and Obama wants to take what little money I have and give it to people who don't like to work
Could you stop repeating that damn myth unless you intend to back it up with some real evidence? What specific program that he has purposed do you think is going to "give money to people who don't like to work"?
And speaking of giving money to people who don't like to work: What about the $600 "stimulus" package promoted by GWB and jumped on by both parties? Wouldn't it have made more sense to have invested that money into the highway fund, green projects or any number of infrastructure upgrades that would employ people right here in the United States instead of giving people money to go spend on Chinese crap at Wally World?
Uh, Chamberlain's deal bought the UK the time they needed to arm up and prepare for war. Look at the military expenditures and army commitments of the Allies in the years leading up for war and then tell us whether Chamberlain was wrong to dither for a few years. If he'd gone to war immediately we might all be speaking German.
-1, factually incorrect.
There's this myth that Germany was this all powerful conquering force. Nothing could be further from the truth. When Germany invaded Poland the vast majority of her artillery pieces were hauled by horses, because they didn't have enough fuel or vehicles to go around. I know the popular image we have from history is one of an all powerful armored blitzkrieg -- but the tanks were only the first part of the battle. The troops that followed them were largely on foot in the first few years. They continued to make use of horses and suffered many logistical problems due to their overextended and undermanned supply system.
Germany was the weak power in the 1930s -- not the UK or France. The German high command was horrified at the hard line that Hitler was taking during the Sudetenland Crisis -- they knew that they would not be able to win a war against the Allies at that point. If the UK and/or France had shown some backbone (maybe by actually intervening when Poland was invaded instead of waiting to be attacked) history might have turned out a lot differently.
Doesn't it bother anyone that the media gets to decide?
How is the media 'deciding'? He has a majority of the delegates to the convention. I don't think the media repeating this fact is 'deciding' anything.... it's reporting.
but the only states he won by a large margin are traditionally democratic states anyway
You mean those traditionally democratic states like Montana (15 point victory), North Carolina (14.5 points), Mississippi (24.5), Wyoming (23.6), Virginia (28.2), Nebraska (35.4), Georgia (35.3), Kansas (48.2), Idaho (62.3) or Alaska (50.5)?
You know, all the flyover states that Obama wrote off to his friends in San Francisco a few weeks back.
Do you really want to play this game of trying to beat the candidates to death with a single badly worded statement? That game can be played both ways you know.
If that's your metric for calling someone the most liberal Senator then I have some bad news for you. Who knew that John McCain was the most liberal person in the United States Senate?
And when did 'Liberal' become a bad word, exactly?
Clinton wasn't called one of the most leftist
I'm sure they would have if she had managed to win.
Ummm...so you're essentially throwing EVERYTHING that makes you a republican out the window to vote for the most leftist presidential candidate from a major party EVER?
Isn't it amazing how the Republicans manage to label every single candidate that we run as the "most leftist" or "most liberal"? They did it to Al Gore and John Kerry and now they are trying to do it to Senator Obama. Hell, I suspect they'd be doing it if we had nominated Joe Libermann or Zell Miller.
It's almost enough to give you the idea that they know they can't win on the issues so they have to run a campaign of FUD.
Yeah, I'm sure the large corporation is shaking in their boots. Large companies have teams of lawyers just waiting for something like some schmoe to sue the company
Yes and those teams of lawyers cost money and those large corporations will almost always settle a lawsuit in the favor of the consumer. It's a lot cheaper to settle a dispute over a few hundred bucks than it is to even pay your lawyers to respond to a summons, never mind paying them to go to trial or respond to discovery requests.
They will simply cut you off and sell the debt to a collection company. When the collection company sues you I doubt the judge will even take the time to hear your explanation, must less understand it
Actually if you simply respond to a debt collection lawsuit your odds of paying anything drop substantially. Consumer debt collection lawsuits are based on the theory that they can file dozens of them at the same time and obtain default judgments when the debtors don't bother to show up and contest the lawsuit. Once you show up you don't even have to worry about explaining it to the judge -- because first you get to go through discovery and make them prove that they have a valid assignment for the debt, a valid chain of custody for any supporting documentation about the underlying debt and that they have followed the law. specifically the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. If they violate any aspect of that law (and they all do) you can counter-sue them for $1,000 per violation and you don't even need to prove damages -- it's a statutory penalty.
