are that at least its a lesser extent, and that it's a lot easier to move to a different state than to move to a different country.
There are probably others. But at least from July 4, 1776 until November 15, 1777 there is no doubt that there were 13 independent states in what is now the eastern USA.
Really?
Yes.
Can you tell me who the President of any of the countries was?
An entity doesn't have to have a "President" to be considered a country; in fact, most countries don't have "Presidents." They have "Prime Ministers" or "Premiers" or "Kings" or "Dictators" or whatever instead. In this case, the supreme executives were called "Governers."
Did these governments tax
Yes. This should be obvious, since they still do that now!
hold elections
Ditto.
print currency
Yes (scroll down for discussion of individual states' currencies).
raise an army
They all had, and in fact still technically have, their own militias.
send and receive ambassadors
Who did you think they sent to the first and second Continental Congresses? Clowns?
create treaties or any of the other things that "states" do?
Where does the Constitution allow for the FCC? Is the FCC unconstitutional?
Probably allowed by the Interstate Commerce Clause (hereafter referred to as "ICC"), since radio waves often cross state lines. Still, it's a bit of a stretch.
How about the Air Force?
Good question -- the Constitution provides for a navy, but armies are supposed to be raised ad-hoc for a maximum of two years. So is the Air Force more like a navy or an army? Or should it have required an Amendment to exist at all?
The national highway system...
ICC, probably. Also, it could be construed to be a "post road."
...HUD, CDC...
I'd say "unconstitutional;" they were probably (dubiously) justified by the ICC.
...CIA, FBI...
The FBI is on thinner ice than the CIA here; I'd say it could maybe be justified by the stuff about punishing "offenses against the law of nations" or the bits about the militia. The FBI I can't justify.
...the Marine Core...
Part of the Navy; it's OK.
...FEMA...
It's a stretch, but maybe it could be classified as "militia."
...social security...
Unconstitutional, no question (again, dubiously justified by the ICC).
OK, let me try it another way: If congress is only allowed to make laws that are specifically, (read: already) spelled out in the Constitution, why do we even have a congress at all?
To make laws about only those issues that can't be handled by the states.
Seems like don't really have much purpose.
Yep, that is how it was originally intended to be! The states were supposed to have more (or at least equal) power than the Federal government, and the people (and local goverment) were supposed to have more power than the states. Instead, the Civil War, New Deal, and everything after that created this topsy-turvy situation, which isn't how it's supposed to be at all.
Can we have the courts rule all these things out of existence?
I wish. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court is appointed by the Federal goverment (do you see the problem?).
you're assuming that the first person he encountered would've shot him dead, rather than after he's already shot twenty.
Nope, instead I'm making the point that even if that had occurred, there'd still be ten fewer people dead.
You're assuming that multiple armed people don't shoot each other, entirely unrelated to him, each thinking the other is the evil gunman, leaving him to keep on shooting other people.
No, I was just assuming it wouldn't happen "too many" times. I'd consider this a pretty good assumption -- it's not as if, even when guns are allowed, that many people would be carrying them. For example, as far as I know there's no prohibition against carrying a gun to class at GA Tech, but I've never heard of anyone ever doing so. Therefore, the more likely scenario is that there'd be only one or two armed people, at most, in any given place (unless the class in question was ROTC or something, of course).
In other words, you assume that everything goes perfectly for a single, armed, ideally fortunate person facing a madman, to come up with your estimate.
No, if that happened then exactly one person would get shot (the original gunman). The point is that everything doesn't have to go perfectly, because there's a 32-person margin of error! Even if 31 people mistakenly shoot each other before somebody finally disables the original gunman, they still come out ahead compared to not having guns.
Consider: you are carrying a concealed weapon and you hear gunfire coming from the room down the hall (or maybe from the floor below). You draw your weapon, and the next thing you know someone carrying a gun walks into the room. Is it another student from elsewhere in the building responding to the gunfire, or the nutcase? Do you shoot them before they can shoot you? Now add plenty of screaming and panic, and multiply this scenario by the number of different panicked scared students all carrying firearms.
