This is why it's important to give the government the least possible power needed to accomplish your objectives - all power will surely be abused, you can't stop it from being abused, all you can do is give less power to be abused.
Seeing how acting as a Leviathan capable of keeping a lid on violence is the government's main function, this is hopeless - a government powerful enough to keep you from oppressing others is powerful enough to oppress you.
Also, while governments certainly want power, so do all other entities. A weaker government will simply leave more room for other power centers to grow and set up their own empires. From multinational corporations to banks to local thugs, there's simply no way to avoid tyrants big and small taking power. The best we can hope for is to pit them against each other, so that they'll be too busy to oppress the rest of us. That, however, requires the careful balancing of power between them, rather than simply minimizing or maximizing the power of government or any other entity.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we have systems designed to monitor weather, flooding, seismic activity, volcanism and so on? If they're finding out about natural disasters from social networks, that's beyond pathetic.
No system is 100% accurate, so it's best to have redundancy and correlate multiple sensors. Also, it takes time to process data from them, and then more time to send information to interested parties. Twitter or other sources (say, the amount of 911 calls being made in an area) could be used to prioritize an area for more detailed scrutiny.
Besides, disaster recognition systems cost money, so you can't just blanket every square meter with sensors - you have to decide what disasters are likely to hit where. But even low-probability disasters can hit, and monitoring Twitter is a cheap way of getting basic coverage for everything everywhere, so why not do it?
Crime is not a game. The law is slow, sometimes very slow, but it will get one sooner or later anyway.
The law catches the dumb and desperate ones, who commit crimes either due to mental problems or because they can't rise money any other way or both. Contrast this with drug lords and the Mafia, who commit crimes with a long-term business plan and tend to be very succesful. Or, for that matter, the banks, who are constantly in the headlines due to breaking various laws yet continue business as usual.
So yes, crime is a game. And like with most games, making moves "for the lulz" means you'll lose.
Which is why I capitalized it to mean the group and not the adjective, yet many are still keen to misunderstand it, preventing meaningful conversation.
Seeing how both membership and identity of the group Anonymous is defined through the concept of anonymity, it is probably impossible to meaningfully separate them.
We're talking energy distribution here, not fuel. You can move gigawatts of power across the country in seconds/minutes.
No, as a matter of fact you can't move gigajoules (I presume you meant this) of energy beyond what's already used by all the electric appliances across the country in seconds. The electric grid doesn't have much spare capacity, since maintaining that would be a cost.
We need to release some of the strategic reserves to drive down the cost.
But if you do that, then oil will get cheaper relative to alternatives, delaying the adoption of said alternatives. And since the reason you released some of the strategic reserves to begin with was that other supplies were insufficient, once the surplus has been burned you're right where you began, except that other supplies have been further depleted and you're short some strategic reserves which need to be refilled, making things even worse.
Or you could release strategic natural gas reserves (do those exist?), but that'll drive down the price of natural gass, making methane capture less attractive option, agian leaving you worse off in the end.
Just bite the bullet and let enery costs rise. They will anyway, and not trying to stop it will cause a slow and steady rise, which has the best chances of stimulating alternative sources while not causing sudden market crashes, while leaving you the strategic reserves for emergencies.
So yeah, don't take PayPal and then complain because YOU didn't follow the rules.
This does rise an interesting question: should TOSes or other unilateral declarations from private individuals or businesses be allowed to undermine the free market? As long as PayPal acts as a payment processor, it seems to me that allowing it to discriminate who it delivers payments to works against the interests of the consumer by reducing the number of suppliers available.
In other words: should we let PayPal decide who can and cannot buy or sell over the Internet, and what?
Everybody switch to bitcoin and put these losers outta business!
Or wire transfer, or money orders, or checks, or credit cards, or cash in an envelope...
I've never really understood what role PayPal plays. It's like a bank, but apparently not covered with any kind of regulations nor in fact any laws at all, with a reputation for stopping payments and confiscating money on your account on a whim. I can't think of a scenario where it wouldn't be the worst possible option for everyone involved. So why do people use it?
But yeah, Bitcoin would be ideal, especially since proof of payment stays available as long as the network lasts. I don't think it can stabilize and become widely-accepted, however, especially since any sign it is becoming so would threaten every bank in existence.
If the carriers can't control the dang OS they will not use it. End of story.
No, it isn't. In most of the world what the carriers use has nothing to do with what the users use - the carrier gives you a SIM card which identifies your account, you buy whatever phone you want and put the SIM card in there, and everything just works.
What this really demonstrates is that different but related markets should be decoupled from each other, by force if necessary. Also, open standards are vital for a functional market economy.