Unless you owe thousands of dollars AND have assets worth coming after it's just not profitable for them to pay a lawyer to contest ONE individual case when they could be paying him to obtain dozens of default judgments. Its just not a profitable exchange for them. If you think a debt collection agency would take a few hundred dollars of debt to court and then not fold like a cheap suit if you contested it then you've never had the "privilege" of dealing with one of them. I sued a debt collector over FDCPA violations once -- I'd sent them a no-contact letter and they kept calling me -- a few recorded phone calls and some pro-say filings later they wrote me a check for $2,000 and ceased all collection attempts on the original debt.
But what he will understand is the law - and if you entered into a contract with a company where you agreed on a bandwidth limit and your computer transfers more data than the limit then you are liable for the overages. Your "but it was teh haxxors!" defense probably will hold little merit in an actual court.
Actually you'd be pretty surprised. As a random example there are already laws on the books that basically give you a "get out of jail free" card if your kids run up a huge phone bill calling 900 numbers. But it's largely a moot point. You could make a lawsuit grossly unprofitable for them regardless of what the judge thinks (and there are at least as many pro-consumer judges as there are pro-business ones). No large corporation is going to spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to defend a lawsuit over a few hundred bucks. They are going to settle with you and probably include a non-disclosure agreement in the settlement so you can't talk about it and encourage other people to do the same. Either way you win.
More reliable, especially in "rural" area that see the occasional power outage. After living in NYC for the past 20+ years the only thing that has consistently worked through almost ANY emergency is my POTS line. 9/11? Pots line kept working (the cell phone could only dial out of city but the POTS worked fine). Blackout in 2003? POTS kept working long after the cell phone and VOIP backup batteries died. It was good to be able to call and check on family members who were also affected. Think of it like this. We talk about redundancy in data centers. Having a POTS line along with a cable modem and a cell phone is the same thing but for the home.
Hey, your preaching to the choir here. I wrote a journal entry a few years ago titled "In Defense of POTS". I'm not a huge fan of the alternatives -- VoIP has reliability/customer service issues and wireless comes with draconian contracts and isn't as bulletproof as POTS is.
That said, I still dumped my POTS line at home when Verizon started nickel and diming people to death. They tacked on a $2/mo charge for regional long distance, raised the price of message rate service 50% (the cheapest plan they offer) and raised their per minute long distance rates close to 50%, probably in an effort to get people to buy unlimited calling plans. It just wasn't worth paying for two phone lines anymore -- I have to have a cell phone and what's the point of keeping the landline around when everyone calls my cell first and I rarely used it anymore? I can think of better things to do with $35/mo than give it to Verizon for a service I'm barely using.
If I had to have a landline in the house (I'd want one if I had kids) then it would be a POTS line because I'm not a big cable company fan and no product is remotely as reliable as POTS is.
it built on work by Alexander Bain [wikipedia.org] who received a patent for "improvements in producing and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces and in electric printing and signal telegraphs" in 1843.
My landline is with them so every couple of months
Why are you giving those bastards money for a POTS line if they won't even bother to build out DSL in your area? Ditch them for a cellular-only lifestyle or get VoIP/CLEC landline provider if you really can't live without the fixed phone.
No, they don't have to prove anything of the sort. All they have to do is point to their TOS and the clause that is likely already there today stating that YOU are responsible for all data coming from your computer, legitimate or otherwise.
Yeah but that doesn't mean they won't have to spend piles of money to defend that position in court. Merely putting something in your TOS does not prevent your customers from dragging you into court when they get a $200 bandwidth bill after their machine is pwned.
Instead of investing in technology here, the big Telcos (and ROT IN HELL for this Billy Tauzin, et al) have a stranglehold on the market and can dictate everything
Why are you whining about the "big telcos" when it's Time Warner Cable proceeding with a bandwidth cap?
