Every religion is a tool invented by people. Tools can be used for good or for evil. Look at the historical record and you wll find examples of that with every belief system invented by man.
No religion should be taught in school. In my opinion, no religion should be taught to any child. When they turn 18 and have an understanding of reason and logic, then they can choose to learn about religion and choose to just "believe" something if they want. Indoctrination of children into a belief system when they are unable to make an informed choice is wrong.
A variation of this would be that when cars traveling at dangerous speeds are detected coming from perpendicular directions, turn the lights green for both of them.;)
Look, just because you can't figure out that there might have been a real geopolitical reason to invade Iraq doesn't mean there wasn't one. See, we were already in Afghanistan at the time. And Iraq was totally a target of opportunity - we had a very good excuse to invade them, and they just happened to be the country on the other side of Iran, which was the one we wanted to operate against anyway (because it's definitely operating against us) but didn't have an excuse to invade.
The "good excuse" to invade Iraq that you refer to is that Iraq: 1. has lots of Oil, 2. was militarily weak, and 3. was politically isolated. To paraphrase Dick Cheney: "This invasion will pay for itself and my buddies at Halliburton will make a killing on oil deals."
The original Afghan campaign was a brilliant piece of work,
Including the part where Bush let Bin Ladin escape from Tora Bora?
The point of Afghanistan wasn't to take the country - you can't - it was to deny it to the Taliban, which is a small and sensible goal that actually could be accomplished.
Actually, the point was to deny it to Al Qaeda. The Taliban refused to stop protecting Al Qaeda, so then the Taliban became targets. If the Taliban had agreed to the U.S. ultimatum to surrender Al Qaeda then the US would not have invaded. Of course the whole notion of denying safe havens to terrorists by occupying entire countries becomes a game of Whack-a-Mole where each "whack" costs the USA about a trillion dollars, and the USA runs out of cash before the world runs out of terrorrists popping up in new obscure countries.
The red car is in the leftmost of 2 left turning lanes. The car in the rightmost of the 2 left turning lanes remains stationary, which would be evidence that the left turn light was red.
Regardless of the signal state, as you note it is clearly a poor driving decision by the red car driver to accelerate from a stopped state and initiate a left turn into traffic that is flowing at high speed. If I were stopped in my car and I got a green light but oncoming traffic chose to ignore the signals and continue then I would choose to remain stopped. The rule for making a turn is that you should not turn your wheels until you are certain that you will be able to safely complete the turn and clear the intersection. That's because if you turn your wheels and stop and wait for traffic to clear, a car behind you can rear end you and push you into traffic, getting you killed. Happened to a coworker, RIP.
You are correct. The definition of "assault rifle" is a weapon that is capable of firing multiple bullets with a single trigger pull. The BushMaster does not meet that definition. My apologies for the mistake.
Here's how Adam gets into the safe: "Hey Mom, I'm going to the range to do some shooting, can I get a gun from the safe?" Mom: "Sure, and make sure to wear a jacket, it's chilly outside today."
His mother (who was a target shooter) introduced him to target shooting as a hobby. His mother did not believe that he was capable of violence so saw no reason to keep guns away from her son.
The mother did do something: She purchased the assault rifle use to commit the massacre and kept it in her home where her sone could get it.
Could she have done something different? Sure. The mother could have kept her assault rifle and hanguns locked up at the gun range in secure storage that only she could have access to. Instead, she kept the guns at home where her son could access them, apparently without her permission since she was apparently shot in her bed that morning of the massacre.
The rate of gun suicide in Canada is about equal to that in the US, which is significant because the primary purpose of owning a gun is to kill yourself: that is the most common use of guns against humans in both the US and Canada, and why wouldn't we identify the most common use as the purpose of the tool?
Look, I'm a supporter of very restrictive gun control laws, but what you wrote above is wildly incorrect. For every shot from a gun that is aimed at a human, dozens are aimed at paper targets, non-human animals, or just into the sky. So I would say that the most common use of guns is target shooting or killing non-human animals.
Cars have unique identifiers (VIN). When you register your car with the government (as you are required to do to drive it on public roads) you provide your name and the VIN to the government.
The car manufacturer assigns the VIN to the car. For a factory installed Bluetooth system in the car, the car manufacturer also knows (or could get) the BT MAC address and store that in a database matching the VIN to the BT MAC. The government could require the car manufacturer to make this database of (VIN, BT MAC) pairs available to them.
