More than likely this will go nowhere and end up meaning little.
However, if one of the green groups gets traction with it, huge amounts of taxpayer money and reams of regulations will go into "Starbucks-abatement" programs.
Maybe we can even get another government-mandated toilet re-design. The last one accomplished a lot. Like making sure US Border Agents are spending time searching through semi's full of toilets from Mexico to make sure they are compliant with US regulations.
I guess we can now thank the US Government for the rise of Mexican illegal-toilet cartels.
It's actually quite simple to raise a small number of food animals yourself.
In the US, many if not most suburban areas, and nearly all cities, forbid keeping farm animals e.g. chickens, pigs, goats, etc. even as pets.
Long before people start eating cricket-burgers they'll be engaging in the black market for meats, which will spur increases in things like armed meat-truck hijackings, warehouse/store burglaries/robberies, corruption, and further degradation of the social structure and needless deaths as respect for the rule of law evaporates.
Here's a novel idea...
How about we instead make the government quit screwing around with things that make meat prices (and energy, housing, clothing, healthcare, education, etc etc) increase as a way for them to increase their power and control over the population?
Yeah, and some idiot shooting a nobody Viscount and his Wife in Serbia, started World War One. From small things, world changing events unfold. Who knows, being the first might provide them with some special status in the future, or help make something else possible because we learned from their example.
Every activity and accomplishment is a learning experience. I hope there *is* something the world can gain from this. That's not sarcasm.
I'm simply pointing out the obvious, that although a first and a possible inspiration and benefit to others, it's no leap-ahead in engineering or scaling.
I know that we've had a history of disagreements on a number of topics on/. in the past and almost certainly will again, but allow me to agree with you when there is common ground. I'm not unreasonable, even though we have differing views.
I'm not against solar or alternative energy in the broad sense at all. There is an appropriate tool for every job, and here solar may well be it. I just object on principle when every every unique energy need is made an identical nail for the same supply source/method/policy hammer. It offends the engineer in me.
However, if something makes more practical and economic real-word sense than the alternatives, I'm all for using the right tool for the job. I sincerely wish the islanders all luck and fair winds.
On a tropical island with way more sunshine than many more temperate areas?
See: Log, falling off of.
Seriously, I understand that it's a first. It's a step forward for possibly more similar places to switch. But let's be real here, supplying just 1400 people on a tropical island isn't exactly breaking any major technical barriers or pushing the envelope of scalability.
The tech to accomplish what they did has been around for at least a couple of decades, and likely became affordable/economical at least ten years ago or more at that small a scale and under those near-perfect conditions for a solar power installation. They'll still need some emergency diesel generators however for the inevitable hurricane/typhoon damage/outages.
Again, I think it's an admirable accomplishment and I salute them for it. It's a decision that makes sense all around for them and their limited needs, considering their abundance of sunshine resulting from location, and it's a "first" that will go into the history books.
Tropical flowers of all kinds smell better without the odor of diesel floating on the gentle tropical breeze.;-)
I've been trying to stay out of politics lately, but my ethics and concern for my country require me to reply to your posts.
In the last decade or so (after 9/11, not coincidentally) there has been a rash of cult-like right-wing nationalism and tribal "us versus them". It existed prior to this millennium, but it's been getting worse, and more concerning. The rhetoric is, in my opinion, becoming dangerous and increasingly ridiculous, and if not checked, may lead to severe consequences for our nation and the world.
You can't reason with a cult member, and likewise, with an ultra-nationalist or conspiracy theorist. The best you can hope for is that a method of cult recovery "deprogramming" comes along, or that a significant shift in the dialog marginalizes the cult.
Still, even though you won't, I encourage you (and anyone reading this who thinks as you do) to step back, get a look at the big picture, and try making friends with some people outside your echo chamber, before your rantings move any further from merely extreme into the "bat-guano insane" category. Sorry for being so blunt, but this is what conservatives would call "tough love".
For the record:
Obama is not a socialist communist fascist Muslim Brotherhood member of the Trilateral U.N. Knights Templar.
Progressives/Liberals are not your enemy, nor are they the enemy of the state. They merely favor a different approach than you do for government's role in society. They do NOT believe any less than you do in freedom or democracy. Deal with it.
When teachers make as much as military contractors or wall street traders, you can talk to me about teacher's unions. Until then, no dice.
Despite your signature's attempt to demean the concept, some ideas ARE so good they need to be mandatory. I'm sure you've heard that absolute freedom destroys freedom (it's true). Your freedom to pollute the air must knuckle to my freedom to breathe clean air, and so on.