Which "big telco" is engaged in BT throttling and capping? I can't speak for AT&T because they aren't around here but Verizon has a completely uncapped and unshaped product. Two of them actually -- DSL and FiOS.
A better example of someone who might adjust would be an ancient Roman; they had the sort of outlook that would make living in the modern world fairly easy. I think a medieval European might simply disintegrate in the face of a world so utterly alien.
That's a pretty interesting way of looking at it. An upper class Roman would probably look at our World and just see a lot of the jobs his slaves used to do replaced with technology. He'd probably adapt pretty quickly. He'd probably also be pretty proud of himself considering how much influence Rome had on the modern World.
I don't think the medieval European would disintegrate but he'd have a pretty hard time adjusting. You'd have some good selling points for him if you could communicate with him though -- we beat smallpox and syphilis for starters. The trouble is that a lot of the modern world would completely fly in the face of everything he thinks -- you'd probably want to have a pretty good psychologist on hand when you thawed him out.
It seems that humans have a hard time adopting new technology past adulthood
I think you are painting with a pretty broad brush there. It might be better to say that some humans have a hard time adopting new technology.
I know a 84 year old WW2 vet that has a gaming rig that blows my setup out of the water. He plays computer games all day long (it must be nice to be retired....) He doesn't have/. like computer knowledge but he's quite comfortable using them and generally adopts new technology faster than I do (it must be nice to have money...).
You really need to pick up at least the fundamentals while young, or it quite dificult to understand a technology except as magic
What are the 'fundamentals'? Are the fundamentals of computers having the knowledge of how digital systems work and what all that hardware on the motherboard does? Are the fundamentals of automobiles knowing how internal combustion engines work and all the related hardware that supports them? Or are they the ability to interface with that technology (drive a car, operate a computer)? If it's merely the ability to interface with the technology than anyone who is still capable of learning is capable of adopting new technology.
which is basically how my grandparents viewed computers
That's not how mine viewed them. They deferred to my knowledge with regards to computers but they didn't view them as some sort of black magic that only I fully understood.
Going back to the original question, exactly why do you think that someone from 1,000 years ago wouldn't be able to (eventually) adjust to our world? Do you think that there is some reason you wouldn't be able to teach them how to drive a car? Operate a telephone? Use an ATM? Fire a gun?
is driving their civilization into the ground as well as we have done to our own.
I wonder if you'd still think we drove our civilization into the ground if this tribe was wiped out by some horrible disease that modern medicine would have prevented?
If starving to death isn't beautiful, explain Hollywood and the fashion industry.
As disgusting as that anorexic look is it's not "starving to death". If you want to see pictures of what straving to death really looks like do some Google image searches for "concentration camp survivors" or "POWs held by Japan".
What if someone with a time machine kidnapped you and dropped you off 1000 years in the future. You might have trouble adjusting.
Would it really be any harder then adjusting to being dropped off in a modern day country that speaks a different language or has different cultural norms than your own?
If you took someone from the Middle Ages and dropped them into Times Square they'd probably be very overwhelmed -- but do you have any reason to think that they wouldn't eventually adjust and live a normal life?
Smallpox is almost gone but it keep on showing up here and thier. just a quick googl search
You realize that link you provided is citing an outbreak that happened in 1969 right? That was thirty nine years ago for those who are bad at math -- the second to last time that the Mets fielded a winning team and the year that we first landed on the Moon.
Yes, I know what you mean. We're a lot more advanced culturally, not just technologically - I think mature is the word - than our 15th-16th century counterparts.
I'd dispute that. We are more mature than our 15th-16th century counterparts because we have the luxury of being more mature. If you took a population of modern mature humans and placed their backs against a wall somehow I suspect you'd see just how quickly we could revert back to our aggressive roots.