Unfortunately, politics influences the Internet (for example, see the recent attempts to push ACTA through) and are thus relevant to nerds. This is especially true of the US, due to the power it wields and the likely consequences of losing that power due to mismanagement (China becomes the next hyperpower and unleashes even worse things upon the world, or European Union prevails and enforces its own brand of censorship). Since Slashdot advertises itself as news of nerds, politics are relevant to it.
People do not understand that a change of this magnitude will affect end price in a big way.
For that to be true, mining the raw materials must represent a large portion of the final cost of a product, and filtering the exhaust of any engines used in a mine must, if done, represent a large portion of a cost of running a mine. Both of these seem pretty unlikely proposals, especially since taken together they would mean that mining companies are getting a large proportion of all money spent on industrial products yet can't afford an expense a lowly delivery service can.
See, things like health care are long term decisions involved with making your business viable. Literally spending the 2 cents a ton in healthcare costs saves them probably 200k per employee in the long run (including lawsuits, health claims, etc).
The "them" who benefit from long-term decisions is a different bunch than the people who benefit from short-term decisions, and it's the latter people who make the decisions.
The very notion of hate crimes is dangerous. It essentially criminalizes feelings.
It doesn't criminalize feelings, or anything else that wasn't already criminal. It simply increases the punishment for crimes where the culprit was motivated by them.
Now, no one wants to criminalise people walking in groups (at least I don't), but gangs (of you people I must add) most certainly walks in groups and do cause a nuisance, engage in threatening behaviour and in some cases commit crimes.
So you want to retain a right to walk in groups while denying it to others. Got it. But wouldn't it be easier to just pass the law and selectively enforce it only against "you people"? I mean, that's what you really want here, right?
Also, if a gang already commits crimes, how would an ASBO stop them?
There is no "right" to free health care, as nobody has the right to make a slave of people by making another person's labor, like the doctors and nurses that provide care, your right. It's just as wrong and for the exact same reasons as slavery was in pre-Civil-War America.
Really? You're a slave? If you don't go to work tomorrow, someone's coming to take you there with a whip?
Also, just out of curiosity, does your opinion also extend to soldiers? That is, if your county gets attacked, is it okay for people who have been paid as part of military to suddenly quit? If not, why not? If yes, how do you propose your society defends itself?
Same with free housing and free food. That's what charitable organizations, groups, and churches are for, and if the government didn't confiscate so much wealth, people would have much more money to give to those charitable organizations, groups, and churches.
The reason the government began to redistribute wealth in the first place is that people didn't give anywhere near enough to charitable organizations on their own, resulting in constant strife.
I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying it's the Republicans fault that they can't fire teachers, principals or superintendents?
No, he's saying that it's the Republicans fault that Republicans are slashing education budgets as low as possible to get lower taxes while trying to pretend they're not doing that by avoiding easily noticeable things like firing teachers. This may or may not have consequences down the road, such as creating an undereducated public who can't compete with China nor Europe on either engineering nor cultural output, thus dropping the US into third world status, but that's beyond the point.
Mind you, I'm an European, so the only thing that's troublesome in this scenario for me is that ICANN might be moved to some country without a First Amendment. That "goddamn piece of paper" is the only thing the US still has to contribute to the rest of the world. That fact should also be some food for the thought for you folks, and something you should digest before it's too late. Unless, of course, you want to be tpssed into the wastebin of history with the rest of the has-beens.
You really think that as a blue collar worker you will have a better chance to catch an afternoon nap?
Not every day, but 12-hour shifts and 40-hour workweeks combine wonderfully for both companies (less shift-change related confusion) and workers (more free days).
In an era where the rich are able to get by paying so few taxes in the U.S., I think that those who still CHOOSE to help our ailing schools should be praised, not chastised, for the policies of one particular charter school (and I don't even find their policy that egregious in the first place).
So you're fine with private organizations imposing fines on a whim? And that a school teaches its students to submit to such arbitrary authority?
And the rich pay less than their fair share of taxes because they have used the power their riches bring to bring it about. They deserve no more praise than a mugger who calls an ambulance for his victim would.
It's nice to know that not *all* rich people are just greedy pricks who would say "fuck all" to the poor.
The rich are like politicians or lawyers: there might be a few who are honest or even decent, but as a group, they have earned their reputation.
A lot of this is considering larger ships. Probably the only "big" things will be moon/asteroid bases and the occasional "space dock" carrier-type large ships, I don't think a "capital class" space battleship will be anything short of a nuke-magnet. (again reference several examples in B5, bigger ships generally lost to smaller ones, for good reason)
If you have a fight in space, then either one side will travel a long distance to get there, or both will. And you can't keep people sitting on a tiny fighter for months. Even if you could find people fanatical enough to do that, their bodies would simply break from forced inactivity long before they reached the target. So if you want to do battle in space, you must either have large ships or hyperdrives. Which, of course, is exactly why we deploy carriers in real life: fighters just don't have the range.
