I don't think that there's any evidence that he was a Nazi. He joined the Hitler Youth program at 14 because the law required it, and he was drafted into the German military later on because again, the law required it. There are accounts suggesting that he didn't like being in the former, and he deserted from the later. Pretty much any German of his age would have gone through the exact same thing, whether they supported the Nazi regime or not. The only ones who didn't were killed either under Action T4 or just for insubordination.
I'm not standing up for him by the way, personally I couldn't care less about anything the Vatican does. I'm an atheist so I have no reason for doing so anyways; I'm just stating the known facts.
As a strong anti-regulation libertarian myself, even I will accept and even encourage certain forms of regulation. Namely the EPA to "keep london tidy", and anything to break apart monopolies. What McCain suggests here falls in line with my anti-monopoly stance.
I also hold that opinion on other subjects that many self identified leftists hate though. For example, I like right to work laws (yes, these are regulations) because they break up the monopoly on the supply of labor that labor unions create. That monopoly harms both the workers and the employers (the workers become the product of the union, and are forced to pay the labor union and support all of its heavy handed lobbying efforts, even if they disagree with it politically - if you don't want to fund their cause, then they can legally force your employer to fire you - a very anti-democratic practice. The employer thus has to bend to the union rules, including answering to demands such as featherbedding - where for example, after the invention of shipping containers, the dock workers unions forced the companies to hire people to remove the individual contents of a shipping container and load them into another shipping container on the ship, instead of simply using a crane to move the entire container over at once.)
You as a customer hate when a company has a monopoly. An employer is a customer of its employees in a sense, and it's not fair when they have to answer to a monopoly either.
At risk of sounding like I'm against education, I have to ask: Who cares about educational programming? Who ever did other than the occasional "let's feel good, and think of the children" politician or layman?
When I was a kid, I never watched educational programs. I don't even know anybody who did. Sesame street is the only valid example I can think of, and it is so profitable and so not dead that its owners are wealthy beyond belief.
I get tired of hearing people saying we need to more educational programming. What good does it do when nobody watches it? We mostly only watch TV to get entertained, so let TV stay entertaining. Personally I gave up on TV a long time ago, but there's no sense at all in telling people what they should watch. Besides, with the rise of the internet and youtube, there is far more educational video content now than ever, readily available to the viewer on demand no less.
I don't feel that way at all. When the nexus 7 came around I already had a 9" tablet, and I didn't like how unwieldy it was for reading on a casual basis. Sure, there were dedicated eBook readers, but it would be kind of lame to carry around both devices. So here comes the nexus 7, about the same size and weight as a paperback novel, and it runs all of my apps. That was a no brainer, even though I had already owned a tablet, so price wasn't the issue.
Honestly I don't see this putting the weapons manufacturers out of business even if it was cheaper. Most legitimate firearms owners are collectors, hence that figure of there being more firearms than people in the USA (or whatever it is, it's often used as an argument in favor of gun control, and a rather stupid argument at that.) Anything you can just print up willy nilly isn't exactly collector material.
I think you've just demonstrated that Bill Gates is right on this one.
You see, people want smaller lighter devices that are easier to carry around. This is why for example, the ipad sold well, and then the smaller tablets sold even better. However these smaller devices pose a problem: their form factor mostly delegates them to content consumption, with very limited content creation.
And what is it that engineers do? Solve problems. Does that mean the solution is with Microsoft? Not necessarily. But the next "killer device" could be something that lets you have your cake and eat it too. Remember, apple assumed that nobody would want tablets smaller than 9". Turns out they did. Really, really did. Apple is also assuming that people don't want to be very productive on a tablet. Bill Gates is simply saying that the later assumption is wrong, and if you read most of the comments on slashdot, he's right because that is the number one complaint about these devices.
Likewise, Bill Gates suggests that Microsoft is pushing in that direction. In my opinion, the current Microsoft implementation does nothing to solve this problem. Namely, the surface is neither a laptop nor a tablet. It tries to do both, and doesn't do either particularly well. Unlike a laptop it doesn't work when its on your lap, and unlike a nexus 7 or ipad mini it doesn't fit in your pocket.
Although, GP is only kidding himself if he thinks the demand for MS Office isn't there (as opposed to say libreoffice, which while good, apparently isn't enough for most organizations out there - in the words of those organizations that is.)
