“increase [...] by 330 percent” means 4.3 faster."
Sorry, but "330% faster" is indeed 3.3 times faster, or 4.3 times as fast. "4.3 [times] faster" is actually 5.3 times as fast. You're off by one, and GP is correct.
Let's try it this way: "100% faster" and "1 times faster." Do you see how your statement is provably false, now?
I'm afraid that your "pre-1940s" view of the US is either rose tinted or just plain incorrect. While Teddy Roosevelt spoke of the need to speak softly and carry a big stick, the foreign policy of the United States has been largely the opposite of the isolationist position that many people seem to think is our norm. There's a reason the USMC's Battle Hymn starts with "from the Hallf of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli." We've invaded both Canada and Mexico in our history, and (prior to the 1940 date you remember fondly) had been at war on every continent save Australia and Antartica. We took the vast majority of our nation away from the people who already lived there. I'm reasonably certain that every single US extraterritorial possession (i.e. Guam, etc) was in our possession prior to the second world war, except for a bunch of tiny atolls in the Pacific we built bases on during the war and maybe kept afterward.
I personally think that, on the whole, we've been a stronger force for "good" (however you want to define that) than "evil" but I do have my biases.
I think you missed the point. In this context, customers refers to individual people and families. Corporations are more important than people, and so, by definition, get better service. It does not contradict the GP who says that a happy Comcast customer is a myth.
I'm the guy who deals with the sales guys, tech guys, field guys and manages the circuits on a day to day basis. To suggest that I'm not a customer is an absurdity. With regard to your schtick that corporte customers are more important because they're "not people" I think it has more to do with the fact that the check we cut Comcast every month probably equals what everyone else in a quarter-mile radius pays, combined.
I'm a VERY happy Comcast customer (so they do exist) but I'm an enterprise customer and not a residential customer, so YMMV. Something like 3-4 hours of unscheduled downtime in the last five years on the HFC circuit, and the GigE private circuit that I have for one of my remote sites hasn't seen any downtime since installation last year.
I'd like to say that "service with big telecom improves as you spend more money" but AT&T still sucks no matter how much money I give them.
You missed the gem where the music company also comes out of this owning the copyrights to the music. It's like paying off a mortgage, and instead of the bank giving you clear title, they tell you "thanks for the house." instead.
To reply to something you said upthread: I agree teaching people to fish that far, far preferable to providing them daily fish rations. Sometimes, though, you're faced with people who live in the middle of a desert, where teaching them to fish just isn't feasible, and is never going to be. At that point, you can either feed them on the journey out of the desert, or just leave them to die. To me, there is no choice between the two.
To goal of all welfare programs should be self-obsolecence--that people enrolled in those programs transition out of them as soon as possible. Section 8, as originally structured, was designed to do just that. We need to go back to it and come up with more programs like it.
Section 8, as designed, is a welfare program that anyone (conservative, liberal, whatever) can get behind. It was the proverbial "hand up, not a hand out" that was designed to move people out of projects, where opportunity was low (at best) and into situations where they could truly benefit themselves. The original participants were chosen very carefully, and were tightly screened. They looked for people who wanted to work. People who kept neat houses and took care of their kids. When they were enrolled in the program, they were followed up on to check their progress and ensure they were doing their part. The program was a massive success--the people it helped had overwhelmingly positive outcomes.
What we have today is a result of it being a victim of its own success. Because it was so successful, scads of money was thrown at the program in an attempt to expand it to more people. Today, just about ANYONE who meets the income requirements can get on section 8 (it is awarded typically by lottery), there is no screening, no followup, or anything else. Its use has (as your citations notes) exported crime from the high crime areas to the low crime areas, all under the guise of "equality" (where everyone lives an equally shitty life, I guess?) it's basically the inverse of the "villas at Kenny's House" gag on South Park, with predictable results.
I (strongly!) support section 8, but as it was originally designed and implemented, and not the gigantic mess we have today. If you still want me to die as a result, then (with equal civility) I suggest that you go fuck yourself.
The following account has been suspended for violating our terms of service of not agreeing with us politically.
Plenty of sites will ban you for doing just that (see democraticunderground.com). Personally, I don't have much of a problem with it, people who want to silence their political opponents should be marked as such, and those who self-proclaim that do us all the service of not having to go through the effort of doing so ourselves.
I agree with you in principle, but the reality is different. Ask a guy in prison how his inalienable rights to "be secure in his person, houses, papers, and effects," "peaceably assemble," or vote are working out for him.