Also, consider the square-cube law: the surface area of a ship scales with second power, while the volume scales with third. That means that a larger ship takes less penalty (mass increase in percentage of total mass) from the same armor than a smaller one would, while being capable of taking the same relative amount of fuel and supplies. A larger ship can also fit automatic anti-missile guns and such which a smaller ship simply doesn't have room for.
unmanned drones sniping the shit out of each other over ridiculous distances using lasers and maybe perhaps anti-matter "nukes".
Once you have weapon-grade lasers, how are anti-matter warheads viable weapons? Seeing how anything trying to get close would be a prime priority target precisely to shoot them down.
For that matter, what current or near-future technology do you propose would be used to manufacture the antimatter in these warheads?
Nah, there will be clear and well-understood male/female communications, which so violates the rules of the universe that the universe itself will be destroyed and remade. Bet on it.
Isn't that basically the whole plot? Metaphysics of WoT are divided into male and female halfs, and the attempt to find an unisex power found one that's trying to destroy the fabric of reality.
So Rand's quest is to ensure that men and women can never understand one another, and he's engaged to three women. No wonder the poor guy has issues.
Slashdot Mirror
Seeing how acting as a Leviathan capable of keeping a lid on violence is the government's main function, this is hopeless - a government powerful enough to keep you from oppressing others is powerful enough to oppress you.
Also, while governments certainly want power, so do all other entities. A weaker government will simply leave more room for other power centers to grow and set up their own empires. From multinational corporations to banks to local thugs, there's simply no way to avoid tyrants big and small taking power. The best we can hope for is to pit them against each other, so that they'll be too busy to oppress the rest of us. That, however, requires the careful balancing of power between them, rather than simply minimizing or maximizing the power of government or any other entity.
No system is 100% accurate, so it's best to have redundancy and correlate multiple sensors. Also, it takes time to process data from them, and then more time to send information to interested parties. Twitter or other sources (say, the amount of 911 calls being made in an area) could be used to prioritize an area for more detailed scrutiny.
Besides, disaster recognition systems cost money, so you can't just blanket every square meter with sensors - you have to decide what disasters are likely to hit where. But even low-probability disasters can hit, and monitoring Twitter is a cheap way of getting basic coverage for everything everywhere, so why not do it?
The law catches the dumb and desperate ones, who commit crimes either due to mental problems or because they can't rise money any other way or both. Contrast this with drug lords and the Mafia, who commit crimes with a long-term business plan and tend to be very succesful. Or, for that matter, the banks, who are constantly in the headlines due to breaking various laws yet continue business as usual.
So yes, crime is a game. And like with most games, making moves "for the lulz" means you'll lose.
Seeing how both membership and identity of the group Anonymous is defined through the concept of anonymity, it is probably impossible to meaningfully separate them.
No, as a matter of fact you can't move gigajoules (I presume you meant this) of energy beyond what's already used by all the electric appliances across the country in seconds. The electric grid doesn't have much spare capacity, since maintaining that would be a cost.
But if you do that, then oil will get cheaper relative to alternatives, delaying the adoption of said alternatives. And since the reason you released some of the strategic reserves to begin with was that other supplies were insufficient, once the surplus has been burned you're right where you began, except that other supplies have been further depleted and you're short some strategic reserves which need to be refilled, making things even worse.
Or you could release strategic natural gas reserves (do those exist?), but that'll drive down the price of natural gass, making methane capture less attractive option, agian leaving you worse off in the end.
Just bite the bullet and let enery costs rise. They will anyway, and not trying to stop it will cause a slow and steady rise, which has the best chances of stimulating alternative sources while not causing sudden market crashes, while leaving you the strategic reserves for emergencies.
This does rise an interesting question: should TOSes or other unilateral declarations from private individuals or businesses be allowed to undermine the free market? As long as PayPal acts as a payment processor, it seems to me that allowing it to discriminate who it delivers payments to works against the interests of the consumer by reducing the number of suppliers available.
In other words: should we let PayPal decide who can and cannot buy or sell over the Internet, and what?
Or wire transfer, or money orders, or checks, or credit cards, or cash in an envelope...
I've never really understood what role PayPal plays. It's like a bank, but apparently not covered with any kind of regulations nor in fact any laws at all, with a reputation for stopping payments and confiscating money on your account on a whim. I can't think of a scenario where it wouldn't be the worst possible option for everyone involved. So why do people use it?
But yeah, Bitcoin would be ideal, especially since proof of payment stays available as long as the network lasts. I don't think it can stabilize and become widely-accepted, however, especially since any sign it is becoming so would threaten every bank in existence.