Really, my friend, come down out of the trees. And ask some of your friends to turn off the hate mongers on the TV and radio, and come down out of the trees with you. Please do it soon, so we can avoid the less pleasant consequences that are coming if this radical polarization and crazy fear mongering continues. You don't need lots of guns and ammo. You need balance.
Your characterizations and ad hominems show extreme condescension, arrogance, and intellectual elitism, not to mention a huge dose of hubris and disregard for truth, intellectual honesty, and reality. Attitudes and beliefs such as yours are a huge part of the problem the US is in.
It's obvious we are at polar opposites and will never agree, therefor I must strive to expose those kinds of beliefs and the ideology that drives them for the shams that they are and defeat them in the public arena wherever and whenever I encounter them until they join all the other discarded and failed ideologies on the scrap heap of history.
Progressives are enemies of individual liberty and the Constitution whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. That's the whole origin of the term "Progressive" in labeling the modern Liberal movement...to "progress" past the restrictions and limits imposed by the Constitution on government power without actually allowing any vote by the people on amending it.
One simply has to observe their actions, like Obama bypassing the Legislative Branch by Executive Order etc. and Holder and his blatant disregard for the law, court orders, and legal decisions from the Legislative and Judiciary Branches. "You'll have to pass it to see what's in it". NDAA, PATRIOT, TSA, etc etc. Yes, Progressives are in both major US political parties. I am neither Republican nor Democrat. I despise both major parties.
It is rule by the whim of powerful men, not the rule of law. I will not sit quietly or idly by while my country descends into tyranny. It is contrary to the very core principles of the Constitution and individual liberty and freedom, and I will not comply!
Mors tyrannis, sic semper tyrannis, aut mors aut victoria.
I actually pity people like you if your ideology triumphs, as the "useful idiots" are always the first to be purged.
I can only imagine what having the executive and legislative so blatantly flip the bird to the judicial branch would do to the people's respect for the rule of law.
It's called treason. I don't think either party wants that kind of spotlight on them in an election year.
Why do you think they've been enacting all this "We can kill or 'disappear' you without any due process at all whenever we want and for whatever reason we want because it's all essential to our top-secret anti-terrorism battle" crap?
"DC Federal Appeals Court Judge Missing - Investigators Have No Leads - Rumors Of Drugs And Homosexual Escorts Emerge - More At 11:00"
Sad to see your post descend into paranoid ranting after such a strong start. How the hell did this get +5:Interesting?
"Normalcy bias", much?
Or is it simple blind ideological/political fervor?
Do the UN's own documents you can read right now on the web and our own government's documents outlining a plethora of Federal programs for locally implementing the UN's "sustainable development" and other parts of Agenda 21 in US cities & towns, etc, lie?
It's likely the US city, town, or community you're in (assuming you're American) right now has on their official website links to pages with their plans for compliance with "sustainable development".
It's not even like they're trying real hard to hide it or anything. They spell it all out in publicly-available documents. Anyone who cares to look can find the stuff.
"None so blind..." I suppose.
Much more comfortable to sit back and mock others and pretend it's all BS, and not feel like an ass for not doing anything or speaking out.
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
That's why it is foolish to shut down coal plants without simultaneously encouraging nuclear and solar thermal.
That's the point...the coal plants are being shut down with nothing to take up the slack except ideas that are barely beyond the experimental stage, and non-existent nuke plants that will take decades to be approved, battles with the NIMBY crowd and environmental/no-nukes activists to be won, and finally construction to be completed.
That doesn't prevent people from freezing to death in winter or dying from heat prostration in summer in the meantime. Never mind the economic cost of businesses closing, never being started, or moving offshore and the resulting unemployment and economic troubles.
Then where will the tax revenues to pay for all the government programs, including all the renewable energy programs, and service the national debt come from?
Parent comment is not interesting, is insane. We have witnessed hundreds of times that the UN is absolutely unable to twist even a little tiny bit USA's arm, even when doing so would be in USA middle long term self interest.
Except for the *fact* that Agenda 21 "sustainable development" programs are currently being implemented in cities and towns across the US, along with destruction of private property rights and personal gun ownership rights
The difference between this and other UN programs and initiatives being that US Liberal/Progressives are on-board politically & ideologically with Agenda 21, as their goals are mostly the same.
Fortunately, the military is made up of US citizens, a large fraction of which will not comply with orders to fire on US citizens or confiscate weapons, round up people into camps, etc. They understand that their oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, includes political leaders.