For what's it's worth, you're (probably) being hypocritical. We're talking about people's perceptions here--what it is they think and feel. You cannot dictate that. Saying "well, that's different" is stating that you believe one group's (transgender) feelings to be valid, while another group's ("otherkin," or whatever) are not, simply because you're sympathetic to the first group. The reality is that both groups have the same issues.
And all I have a copy of this on our team server's home page, darn.
I like that one, but the one hanging on my wall is this one, which I like even more. No one seems to like when I use it as a visual aid during meetings.
That said, if somebody is behaving violently, sometimes that is reason to kill them.
Uh no. Unless they are actually about to kill someone, then no. EVEN IF it looks like another person may get punched a few times, that is still not a reason to kill someone.
The OP proceeded to explain his initial statement and gave hypotheticals, which agree that you don't kill someone for simply punching someone else (though there are indeed some situations where punching someone can be considered lethal force and should be responded to appropriately). You either fail at reading comprehension, or are a troll.
I have to agree with the AC below: you're fucking crazy, and sound like one of those lunatics from the cold war who thought nuclear war could be made winnable. On the plus side, you probably have a bright career as a foreign policy advisor for Donald Trump, should he be elected. From recent reports, he seems to agree with your policy of nuking people rather than using conventional forces.
Look, this is simple. We just need government workers to show up and actually work. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.
Rachel from Cardholder Services advertises on Craigslist in Orlando. How difficult is it to just use their services (I know they're calling people at the FTC) and track them down? Use existing laws to put them out of business. There are plenty of options for those willing to do the minimal amount of work.
To be slightly more precise, we need legislators to get their heads out of each others butts and do their job. The current bunch are almost entirely occupied with infighting. Fire them all, just to be sure.
The post you're replying to says "there are plenty of laws already on the books that cover these situations, we should just use them." Your response is "congress should get off its butts and pass more laws."
You're proposing a policy of defense such that any conventional attack by a nation state would be met with nuclear weapons. So if North Korea invaded the south, your solution is to glass North Korea. Ignoring the potential moral issues of turning a few million slave laborers (i.e. NK civilians) into radiation poisoned and/or vaporized casualties, I tend to think that our allies in the region (Japan, South Korea, etc) would be most upset with us for the fallout. Our adversaries in the region (China, USSR) would likely be pissed beyond measure.
No one can say what the result of that would be, but it's unlikely that such a result would be good. "General Exchange of Nuclear Weapons" is a non-zero possibility.
For my money, let's stick with some conventional forces, the expense of such is worth lessening the chances of a human caused extinction level event.
Uhhh, potential? That's the best you can do here? Exactly how many metric fucktons of FUD does one need in order to justify over 1,700 aircraft and a $380 billion dollar price tag?
In general, I agree the US spends too much on defense, but the above is short sighted. To answer you question, YES, you do plan based on potentials, because by the time a "potential" threat becomes an "actual" threat it may be too late to do anything about it.
This OBVIOUSLY lends itself to abuse (if you can sell a "potential" threat well enough you can write a blank check, or, as you note, some people can't leave their toys in the cupboard and just HAVE to play with them, regardless of the mess made) and I'm not sure there's any good solution to that potential abuse, but the alternative is "someone else comes along and takes your stuff" and there is precious little you can do about it.
Footnote: the F-35 looks like one of the worst weapons programs in American history. It is a plague upon our nation and should have been killed with fire before it became "too big to fail." That does not change the point made above.
And note that that is about dogfighting, an increasingly less relevant portion of an aircraft's activity. The whole philosophy behind the F-35 is to detect and engage targets from further away than they can detect and engage the F-35. Aka, if the F-35 is in a dogfight, it's already done something wrong to begin with.
That sounds extremely familiar (last heard during the development of the F-4). It's arguable that technology has improved to where that is a true statement today where it was not in the past, but only time will tell.
It was a great workaround back before active directory. If you didn't have access to a share, just figure out the owner's username (pre-populated on their lock screen), and create a new local user on your machine with the same username, connect to the share as that user, done.
That workaround doesn't work... the password has to match as well.
The open water swimmers will be hit the hardest out of anyone, since they will be immersed in raw sewage. Ever try swimming without getting water in your mouth (much less other orifices)? It's impossible.
The boaters are at risk as well, of course, but not to the degree that the swimmers are.
They're both liars. Trying to decide which one lies less is an exercise in masturbation, unless you have an agenda, in which case whichever one you happen to support will always be found to lie less.