What if the engineers were good enough that they engineered a way to make their development costs cheaper?
Not saying that this is what is happening (without more information, I have no idea what is actually happening), but that is one of the things engineers do aim for.
Well for example, plastic from the beginning isn't as clear, and over time turns yellow. This means you'll have slower data rates, and over time they get even slower. This is why for example that TOSLINK optical cable was only capable of 4mbit whereas SPDIF coax could do 10mbit, because they wanted to take into account cable degredation. Glass doesn't have any of these problems; as far as we know it can last forever.
And LED is only capable of transmitting a single channel, not to mention that like plastic, over time it dims and you'll have that degraded performance over time I talked about. And while lasers don't last forever, they certainly last longer than LED's.
Nobody needs to appoint me, what I'm stating is just a fact. If you cut corners, you'll regret it. If you want the government to take over and build its own LED/plastic fiber network, be my guest, but don't get pissed off later when you run into problems.
And also, if you actually read what I posted, fiber still needs a lot of copper, so your copper argument doesn't work. And yes, wireless capacity can and does increase, even without increasing spectrum. For example, when we first started using wireless, we used TDMA. TDMA is horribly inefficient compared to CDMA in terms of both aggregate bandwidth and range, or the even better OFDMA modulation that LTE uses. There are also other techniques that we don't use yet such as polarization because the technology to miniaturize it just isn't there yet.
I don't think you understand the technology. In fact I don't even think I need to explain all of this. Judging by your hostile tone, I think you're just arguing just for the sake of arguing. It just so happens that Verizon has the most reliable, fastest, well covered wireless network in the US, so I think their engineers probably know pretty well what they're doing. If their engineers say this will work better than rebuilding the copper network from the ground up, I'll believe them.
Those maintenance fees cover the occasional fried wire, copper theft, or some derp digging where he isn't supposed to. They aren't meant to cover an entire infrastructure being demolished.
And I wouldn't be surprised if it's completely true. People like myself have long since moved from POTS to wireless. That isn't a corporate conspiracy, that is a fact brought about by consumer choice. That being the case, why are we going to maintain old copper lines that people don't want anymore?
Virtual circuits make a lot more sense than switched circuits. This is the same reason why in every other form of communication that exists, we've moved away from TDMA (this is where the t in t-carrier comes from, aka t1, t3, by the way) and to CDMA, ODFMA, PSK, and other similar technologies that allow multiple virtual channels within a single physical channel, all without sacrificing quality (indeed, these technologies allow for better voice quality than POTS can ever deliver.)
It's one thing to run a trunk line to the towers, and a whole other thing (due to flooding) to dig up and replace the smaller lines to each individual house.
I think they're far more likely to do a better job with modern wireless than POTS anyways. Newer modulation techniques allow for far more bandwidth and signal reliability, especially given that since you aren't dealing with a tiny cell phone with limited battery you could get away with using a higher power transmitter at the customer end, coupled with a UPS for emergency use.
You have to keep in mind as well that POTS also has a finite number of possible links at once, dare I say probably even more limited than wireless. In a POTS connection, you are literally establishing a dedicated circuit from point A to point B by use of a series of automated switchboards. There are only going to be so many circuits that can be active at any one time in any particular area. This is one reason, by the way, that long distance POTS calls are more expensive than long distance wireless calls, and consequently why wireless carriers make no distinction between local and long distance: they use virtual circuits instead of switched circuits.
No, fiber is far more expensive if you do it proper. That is, using actual glass fibers as opposed to plastic, and using lasers instead of LED. Not even just talking about the materials, actually properly terminating fiber lines requires a bit of skill and some tools that aren't cheap, unlike say voice grade copper that requires a simple punch tool.
In addition, running fiber not only requires the fiber itself, but you also have to have repeaters, which means you need copper power lines running parallel with the fiber lines. Sure you could depend on the power grid, but then you have to forgo the classic emergency benefit where the phone lines worked even during a blackout. This is precisely the reason why all long distance fiber lines do invariably come with copper, in fact many of which need a lot of copper (far more than voice grade lines) since one of the sheathing layers is made out of copper to make it more resilient against damage while still being somewhat flexible.
