Here's an idea for a practical use of the pressure sensitive keyboard, an idea which may put a team of contestants off to a good start. You know, most of the time you typo you know you are about to do it a split second before you actually do. Like while you are in the process of typoing, you can feel yourself hit the wrong key. It's like your brain screams YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG, but your body just can't stop pressing that wrong key.
This leads to a scenario where there is likely an abnormal amount of pressure on the "wrong" key press, like a light pressed keystroke (a 'checked swing' if you can deal with a baseball analogy), while at the same time there might be an even lighter pressed keystroke on the "right" key, or maybe a full on keystroke on the "right" key immediately following the checked swing on the wrong key.
This pressure sensitive technology might be useful after all. It may help develop a keyboard which aids humans in minimizing typos.
Just a hint contestants, just a hint.
Well, thank you for your input. Unfortunately, you have no clue on the subject you are talking about. To most readers of./ I don't even have to point out your intellectual shortcomings, because they are pretty obvious. After all, you are the idiot who compared cost of living to a corporate move, as if they had any coincidence what so ever. I advise you actually read a book or two on the subject, figure out which way is up, and then get back to us. You just interjected a kindergarten equivalent of "Hey look at me!" into a somewhat serious discussion of adult nature.
The adults are talking now, and we aren't striken with any sort of lust for a particular politician. So why don't you come back and ask questions once reality sinks in, and you've developed some sort of clue.
If you think every U.S. company who has the power to move out of the overbearing state has done so, and if you think that taxes, tariffs and mere U.S. Law is just some sort of impracticality, then I hope you stick around and follow the news as these formerly U.S. companies become foreign holdings en masse.
Whenever you deal with the type of money our biggest corporations call pocket change, it's never relevant to brand those dealings as trivial. The world is a big place, and the world doesn't quite think like you. You need to abstract, way abstract your ideas, or you can continue to not understand anything someone else does. It's just kindof the way it goes. All 300 million people in this country have plans. However none of their plans will survive first contact with a force who will work agaist their plans. It's just the way of life, apparently you haven't picked upon that yet.
That would be a lot simpler than what we have, and I'm for anything simpler than what we have. I also wouldn't be opposed to a flat tax of some sort wherein only real-live individuals are taxpayers, and corporations may own no "profits". Meaning the CEO, the board and shareholds are taxed on the entire profits of the corporation, and the corporation itself can claim no profit or loss.
Whatever we do about the current issue in question, it won't solve the big problem. U.S. Taxes are too overbearing and too complex to be handled efficiently. That is the real problem. Current tax codes are so complex neither the IRS, tax law firms, the executive or even NASA can figure them out without a month of hearings on some item or another. That's no way to run a revenue stream, even for politicians.
What Obama's administration is trying to do is tackle one symptom of a defunct system, and I'm afraid it's going to break the system if it's attacked too harshly. Once the congress and the executive gets on the crazy train, they aren't very good at getting off until the train has derailed itself and landed on the The People.
Hey, I've got a better idea! Let's close all these loop holes, raise corporate taxes and lower individual taxes! Let's make the corporations support our entire overly extravagant government budget, the war state, the welfare state, and the credit market bailouts!
Now, just remember, no whining when you can't buy anything or find a job. Oh, wait! We could pass laws to *make* corporations hire you, and pay you very well!
But no whining when they go bankrupt because no one can afford their goods. Oh, Wait! We can pass laws to *make* people buy the goods.....
There are two sides to every extreme. My post was just a word of caution.
With the "free" (read "internationally managed") trade agreements we have with foreign nations, I don't think "fixing" these "loopholes" will have the effect this administration desires. "Fixing" these "loopholes" and thus increasing the over all tax burden of a corporation may have quite the opposite effect.
If it becomes more lucrative and less of a tax burden to be a foreign business inside one of these countries with managed trade agreements instead of a domestic one, what will happen? The business will move because tariffs and import taxes become cheaper than domestic ones. That means unemployment grows and tax revenues drop.