You can't even argue magnitude as a means to differentiate them. Hillary has plenty of "yuge" lies of her own (like claiming she landed under sniper fire and had to run for safety).
To be accurate, its kinda like how people like you spent the last 8 years blaming everything on the present occupant.
Thanks, present occupant!
To be fair, most people blame the current guy for everything if they don't agree with his politics. If they do agree with his politics, they blame the previous guy (or the guy before that, if the previous guy has the unfortunate handicap of also sharing their politics).
To most democrats, everything is Dubya's fault. To most Republicans, everything is Obama's fault (before that it was Clinton's fault). Timing is largely meaningless (take a look at how many conservative types blame Bill Clinton and Janet Reno for Ruby Ridge (which happened before the 1992 election) or the laughable way Obama was nominated for a Nobel peace prize for the accomplishment of not being George Bush).
Unfortunately, that's not how it works. Without taxes, the wealthy and corporations mostly transfer wealth among themselves, and very little of it ever actually manages to trickle down. Perhaps you missed the memo, but "trickle down" economics doesn't work, and never has done.
I'm not supporting trickle down economics here, I'm just saying that Apple's $250B in cash would probably not be stuffed under a mattress. It would be doing SOMETHING in our economy (whether that benefits everyone or just the 1% is an open question) rather than doing something in someone else's economy, which is the current state.
IOW, this is a false dichotomy. "We need to tax that money to realize a return on society's investment" is all well and good, except for the fact that we're not actually taxing that money, Ireland[1] is.
[1] - Or the Cayman Islands, etc, but the point remains.
For the sake of argument, let's take everything you said as fact (both literally and morally). The status quo has all of that money (that our infrastructure enabled them to earn) leaving our nation to go elsewhere, and enrich other economies, so we're not benefiting from it at all (but we're still out the cost of the infrastructure).
I'm NOT suggestion that the tax rate here should be 0, but if it were, that money would be in our economy and working, thus a net benefit to us.
To put it another way, half an apple is better than no apple at all, and our tax code should realize that rather than levying punishing rates that absolutely NO ONE actually pays and discourages the repatriation of those funds.
Slashdot Mirror
“increase [...] by 330 percent” means 4.3 faster."
Sorry, but "330% faster" is indeed 3.3 times faster, or 4.3 times as fast. "4.3 [times] faster" is actually 5.3 times as fast. You're off by one, and GP is correct.
Let's try it this way: "100% faster" and "1 times faster." Do you see how your statement is provably false, now?
I'm afraid that your "pre-1940s" view of the US is either rose tinted or just plain incorrect. While Teddy Roosevelt spoke of the need to speak softly and carry a big stick, the foreign policy of the United States has been largely the opposite of the isolationist position that many people seem to think is our norm. There's a reason the USMC's Battle Hymn starts with "from the Hallf of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli." We've invaded both Canada and Mexico in our history, and (prior to the 1940 date you remember fondly) had been at war on every continent save Australia and Antartica. We took the vast majority of our nation away from the people who already lived there. I'm reasonably certain that every single US extraterritorial possession (i.e. Guam, etc) was in our possession prior to the second world war, except for a bunch of tiny atolls in the Pacific we built bases on during the war and maybe kept afterward.
I personally think that, on the whole, we've been a stronger force for "good" (however you want to define that) than "evil" but I do have my biases.
I think you missed the point. In this context, customers refers to individual people and families. Corporations are more important than people, and so, by definition, get better service. It does not contradict the GP who says that a happy Comcast customer is a myth.
I'm the guy who deals with the sales guys, tech guys, field guys and manages the circuits on a day to day basis. To suggest that I'm not a customer is an absurdity. With regard to your schtick that corporte customers are more important because they're "not people" I think it has more to do with the fact that the check we cut Comcast every month probably equals what everyone else in a quarter-mile radius pays, combined.
I'm a VERY happy Comcast customer (so they do exist) but I'm an enterprise customer and not a residential customer, so YMMV. Something like 3-4 hours of unscheduled downtime in the last five years on the HFC circuit, and the GigE private circuit that I have for one of my remote sites hasn't seen any downtime since installation last year.
I'd like to say that "service with big telecom improves as you spend more money" but AT&T still sucks no matter how much money I give them.
You missed the gem where the music company also comes out of this owning the copyrights to the music. It's like paying off a mortgage, and instead of the bank giving you clear title, they tell you "thanks for the house." instead.
Thank you for your return to civility.