The government should implement regulations on coal fired plants because they emit a lot of CO2 and pollution for which they don't compensate society.
So, who will "compensate society" for the loss of generation capacity, nationwide brownouts/blackouts, and skyrocketing electricity prices that will affect the poorest the most, and for the additional deaths from freezing/heat among those on disability with fixed incomes, and the poor and working-poor? Or do you expect them to grow wings and migrate each season like birds?
You will NEVER have as many guns as the government.
Fortunately, the military is made up of US citizens, a large fraction of which will not comply with orders to fire on US citizens or confiscate weapons, round up people into camps, etc. They understand that their oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, includes political leaders.
Apologies for not including links. I know that doing a simple Google search is beyond many people's intellectual capabilities thanks to teacher's unions' grip on US schools.
Obama has expanded gun rights since going in to office.
Look, I know it makes people uncomfortable, and that it's easy to allow normalcy bias to convince you to dismiss it out of hand, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. It's being implemented at the local level in many hundreds of towns and cities across the US.
They had to restart because there is a need for more electricity. I wish people started to realize this when they block new generators. They are safer, and you aren't exactly going to consume a lot less, are you? Thus either you are forcing us to hold older plants open for a lot longer than intended, or you allow us to make a new and better plant.
By stopping new ones from being made, you are only making it more dangerous for everybody
I know this will likely be modded down, but screw it. It's the truth.
Well, get ready for blackouts and brownouts across the whole US, as the Obama administration is forcing coal-fired generator plants to shut down by drastically increasing regulation-compliance costs. This year, 57 plants will be shut down with nothing to replace the lost capacity. That's 8.5% of total US power generation capacity! Summers and winters are going to be increasingly-lethal seasons for the poor and working-poor.
Meanwhile, demand continues to increase. If EVs are to be the US solution to automobile pollution, how will the increased electrical demand from electric vehicles be supplied with a diminishing US generation capacity? Or is the plan to simply "nudge" people away from personal transportation altogether?
Lack of widespread ownership of personal transportation, high recharging costs for the few with EVs, and limited range would make living outside of city/metropolitan areas nearly impossible. This fits in with the UNs' "Agenda for the 21st Century" which includes forcing people out of rural and suburban areas into mass centralized housing as part of the agenda. I guess they like the Chinese practice of housing workers in the same facilities as the factories in which they work. That would certainly make it easier for government to monitor and control the population.
If that's their plan, it's no wonder that they are also pushing to disarm the US population to remove any possibility of resistance. That would have to be one of the first steps.
Buy guns. Lots and lots of guns. Hide caches of guns and ammo in multiple locations along with reloading equipment and supplies. Better do it quick while it's still possible.
As long as you paid the $200 tax and got the background check, I imagine it'll turn out just fine.
That's fine for buying/owning a full-auto weapon.
I'm not at all certain that is valid for manufacturing a fully-automatic weapon. The law may make a distinction there.
I'm not certain, however. IANAL, YMMV, etc etc.
A practical 3D printer system could make manufacturing an unregistered fully-automatic firearm much easier and within reach of many more people, which I'm sure the government would not be happy about and may pass laws to prevent.
Did you know there is NO law against building your own gun. Only if you try to sell it etc.
Not when it comes to fully-automatic weapons. Build yourself a full-auto Sten without any licenses or permits and let the police know you did. See how that works out.
There is nothing a 3D printer can do that you couldn't do with basic hand tools and patience. In fact basic hand tools can do quite a bit more than 3D printers.
Just like they haven't banned hand tools, personal computers, photocopiers and personal printers, still and video cameras, VCRs and CD/DVD burners because they had the potential for facilitating copyright infringement - they won't ban 3D printers either. Everything you said applies to all those technologies - and the same arguments were about them in the past - but nothing has come of it.
Of course you're correct that this is nearly the identical argument, as you say. I fervently hope that you're correct in that this, too, will fail.
However, I'm also certain that this battle will have to be fought yet again. The new thing with 3D printing is that it won't take a pole-barn full of very expensive machining equipment, tell-tale orders of certain metal stock for barrels, etc, and requires no machining skills or years of training/experience as a gunsmith for anyone to relatively quickly produce an unregstered weapon.
Those factors make 3D printing a greater threat to TPTB. Add to that the ever-increasing pressure from the government to disarm the populace and defend existing business models, and a battle-Royal is almost guaranteed.
