Done at cost ? I just looked at Treasure Island to get an idea and the cheapest estimate is $14 to $17 for softcover and up to $30 for hardcover. With the price estimated at $8 for the Google Books publicdomainreprints must be doing something wrong.
Off topic but the irony and the laugh would be on you if they "harassed" you the same the British did: by harassment do you mean they forced you out of your homes, to learn their imported language, killed your friends and kidnaped your kids ?
Privoxy: works with any browser that support proxy servers. It is great if you have a server machine to install it, then you can set all your home computers to use that centralized proxy.
Remember that the recruiting is Worldwide: how do you hire someone with no work authorization for 30 days ? Would you relocate to a foreign country for 30 days ? If I get similar offers the one where they say "you're hired, when can you start" and the one "we'll try you for thirty day, then if we don't like you return to your country" it's pretty obvious which one I will pick: a little bit more potential money is not worth a much bigger risk. How do you know the company is not hiring 3 candidates for 30 days, meaning that not only you have to do a good job, but you're still competing with 2 other guys and have a high risk to be unemployed at the end of the trial.
For example a few years ago I refused a 12% bigger offer for a more stable company which actually was quicker to make the offer. When I look back, I have no regrets: the better paying company had massive layoffs and is now sleeping with M$. The company I picked has great perks to help offset the lower base salary.
Agreed. I did sit in class jut waiting for the hours to pass. It was especially true in Computer Science classes (I started programming when I was 7 or 8). I'm pretty sure I could have been a decent developer without going to college or even finishing high school. But I did complete a Masters in Engineering and Business Management and this background is useful to move my career forward, let me better understand people in other disciplines and have a good understanding of most aspect of business.
There are often problems at work that I can find a solution for because I've sit in a class 10+ years ago.
Now... when I look back at what I've learned 'before' college, then yes, it was pretty much useless. I actually remember getting an F in math because I did "7-10=-3": the answer the teacher wanted was 'impossible': we had not learned negative numbers in class yet. The point is the school was restrictive and all about 'you must fit in the mold' rather than "we want you to learn".
I use the nightly builds of WebKit and it's been an excellent browser for me for the past few years.
So actually a multimedia player will be pretty easy to implement, child play compared to a native application doing the same thing on Linux. Sure it won't help much to watch a DVD, but netbooks don't have dvd players anyhow. The trend is to all of your data online. Even Netflix is moving toward streaming rather than physical media, once DRM dies with the MPAA I'm sure they'll adopt HTML 5 instead of Silverlight.
There's one thing that disturbed me about Facebook: I wanted to apply for a position there, but you need a Facebook account in order to do so. So why not ? You have to provide some personal information especially your birth date, which is illegal for a prospect employer to ask.
I understand the recruiters might not look actively look for your birth date, yet now it's there for them to look at, forever in their database.
The only reason people want money is for happiness
Bullshit! you can't buy happiness with money.
Well to some extend. I have a job that pays well and am able to save money and have no debt, while I saved up enough for a 25% down payment I am not making enough to actually buy a single family house in my neighborhood. Well I 'could' but this would put me at a level of debt that I am really not comfortable with. I'm not asking for a mansion, just a 3 bedroom house, no pool, and a big enough backyard so I can have a BBQ with friends. I really don't care about the $ value of the house, to me money is just something to pay the bills, and in the future the mortgage.
It's not about being rich, it's about not lacking the money when you really need it, for example not having to delay a visit to the dentist because you can't afford it. And this, to me, is part of happiness.
Oh sure, and it would work for a company in a strong position, like Apple. If the company is hurting like Motorola, or Palm then you really cannot afford to not be sold by them. There is much more manufacturer competition than carrier competition and the big 4 carriers use that. Apple has reversed the roles a bit by having a true *must have* device. Sprint and Verizon got bitten by their own strategy and see a mass exodus to AT&T (I think customer support is not neutral on this).
Look at the last Treo model that was sold without carrier support. Sure you can use it with AT&T and TMobile but you have to pay the full price for it. I'm not even sure they've recouped development cost on this one.
As a customer I would much rather get lower monthly bill and no 2 year lock-in than getting a subsidized phone. This is pretty much paying a high interest perpetual loan on a device that is not that expensive anyway.