To reply to something you said upthread: I agree teaching people to fish that far, far preferable to providing them daily fish rations. Sometimes, though, you're faced with people who live in the middle of a desert, where teaching them to fish just isn't feasible, and is never going to be. At that point, you can either feed them on the journey out of the desert, or just leave them to die. To me, there is no choice between the two.
To goal of all welfare programs should be self-obsolecence--that people enrolled in those programs transition out of them as soon as possible. Section 8, as originally structured, was designed to do just that. We need to go back to it and come up with more programs like it.
Section 8, as designed, is a welfare program that anyone (conservative, liberal, whatever) can get behind. It was the proverbial "hand up, not a hand out" that was designed to move people out of projects, where opportunity was low (at best) and into situations where they could truly benefit themselves. The original participants were chosen very carefully, and were tightly screened. They looked for people who wanted to work. People who kept neat houses and took care of their kids. When they were enrolled in the program, they were followed up on to check their progress and ensure they were doing their part. The program was a massive success--the people it helped had overwhelmingly positive outcomes.
What we have today is a result of it being a victim of its own success. Because it was so successful, scads of money was thrown at the program in an attempt to expand it to more people. Today, just about ANYONE who meets the income requirements can get on section 8 (it is awarded typically by lottery), there is no screening, no followup, or anything else. Its use has (as your citations notes) exported crime from the high crime areas to the low crime areas, all under the guise of "equality" (where everyone lives an equally shitty life, I guess?) it's basically the inverse of the "villas at Kenny's House" gag on South Park, with predictable results.
I (strongly!) support section 8, but as it was originally designed and implemented, and not the gigantic mess we have today. If you still want me to die as a result, then (with equal civility) I suggest that you go fuck yourself.
The following account has been suspended for violating our terms of service of not agreeing with us politically.
Plenty of sites will ban you for doing just that (see democraticunderground.com). Personally, I don't have much of a problem with it, people who want to silence their political opponents should be marked as such, and those who self-proclaim that do us all the service of not having to go through the effort of doing so ourselves.
I agree with you in principle, but the reality is different. Ask a guy in prison how his inalienable rights to "be secure in his person, houses, papers, and effects," "peaceably assemble," or vote are working out for him.
For what's it's worth, you're (probably) being hypocritical. We're talking about people's perceptions here--what it is they think and feel. You cannot dictate that. Saying "well, that's different" is stating that you believe one group's (transgender) feelings to be valid, while another group's ("otherkin," or whatever) are not, simply because you're sympathetic to the first group. The reality is that both groups have the same issues.
And all I have a copy of this on our team server's home page, darn.
I like that one, but the one hanging on my wall is this one, which I like even more. No one seems to like when I use it as a visual aid during meetings.
That said, if somebody is behaving violently, sometimes that is reason to kill them.
Uh no. Unless they are actually about to kill someone, then no. EVEN IF it looks like another person may get punched a few times, that is still not a reason to kill someone.
The OP proceeded to explain his initial statement and gave hypotheticals, which agree that you don't kill someone for simply punching someone else (though there are indeed some situations where punching someone can be considered lethal force and should be responded to appropriately). You either fail at reading comprehension, or are a troll.
I have to agree with the AC below: you're fucking crazy, and sound like one of those lunatics from the cold war who thought nuclear war could be made winnable. On the plus side, you probably have a bright career as a foreign policy advisor for Donald Trump, should he be elected. From recent reports, he seems to agree with your policy of nuking people rather than using conventional forces.
Look, this is simple. We just need government workers to show up and actually work. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.
Rachel from Cardholder Services advertises on Craigslist in Orlando. How difficult is it to just use their services (I know they're calling people at the FTC) and track them down? Use existing laws to put them out of business. There are plenty of options for those willing to do the minimal amount of work.
To be slightly more precise, we need legislators to get their heads out of each others butts and do their job. The current bunch are almost entirely occupied with infighting. Fire them all, just to be sure.
The post you're replying to says "there are plenty of laws already on the books that cover these situations, we should just use them." Your response is "congress should get off its butts and pass more laws."
Obligatory xkcd.
By USSR I mean Russia... Sorry, I'm old enough to still think of them that way.
You're proposing a policy of defense such that any conventional attack by a nation state would be met with nuclear weapons. So if North Korea invaded the south, your solution is to glass North Korea. Ignoring the potential moral issues of turning a few million slave laborers (i.e. NK civilians) into radiation poisoned and/or vaporized casualties, I tend to think that our allies in the region (Japan, South Korea, etc) would be most upset with us for the fallout. Our adversaries in the region (China, USSR) would likely be pissed beyond measure.