They may pass laws forbidding the possession of 3D printers that aren't licensed, like unregistered handguns and fully-automatic firearms. Possessing/using an unlicensed/unauthorized 3D printer would result in a lengthy prison term and huge fines.
They can use the logic of "since an unlicensed 3D printer *could* possibly print a gun, the penalties for possession/use of an unlicensed 3D printer should match those of someone possessing/using an unregistered/illegal fully-automatic weapon during the commission of a crime" to justify making the punishments comparable.
The licensed and legal printers, in turn, would be secured through "Trusted Computing" type systems so that they must connect online to some central authority that will check the file(s) you're trying to print against a white-list database of legal/permitted designs that may be printed. If it's not on the list, you can't print it, and for for permitted-but-paywalled items, automatically deduct the charge from a bank account or CC.
This way they can monetize it and control what and how much can be printed and know who has printed what and when, while simultaneously increasing the amount of money going to criminal defense lawyers and the government and filling even more prisons with another whole class of non-violent criminal.
Sometimes it sucks to have a good imagination and understanding of government/political/human nature.
Neither of you has dealt with the OP's point, which is that unions and liberal politics are not to blame for low test scores. You want to blame them for the destruction of the country. Debatable, but that's an entirely different topic from the OP. And BlueStrat somehow thinks this topic has something to do with mandatory gun-ownership in Switzerland. Both of you, take your debate somewhere else.
You missed the point. He mentioned that teacher's unions existed in other countries and don't have such a deleterious effect. I used the Swedish example to illustrate my point that different cultures are...well...different, and different results come from nearly-identical situations depending on the society, culture, etc.
Teacher's unions in the US *DO* have a negative effect on student test scores, as teacher's unions protect and retain bad teachers with more seniority over good teachers and block voucher programs to allow students to escape failed schools for just two examples.
If you're unable to grasp the conversation, whether from poor reading/comprehension skills or pure laziness, perhaps *you* should heed your own advice.
It so happens there are teachers' unions in Finland, South Korea and Canada, and the political cultures in those countries are arguably more liberal/progressive than the USA. So much for your overly simplistic argument.
No, not even close. I hate such specious and ignorant arguments. You've never traveled much, have you?
You're comparing apples and oranges. Totally different cultures, societies, and histories. The Swiss require every military-aged male to keep a full-military assault rifle in their home. Do you think that would work in the US? Why not? Totally different societies, histories, and cultures is why not.
Won't happen until you can get the ISPs to quit overselling the living hell out of their networks and then slapping nasty caps just to make sure you don't use what you pay for!
Don't you just love when irony is so moist and delicious? On the one hand you have a set of greedy publishing bastards that want to take away first sale, but to do so they have to get around the greedy ISP bastards that want to oversell and cap the shit out of their networks.
Kinda sad when there isn't anyone to actually root for, Gamestop charging crazy prices while giving jack shit for trade ins, the ISPs capping your asses, or the media corps wanting to take away first sale and nickel and dime you with DLC so that a $60 game actually costs $130 just to get what you would have gotten before in the box...wow what a carnival of sucktitude!
Agreed.
I've pretty much given up on the whole industry. There are some older games I like that have good replay value that I run on an offline XP box and a PS2 that's also offline. Mostly flight sims and some classic FPSs. I was never much for online multiplayer modes anyway. Too many young children and assholes.
They simply won't get any more of my money. Same with movies. I've also dropped cable TV, and only have lowest-speed-tier internet service. It didn't make a bit of difference in my actual speeds switching from Charter's highest bandwidth/speed plan to their lowest-tier service. Neither one has ever approached even the lowest-tier advertised speed/bandwidth.
Complaints to Charter always get the "our TOS says 'best effort' sir" response. If it gets much worse, I'll cancel all service, build a high-gain antenna, and connect through nearby public wifi nodes and available wireless routers in the area when I simply must get online for email, etc. And no, there are no other options. DSL isn't available and satellite/mobile-carrier services are a non-starter for performance and cost.
I suppose I'll be offline once bandwidth caps and metered bandwidth become universal and the obligatory laws against unsecured wireless/wifi connections (to secure their business model) are passed/implemented.
At least I'm old enough to remember how to live without internet, cable TV, or cellphones.
Slashdot Mirror
Kill All Humans
It's what Bender would suggest.
More than likely this will go nowhere and end up meaning little.
However, if one of the green groups gets traction with it, huge amounts of taxpayer money and reams of regulations will go into "Starbucks-abatement" programs.
Maybe we can even get another government-mandated toilet re-design. The last one accomplished a lot. Like making sure US Border Agents are spending time searching through semi's full of toilets from Mexico to make sure they are compliant with US regulations.