This administration would be well served to tread lightly, and ensure that conducting business withing the U.S. is cheaper than foreign alternatives, else the U.S. may find itself with very little businesses conducting any business at all.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't think this is a proper use of federal authority. National broadband, national healthcare, what's next, nationalized gasoline distribution? It just never stops.
The modern, knuckle dragging, federal government has 3 tools in it's toolbox when it comes to nationalizing any market. The ban, the subsidy, and heavy-handed regulation are the only tools it understands. They either ban it, like illegal drugs, or they subsidize and regulate it, like pharmacological industry. What ever happened to lazziez faire in this Country? The government has no interest in efficiency, or the bottom line. If national broadband costs too much, they'll subsidize the providers and tax the people on the back end, or increase public debts. Either way, the people will still pay the costs. The government has forgotten that the public does not own, and is not entitled to everything anyone else has in this country. The routers, switches, and cables are physical assets of the companies who own them, and it's certainly not up to Congress to decide how those assets are utilized, unless used in a crime.
I'm with the posters above me who would rather see government exercise it's authority properly and break up the monopolies who's anti-competitive practices cause the lack of consumer satisfaction. Instead, the government plans to lie in bed with the very same providers who are currently screwing over said government's constituents.
People obsess over their right to bear arms, and I do no dispute the inherent importance of killing an animal or blowing off the head of your fellow person, but how long has it been since such primitive weapons as promoted by the NRA has actually really defended a country. The Iraqis defended themselves with IED. The Israeli's depend on missiles. In both cases an understanding of explosives is important, and in the later case the people must understand rocketry. sure, in some sense the NRA is right. If there is enough cannon fodder around with simple to use guns, of the type they support, battles can be won. This is proved by the weapons smuggled into Mexico from the US and used against the Mexican legal authorities. But really, such things are toys and the people who obsess over them are just playing games. The real action is rocketry, and anyone who infringes on our right to practice rocketry is risking the security of the free state.
Let the toy soldiers wear their camouflage underwear and play with their guns. Those of us in the know see the key in chemistry, physics, and the willingness to build a gadget that will solve the problem. For better or worse.
Every war ever won has been won on the backs of the boots on the ground. The assumption you are making is that rifles cannot compete with tanks and plans and missiles.
That assumption is simply wrong and anyone remotely familiar with tactics and military history would tell you the same. The insurgents in Iraq and the VC in Vietnam surely didn't agree with this line of thinking.
Q.) If the tanks, planes and rockets defend the country, who defends the fuel these tanks, planes and rockets rely on? The millions of gallons of fuels required to keep these things flying and driving isn't very mobile, yet these instruments are, so who defends, or can attack the fuel farm?
A.) Men with rifles.
Q.) Who finds targets for the planes and tanks and rockets? Sure satellites and P3's are good at narrowing them down, but there are good reasons reasons good reconnaissance units and forward observers are incredibly important in a modern military. Who then, could counteract the groups finding the targets for the planes and tanks, and how do these recon units and FO defend themselves while forward of the reach of the planes and tanks?
A.) Men with rilfes.
Q.) Who safeguards the maintenance and resupply of the planes and tanks and rockets? They break down, new ones need to be built, spare parts and munitions must be delivered from point A to point B in order for these things to be effective. Who can disrupt this supply line or defend it?
A.) Men with rifles.
These are just a few examples where properly executed maneuver warfare can completely break a technologically superior force, all accomplished with 'primitive' rifles. If one consistently masses their primitive rifles on the enemies weakest spots usually defended by men with rifles (fuel depots, logistical supply areas, etc), then the enemy must then use it's planes, tanks and missiles to defend it's supply lines. Who then is fighting in the front? Men with rifles.
It's time for MegaMaid. Get NASA started on that Spaceball-1 project STAT.