DSL itself is rather low tech, and is probably right now about as good as its going to get, likewise IMO it's not even worth bothering to rebuild it. You can only do so much with voice grade copper since it can only carry a very limited number of channels, unlike say cable which is shielded far better and is easily capable of 5.1Gbit/s if you use all available channels up to 1Ghz. (In most of the existing infrastructure you can go up to 3Ghz, it's just a matter of having better transmitters and receivers to take advantage of it. Dump the analog channels and you'll get even more out of it.)
Perhaps they just want to make sure that you are actually poor before you can receive any dole payments. In other words, somebody with a more modern system is more likely to be able to afford to cover their own living expenses.
Right, because that already just works SOOO well against drugs. I mean, the things basically don't exist these days.
Firearms violations in the US are more of a cultural issue. When you compare similar weapons control laws to other countries, you start to see that it isn't actually the laws that make a difference. In fact, even within the US, it's very often the case that the areas with the highest restrictions against firearms tend to have the highest per capita weapons violations.
That and cold weather causes more homicides, as evidenced by this:
No, he's right. I'm sick of this "let's blame all of the worlds problems on the megacorps and the 1%" syndrome. It's stupid and just creates a divisive "us vs them" mentality when often times the "them" are either on your side or have nothing to do with whatever the hell it is you're fighting.
Every time somebody such as yourself goes on this tirade it makes me think of how stupid a group of otherwise at least mildly intelligent people can become, like the Salem witch trials. The boogeyman you are fighting is one you yourself created. Emmanuel Goldstein doesn't fucking exist.
Apparently you frequently ditched history 101 and eventually dropped out.
You can't impeach somebody for adultery. Likewise, that isn't why he was impeached. He was impeached because he perjured himself and obstructed justice. Typically people go to jail for that.
As for the war - without commenting on my opinion of the war itself - it was initiated, waged, and executed every bit as legally as any other war the US has been involved in, declared or undeclared, as prescribed by the US legal system. Now as far as the UN is concerned, that one is debatable, however it hasn't been challenged for many reasons, several elements of which are the result of our never agreeing to become a signatory to the international criminal court treaty.
You know who originally lobbied against our ratifying that treaty? Bill Clinton. George Bush was openly hostile to it, and later Barack Obama openly and outright refused to oblige what it asks for (you're expected to oblige the rules of a treaty when you've signed but not ratified it.)
All three of these men did the right thing. In the global political landscape, American servicemen are political targets plain and simple. They'd never receive a fair trial simply because of the fact that they serve under our banner, and all three of those presidents are fully aware of it. Frankly, it would be foolish to think otherwise. Yes, we do vote stupid people into office, but fortunately they aren't that stupid.
Just a comment on the foreign relations - nothing has really changed with regard to our public image. The last guy set terms to dictators, the current guy rather embarrassingly bows to them. Yet their opinion of us remains largely the same.
(Though as far as respecting customs and those whatnots, they're both the same. And the Bush doctrine - of foreign governments being either fully with us or fully against us when it comes to pursuing terrorists within their borders - is still in full force, and has always had the blessing of most world governments, many of whom have even adopted it themselves. And frankly, I support it too - it was about time that we ended the days where you could commit mass murder and then simply run to a place with no extradition treaty.)
Bitcoin doesn't take any effort to obtain it. Running a computer program isn't effort.
Yes, it does need effort. For one, you actually need the equipment to do it. Try mining gold with your bare hands.
Second, instead of that equipment doing some other task, its time is allocated to mining.
This is the kind of crap that members of the bitcoin bubble use to try and convince each other. To some primitive cultures, sharks teeth had a value, as a cutting tool and/or jewellery. That's intrinsic worth. In some cases they might have been bartered because of that. That doesn't make them currency. Again bitcoins have no intrinsic worth.
Ok if you want to go that route, then consider that human teeth have been used as currency, and they don't make particularly good tools or interesting jewelry.
I'm well aware of the size of the drug trade. But the drug trade per se isn't working in bit-coins. They love their traditional bank-notes. You mentioned one drug-dealer with a web-site. Who's clearly also a foolish libertarian who's got caught up in the bubble.
And here's the thing: Some journalists investigating the silk road have found that those who have used it by far prefer it over traditional distribution means. Apparently it's easier to verify the authenticity of the dealer, and it's easier to track their reputation, all without ever knowing anything about who that dealer is or even a hint at where they are located. And, most importantly, apparently on the silk road, the goods they acquire are consistently of a much higher quality. The silk road is rapidly growing.