Hell, if I'm being a real pessimist I could probably make the argument that we really haven't matured any at all. It was a little over sixty years ago that several nations teamed up in an effort to try and conquer their way into great power status. If anything I'd give more credit for keeping the (relative) peace since then to nuclear weapons more than I'd give to any spiritual awakening of humanity. Nuclear weapons made warfare to risky to wage -- there's just too much to lose when your enemy can kill hundreds of millions of your own people in just a few hours.
a far more advanced alien civilization will probably view us the same way. (Unless of course I missed something there, like they plan to mine our planet to death for resources we haven't discovered yet, or haven't any use yet.)
It would probably be hubris to think something that advanced would go out of their way to invade us.
Why would that be hubris? It's not exactly unpredecented for an advanced power to displace a less advanced one.
Invade is probably the wrong word though. Nature is full of examples of more adaptable/aggressive/advanced life forms pushing out less adaptable/aggressive/advanced ones. That's the most likely explanation for the disappearance of the Neanderthals -- displaced by more aggressive/adaptable Cro-Magnons. Homo Sapiens have done it to each other too (see the aforementioned link). It's not even unique behavior of ours either. Other animals do the exact same thing (try being a red squirrel and having to compete with gray squirrels).
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Could you stop repeating that damn myth unless you intend to back it up with some real evidence? What specific program that he has purposed do you think is going to "give money to people who don't like to work"?
And speaking of giving money to people who don't like to work: What about the $600 "stimulus" package promoted by GWB and jumped on by both parties? Wouldn't it have made more sense to have invested that money into the highway fund, green projects or any number of infrastructure upgrades that would employ people right here in the United States instead of giving people money to go spend on Chinese crap at Wally World?
-1, factually incorrect.
There's this myth that Germany was this all powerful conquering force. Nothing could be further from the truth. When Germany invaded Poland the vast majority of her artillery pieces were hauled by horses, because they didn't have enough fuel or vehicles to go around. I know the popular image we have from history is one of an all powerful armored blitzkrieg -- but the tanks were only the first part of the battle. The troops that followed them were largely on foot in the first few years. They continued to make use of horses and suffered many logistical problems due to their overextended and undermanned supply system.
Germany was the weak power in the 1930s -- not the UK or France. The German high command was horrified at the hard line that Hitler was taking during the Sudetenland Crisis -- they knew that they would not be able to win a war against the Allies at that point. If the UK and/or France had shown some backbone (maybe by actually intervening when Poland was invaded instead of waiting to be attacked) history might have turned out a lot differently.
Chamberlain was a fool. The evidence of Hitler's intentions were there for all to see.
How is the media 'deciding'? He has a majority of the delegates to the convention. I don't think the media repeating this fact is 'deciding' anything.... it's reporting.
Actually, in the states that had "open" primaries Obama tended to do better.
It's a bitch, isn't it?
You mean those traditionally democratic states like Montana (15 point victory), North Carolina (14.5 points), Mississippi (24.5), Wyoming (23.6), Virginia (28.2), Nebraska (35.4), Georgia (35.3), Kansas (48.2), Idaho (62.3) or Alaska (50.5)?
You know, all the flyover states that Obama wrote off to his friends in San Francisco a few weeks back.Do you really want to play this game of trying to beat the candidates to death with a single badly worded statement? That game can be played both ways you know.
If that's your metric for calling someone the most liberal Senator then I have some bad news for you. Who knew that John McCain was the most liberal person in the United States Senate?
And when did 'Liberal' become a bad word, exactly?
Clinton wasn't called one of the most leftistI'm sure they would have if she had managed to win.
Isn't it amazing how the Republicans manage to label every single candidate that we run as the "most leftist" or "most liberal"? They did it to Al Gore and John Kerry and now they are trying to do it to Senator Obama. Hell, I suspect they'd be doing it if we had nominated Joe Libermann or Zell Miller.
It's almost enough to give you the idea that they know they can't win on the issues so they have to run a campaign of FUD.
Yes and those teams of lawyers cost money and those large corporations will almost always settle a lawsuit in the favor of the consumer. It's a lot cheaper to settle a dispute over a few hundred bucks than it is to even pay your lawyers to respond to a summons, never mind paying them to go to trial or respond to discovery requests.