Re:Re-usable libraries
on
Bash Cookbook
·
· Score: 1
Why would they need to lean new syntax? We still use bash syntax when writing BPE scripts. They need only to learn the names, arguments, and returns of the function calls. Just like they would for any software product. It's not like the BPE implementation is restricting them from learning perl or python or anything else
Doing advanced things in bash is a personal hobby mine, and if it proves useful to other admins and the company as well, than that's just a bonus.
Re:Re-usable libraries
on
Bash Cookbook
·
· Score: 1
Not when your hobby is doing fun/weird things with bash.
Re-usable libraries
on
Bash Cookbook
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Bash is just plain awesome, I'm always trying to find ways to push it even further, I'm checking to see if this book is on safari right now.
I do a lot of work in bash. I'm a Linux administrator by trade, so I think in bash all day long. For my company I've developed a set of bash libraries that we call the BPE. These libraries implement a hashmap, stack, linked list, MySQL API, SQLite API and all sorts of other useful things that one doesn't want to re-invent for every script.
I'm in the process of writing man pages for the several libraries right now, and I think I'll sourceforge the project when the mans are complete. It's great to be able to begin a new script when a hashmap might be useful, and be able to do something like:
In short, if organized correctly, bash can be used where a senior sysadmin would normally reach for perl or python. This is often helpful when your juniors have a good grasp of bash, but aren't very strong in other languages.
If arming police officers with tazers has taught us anything it's taught us that para-military forces are much more likely to use unnecessary physical force when the less-than-lethal option is present.
All the more reason I'm thankful for D.C. V. Heller. It didn't change much here in Arizona since the right to keep and bear is in our state constitution. If the government's men to try to fire 'less than lethal' ammunition into a peaceably assembled crowd here in Arizona, they are likely to get more than few rounds of the lethal variety back for their trouble. Maybe once this type of nastiness is used against Americans in places like Chicago or San Francisco people in those places might question their own lack of self defense.
There are many societies on this planet that do it just fine.
Elaborate? Which societies hold everyone accountable when a child goes wrong, and how are they 'doing just fine'? By what standard?
Logical fallacy.
There are consequences, dire ones.
Again, elaborate! How is 'society' held accountable? Individuals may suffer, and 'society' as a hole may be downgraded by some standard, but is society 'punished'. No it is not. Society is irresponsible because 'society' is an abstract and is therefore not capable of being held accountable for it's actions or inactions. Period.
I don't think you understand what that means.
I'm sure I do understand what it means, and what it means is that somehow 'society' has the responsibility of making the world safe for children. Fat chance of that. We've already established that society has no real responsibility. So let's propose that society has real, enforcible responsibilities. Even if that were the case, then what's expected of society is impossible. In all my life I've never seen an abstract society jump in and save a child from drowning because a janitor forgot to lock the pool gate.
You say, "The janitor should be punished." That's hardly correct. It was an accident. We all make them, and we will continue to make them as long as there is humanity. I say, "The kid should have been taught to swim by his relatives, and if he wasn't old enough to swim, why was he out of sight of his parents in the first place." The accountable & responsible party in either case is the parents. Not society.
I was by no means saying that BS is the end all be all of scientific discovery on this issue. However that particular episode does a good job of explaining how little science is involved in the 'porn creates violence' argument.
The only problem I see with this argument is that you assume hard-core porn results in rape. Quite the opposite actually. You should watch Penn & Teller's Bullshit! episode on the subject for facts & figures.
Basically, there isn't even correlation, much less a causation between porn watching activities and violence. Porn watching, even the hardcore stuff, does not lead to an increase in rape & violence. A child, by child I mean pubescent or post-pubescent, who has watched porn is not more likely to rape by any statistic.
Not confusing them at all. Without accountability responsibility doesn't matter. Since society can't be held accountable, then society isn't responsible.
True but a society must also take care to protect it's most vulnerable members.