Just like the race-track. Funny how everyone you hear from is a winner! Amazing how these sequences of bits have created value out of thin air! No one's lost any money!
Hmm...no. People have "lost" money and always do in the same sense that you lose money if you buy a pizza. In other words, they didn't actually lose anything, they simply used bitcoins as a means to an end.
Are you into tin-foil hats as well? Like most people here I argue about all sorts of shit. Especially when people are being dumb.
I think what is most telling is how hostile you are towards bitcoin. Again, you have obviously devoted yourself towards seeing it fail, otherwise you'd be making no mention of it. Somebody who owns bitcoins must have kicked your puppy. Either that or more realistically you are ideologically opposed to the idea that it could eventually become mainstream, just like Krugman.
But as I say, I actually want libertarians to continue with bitcoins. The bigger the stupidity, the more entertaining it is.
Yeah reminds me of what creationists commonly say about evolution. They always go on and on about how it isn't proven and it's so obvious that there's a god that it's just entertaining watching them try to prove otherwise. I've even recently read one who posted a comment about what he found was the "final nail in the coffin" of evolution. Like you, they always see the vindication of a new breakthrough as a sign of failure.
Actually there is, but people are not willing to accept or even to discuss it because its not politically correct to entertain the possibility that evolution allowed more differences between the races than just skin color. Merely suggesting that you noticed a correlation gets you labeled a racist.
Personally I'm fully willing to consider that viewpoint, but it doesn't make sense when you take some things into consideration.
When you look at the genetics of it, it's actually apparent that whites have more in common with blacks than any other race, at least when it comes to the bits that help decide intellect. "Brown" people tend to be asian and therefore mongoloid, to include e.g. India. This applies to latinos and native americans as well who share the same mongoloid roots with some anglo interbreeding. Mongoloid people have very rounded skulls. However blacks and whites tend to have elongated skulls which more closely resemble one another than mongoloids.
Other traits such as tendons also tend to be more similar among whites and blacks than among mongoloids.
Anyways, asians of far eastern cultures tend to excel way beyond any other groups academically. Beyond whites even. Yet native americans and latinos do not, even though they are genetically very similar. I think the reason for this is kind of obvious when you look at the cultural differences. Native americans today are very self entitled. E.g. because of how badly they were treated in the past, many of them believe that they are now entitled to payback. Yet east asian cultures instil high respect, dignity, discipline, and responsibility for your own actions. There are very few native american tribes who hold similar cultural values, and they are very very well off. One of their cultural values in fact is to refuse any government handouts, which probably helps a lot. Try telling a liberal that, and they won't believe it, but it's true.
And then of course you have the mexicans. Another thing of interest is to note how cubans tend to be more successful than mexicans, and when you look at why, the answer to that seems kind of obvious. Cubans who came to america did so because they reject the idea that everybody is entitled to everything - basically they are ideologically opposed to everything the cuban government espouses, which leads to their success. They came here because they like the idea that if you work on it, you can become more than what the government tells you you can become. Mexicans work the opposite though - they come here with the knowledge that all they have to do is have a kid here, and that automatically entitles them to free food, health care, and cash assistance.
(I think if we got rid of birthright citizenship, that later problem would go away. That will never happen though - the hispanic voters already have too high of numbers, and they'll never vote for anybody who would want to do that, so no politicians will touch it with a ten foot pole. But I digress.)
All of the above just shows me that cultural values influence this more than anything. There could be genetic disposition, but I don't think it is strong enough to make a significant difference. One of my favorite philosophers happens to be black by the way, his name is Thomas Sowell - that guy knows his shit when it comes to a lot of things, especially education and economics.
I'll agree with that. You tend to hold little value of things that are just given to you.
When my parents stopped giving me a $20 a month allowance when I was about 13 or so, I started to value money quite a bit more after that. I think that is part of the reason why I am so financially disciplined (i.e. never borrowing anything, and only spending when it makes sense rather than because I get something shiny - though I can get the occasional shiny thing.)
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I don't think that there's any evidence that he was a Nazi. He joined the Hitler Youth program at 14 because the law required it, and he was drafted into the German military later on because again, the law required it. There are accounts suggesting that he didn't like being in the former, and he deserted from the later. Pretty much any German of his age would have gone through the exact same thing, whether they supported the Nazi regime or not. The only ones who didn't were killed either under Action T4 or just for insubordination.