I guess we can now thank the US Government for the rise of Mexican illegal-toilet cartels.
Don't ask what they shoot you with.
Strat
takedown reversals should cost big bucks in fines.
that's another way to pay for Curiosity.
One always pays for curiosity.
Ask a cat.
Strat
It's actually quite simple to raise a small number of food animals yourself.
In the US, many if not most suburban areas, and nearly all cities, forbid keeping farm animals e.g. chickens, pigs, goats, etc. even as pets.
Long before people start eating cricket-burgers they'll be engaging in the black market for meats, which will spur increases in things like armed meat-truck hijackings, warehouse/store burglaries/robberies, corruption, and further degradation of the social structure and needless deaths as respect for the rule of law evaporates.
Here's a novel idea...
How about we instead make the government quit screwing around with things that make meat prices (and energy, housing, clothing, healthcare, education, etc etc) increase as a way for them to increase their power and control over the population?
More freedom, more meat.
Just sayin'
Strat
Yeah, and some idiot shooting a nobody Viscount and his Wife in Serbia, started World War One. From small things, world changing events unfold. Who knows, being the first might provide them with some special status in the future, or help make something else possible because we learned from their example.
Every activity and accomplishment is a learning experience. I hope there *is* something the world can gain from this. That's not sarcasm.
I'm simply pointing out the obvious, that although a first and a possible inspiration and benefit to others, it's no leap-ahead in engineering or scaling.
I know that we've had a history of disagreements on a number of topics on /. in the past and almost certainly will again, but allow me to agree with you when there is common ground. I'm not unreasonable, even though we have differing views.
I'm not against solar or alternative energy in the broad sense at all. There is an appropriate tool for every job, and here solar may well be it. I just object on principle when every every unique energy need is made an identical nail for the same supply source/method/policy hammer. It offends the engineer in me.
However, if something makes more practical and economic real-word sense than the alternatives, I'm all for using the right tool for the job. I sincerely wish the islanders all luck and fair winds.
Strat
A whole 1400 people?
On a tropical island with way more sunshine than many more temperate areas?
See: Log, falling off of.
Seriously, I understand that it's a first. It's a step forward for possibly more similar places to switch. But let's be real here, supplying just 1400 people on a tropical island isn't exactly breaking any major technical barriers or pushing the envelope of scalability.
The tech to accomplish what they did has been around for at least a couple of decades, and likely became affordable/economical at least ten years ago or more at that small a scale and under those near-perfect conditions for a solar power installation. They'll still need some emergency diesel generators however for the inevitable hurricane/typhoon damage/outages.
Again, I think it's an admirable accomplishment and I salute them for it. It's a decision that makes sense all around for them and their limited needs, considering their abundance of sunshine resulting from location, and it's a "first" that will go into the history books.
Tropical flowers of all kinds smell better without the odor of diesel floating on the gentle tropical breeze. ;-)
Strat
I've been trying to stay out of politics lately, but my ethics and concern for my country require me to reply to your posts.
In the last decade or so (after 9/11, not coincidentally) there has been a rash of cult-like right-wing nationalism and tribal "us versus them". It existed prior to this millennium, but it's been getting worse, and more concerning. The rhetoric is, in my opinion, becoming dangerous and increasingly ridiculous, and if not checked, may lead to severe consequences for our nation and the world.
You can't reason with a cult member, and likewise, with an ultra-nationalist or conspiracy theorist. The best you can hope for is that a method of cult recovery "deprogramming" comes along, or that a significant shift in the dialog marginalizes the cult.
Still, even though you won't, I encourage you (and anyone reading this who thinks as you do) to step back, get a look at the big picture, and try making friends with some people outside your echo chamber, before your rantings move any further from merely extreme into the "bat-guano insane" category. Sorry for being so blunt, but this is what conservatives would call "tough love".
For the record:
Obama is not a socialist communist fascist Muslim Brotherhood member of the Trilateral U.N. Knights Templar.
Progressives/Liberals are not your enemy, nor are they the enemy of the state. They merely favor a different approach than you do for government's role in society. They do NOT believe any less than you do in freedom or democracy. Deal with it.
When teachers make as much as military contractors or wall street traders, you can talk to me about teacher's unions. Until then, no dice.
Despite your signature's attempt to demean the concept, some ideas ARE so good they need to be mandatory. I'm sure you've heard that absolute freedom destroys freedom (it's true). Your freedom to pollute the air must knuckle to my freedom to breathe clean air, and so on.