No one can say what the result of that would be, but it's unlikely that such a result would be good. "General Exchange of Nuclear Weapons" is a non-zero possibility.
For my money, let's stick with some conventional forces, the expense of such is worth lessening the chances of a human caused extinction level event.
Uhhh, potential? That's the best you can do here? Exactly how many metric fucktons of FUD does one need in order to justify over 1,700 aircraft and a $380 billion dollar price tag?
In general, I agree the US spends too much on defense, but the above is short sighted. To answer you question, YES, you do plan based on potentials, because by the time a "potential" threat becomes an "actual" threat it may be too late to do anything about it.
This OBVIOUSLY lends itself to abuse (if you can sell a "potential" threat well enough you can write a blank check, or, as you note, some people can't leave their toys in the cupboard and just HAVE to play with them, regardless of the mess made) and I'm not sure there's any good solution to that potential abuse, but the alternative is "someone else comes along and takes your stuff" and there is precious little you can do about it.
Footnote: the F-35 looks like one of the worst weapons programs in American history. It is a plague upon our nation and should have been killed with fire before it became "too big to fail." That does not change the point made above.
And note that that is about dogfighting, an increasingly less relevant portion of an aircraft's activity. The whole philosophy behind the F-35 is to detect and engage targets from further away than they can detect and engage the F-35. Aka, if the F-35 is in a dogfight, it's already done something wrong to begin with.
That sounds extremely familiar (last heard during the development of the F-4). It's arguable that technology has improved to where that is a true statement today where it was not in the past, but only time will tell.
It was a great workaround back before active directory. If you didn't have access to a share, just figure out the owner's username (pre-populated on their lock screen), and create a new local user on your machine with the same username, connect to the share as that user, done.
That workaround doesn't work... the password has to match as well.
The open water swimmers will be hit the hardest out of anyone, since they will be immersed in raw sewage. Ever try swimming without getting water in your mouth (much less other orifices)? It's impossible.
The boaters are at risk as well, of course, but not to the degree that the swimmers are.
There is a 10km open water event, so your statement that this is not a factor is incorrect.
Hillary lies much less than Trump does.
They're both liars. Trying to decide which one lies less is an exercise in masturbation, unless you have an agenda, in which case whichever one you happen to support will always be found to lie less.
You can't even argue magnitude as a means to differentiate them. Hillary has plenty of "yuge" lies of her own (like claiming she landed under sniper fire and had to run for safety).
To be accurate, its kinda like how people like you spent the last 8 years blaming everything on the present occupant.
Thanks, present occupant!
To be fair, most people blame the current guy for everything if they don't agree with his politics. If they do agree with his politics, they blame the previous guy (or the guy before that, if the previous guy has the unfortunate handicap of also sharing their politics).
To most democrats, everything is Dubya's fault. To most Republicans, everything is Obama's fault (before that it was Clinton's fault). Timing is largely meaningless (take a look at how many conservative types blame Bill Clinton and Janet Reno for Ruby Ridge (which happened before the 1992 election) or the laughable way Obama was nominated for a Nobel peace prize for the accomplishment of not being George Bush).
Unfortunately, that's not how it works. Without taxes, the wealthy and corporations mostly transfer wealth among themselves, and very little of it ever actually manages to trickle down. Perhaps you missed the memo, but "trickle down" economics doesn't work, and never has done.
I'm not supporting trickle down economics here, I'm just saying that Apple's $250B in cash would probably not be stuffed under a mattress. It would be doing SOMETHING in our economy (whether that benefits everyone or just the 1% is an open question) rather than doing something in someone else's economy, which is the current state.
IOW, this is a false dichotomy. "We need to tax that money to realize a return on society's investment" is all well and good, except for the fact that we're not actually taxing that money, Ireland[1] is.
[1] - Or the Cayman Islands, etc, but the point remains.
For the sake of argument, let's take everything you said as fact (both literally and morally). The status quo has all of that money (that our infrastructure enabled them to earn) leaving our nation to go elsewhere, and enrich other economies, so we're not benefiting from it at all (but we're still out the cost of the infrastructure).
I'm NOT suggestion that the tax rate here should be 0, but if it were, that money would be in our economy and working, thus a net benefit to us.
To put it another way, half an apple is better than no apple at all, and our tax code should realize that rather than levying punishing rates that absolutely NO ONE actually pays and discourages the repatriation of those funds.