I'm not standing up for him by the way, personally I couldn't care less about anything the Vatican does. I'm an atheist so I have no reason for doing so anyways; I'm just stating the known facts.
As a strong anti-regulation libertarian myself, even I will accept and even encourage certain forms of regulation. Namely the EPA to "keep london tidy", and anything to break apart monopolies. What McCain suggests here falls in line with my anti-monopoly stance.
I also hold that opinion on other subjects that many self identified leftists hate though. For example, I like right to work laws (yes, these are regulations) because they break up the monopoly on the supply of labor that labor unions create. That monopoly harms both the workers and the employers (the workers become the product of the union, and are forced to pay the labor union and support all of its heavy handed lobbying efforts, even if they disagree with it politically - if you don't want to fund their cause, then they can legally force your employer to fire you - a very anti-democratic practice. The employer thus has to bend to the union rules, including answering to demands such as featherbedding - where for example, after the invention of shipping containers, the dock workers unions forced the companies to hire people to remove the individual contents of a shipping container and load them into another shipping container on the ship, instead of simply using a crane to move the entire container over at once.)
You as a customer hate when a company has a monopoly. An employer is a customer of its employees in a sense, and it's not fair when they have to answer to a monopoly either.
At risk of sounding like I'm against education, I have to ask: Who cares about educational programming? Who ever did other than the occasional "let's feel good, and think of the children" politician or layman?
When I was a kid, I never watched educational programs. I don't even know anybody who did. Sesame street is the only valid example I can think of, and it is so profitable and so not dead that its owners are wealthy beyond belief.
I get tired of hearing people saying we need to more educational programming. What good does it do when nobody watches it? We mostly only watch TV to get entertained, so let TV stay entertaining. Personally I gave up on TV a long time ago, but there's no sense at all in telling people what they should watch. Besides, with the rise of the internet and youtube, there is far more educational video content now than ever, readily available to the viewer on demand no less.
I don't feel that way at all. When the nexus 7 came around I already had a 9" tablet, and I didn't like how unwieldy it was for reading on a casual basis. Sure, there were dedicated eBook readers, but it would be kind of lame to carry around both devices. So here comes the nexus 7, about the same size and weight as a paperback novel, and it runs all of my apps. That was a no brainer, even though I had already owned a tablet, so price wasn't the issue.
On mythbusters they actually found a fully working semi automatic made by a prison inmate, created entirely from improvised tools.
Honestly I don't see this putting the weapons manufacturers out of business even if it was cheaper. Most legitimate firearms owners are collectors, hence that figure of there being more firearms than people in the USA (or whatever it is, it's often used as an argument in favor of gun control, and a rather stupid argument at that.) Anything you can just print up willy nilly isn't exactly collector material.
I think you've just demonstrated that Bill Gates is right on this one.
You see, people want smaller lighter devices that are easier to carry around. This is why for example, the ipad sold well, and then the smaller tablets sold even better. However these smaller devices pose a problem: their form factor mostly delegates them to content consumption, with very limited content creation.
And what is it that engineers do? Solve problems. Does that mean the solution is with Microsoft? Not necessarily. But the next "killer device" could be something that lets you have your cake and eat it too. Remember, apple assumed that nobody would want tablets smaller than 9". Turns out they did. Really, really did. Apple is also assuming that people don't want to be very productive on a tablet. Bill Gates is simply saying that the later assumption is wrong, and if you read most of the comments on slashdot, he's right because that is the number one complaint about these devices.
Likewise, Bill Gates suggests that Microsoft is pushing in that direction. In my opinion, the current Microsoft implementation does nothing to solve this problem. Namely, the surface is neither a laptop nor a tablet. It tries to do both, and doesn't do either particularly well. Unlike a laptop it doesn't work when its on your lap, and unlike a nexus 7 or ipad mini it doesn't fit in your pocket.
Although, GP is only kidding himself if he thinks the demand for MS Office isn't there (as opposed to say libreoffice, which while good, apparently isn't enough for most organizations out there - in the words of those organizations that is.)
Perhaps you were looking for this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274518/
What if the engineers were good enough that they engineered a way to make their development costs cheaper?