Really, my friend, come down out of the trees. And ask some of your friends to turn off the hate mongers on the TV and radio, and come down out of the trees with you. Please do it soon, so we can avoid the less pleasant consequences that are coming if this radical polarization and crazy fear mongering continues. You don't need lots of guns and ammo. You need balance.
Your characterizations and ad hominems show extreme condescension, arrogance, and intellectual elitism, not to mention a huge dose of hubris and disregard for truth, intellectual honesty, and reality. Attitudes and beliefs such as yours are a huge part of the problem the US is in.
It's obvious we are at polar opposites and will never agree, therefor I must strive to expose those kinds of beliefs and the ideology that drives them for the shams that they are and defeat them in the public arena wherever and whenever I encounter them until they join all the other discarded and failed ideologies on the scrap heap of history.
Progressives are enemies of individual liberty and the Constitution whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. That's the whole origin of the term "Progressive" in labeling the modern Liberal movement...to "progress" past the restrictions and limits imposed by the Constitution on government power without actually allowing any vote by the people on amending it.
One simply has to observe their actions, like Obama bypassing the Legislative Branch by Executive Order etc. and Holder and his blatant disregard for the law, court orders, and legal decisions from the Legislative and Judiciary Branches. "You'll have to pass it to see what's in it". NDAA, PATRIOT, TSA, etc etc. Yes, Progressives are in both major US political parties. I am neither Republican nor Democrat. I despise both major parties.
It is rule by the whim of powerful men, not the rule of law. I will not sit quietly or idly by while my country descends into tyranny. It is contrary to the very core principles of the Constitution and individual liberty and freedom, and I will not comply!
Mors tyrannis, sic semper tyrannis, aut mors aut victoria.
I actually pity people like you if your ideology triumphs, as the "useful idiots" are always the first to be purged.
Strat
Why do you think they've been enacting all this "We can kill or 'disappear' you without any due process at all whenever we want and for whatever reason we want because it's all essential to our top-secret anti-terrorism battle" crap?
"DC Federal Appeals Court Judge Missing - Investigators Have No Leads - Rumors Of Drugs And Homosexual Escorts Emerge - More At 11:00"
Strat
Sad to see your post descend into paranoid ranting after such a strong start. How the hell did this get +5:Interesting?
"Normalcy bias", much?
Or is it simple blind ideological/political fervor?
Do the UN's own documents you can read right now on the web and our own government's documents outlining a plethora of Federal programs for locally implementing the UN's "sustainable development" and other parts of Agenda 21 in US cities & towns, etc, lie?
It's likely the US city, town, or community you're in (assuming you're American) right now has on their official website links to pages with their plans for compliance with "sustainable development".
It's not even like they're trying real hard to hide it or anything. They spell it all out in publicly-available documents. Anyone who cares to look can find the stuff.
"None so blind..." I suppose.
Much more comfortable to sit back and mock others and pretend it's all BS, and not feel like an ass for not doing anything or speaking out.
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Strat
That's why it is foolish to shut down coal plants without simultaneously encouraging nuclear and solar thermal.
That's the point...the coal plants are being shut down with nothing to take up the slack except ideas that are barely beyond the experimental stage, and non-existent nuke plants that will take decades to be approved, battles with the NIMBY crowd and environmental/no-nukes activists to be won, and finally construction to be completed.
That doesn't prevent people from freezing to death in winter or dying from heat prostration in summer in the meantime. Never mind the economic cost of businesses closing, never being started, or moving offshore and the resulting unemployment and economic troubles.
Then where will the tax revenues to pay for all the government programs, including all the renewable energy programs, and service the national debt come from?
Strat
Parent comment is not interesting, is insane. We have witnessed hundreds of times that the UN is absolutely unable to twist even a little tiny bit USA's arm, even when doing so would be in USA middle long term self interest.
Except for the *fact* that Agenda 21 "sustainable development" programs are currently being implemented in cities and towns across the US, along with destruction of private property rights and personal gun ownership rights
The difference between this and other UN programs and initiatives being that US Liberal/Progressives are on-board politically & ideologically with Agenda 21, as their goals are mostly the same.
Strat
I guess you never checked the Oathkeepers link I provided, ignoring that which doesn't fit your preconceived notions.
Good work.
Strat
The government should implement regulations on coal fired plants because they emit a lot of CO2 and pollution for which they don't compensate society.