They will simply cut you off and sell the debt to a collection company. When the collection company sues you I doubt the judge will even take the time to hear your explanation, must less understand itActually if you simply respond to a debt collection lawsuit your odds of paying anything drop substantially. Consumer debt collection lawsuits are based on the theory that they can file dozens of them at the same time and obtain default judgments when the debtors don't bother to show up and contest the lawsuit. Once you show up you don't even have to worry about explaining it to the judge -- because first you get to go through discovery and make them prove that they have a valid assignment for the debt, a valid chain of custody for any supporting documentation about the underlying debt and that they have followed the law. specifically the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. If they violate any aspect of that law (and they all do) you can counter-sue them for $1,000 per violation and you don't even need to prove damages -- it's a statutory penalty.
Unless you owe thousands of dollars AND have assets worth coming after it's just not profitable for them to pay a lawyer to contest ONE individual case when they could be paying him to obtain dozens of default judgments. Its just not a profitable exchange for them. If you think a debt collection agency would take a few hundred dollars of debt to court and then not fold like a cheap suit if you contested it then you've never had the "privilege" of dealing with one of them. I sued a debt collector over FDCPA violations once -- I'd sent them a no-contact letter and they kept calling me -- a few recorded phone calls and some pro-say filings later they wrote me a check for $2,000 and ceased all collection attempts on the original debt.
But what he will understand is the law - and if you entered into a contract with a company where you agreed on a bandwidth limit and your computer transfers more data than the limit then you are liable for the overages. Your "but it was teh haxxors!" defense probably will hold little merit in an actual court.Actually you'd be pretty surprised. As a random example there are already laws on the books that basically give you a "get out of jail free" card if your kids run up a huge phone bill calling 900 numbers. But it's largely a moot point. You could make a lawsuit grossly unprofitable for them regardless of what the judge thinks (and there are at least as many pro-consumer judges as there are pro-business ones). No large corporation is going to spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to defend a lawsuit over a few hundred bucks. They are going to settle with you and probably include a non-disclosure agreement in the settlement so you can't talk about it and encourage other people to do the same. Either way you win.
Hey, your preaching to the choir here. I wrote a journal entry a few years ago titled "In Defense of POTS". I'm not a huge fan of the alternatives -- VoIP has reliability/customer service issues and wireless comes with draconian contracts and isn't as bulletproof as POTS is.
That said, I still dumped my POTS line at home when Verizon started nickel and diming people to death. They tacked on a $2/mo charge for regional long distance, raised the price of message rate service 50% (the cheapest plan they offer) and raised their per minute long distance rates close to 50%, probably in an effort to get people to buy unlimited calling plans. It just wasn't worth paying for two phone lines anymore -- I have to have a cell phone and what's the point of keeping the landline around when everyone calls my cell first and I rarely used it anymore? I can think of better things to do with $35/mo than give it to Verizon for a service I'm barely using.
If I had to have a landline in the house (I'd want one if I had kids) then it would be a POTS line because I'm not a big cable company fan and no product is remotely as reliable as POTS is.
Yeah, but did he go on to sue RIM? ;)
Why are you giving those bastards money for a POTS line if they won't even bother to build out DSL in your area? Ditch them for a cellular-only lifestyle or get VoIP/CLEC landline provider if you really can't live without the fixed phone.
Yeah but that doesn't mean they won't have to spend piles of money to defend that position in court. Merely putting something in your TOS does not prevent your customers from dragging you into court when they get a $200 bandwidth bill after their machine is pwned.
Why are you whining about the "big telcos" when it's Time Warner Cable proceeding with a bandwidth cap?
Which "big telco" is engaged in BT throttling and capping? I can't speak for AT&T because they aren't around here but Verizon has a completely uncapped and unshaped product. Two of them actually -- DSL and FiOS.
That's a pretty interesting way of looking at it. An upper class Roman would probably look at our World and just see a lot of the jobs his slaves used to do replaced with technology. He'd probably adapt pretty quickly. He'd probably also be pretty proud of himself considering how much influence Rome had on the modern World.