That's a laugh. The reason why 'society' can't take care of anything, much less it's most vulnerable members is because 'society' is incapable of shouldering responsibility. How do you punish 'society' for every kid that joins a gang or drowns in a pool? If 'society' is charged with a portion of the responsibility of raising a child, what are the consequences of shirking that responsibility? There are none, therefore the responsibility of society is a myth, and so is the idea that society 'takes care of' anything.
For each child there are a select few people who have an actual responsibility to rear that child. Family, teachers, coaches, etc. These people aren't 'society', they are part of a local community, not America as a whole. These people have real world consequences to face when they don't live up to their responsibilities.
Logically, "It takes a village to raise a child." is a ridiculous farce when that "village" is the whole United States & it's Federal Government. The only thing the "village to raise a child" philosophy has done to child rearing is to lessen the consequences when those who should be responsible aren't.
And when that happens again, and again, more and more people will band together.
The U.S. military is comprised of about 3 million troops, of which only half a million are 'combat capable'. So, the federal government has a total of about 500,000 troops who know which end of the gun the bullet comes out, the rest are mechanics, cooks, etc. Then there's the para-military side, probably about the same amount of people, but I don't know.
So, the government can field about 1,000,000 troops to quell a national rebellion provided there are no defectors, which there will be, our soldiers are citizens too. What can the citizenry field? Well, 1,000,000 is a little more than 1% of the estimated number of gun owners in this country. Should 10% of the total number of gun owners partake in a little civil disorder the government would be out-manned and out-gunned 9 to 1. Those are long odds for any military to face, especially when your opponents will be employing guerrilla tactics. See post-invasion Iraq & Afghanistan for an example.
The government has access to combat force multipliers, tanks and planes. However, the civilians have access to the refineries and pipelines that power these tanks and planes, and could in theory render them useless very quickly.
That is exactly how owning an M16 will be of use.
Strict gun control & Hate Speech laws *ARE* bad things. If you can't see why, you are too far wrapped in the warm and fuzzy feel good of these do-nothing-but-make-you-a-victim laws. Otherwise you might have taken a look at the world around you and noticed how dangerous and cruel it actually is. Then at least you would be better prepared. Look at the world around you and decide if you'd rather have the option to defend your own life with your own tools, or wait for the police to come, clean up your body, and file a report.
http://mwkworks.com/onsheepwolvesandsheepdogs.html
I suppose Singapore doesn't have anything like the Eighth Amendment. I for one like that Amendment and hope it sticks around for a while. Hanging someone for consumption, or even distribution of controlled substances just doesn't quite befit the crime.
It seems like the automotive industry has a similar triangle to IT. In IT you have a triangle with reliable, fast and cheap on each point. You have to pick a point in the middle. On the automotive side, it looks like their triangle is fuel-efficient, safe, and cheap and they must also pick a point somewhere in there.
Sure GM could build a lightweight fuel efficient SUV that meets or exceeds automotive safety standards by borrowing technologies used in F1 racing. How many people could afford to buy all that carbon fiber and expensive titanium alloys? Not very many. Currently, the only realistic way to make vehicles ultra lightweight, like F1 cars, and still reach market acceptable price points is to make them unsafe. Regulations won't allow it, and even if they did I'm fairly certain consumers wouldn't buy them.
If we accept that the actions of human beings can impact the climate, and we accept the first law of thermodynamics, what impact will wind farms have on the environment? Imagine if every home and factory in the U.S. were powered by wind farms. How much energy would these farms be pulling out of the wind? How would that impact weather patterns?
Something I've always wondered about. As we jump off fossil fuels and move on to other sources of energy I sure hope someone thinks ahead this time.
for the Arizona district. As an Arizonan I wish he were an elected official so that we could keep him on that bench for a good long while.
This is the second major issue Wake has weighed in on, and both have been good decisions that are good for Arizona.