The traffic control system could compute the time that a BT MAC address took to travel between 2 locations of known driving distance along a freeway. Computing the average speed is simple. If the average speed exceeds the allowed speed by some amount, they could map the BT MAC to the VIN to the registered owner.
Doing this would be a bad idea. BT MAC can be spoofed so pranksters could make trouble. Speeders could turn off BT in their cars.
However, I do think it is very technically feasible to do it.
Can someone impersonate your car's or phone's BT MAC address? Yes. Does the average person have the knowledge and ability to do so? No.
So, if the government database shows that a BT device with a MAC address matching that of your car or phone was on Deerfoot Trail at 2am on Monday, then it is likely, but not certain, that your car or phone was on that road at that time. Note that the presence of your car on phone on the road does not mean that you were there. Similarly, the absence of your car's or phone's BT MAC in the database does not mean that your car or your phone were not there since BT could be turned off, jammed, or if you were an expert hacker you could potentially alter your BT MAC address.
Would I convict someone (or exonerate them) solely on the basis of BT MAC address evidence? No.
I agree that scepticism is appropriate for government provided information about the effectiveness of the system.
The system has not provided freedom from fear for Israeli civilians who still hear sirens and run to shelters when missiles are launched.
Are there any public statistics available from the last major missile attack from Gaza (several years ago) and the current one that compare number of missiles launched and how much damage (property and human) caused? Presumably if the system is effective then the damage done in this most recent war would be measurably less than the previous war.
One of Israel's greatest strengths would be its military. Hamas cannot compete militarily, it's a losing strategy. Attempting to compete on this battlefield demonstrates the absence of rational thinking.
Israel's weakness is on the morality of preventing Palestinians from forming a country of their own. A wise strategy would be for the Palestinians to fight Israel here, using public opinion (of both reasonable Israelis and the larger world). Look at Gandhi's strategy of non-violent non-cooperation that got the British Empire out of India. Look at how Mandela ended Apartheid in South Africa.
I want to opt out of mass mail to save the environment.
The system today is: 1. Company uses ink and paper and time to make admail. 2. USPS delivers admail to my mailbox consuming gas and time. 3. I take admail from mailbox and put in recycle bin (wasting my time) 4. Recycling company hauls paper to recycling, consuming gas and time
It would be great if I could opt-out of admail so that we can eliminate the wastage of gas and time. e.g. have the USPS just take the admail of everyone who opts out to the recycler directly, instead of putting it in my mailbox.
Followup question: How do you account for Ryan begging Biden for stimulus money 3 years ago where Ryan wrote "Please give my district stimulus money it will create jobs" and now Ryan claims the stimulus did not and could not create jobs? Doesn't that smell hypocritical?
Let me warn you and let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion that says “of course we believe these things. We believe in social security. We believe in work for the unemployed. We believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die [laughter, applause] we believe in all these things. BUT, we do not like the way the present administration is DOING them! Just turn them over to us. We will do ALL of them. We will do MORE of them. We will do them better! And most important of all, the doing of them will not. cost. anybody ANYthing!” [much laughter, much applause].
How do you account for Ryan voting to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from embassy security forces and attacking Biden for the lack of security for the Libyan ambassador? Doesn't that seem hyprocritical?
And also the problem is that he would prevent the application of scientific solutions to problems where the solutions are known.
Why bother to reduce carbon emissions if you believe that it's all part of God's plan or that God will save those who deserve saving?
Even more scary, if the President believes in heaven and all that goes with it, then it's pretty darn scary to us non-believers that the President has the nuclear football with him at all times. Because we see nuclear armageddon as the end of our existence, not the transition to some newer, better place like he does
If you reward medical service providers for providing as many services as they can (or in fraud cases billing for services they don't provide), then you should not be surprised to find costs growing out of control.
Ancient Chinese Proverb went something like: "Pay doctor when you are healthy. Stop paying doctor when you are sick." That creates the financial incentives for the medical profession to be efficient.
There are some providers in the USA that break out of the fee for service model and provide good, efficient care.
Slashdot Mirror
he can't write any better than an elementary school kid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Every religion is a tool invented by people. Tools can be used for good or for evil. Look at the historical record and you wll find examples of that with every belief system invented by man.
No religion should be taught in school. In my opinion, no religion should be taught to any child. When they turn 18 and have an understanding of reason and logic, then they can choose to learn about religion and choose to just "believe" something if they want. Indoctrination of children into a belief system when they are unable to make an informed choice is wrong.