Fact: today, over THIRTY people were killed (and more were shot and injured). Your scenario would have to occur about THIRTY times to equal that number of casualties. Is it likely that that could happen that many times before somebody took out the real gunman? I think not.
Or, in this horrible case, mistake someone firing back at the sniper as the actual sniper and shoot the wrong person.
In this case, that would have had to happen OVER THIRTY TIMES to become worse than the result caused by the lack of guns. In reality, the more likely scenario would be that that would happen at most once, and a grand total of maybe 2 or 3 people would have been shot, instead of 33!
My guess would be stress. I've seen grown men cry over single assignments, several of them, over the years here @ VT. The engineering kids are pushed really hard, and many of them don't deal with it very well. 60 hours a week of real work are pretty normal, with classes that everage 27-50%, which are only curved at the end (and nobody knows the curve till then). Try that for 4 years while growing up... Many engineering students I know end up having fairly empty shells of personalities, as their entire lives so far have circled around work and thinly veiled attempts at having a life on the side.
Jeez, that's fucked up! I go to Georgia Tech, which has a reputation of being a difficult engineering school, but it doesn't even come close to what you describe.
However, removing weapons from the market makes it much harder, and that means that fewer people die; hence, why some people place their personal safety in front of their right to bear arms, and call for tighter gun control.
The trouble with that theory is that "removing weapons from the market" doesn't actually happen. All that happens is that weapons get transferred from the normal market to the black market and the criminals still have them!
Actually, I fear crazy people who can just walk into K-Mart and arm themselves.
What are you, stupid? The "crazy people" will be able to arm themselves anyway, because they won't care about breaking the law. In reality, there are two choices: either everybody has guns, or only the criminals will have guns. Keeping the guns away from the criminals is not possible.
You don't, for example, have the right to make a copy of the whole book. But you are granted all rights but that.
That has nothing to do with some imaginary "license." All those rights are granted by the Doctrine of First Sale, as they are for all goods, and then copyright law takes away the right to make a copy.
Now, here's where the stupidity comes in: According to the current theory, software is different from every other product in the universe because the program code has to be copied into the computer's memory in order to run. This causes copyright law to kick in, meaning that you need extra permission (above and beyond the Doctrine of First Sale) in order to use it. This is the ridiculous, asinine, dumbass court decision that needs to be overturned.
I have yet to see (apart from that clause in Vista's EULA - which actually according to Paolo from Microsoft means that you aren't allowed to run the same copy of Windows as a guest where it is also installed as the Host OS, which is pretty "well, DUH!" anyway) any EULA which tries to remove a right other than the inevitable warranty disclaimer.
That's not what the license says. The exact wording is as follows:
4. USE WITH VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES. You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system.
This precludes running it as the guest OS even if it isn't the host, and you're only using it once. The text of the legal document takes precedence over the BS statements of some random Microsoft employee, you know!
I would be interested in seeing some of the more bizarre EULA clauses, so if you have any examples to share, please do.
Some EULAs, such as those for various database programs (Oracle and MS SQL, I think), disallow publishing benchmark results (or require running the tests in a specific "approved" way).
The Vista EULA prohibits accessing any DRM'd stuff from within a virtualized OS session.
EULAs are often non-transferable, and thus prohibit resale of the software.
The Vista EULA only allows you to install the software on a different device once. After that, it's worthless.
A U.S. appellate court rejected an argument similar to yours with respect to DVD-Video products in Universal v. Reimerdes.
Then this issue is in dire need of going to the Supreme Court, because EULAs are exactly as absurd as (hypothetically) IKEA telling you which rooms you are or are not allowed to put your new table in, just because you had to "agree" to something before being able to assemble it.
(Oh, by the way -- when I said "bullshit" in my previous post, I was referring to the situation, not you.)