I hope he continues to do this.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's an idea for a practical use of the pressure sensitive keyboard, an idea which may put a team of contestants off to a good start. You know, most of the time you typo you know you are about to do it a split second before you actually do. Like while you are in the process of typoing, you can feel yourself hit the wrong key. It's like your brain screams YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG, but your body just can't stop pressing that wrong key.
This leads to a scenario where there is likely an abnormal amount of pressure on the "wrong" key press, like a light pressed keystroke (a 'checked swing' if you can deal with a baseball analogy), while at the same time there might be an even lighter pressed keystroke on the "right" key, or maybe a full on keystroke on the "right" key immediately following the checked swing on the wrong key.
This pressure sensitive technology might be useful after all. It may help develop a keyboard which aids humans in minimizing typos.
Just a hint contestants, just a hint.
Well, thank you for your input. Unfortunately, you have no clue on the subject you are talking about. To most readers of ./ I don't even have to point out your intellectual shortcomings, because they are pretty obvious. After all, you are the idiot who compared cost of living to a corporate move, as if they had any coincidence what so ever. I advise you actually read a book or two on the subject, figure out which way is up, and then get back to us. You just interjected a kindergarten equivalent of "Hey look at me!" into a somewhat serious discussion of adult nature.
The adults are talking now, and we aren't striken with any sort of lust for a particular politician. So why don't you come back and ask questions once reality sinks in, and you've developed some sort of clue. If you think every U.S. company who has the power to move out of the overbearing state has done so, and if you think that taxes, tariffs and mere U.S. Law is just some sort of impracticality, then I hope you stick around and follow the news as these formerly U.S. companies become foreign holdings en masse. Whenever you deal with the type of money our biggest corporations call pocket change, it's never relevant to brand those dealings as trivial. The world is a big place, and the world doesn't quite think like you. You need to abstract, way abstract your ideas, or you can continue to not understand anything someone else does. It's just kindof the way it goes. All 300 million people in this country have plans. However none of their plans will survive first contact with a force who will work agaist their plans. It's just the way of life, apparently you haven't picked upon that yet.
That would be a lot simpler than what we have, and I'm for anything simpler than what we have. I also wouldn't be opposed to a flat tax of some sort wherein only real-live individuals are taxpayers, and corporations may own no "profits". Meaning the CEO, the board and shareholds are taxed on the entire profits of the corporation, and the corporation itself can claim no profit or loss.
Whatever we do about the current issue in question, it won't solve the big problem. U.S. Taxes are too overbearing and too complex to be handled efficiently. That is the real problem. Current tax codes are so complex neither the IRS, tax law firms, the executive or even NASA can figure them out without a month of hearings on some item or another. That's no way to run a revenue stream, even for politicians.
What Obama's administration is trying to do is tackle one symptom of a defunct system, and I'm afraid it's going to break the system if it's attacked too harshly. Once the congress and the executive gets on the crazy train, they aren't very good at getting off until the train has derailed itself and landed on the The People.
Hey, I've got a better idea! Let's close all these loop holes, raise corporate taxes and lower individual taxes! Let's make the corporations support our entire overly extravagant government budget, the war state, the welfare state, and the credit market bailouts!
Now, just remember, no whining when you can't buy anything or find a job. Oh, wait! We could pass laws to *make* corporations hire you, and pay you very well!
But no whining when they go bankrupt because no one can afford their goods. Oh, Wait! We can pass laws to *make* people buy the goods.....
There are two sides to every extreme. My post was just a word of caution.
With the "free" (read "internationally managed") trade agreements we have with foreign nations, I don't think "fixing" these "loopholes" will have the effect this administration desires. "Fixing" these "loopholes" and thus increasing the over all tax burden of a corporation may have quite the opposite effect.
If it becomes more lucrative and less of a tax burden to be a foreign business inside one of these countries with managed trade agreements instead of a domestic one, what will happen? The business will move because tariffs and import taxes become cheaper than domestic ones. That means unemployment grows and tax revenues drop.