An Apple gaming device would be an elegant, pure white box with only a light, it would never crash, but only Apple-approved games would run on it
So basically like every other game console.
And like the hyptothetical Steambox that will run any game that Valve approves for download via Valve's Steam game service.
A variation of this would be that when cars traveling at dangerous speeds are detected coming from perpendicular directions, turn the lights green for both of them. ;)
Look, just because you can't figure out that there might have been a real geopolitical reason to invade Iraq doesn't mean there wasn't one. See, we were already in Afghanistan at the time. And Iraq was totally a target of opportunity - we had a very good excuse to invade them, and they just happened to be the country on the other side of Iran, which was the one we wanted to operate against anyway (because it's definitely operating against us) but didn't have an excuse to invade.
The "good excuse" to invade Iraq that you refer to is that Iraq: 1. has lots of Oil, 2. was militarily weak, and 3. was politically isolated. To paraphrase Dick Cheney: "This invasion will pay for itself and my buddies at Halliburton will make a killing on oil deals."
The original Afghan campaign was a brilliant piece of work,
Including the part where Bush let Bin Ladin escape from Tora Bora?
The point of Afghanistan wasn't to take the country - you can't - it was to deny it to the Taliban, which is a small and sensible goal that actually could be accomplished.
Actually, the point was to deny it to Al Qaeda. The Taliban refused to stop protecting Al Qaeda, so then the Taliban became targets. If the Taliban had agreed to the U.S. ultimatum to surrender Al Qaeda then the US would not have invaded. Of course the whole notion of denying safe havens to terrorists by occupying entire countries becomes a game of Whack-a-Mole where each "whack" costs the USA about a trillion dollars, and the USA runs out of cash before the world runs out of terrorrists popping up in new obscure countries.
The red car is in the leftmost of 2 left turning lanes. The car in the rightmost of the 2 left turning lanes remains stationary, which would be evidence that the left turn light was red.
Regardless of the signal state, as you note it is clearly a poor driving decision by the red car driver to accelerate from a stopped state and initiate a left turn into traffic that is flowing at high speed. If I were stopped in my car and I got a green light but oncoming traffic chose to ignore the signals and continue then I would choose to remain stopped. The rule for making a turn is that you should not turn your wheels until you are certain that you will be able to safely complete the turn and clear the intersection. That's because if you turn your wheels and stop and wait for traffic to clear, a car behind you can rear end you and push you into traffic, getting you killed. Happened to a coworker, RIP.
You are correct. The definition of "assault rifle" is a weapon that is capable of firing multiple bullets with a single trigger pull. The BushMaster does not meet that definition. My apologies for the mistake.
Here's how Adam gets into the safe: "Hey Mom, I'm going to the range to do some shooting, can I get a gun from the safe?" Mom: "Sure, and make sure to wear a jacket, it's chilly outside today."
His mother (who was a target shooter) introduced him to target shooting as a hobby. His mother did not believe that he was capable of violence so saw no reason to keep guns away from her son.
The mother did do something: She purchased the assault rifle use to commit the massacre and kept it in her home where her sone could get it.
Could she have done something different? Sure. The mother could have kept her assault rifle and hanguns locked up at the gun range in secure storage that only she could have access to. Instead, she kept the guns at home where her son could access them, apparently without her permission since she was apparently shot in her bed that morning of the massacre.
The rate of gun suicide in Canada is about equal to that in the US, which is significant because the primary purpose of owning a gun is to kill yourself: that is the most common use of guns against humans in both the US and Canada, and why wouldn't we identify the most common use as the purpose of the tool?
Look, I'm a supporter of very restrictive gun control laws, but what you wrote above is wildly incorrect. For every shot from a gun that is aimed at a human, dozens are aimed at paper targets, non-human animals, or just into the sky. So I would say that the most common use of guns is target shooting or killing non-human animals.
Yes my definition of an expert hacker is anyone who can root their phone and type in commands like "chmod" to modify their MAC address.
Cars have unique identifiers (VIN). When you register your car with the government (as you are required to do to drive it on public roads) you provide your name and the VIN to the government.
The car manufacturer assigns the VIN to the car. For a factory installed Bluetooth system in the car, the car manufacturer also knows (or could get) the BT MAC address and store that in a database matching the VIN to the BT MAC. The government could require the car manufacturer to make this database of (VIN, BT MAC) pairs available to them.