So, who will "compensate society" for the loss of generation capacity, nationwide brownouts/blackouts, and skyrocketing electricity prices that will affect the poorest the most, and for the additional deaths from freezing/heat among those on disability with fixed incomes, and the poor and working-poor? Or do you expect them to grow wings and migrate each season like birds?
Strat
You will NEVER have as many guns as the government.
Fortunately, the military is made up of US citizens, a large fraction of which will not comply with orders to fire on US citizens or confiscate weapons, round up people into camps, etc. They understand that their oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, includes political leaders.
http://oathkeepers.org/oath/
Strat
And not a single link to back up your claims.
http://peakoil.com/publicpolicy/record-number-of-coal-fired-generators-to-be-shut-down-in-2012/
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21
Apologies for not including links. I know that doing a simple Google search is beyond many people's intellectual capabilities thanks to teacher's unions' grip on US schools.
Obama has expanded gun rights since going in to office.
Now that's just a bad joke.
Strat
The UN boogeyman is just that..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml
You were saying?
Look, I know it makes people uncomfortable, and that it's easy to allow normalcy bias to convince you to dismiss it out of hand, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. It's being implemented at the local level in many hundreds of towns and cities across the US.
Strat
They had to restart because there is a need for more electricity. I wish people started to realize this when they block new generators. They are safer, and you aren't exactly going to consume a lot less, are you? Thus either you are forcing us to hold older plants open for a lot longer than intended, or you allow us to make a new and better plant.
By stopping new ones from being made, you are only making it more dangerous for everybody
I know this will likely be modded down, but screw it. It's the truth.
Well, get ready for blackouts and brownouts across the whole US, as the Obama administration is forcing coal-fired generator plants to shut down by drastically increasing regulation-compliance costs. This year, 57 plants will be shut down with nothing to replace the lost capacity. That's 8.5% of total US power generation capacity! Summers and winters are going to be increasingly-lethal seasons for the poor and working-poor.
Meanwhile, demand continues to increase. If EVs are to be the US solution to automobile pollution, how will the increased electrical demand from electric vehicles be supplied with a diminishing US generation capacity? Or is the plan to simply "nudge" people away from personal transportation altogether?
Lack of widespread ownership of personal transportation, high recharging costs for the few with EVs, and limited range would make living outside of city/metropolitan areas nearly impossible. This fits in with the UNs' "Agenda for the 21st Century" which includes forcing people out of rural and suburban areas into mass centralized housing as part of the agenda. I guess they like the Chinese practice of housing workers in the same facilities as the factories in which they work. That would certainly make it easier for government to monitor and control the population.
If that's their plan, it's no wonder that they are also pushing to disarm the US population to remove any possibility of resistance. That would have to be one of the first steps.
Buy guns. Lots and lots of guns. Hide caches of guns and ammo in multiple locations along with reloading equipment and supplies. Better do it quick while it's still possible.
Strat
As long as you paid the $200 tax and got the background check, I imagine it'll turn out just fine.
That's fine for buying/owning a full-auto weapon.
I'm not at all certain that is valid for manufacturing a fully-automatic weapon. The law may make a distinction there.
I'm not certain, however. IANAL, YMMV, etc etc.
A practical 3D printer system could make manufacturing an unregistered fully-automatic firearm much easier and within reach of many more people, which I'm sure the government would not be happy about and may pass laws to prevent.
Strat
See my comment here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3017111&cid=40833407
Strat
Did you know there is NO law against building your own gun. Only if you try to sell it etc.
Not when it comes to fully-automatic weapons. Build yourself a full-auto Sten without any licenses or permits and let the police know you did. See how that works out.
Strat
There is nothing a 3D printer can do that you couldn't do with basic hand tools and patience. In fact basic hand tools can do quite a bit more than 3D printers.
Just like they haven't banned hand tools, personal computers, photocopiers and personal printers, still and video cameras, VCRs and CD/DVD burners because they had the potential for facilitating copyright infringement - they won't ban 3D printers either. Everything you said applies to all those technologies - and the same arguments were about them in the past - but nothing has come of it.
Of course you're correct that this is nearly the identical argument, as you say. I fervently hope that you're correct in that this, too, will fail.
However, I'm also certain that this battle will have to be fought yet again. The new thing with 3D printing is that it won't take a pole-barn full of very expensive machining equipment, tell-tale orders of certain metal stock for barrels, etc, and requires no machining skills or years of training/experience as a gunsmith for anyone to relatively quickly produce an unregstered weapon.