This administration would be well served to tread lightly, and ensure that conducting business withing the U.S. is cheaper than foreign alternatives, else the U.S. may find itself with very little businesses conducting any business at all.
I've done some doodling, nothing serious. The Eclipse plugin with emulator integration is very nice to work with.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't think this is a proper use of federal authority. National broadband, national healthcare, what's next, nationalized gasoline distribution? It just never stops.
The modern, knuckle dragging, federal government has 3 tools in it's toolbox when it comes to nationalizing any market. The ban, the subsidy, and heavy-handed regulation are the only tools it understands. They either ban it, like illegal drugs, or they subsidize and regulate it, like pharmacological industry. What ever happened to lazziez faire in this Country? The government has no interest in efficiency, or the bottom line. If national broadband costs too much, they'll subsidize the providers and tax the people on the back end, or increase public debts. Either way, the people will still pay the costs. The government has forgotten that the public does not own, and is not entitled to everything anyone else has in this country. The routers, switches, and cables are physical assets of the companies who own them, and it's certainly not up to Congress to decide how those assets are utilized, unless used in a crime.
I'm with the posters above me who would rather see government exercise it's authority properly and break up the monopolies who's anti-competitive practices cause the lack of consumer satisfaction. Instead, the government plans to lie in bed with the very same providers who are currently screwing over said government's constituents.
People obsess over their right to bear arms, and I do no dispute the inherent importance of killing an animal or blowing off the head of your fellow person, but how long has it been since such primitive weapons as promoted by the NRA has actually really defended a country. The Iraqis defended themselves with IED. The Israeli's depend on missiles. In both cases an understanding of explosives is important, and in the later case the people must understand rocketry. sure, in some sense the NRA is right. If there is enough cannon fodder around with simple to use guns, of the type they support, battles can be won. This is proved by the weapons smuggled into Mexico from the US and used against the Mexican legal authorities. But really, such things are toys and the people who obsess over them are just playing games. The real action is rocketry, and anyone who infringes on our right to practice rocketry is risking the security of the free state.
Let the toy soldiers wear their camouflage underwear and play with their guns. Those of us in the know see the key in chemistry, physics, and the willingness to build a gadget that will solve the problem. For better or worse.
Every war ever won has been won on the backs of the boots on the ground. The assumption you are making is that rifles cannot compete with tanks and plans and missiles.
That assumption is simply wrong and anyone remotely familiar with tactics and military history would tell you the same. The insurgents in Iraq and the VC in Vietnam surely didn't agree with this line of thinking.
Q.) If the tanks, planes and rockets defend the country, who defends the fuel these tanks, planes and rockets rely on? The millions of gallons of fuels required to keep these things flying and driving isn't very mobile, yet these instruments are, so who defends, or can attack the fuel farm?
A.) Men with rifles.
Q.) Who finds targets for the planes and tanks and rockets? Sure satellites and P3's are good at narrowing them down, but there are good reasons reasons good reconnaissance units and forward observers are incredibly important in a modern military. Who then, could counteract the groups finding the targets for the planes and tanks, and how do these recon units and FO defend themselves while forward of the reach of the planes and tanks?
A.) Men with rilfes.
Q.) Who safeguards the maintenance and resupply of the planes and tanks and rockets? They break down, new ones need to be built, spare parts and munitions must be delivered from point A to point B in order for these things to be effective. Who can disrupt this supply line or defend it?
A.) Men with rifles.
These are just a few examples where properly executed maneuver warfare can completely break a technologically superior force, all accomplished with 'primitive' rifles. If one consistently masses their primitive rifles on the enemies weakest spots usually defended by men with rifles (fuel depots, logistical supply areas, etc), then the enemy must then use it's planes, tanks and missiles to defend it's supply lines. Who then is fighting in the front? Men with rifles.
The learning curve is *STEEP*, but it pays off in spades. Nothing comes close to the lockdownability of GRSec. www.grsecurity.net
It's time for MegaMaid. Get NASA started on that Spaceball-1 project STAT.