No, it isn't. In most of the world what the carriers use has nothing to do with what the users use - the carrier gives you a SIM card which identifies your account, you buy whatever phone you want and put the SIM card in there, and everything just works.
What this really demonstrates is that different but related markets should be decoupled from each other, by force if necessary. Also, open standards are vital for a functional market economy.
Unfortunately, politics influences the Internet (for example, see the recent attempts to push ACTA through) and are thus relevant to nerds. This is especially true of the US, due to the power it wields and the likely consequences of losing that power due to mismanagement (China becomes the next hyperpower and unleashes even worse things upon the world, or European Union prevails and enforces its own brand of censorship). Since Slashdot advertises itself as news of nerds, politics are relevant to it.
For that to be true, mining the raw materials must represent a large portion of the final cost of a product, and filtering the exhaust of any engines used in a mine must, if done, represent a large portion of a cost of running a mine. Both of these seem pretty unlikely proposals, especially since taken together they would mean that mining companies are getting a large proportion of all money spent on industrial products yet can't afford an expense a lowly delivery service can.
The "them" who benefit from long-term decisions is a different bunch than the people who benefit from short-term decisions, and it's the latter people who make the decisions.
It doesn't criminalize feelings, or anything else that wasn't already criminal. It simply increases the punishment for crimes where the culprit was motivated by them.
So you want to retain a right to walk in groups while denying it to others. Got it. But wouldn't it be easier to just pass the law and selectively enforce it only against "you people"? I mean, that's what you really want here, right?
Also, if a gang already commits crimes, how would an ASBO stop them?
Really? You're a slave? If you don't go to work tomorrow, someone's coming to take you there with a whip?
Also, just out of curiosity, does your opinion also extend to soldiers? That is, if your county gets attacked, is it okay for people who have been paid as part of military to suddenly quit? If not, why not? If yes, how do you propose your society defends itself?
The reason the government began to redistribute wealth in the first place is that people didn't give anywhere near enough to charitable organizations on their own, resulting in constant strife.
"Nanny" state? This sounds more like a wicked stepmotherstate to me.
No, he's saying that it's the Republicans fault that Republicans are slashing education budgets as low as possible to get lower taxes while trying to pretend they're not doing that by avoiding easily noticeable things like firing teachers. This may or may not have consequences down the road, such as creating an undereducated public who can't compete with China nor Europe on either engineering nor cultural output, thus dropping the US into third world status, but that's beyond the point.
Mind you, I'm an European, so the only thing that's troublesome in this scenario for me is that ICANN might be moved to some country without a First Amendment. That "goddamn piece of paper" is the only thing the US still has to contribute to the rest of the world. That fact should also be some food for the thought for you folks, and something you should digest before it's too late. Unless, of course, you want to be tpssed into the wastebin of history with the rest of the has-beens.
Not every day, but 12-hour shifts and 40-hour workweeks combine wonderfully for both companies (less shift-change related confusion) and workers (more free days).
Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to just give them a Royal exemption from copyright law and let them get the shows from Pirate Bay?
So you're fine with private organizations imposing fines on a whim? And that a school teaches its students to submit to such arbitrary authority?
And the rich pay less than their fair share of taxes because they have used the power their riches bring to bring it about. They deserve no more praise than a mugger who calls an ambulance for his victim would.
The rich are like politicians or lawyers: there might be a few who are honest or even decent, but as a group, they have earned their reputation.
If you have a fight in space, then either one side will travel a long distance to get there, or both will. And you can't keep people sitting on a tiny fighter for months. Even if you could find people fanatical enough to do that, their bodies would simply break from forced inactivity long before they reached the target. So if you want to do battle in space, you must either have large ships or hyperdrives. Which, of course, is exactly why we deploy carriers in real life: fighters just don't have the range.
Also, consider the square-cube law: the surface area of a ship scales with second power, while the volume scales with third. That means that a larger ship takes less penalty (mass increase in percentage of total mass) from the same armor than a smaller one would, while being capable of taking the same relative amount of fuel and supplies. A larger ship can also fit automatic anti-missile guns and such which a smaller ship simply doesn't have room for.
Fancy name for a camera you have there.
They have a ship. We have a planet.
The fish is the shark from Jaws, the gun is a popgun, and you're taking a bath in the barrel.
Once you have weapon-grade lasers, how are anti-matter warheads viable weapons? Seeing how anything trying to get close would be a prime priority target precisely to shoot them down.
For that matter, what current or near-future technology do you propose would be used to manufacture the antimatter in these warheads?
Isn't that basically the whole plot? Metaphysics of WoT are divided into male and female halfs, and the attempt to find an unisex power found one that's trying to destroy the fabric of reality.
So Rand's quest is to ensure that men and women can never understand one another, and he's engaged to three women. No wonder the poor guy has issues.