Hey, guess what: there's nothing stopping you from funding the movie yourself if you want! Remember, he said patronage too. So if you want a non-government-made movie, pay for it yourself (you could even get together with other people, and pool your money). If you don't want to pay for it, you must not have wanted it enough anyway, so you have nothing to complain about.
What if I owned a PSP and wanted to play the New Super Mario Bros. on it? Would I be justified in warezing the rom and hacking my PSP's firmware to play it, so long as I sent my $30 check to Nintendo Norway?
Why not? Considering that in your example Nintendo still got their fair price for the game, can you think of anything that's actually ethically wrong with your scenario anyway? I can't.
The software also includes the explicit statement that should you not agree with the license agreement...
Which is irrelevant because I already own the damn thing without ever having seen any "agreement." It's already mine to use and otherwise do with as I please, within the bounds of the law. Effectively, the alleged "agreement" does not exist!
The software includes the explicit clause that it is licensed
I could include exactly the same clause wrapped around a book or an apple or a car or any other consumer good, but that doesn't make it true!
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Personally, I'd rather fund this than the Iraq occupation, even if it is pork!
No, he means "Russian gauge" vs. "standard [just-about-everywhere-but-Russia] gauge."
Which, of course, is a problem we brought upon ourselves by our boneheaded decision to build out roads instead of rails in the first place!
That didn't stop the Japanese; although the Wikipedia article fails to mention it, the Akashi Strait Bridge is not only located in an earthquake-prone area, but actually spans a fault line!
I would say that I hope you die horribly in a tunnel collapse, but for the engineer's sake, I wouldn't wish a tunnel to collapse.
If that's true, then they ought to just all switch to Libertarian at once. Instead of acquring the stigma, they would eliminate it and legitimize the party (at least in that state).
The Civil War was fought for the purpose of ending slavery in exactly the same way that Iraq was invaded for the purpose of ending terror and stopping the proliferation of WMDs.
Still on the phone? (That post was only maginally better than the first.)
No kidding! I can just about guarantee it won't be in Georgia, unfortunately... we've got too many totalitarian "religious right" wackos around here for that!
It's still bad when it's about state IDs! The only differences are that at least its a lesser extent, and that it's a lot easier to move to a different state than to move to a different country.
Yes.
An entity doesn't have to have a "President" to be considered a country; in fact, most countries don't have "Presidents." They have "Prime Ministers" or "Premiers" or "Kings" or "Dictators" or whatever instead. In this case, the supreme executives were called "Governers."
Yes. This should be obvious, since they still do that now!
Ditto.
Yes (scroll down for discussion of individual states' currencies).
They all had, and in fact still technically have, their own militias.
Who did you think they sent to the first and second Continental Congresses? Clowns?
Yes.
Probably allowed by the Interstate Commerce Clause (hereafter referred to as "ICC"), since radio waves often cross state lines. Still, it's a bit of a stretch.
Good question -- the Constitution provides for a navy, but armies are supposed to be raised ad-hoc for a maximum of two years. So is the Air Force more like a navy or an army? Or should it have required an Amendment to exist at all?
ICC, probably. Also, it could be construed to be a "post road."
I'd say "unconstitutional;" they were probably (dubiously) justified by the ICC.
The FBI is on thinner ice than the CIA here; I'd say it could maybe be justified by the stuff about punishing "offenses against the law of nations" or the bits about the militia. The FBI I can't justify.
Part of the Navy; it's OK.
It's a stretch, but maybe it could be classified as "militia."
Unconstitutional, no question (again, dubiously justified by the ICC).
To make laws about only those issues that can't be handled by the states.
Yep, that is how it was originally intended to be! The states were supposed to have more (or at least equal) power than the Federal government, and the people (and local goverment) were supposed to have more power than the states. Instead, the Civil War, New Deal, and everything after that created this topsy-turvy situation, which isn't how it's supposed to be at all.