Why would they need to lean new syntax? We still use bash syntax when writing BPE scripts. They need only to learn the names, arguments, and returns of the function calls. Just like they would for any software product. It's not like the BPE implementation is restricting them from learning perl or python or anything else
Doing advanced things in bash is a personal hobby mine, and if it proves useful to other admins and the company as well, than that's just a bonus.
Not when your hobby is doing fun/weird things with bash.
Bash is just plain awesome, I'm always trying to find ways to push it even further, I'm checking to see if this book is on safari right now.
I do a lot of work in bash. I'm a Linux administrator by trade, so I think in bash all day long. For my company I've developed a set of bash libraries that we call the BPE. These libraries implement a hashmap, stack, linked list, MySQL API, SQLite API and all sorts of other useful things that one doesn't want to re-invent for every script. I'm in the process of writing man pages for the several libraries right now, and I think I'll sourceforge the project when the mans are complete. It's great to be able to begin a new script when a hashmap might be useful, and be able to do something like:
$USE_BPE
use "hashmap"
hm_create "myMap"
hm_set "myMap" "key" "value"
value="$(hm_lookup "myMap" "key")"
echo "$value"
In short, if organized correctly, bash can be used where a senior sysadmin would normally reach for perl or python. This is often helpful when your juniors have a good grasp of bash, but aren't very strong in other languages.
If arming police officers with tazers has taught us anything it's taught us that para-military forces are much more likely to use unnecessary physical force when the less-than-lethal option is present.
All the more reason I'm thankful for D.C. V. Heller. It didn't change much here in Arizona since the right to keep and bear is in our state constitution. If the government's men to try to fire 'less than lethal' ammunition into a peaceably assembled crowd here in Arizona, they are likely to get more than few rounds of the lethal variety back for their trouble. Maybe once this type of nastiness is used against Americans in places like Chicago or San Francisco people in those places might question their own lack of self defense.
There are many societies on this planet that do it just fine.
Elaborate? Which societies hold everyone accountable when a child goes wrong, and how are they 'doing just fine'? By what standard?
Logical fallacy. There are consequences, dire ones.
Again, elaborate! How is 'society' held accountable? Individuals may suffer, and 'society' as a hole may be downgraded by some standard, but is society 'punished'. No it is not. Society is irresponsible because 'society' is an abstract and is therefore not capable of being held accountable for it's actions or inactions. Period.
I don't think you understand what that means.
I'm sure I do understand what it means, and what it means is that somehow 'society' has the responsibility of making the world safe for children. Fat chance of that. We've already established that society has no real responsibility. So let's propose that society has real, enforcible responsibilities. Even if that were the case, then what's expected of society is impossible. In all my life I've never seen an abstract society jump in and save a child from drowning because a janitor forgot to lock the pool gate.
You say, "The janitor should be punished." That's hardly correct. It was an accident. We all make them, and we will continue to make them as long as there is humanity. I say, "The kid should have been taught to swim by his relatives, and if he wasn't old enough to swim, why was he out of sight of his parents in the first place." The accountable & responsible party in either case is the parents. Not society.
I was by no means saying that BS is the end all be all of scientific discovery on this issue. However that particular episode does a good job of explaining how little science is involved in the 'porn creates violence' argument.
The only problem I see with this argument is that you assume hard-core porn results in rape. Quite the opposite actually. You should watch Penn & Teller's Bullshit! episode on the subject for facts & figures.
Basically, there isn't even correlation, much less a causation between porn watching activities and violence. Porn watching, even the hardcore stuff, does not lead to an increase in rape & violence. A child, by child I mean pubescent or post-pubescent, who has watched porn is not more likely to rape by any statistic.
Not confusing them at all. Without accountability responsibility doesn't matter. Since society can't be held accountable, then society isn't responsible.