Those factors make 3D printing a greater threat to TPTB. Add to that the ever-increasing pressure from the government to disarm the populace and defend existing business models, and a battle-Royal is almost guaranteed.
Strat
They may pass laws forbidding the possession of 3D printers that aren't licensed, like unregistered handguns and fully-automatic firearms. Possessing/using an unlicensed/unauthorized 3D printer would result in a lengthy prison term and huge fines.
They can use the logic of "since an unlicensed 3D printer *could* possibly print a gun, the penalties for possession/use of an unlicensed 3D printer should match those of someone possessing/using an unregistered/illegal fully-automatic weapon during the commission of a crime" to justify making the punishments comparable.
The licensed and legal printers, in turn, would be secured through "Trusted Computing" type systems so that they must connect online to some central authority that will check the file(s) you're trying to print against a white-list database of legal/permitted designs that may be printed. If it's not on the list, you can't print it, and for for permitted-but-paywalled items, automatically deduct the charge from a bank account or CC.
This way they can monetize it and control what and how much can be printed and know who has printed what and when, while simultaneously increasing the amount of money going to criminal defense lawyers and the government and filling even more prisons with another whole class of non-violent criminal.
Sometimes it sucks to have a good imagination and understanding of government/political/human nature.
Strat
everything tends to blandness via greed, ignorance, laziness, and apathy.,
FTFY
Strat
Neither of you has dealt with the OP's point, which is that unions and liberal politics are not to blame for low test scores. You want to blame them for the destruction of the country. Debatable, but that's an entirely different topic from the OP. And BlueStrat somehow thinks this topic has something to do with mandatory gun-ownership in Switzerland. Both of you, take your debate somewhere else.
You missed the point. He mentioned that teacher's unions existed in other countries and don't have such a deleterious effect. I used the Swedish example to illustrate my point that different cultures are...well...different, and different results come from nearly-identical situations depending on the society, culture, etc.
Teacher's unions in the US *DO* have a negative effect on student test scores, as teacher's unions protect and retain bad teachers with more seniority over good teachers and block voucher programs to allow students to escape failed schools for just two examples.
If you're unable to grasp the conversation, whether from poor reading/comprehension skills or pure laziness, perhaps *you* should heed your own advice.
Strat
It so happens there are teachers' unions in Finland, South Korea and Canada, and the political cultures in those countries are arguably more liberal/progressive than the USA. So much for your overly simplistic argument.
No, not even close. I hate such specious and ignorant arguments. You've never traveled much, have you?
You're comparing apples and oranges. Totally different cultures, societies, and histories. The Swiss require every military-aged male to keep a full-military assault rifle in their home. Do you think that would work in the US? Why not? Totally different societies, histories, and cultures is why not.
So much for your overly idiotic argument.
Won't happen until you can get the ISPs to quit overselling the living hell out of their networks and then slapping nasty caps just to make sure you don't use what you pay for!
Don't you just love when irony is so moist and delicious? On the one hand you have a set of greedy publishing bastards that want to take away first sale, but to do so they have to get around the greedy ISP bastards that want to oversell and cap the shit out of their networks.
Kinda sad when there isn't anyone to actually root for, Gamestop charging crazy prices while giving jack shit for trade ins, the ISPs capping your asses, or the media corps wanting to take away first sale and nickel and dime you with DLC so that a $60 game actually costs $130 just to get what you would have gotten before in the box...wow what a carnival of sucktitude!
Agreed.
I've pretty much given up on the whole industry. There are some older games I like that have good replay value that I run on an offline XP box and a PS2 that's also offline. Mostly flight sims and some classic FPSs. I was never much for online multiplayer modes anyway. Too many young children and assholes.
They simply won't get any more of my money. Same with movies. I've also dropped cable TV, and only have lowest-speed-tier internet service. It didn't make a bit of difference in my actual speeds switching from Charter's highest bandwidth/speed plan to their lowest-tier service. Neither one has ever approached even the lowest-tier advertised speed/bandwidth.
Complaints to Charter always get the "our TOS says 'best effort' sir" response. If it gets much worse, I'll cancel all service, build a high-gain antenna, and connect through nearby public wifi nodes and available wireless routers in the area when I simply must get online for email, etc. And no, there are no other options. DSL isn't available and satellite/mobile-carrier services are a non-starter for performance and cost.
I suppose I'll be offline once bandwidth caps and metered bandwidth become universal and the obligatory laws against unsecured wireless/wifi connections (to secure their business model) are passed/implemented.
At least I'm old enough to remember how to live without internet, cable TV, or cellphones.
Strat