I don't think the medieval European would disintegrate but he'd have a pretty hard time adjusting. You'd have some good selling points for him if you could communicate with him though -- we beat smallpox and syphilis for starters. The trouble is that a lot of the modern world would completely fly in the face of everything he thinks -- you'd probably want to have a pretty good psychologist on hand when you thawed him out.
I think you are painting with a pretty broad brush there. It might be better to say that some humans have a hard time adopting new technology.
I know a 84 year old WW2 vet that has a gaming rig that blows my setup out of the water. He plays computer games all day long (it must be nice to be retired....) He doesn't have /. like computer knowledge but he's quite comfortable using them and generally adopts new technology faster than I do (it must be nice to have money...).
You really need to pick up at least the fundamentals while young, or it quite dificult to understand a technology except as magicWhat are the 'fundamentals'? Are the fundamentals of computers having the knowledge of how digital systems work and what all that hardware on the motherboard does? Are the fundamentals of automobiles knowing how internal combustion engines work and all the related hardware that supports them? Or are they the ability to interface with that technology (drive a car, operate a computer)? If it's merely the ability to interface with the technology than anyone who is still capable of learning is capable of adopting new technology.
which is basically how my grandparents viewed computersThat's not how mine viewed them. They deferred to my knowledge with regards to computers but they didn't view them as some sort of black magic that only I fully understood.
Going back to the original question, exactly why do you think that someone from 1,000 years ago wouldn't be able to (eventually) adjust to our world? Do you think that there is some reason you wouldn't be able to teach them how to drive a car? Operate a telephone? Use an ATM? Fire a gun?
I wonder if you'd still think we drove our civilization into the ground if this tribe was wiped out by some horrible disease that modern medicine would have prevented?
Just saying, civilization has some advantages ;)
Not anymore apparently ;)
How did it do that without the benefit of a frickin' laser on it's frickin' head?
As disgusting as that anorexic look is it's not "starving to death". If you want to see pictures of what straving to death really looks like do some Google image searches for "concentration camp survivors" or "POWs held by Japan".
Would it really be any harder then adjusting to being dropped off in a modern day country that speaks a different language or has different cultural norms than your own?
If you took someone from the Middle Ages and dropped them into Times Square they'd probably be very overwhelmed -- but do you have any reason to think that they wouldn't eventually adjust and live a normal life?
You realize that link you provided is citing an outbreak that happened in 1969 right? That was thirty nine years ago for those who are bad at math -- the second to last time that the Mets fielded a winning team and the year that we first landed on the Moon.
I'd dispute that. We are more mature than our 15th-16th century counterparts because we have the luxury of being more mature. If you took a population of modern mature humans and placed their backs against a wall somehow I suspect you'd see just how quickly we could revert back to our aggressive roots.
Hell, if I'm being a real pessimist I could probably make the argument that we really haven't matured any at all. It was a little over sixty years ago that several nations teamed up in an effort to try and conquer their way into great power status. If anything I'd give more credit for keeping the (relative) peace since then to nuclear weapons more than I'd give to any spiritual awakening of humanity. Nuclear weapons made warfare to risky to wage -- there's just too much to lose when your enemy can kill hundreds of millions of your own people in just a few hours.
a far more advanced alien civilization will probably view us the same way. (Unless of course I missed something there, like they plan to mine our planet to death for resources we haven't discovered yet, or haven't any use yet.)Maybe they just need more living space?
we'd be clamoring for them to get educated and run casinos.
There, fixed that for you ;)
Why would that be hubris? It's not exactly unpredecented for an advanced power to displace a less advanced one.
Invade is probably the wrong word though. Nature is full of examples of more adaptable/aggressive/advanced life forms pushing out less adaptable/aggressive/advanced ones. That's the most likely explanation for the disappearance of the Neanderthals -- displaced by more aggressive/adaptable Cro-Magnons. Homo Sapiens have done it to each other too (see the aforementioned link). It's not even unique behavior of ours either. Other animals do the exact same thing (try being a red squirrel and having to compete with gray squirrels).