True but a society must also take care to protect it's most vulnerable members.
That's a laugh. The reason why 'society' can't take care of anything, much less it's most vulnerable members is because 'society' is incapable of shouldering responsibility. How do you punish 'society' for every kid that joins a gang or drowns in a pool? If 'society' is charged with a portion of the responsibility of raising a child, what are the consequences of shirking that responsibility? There are none, therefore the responsibility of society is a myth, and so is the idea that society 'takes care of' anything.
For each child there are a select few people who have an actual responsibility to rear that child. Family, teachers, coaches, etc. These people aren't 'society', they are part of a local community, not America as a whole. These people have real world consequences to face when they don't live up to their responsibilities.
Logically, "It takes a village to raise a child." is a ridiculous farce when that "village" is the whole United States & it's Federal Government. The only thing the "village to raise a child" philosophy has done to child rearing is to lessen the consequences when those who should be responsible aren't.
And when that happens again, and again, more and more people will band together.
The U.S. military is comprised of about 3 million troops, of which only half a million are 'combat capable'. So, the federal government has a total of about 500,000 troops who know which end of the gun the bullet comes out, the rest are mechanics, cooks, etc. Then there's the para-military side, probably about the same amount of people, but I don't know. So, the government can field about 1,000,000 troops to quell a national rebellion provided there are no defectors, which there will be, our soldiers are citizens too. What can the citizenry field? Well, 1,000,000 is a little more than 1% of the estimated number of gun owners in this country. Should 10% of the total number of gun owners partake in a little civil disorder the government would be out-manned and out-gunned 9 to 1. Those are long odds for any military to face, especially when your opponents will be employing guerrilla tactics. See post-invasion Iraq & Afghanistan for an example.
The government has access to combat force multipliers, tanks and planes. However, the civilians have access to the refineries and pipelines that power these tanks and planes, and could in theory render them useless very quickly.
That is exactly how owning an M16 will be of use.
Strict gun control & Hate Speech laws *ARE* bad things. If you can't see why, you are too far wrapped in the warm and fuzzy feel good of these do-nothing-but-make-you-a-victim laws. Otherwise you might have taken a look at the world around you and noticed how dangerous and cruel it actually is. Then at least you would be better prepared. Look at the world around you and decide if you'd rather have the option to defend your own life with your own tools, or wait for the police to come, clean up your body, and file a report. http://mwkworks.com/onsheepwolvesandsheepdogs.html
I suppose Singapore doesn't have anything like the Eighth Amendment. I for one like that Amendment and hope it sticks around for a while. Hanging someone for consumption, or even distribution of controlled substances just doesn't quite befit the crime.
It seems like the automotive industry has a similar triangle to IT. In IT you have a triangle with reliable, fast and cheap on each point. You have to pick a point in the middle. On the automotive side, it looks like their triangle is fuel-efficient, safe, and cheap and they must also pick a point somewhere in there.
Sure GM could build a lightweight fuel efficient SUV that meets or exceeds automotive safety standards by borrowing technologies used in F1 racing. How many people could afford to buy all that carbon fiber and expensive titanium alloys? Not very many. Currently, the only realistic way to make vehicles ultra lightweight, like F1 cars, and still reach market acceptable price points is to make them unsafe. Regulations won't allow it, and even if they did I'm fairly certain consumers wouldn't buy them.
If we accept that the actions of human beings can impact the climate, and we accept the first law of thermodynamics, what impact will wind farms have on the environment? Imagine if every home and factory in the U.S. were powered by wind farms. How much energy would these farms be pulling out of the wind? How would that impact weather patterns? Something I've always wondered about. As we jump off fossil fuels and move on to other sources of energy I sure hope someone thinks ahead this time.
for the Arizona district. As an Arizonan I wish he were an elected official so that we could keep him on that bench for a good long while. This is the second major issue Wake has weighed in on, and both have been good decisions that are good for Arizona. I hope he continues to do this.