Not saying that this is what is happening (without more information, I have no idea what is actually happening), but that is one of the things engineers do aim for.
Well technically if you have marketing but no engineering then your ratio is infinite because you are dividing by zero.
Well for example, plastic from the beginning isn't as clear, and over time turns yellow. This means you'll have slower data rates, and over time they get even slower. This is why for example that TOSLINK optical cable was only capable of 4mbit whereas SPDIF coax could do 10mbit, because they wanted to take into account cable degredation. Glass doesn't have any of these problems; as far as we know it can last forever.
And LED is only capable of transmitting a single channel, not to mention that like plastic, over time it dims and you'll have that degraded performance over time I talked about. And while lasers don't last forever, they certainly last longer than LED's.
Nobody needs to appoint me, what I'm stating is just a fact. If you cut corners, you'll regret it. If you want the government to take over and build its own LED/plastic fiber network, be my guest, but don't get pissed off later when you run into problems.
And also, if you actually read what I posted, fiber still needs a lot of copper, so your copper argument doesn't work. And yes, wireless capacity can and does increase, even without increasing spectrum. For example, when we first started using wireless, we used TDMA. TDMA is horribly inefficient compared to CDMA in terms of both aggregate bandwidth and range, or the even better OFDMA modulation that LTE uses. There are also other techniques that we don't use yet such as polarization because the technology to miniaturize it just isn't there yet.
I don't think you understand the technology. In fact I don't even think I need to explain all of this. Judging by your hostile tone, I think you're just arguing just for the sake of arguing. It just so happens that Verizon has the most reliable, fastest, well covered wireless network in the US, so I think their engineers probably know pretty well what they're doing. If their engineers say this will work better than rebuilding the copper network from the ground up, I'll believe them.
Those maintenance fees cover the occasional fried wire, copper theft, or some derp digging where he isn't supposed to. They aren't meant to cover an entire infrastructure being demolished.
And I wouldn't be surprised if it's completely true. People like myself have long since moved from POTS to wireless. That isn't a corporate conspiracy, that is a fact brought about by consumer choice. That being the case, why are we going to maintain old copper lines that people don't want anymore?
Virtual circuits make a lot more sense than switched circuits. This is the same reason why in every other form of communication that exists, we've moved away from TDMA (this is where the t in t-carrier comes from, aka t1, t3, by the way) and to CDMA, ODFMA, PSK, and other similar technologies that allow multiple virtual channels within a single physical channel, all without sacrificing quality (indeed, these technologies allow for better voice quality than POTS can ever deliver.)
Easy, use a UPS. Phones require very little power, so even a cheaper one could last a week or longer.
Pull up google and look up what tongue in cheek means, numbnuts.
It's one thing to run a trunk line to the towers, and a whole other thing (due to flooding) to dig up and replace the smaller lines to each individual house.
I think they're far more likely to do a better job with modern wireless than POTS anyways. Newer modulation techniques allow for far more bandwidth and signal reliability, especially given that since you aren't dealing with a tiny cell phone with limited battery you could get away with using a higher power transmitter at the customer end, coupled with a UPS for emergency use.
You have to keep in mind as well that POTS also has a finite number of possible links at once, dare I say probably even more limited than wireless. In a POTS connection, you are literally establishing a dedicated circuit from point A to point B by use of a series of automated switchboards. There are only going to be so many circuits that can be active at any one time in any particular area. This is one reason, by the way, that long distance POTS calls are more expensive than long distance wireless calls, and consequently why wireless carriers make no distinction between local and long distance: they use virtual circuits instead of switched circuits.
No, fiber is far more expensive if you do it proper. That is, using actual glass fibers as opposed to plastic, and using lasers instead of LED. Not even just talking about the materials, actually properly terminating fiber lines requires a bit of skill and some tools that aren't cheap, unlike say voice grade copper that requires a simple punch tool.
In addition, running fiber not only requires the fiber itself, but you also have to have repeaters, which means you need copper power lines running parallel with the fiber lines. Sure you could depend on the power grid, but then you have to forgo the classic emergency benefit where the phone lines worked even during a blackout. This is precisely the reason why all long distance fiber lines do invariably come with copper, in fact many of which need a lot of copper (far more than voice grade lines) since one of the sheathing layers is made out of copper to make it more resilient against damage while still being somewhat flexible.