The traffic control system could compute the time that a BT MAC address took to travel between 2 locations of known driving distance along a freeway. Computing the average speed is simple. If the average speed exceeds the allowed speed by some amount, they could map the BT MAC to the VIN to the registered owner.
Doing this would be a bad idea. BT MAC can be spoofed so pranksters could make trouble. Speeders could turn off BT in their cars.
However, I do think it is very technically feasible to do it.
Can someone impersonate your car's or phone's BT MAC address? Yes. Does the average person have the knowledge and ability to do so? No.
So, if the government database shows that a BT device with a MAC address matching that of your car or phone was on Deerfoot Trail at 2am on Monday, then it is likely, but not certain, that your car or phone was on that road at that time. Note that the presence of your car on phone on the road does not mean that you were there. Similarly, the absence of your car's or phone's BT MAC in the database does not mean that your car or your phone were not there since BT could be turned off, jammed, or if you were an expert hacker you could potentially alter your BT MAC address.
Would I convict someone (or exonerate them) solely on the basis of BT MAC address evidence? No.
I agree that scepticism is appropriate for government provided information about the effectiveness of the system.
The system has not provided freedom from fear for Israeli civilians who still hear sirens and run to shelters when missiles are launched.
Are there any public statistics available from the last major missile attack from Gaza (several years ago) and the current one that compare number of missiles launched and how much damage (property and human) caused? Presumably if the system is effective then the damage done in this most recent war would be measurably less than the previous war.
One of Israel's greatest strengths would be its military. Hamas cannot compete militarily, it's a losing strategy. Attempting to compete on this battlefield demonstrates the absence of rational thinking.
Israel's weakness is on the morality of preventing Palestinians from forming a country of their own. A wise strategy would be for the Palestinians to fight Israel here, using public opinion (of both reasonable Israelis and the larger world). Look at Gandhi's strategy of non-violent non-cooperation that got the British Empire out of India. Look at how Mandela ended Apartheid in South Africa.
I want to opt out of mass mail to save the environment.
The system today is:
1. Company uses ink and paper and time to make admail.
2. USPS delivers admail to my mailbox consuming gas and time.
3. I take admail from mailbox and put in recycle bin (wasting my time)
4. Recycling company hauls paper to recycling, consuming gas and time
It would be great if I could opt-out of admail so that we can eliminate the wastage of gas and time. e.g. have the USPS just take the admail of everyone who opts out to the recycler directly, instead of putting it in my mailbox.
A programmer (developer?) writes code that hopefully works. A software engineer writes code that is designed to work.
Might be coincidental, but Motorola also does not have a history of being owned by Google.
Episode VII: A Horrible New Hope
Directed by Joss Whedon.
Nathan Fillion as Han Solo.
NPH as Luke Skywalker.
Felicia Day as Leia.
Followup question: How do you account for Ryan begging Biden for stimulus money 3 years ago where Ryan wrote "Please give my district stimulus money it will create jobs" and now Ryan claims the stimulus did not and could not create jobs? Doesn't that smell hypocritical?
http://browneyedgirl65.com/2011/07/10/fdr-predicts-modern-republicans/
Here is FDR in 1936 laughing at Romney in 2012:
Let me warn you and let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion that says “of course we believe these things. We believe in social security. We believe in work for the unemployed. We believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die [laughter, applause] we believe in all these things. BUT, we do not like the way the present administration is DOING them! Just turn them over to us. We will do ALL of them. We will do MORE of them. We will do them better! And most important of all, the doing of them will not. cost. anybody ANYthing!” [much laughter, much applause].
How do you account for Ryan voting to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from embassy security forces and attacking Biden for the lack of security for the Libyan ambassador? Doesn't that seem hyprocritical?
"How can you kill that which has no life?"
And also the problem is that he would prevent the application of scientific solutions to problems where the solutions are known.
Why bother to reduce carbon emissions if you believe that it's all part of God's plan or that God will save those who deserve saving?
Even more scary, if the President believes in heaven and all that goes with it, then it's pretty darn scary to us non-believers that the President has the nuclear football with him at all times. Because we see nuclear armageddon as the end of our existence, not the transition to some newer, better place like he does
If you reward medical service providers for providing as many services as they can (or in fraud cases billing for services they don't provide), then you should not be surprised to find costs growing out of control.
Ancient Chinese Proverb went something like: "Pay doctor when you are healthy. Stop paying doctor when you are sick." That creates the financial incentives for the medical profession to be efficient.
There are some providers in the USA that break out of the fee for service model and provide good, efficient care.