I wish. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court is appointed by the Federal goverment (do you see the problem?).
Nope, instead I'm making the point that even if that had occurred, there'd still be ten fewer people dead.
No, I was just assuming it wouldn't happen "too many" times. I'd consider this a pretty good assumption -- it's not as if, even when guns are allowed, that many people would be carrying them. For example, as far as I know there's no prohibition against carrying a gun to class at GA Tech, but I've never heard of anyone ever doing so. Therefore, the more likely scenario is that there'd be only one or two armed people, at most, in any given place (unless the class in question was ROTC or something, of course).
No, if that happened then exactly one person would get shot (the original gunman). The point is that everything doesn't have to go perfectly, because there's a 32-person margin of error! Even if 31 people mistakenly shoot each other before somebody finally disables the original gunman, they still come out ahead compared to not having guns.
Fact: today, over THIRTY people were killed (and more were shot and injured). Your scenario would have to occur about THIRTY times to equal that number of casualties. Is it likely that that could happen that many times before somebody took out the real gunman? I think not.
In this case, that would have had to happen OVER THIRTY TIMES to become worse than the result caused by the lack of guns. In reality, the more likely scenario would be that that would happen at most once, and a grand total of maybe 2 or 3 people would have been shot, instead of 33!
Jeez, that's fucked up! I go to Georgia Tech, which has a reputation of being a difficult engineering school, but it doesn't even come close to what you describe.
The trouble with that theory is that "removing weapons from the market" doesn't actually happen. All that happens is that weapons get transferred from the normal market to the black market and the criminals still have them!
What are you, stupid? The "crazy people" will be able to arm themselves anyway, because they won't care about breaking the law. In reality, there are two choices: either everybody has guns, or only the criminals will have guns. Keeping the guns away from the criminals is not possible.
No, it's not. Books are bought, not licensed.
That has nothing to do with some imaginary "license." All those rights are granted by the Doctrine of First Sale, as they are for all goods, and then copyright law takes away the right to make a copy.
Now, here's where the stupidity comes in: According to the current theory, software is different from every other product in the universe because the program code has to be copied into the computer's memory in order to run. This causes copyright law to kick in, meaning that you need extra permission (above and beyond the Doctrine of First Sale) in order to use it. This is the ridiculous, asinine, dumbass court decision that needs to be overturned.
That's not what the license says. The exact wording is as follows:
This precludes running it as the guest OS even if it isn't the host, and you're only using it once. The text of the legal document takes precedence over the BS statements of some random Microsoft employee, you know!
(Source for Vista EULA info.)
And I'm sure there are many other absurd, unfair clauses in EULAs; these are just the few that 3 seconds of searching Google found.
...claims the guy who has nothing better to do than to criticize strangers on a web forum. How pitiful.
Yahoo may try to be evil, but Microsoft is far more successful at it.
Then this issue is in dire need of going to the Supreme Court, because EULAs are exactly as absurd as (hypothetically) IKEA telling you which rooms you are or are not allowed to put your new table in, just because you had to "agree" to something before being able to assemble it.
(Oh, by the way -- when I said "bullshit" in my previous post, I was referring to the situation, not you.)
Hey, guess what: there's nothing stopping you from funding the movie yourself if you want! Remember, he said patronage too. So if you want a non-government-made movie, pay for it yourself (you could even get together with other people, and pool your money). If you don't want to pay for it, you must not have wanted it enough anyway, so you have nothing to complain about.
Why not? Considering that in your example Nintendo still got their fair price for the game, can you think of anything that's actually ethically wrong with your scenario anyway? I can't.
Which is irrelevant because I already own the damn thing without ever having seen any "agreement." It's already mine to use and otherwise do with as I please, within the bounds of the law. Effectively, the alleged "agreement" does not exist!
I could include exactly the same clause wrapped around a book or an apple or a car or any other consumer good, but that doesn't make it true!