DSL itself is rather low tech, and is probably right now about as good as its going to get, likewise IMO it's not even worth bothering to rebuild it. You can only do so much with voice grade copper since it can only carry a very limited number of channels, unlike say cable which is shielded far better and is easily capable of 5.1Gbit/s if you use all available channels up to 1Ghz. (In most of the existing infrastructure you can go up to 3Ghz, it's just a matter of having better transmitters and receivers to take advantage of it. Dump the analog channels and you'll get even more out of it.)
Perhaps they just want to make sure that you are actually poor before you can receive any dole payments. In other words, somebody with a more modern system is more likely to be able to afford to cover their own living expenses.
Crude, but what if it works?
Right, because that already just works SOOO well against drugs. I mean, the things basically don't exist these days.
Firearms violations in the US are more of a cultural issue. When you compare similar weapons control laws to other countries, you start to see that it isn't actually the laws that make a difference. In fact, even within the US, it's very often the case that the areas with the highest restrictions against firearms tend to have the highest per capita weapons violations.
That and cold weather causes more homicides, as evidenced by this:
http://i.imgur.com/en3HZ5T.jpg
No, he's right. I'm sick of this "let's blame all of the worlds problems on the megacorps and the 1%" syndrome. It's stupid and just creates a divisive "us vs them" mentality when often times the "them" are either on your side or have nothing to do with whatever the hell it is you're fighting.
Every time somebody such as yourself goes on this tirade it makes me think of how stupid a group of otherwise at least mildly intelligent people can become, like the Salem witch trials. The boogeyman you are fighting is one you yourself created. Emmanuel Goldstein doesn't fucking exist.
Apparently you frequently ditched history 101 and eventually dropped out.
You can't impeach somebody for adultery. Likewise, that isn't why he was impeached. He was impeached because he perjured himself and obstructed justice. Typically people go to jail for that.
As for the war - without commenting on my opinion of the war itself - it was initiated, waged, and executed every bit as legally as any other war the US has been involved in, declared or undeclared, as prescribed by the US legal system. Now as far as the UN is concerned, that one is debatable, however it hasn't been challenged for many reasons, several elements of which are the result of our never agreeing to become a signatory to the international criminal court treaty.
You know who originally lobbied against our ratifying that treaty? Bill Clinton. George Bush was openly hostile to it, and later Barack Obama openly and outright refused to oblige what it asks for (you're expected to oblige the rules of a treaty when you've signed but not ratified it.)
All three of these men did the right thing. In the global political landscape, American servicemen are political targets plain and simple. They'd never receive a fair trial simply because of the fact that they serve under our banner, and all three of those presidents are fully aware of it. Frankly, it would be foolish to think otherwise. Yes, we do vote stupid people into office, but fortunately they aren't that stupid.
Just a comment on the foreign relations - nothing has really changed with regard to our public image. The last guy set terms to dictators, the current guy rather embarrassingly bows to them. Yet their opinion of us remains largely the same.
(Though as far as respecting customs and those whatnots, they're both the same. And the Bush doctrine - of foreign governments being either fully with us or fully against us when it comes to pursuing terrorists within their borders - is still in full force, and has always had the blessing of most world governments, many of whom have even adopted it themselves. And frankly, I support it too - it was about time that we ended the days where you could commit mass murder and then simply run to a place with no extradition treaty.)
Bitcoin doesn't take any effort to obtain it. Running a computer program isn't effort.
Yes, it does need effort. For one, you actually need the equipment to do it. Try mining gold with your bare hands.
Second, instead of that equipment doing some other task, its time is allocated to mining.
This is the kind of crap that members of the bitcoin bubble use to try and convince each other. To some primitive cultures, sharks teeth had a value, as a cutting tool and/or jewellery. That's intrinsic worth. In some cases they might have been bartered because of that. That doesn't make them currency. Again bitcoins have no intrinsic worth.
Ok if you want to go that route, then consider that human teeth have been used as currency, and they don't make particularly good tools or interesting jewelry.
I'm well aware of the size of the drug trade. But the drug trade per se isn't working in bit-coins. They love their traditional bank-notes. You mentioned one drug-dealer with a web-site. Who's clearly also a foolish libertarian who's got caught up in the bubble.
And here's the thing: Some journalists investigating the silk road have found that those who have used it by far prefer it over traditional distribution means. Apparently it's easier to verify the authenticity of the dealer, and it's easier to track their reputation, all without ever knowing anything about who that dealer is or even a hint at where they are located. And, most importantly, apparently on the silk road, the goods they acquire are consistently of a much higher quality. The silk road is rapidly growing.
Just like the race-track. Funny how everyone you hear from is a winner! Amazing how these sequences of bits have created value out of thin air! No one's lost any money!
Hmm...no. People have "lost" money and always do in the same sense that you lose money if you buy a pizza. In other words, they didn't actually lose anything, they simply used bitcoins as a means to an end.
Are you into tin-foil hats as well? Like most people here I argue about all sorts of shit. Especially when people are being dumb.
I think what is most telling is how hostile you are towards bitcoin. Again, you have obviously devoted yourself towards seeing it fail, otherwise you'd be making no mention of it. Somebody who owns bitcoins must have kicked your puppy. Either that or more realistically you are ideologically opposed to the idea that it could eventually become mainstream, just like Krugman.
But as I say, I actually want libertarians to continue with bitcoins. The bigger the stupidity, the more entertaining it is.
Yeah reminds me of what creationists commonly say about evolution. They always go on and on about how it isn't proven and it's so obvious that there's a god that it's just entertaining watching them try to prove otherwise. I've even recently read one who posted a comment about what he found was the "final nail in the coffin" of evolution. Like you, they always see the vindication of a new breakthrough as a sign of failure.
Actually there is, but people are not willing to accept or even to discuss it because its not politically correct to entertain the possibility that evolution allowed more differences between the races than just skin color. Merely suggesting that you noticed a correlation gets you labeled a racist.
Personally I'm fully willing to consider that viewpoint, but it doesn't make sense when you take some things into consideration.
When you look at the genetics of it, it's actually apparent that whites have more in common with blacks than any other race, at least when it comes to the bits that help decide intellect. "Brown" people tend to be asian and therefore mongoloid, to include e.g. India. This applies to latinos and native americans as well who share the same mongoloid roots with some anglo interbreeding. Mongoloid people have very rounded skulls. However blacks and whites tend to have elongated skulls which more closely resemble one another than mongoloids.
Other traits such as tendons also tend to be more similar among whites and blacks than among mongoloids.
Anyways, asians of far eastern cultures tend to excel way beyond any other groups academically. Beyond whites even. Yet native americans and latinos do not, even though they are genetically very similar. I think the reason for this is kind of obvious when you look at the cultural differences. Native americans today are very self entitled. E.g. because of how badly they were treated in the past, many of them believe that they are now entitled to payback. Yet east asian cultures instil high respect, dignity, discipline, and responsibility for your own actions. There are very few native american tribes who hold similar cultural values, and they are very very well off. One of their cultural values in fact is to refuse any government handouts, which probably helps a lot. Try telling a liberal that, and they won't believe it, but it's true.
And then of course you have the mexicans. Another thing of interest is to note how cubans tend to be more successful than mexicans, and when you look at why, the answer to that seems kind of obvious. Cubans who came to america did so because they reject the idea that everybody is entitled to everything - basically they are ideologically opposed to everything the cuban government espouses, which leads to their success. They came here because they like the idea that if you work on it, you can become more than what the government tells you you can become. Mexicans work the opposite though - they come here with the knowledge that all they have to do is have a kid here, and that automatically entitles them to free food, health care, and cash assistance.
(I think if we got rid of birthright citizenship, that later problem would go away. That will never happen though - the hispanic voters already have too high of numbers, and they'll never vote for anybody who would want to do that, so no politicians will touch it with a ten foot pole. But I digress.)
All of the above just shows me that cultural values influence this more than anything. There could be genetic disposition, but I don't think it is strong enough to make a significant difference. One of my favorite philosophers happens to be black by the way, his name is Thomas Sowell - that guy knows his shit when it comes to a lot of things, especially education and economics.
I'll agree with that. You tend to hold little value of things that are just given to you.
When my parents stopped giving me a $20 a month allowance when I was about 13 or so, I started to value money quite a bit more after that. I think that is part of the reason why I am so financially disciplined (i.e. never borrowing anything, and only spending when it makes sense rather than because I get something shiny - though I can get the occasional shiny thing.)