I used to work for a big name smart phone manufacturer. The versions for Sprint/Verizon were crippled at the carrier's request, i.e.: disabling internet sharing to your laptop. The unlocked (GSM) versions of the phones had all the features, not because they were more expensive, just because there was nobody requiring to remove the features.
One of the problems with Sprint and Verizon is that the radio has to be specifically designed for them which mean you can only use a phone that they sell directly. With GSM providers (AT&T, T-Mobile, and most of the world) you just need to put the SIM card in and it works (granted the local frequencies are supported by the phone).
Normally the manufacturer has no interest to cripple it's own product, but when the carrier control what devices will work on their network you don't have any choice but to comply. It is pretty much the same situation as when you had to use the land phone from the One phone company and were not allowed to plug you own.
Google is using a code review tool called Mondrian. It was originally written by Guido van Rossum (Python's creator). He created an open source clone to be used with Subversion, Rietveld:
These tools are great but they are only as good as the guidelines for the reviews. Some reviewers will always say yes to requests, while others will be too anal. What happens? Most people will avoid strict reviewers and send their code to the easy ones. Doing a good review takes time so there need to be incentives to give good reviews: if you spend 2-3hs doing reviews in a day you just lost 25% productivity on your code, while helping an other developer write better code. Overall it's better for the team and the company but can actually hurt the perceived performance of your better developers while in fact they're pulling everyone else up. Just make sure good reviewers are getting as much recognition as good/productive code writers. Same thing goes with lenient reviewers, they should share the blame when bad code they reviewed brake the build. If you don't understand the new code, then it needs to be re-factored by the submitter to improve readability or you are not the right person to do the review.
And remember that the recent plane crash in NY was caused by human error: the autopilot responded to the ice buildup by diving to maintain speed, the pilot 'corrected' what he though was an error and the plane fell to the ground like a stone.
The truth is, modern computers can be much much better pilots than 95% of the pilots out there. I don't think the autopilot would have even attempted the landing in the Hudson river, here the pilot was clearly one of the top pilots that I want on every single I fly. Also I'm pretty sure that good pilot was not overworked and was well rested before his flight. Whatever good training you have humans will always make mistakes and they get worse with fatigue. The computer does not get tired, or emotional.
So with an average pilot, I think the autopilot is much more trustable. In case of exceptional emergency, a true outstanding pilot might pull it off where the computer will not. I'm not sure the data (if it exists) favor the humans though.
I NEVER want to live in the USA and I'm so glad I don't live there. It makes my so angry that wealth and technology are more important than social justice.
I don't know if your rant was targeted toward me but I'll respond since I used to live in a country leaning toward socialism for more than half of my life (France) and now live in California. I've been saying for a while that if you want to be rich go to the US, if you want to be poor and taken care of by a nanny state, France is a good place.
While it is a bad thing to be homeless, I would MUCH rather be homeless in the US than China (communist but not socialist at all) or India (see Slumdog Millionaire for a rough idea). At least in the US you have a rather easy access to 'decent' food from charity or from dumpsters (it can still be clean when wrapped, etc...).
I've often heard that in the US, if you're homeless and sick or injured they let you die in the gutter. This is not true, you can get free medical attention and supplies from non profits like Planned Parenthood or the emergency rooms of *any* hospital (if seriously injured in this case).
As for housing, I do believe that the us does have housing safety nets and welfare safety nets. They're just not always entirely government funded, and not to the level of other countries. I am personally convinced that the long term homeless people in the US are so either by choice (they don't want to go back in the system, having a job, see Into the Wild) or crazy, but not enough to be legally interned.
Now I am not against some socialism, but while I was in France I was somewhat discussed at the welfare abuses in general. A lot of people are very happy to be in a nanny state that distributes wealth as if it's free. For example, the cheap health care there is so much abused and bankrupt that there is now a mandatory $2 fee when you visit the doctor and a lot of people complained when the fee got applied. I also know a few people that make a living purely by gaming the system, making sure they never ever become employable. Why would they ever want to work since they are permanently on vacation, with free housing, and access to free or cheap food. I even remember seeing on TV a father and mother explaining that they had to request (free) food deliveries to feed their kids because they ran out of money. They showed the kids bedroom, with a brand new TV and playstation: they're poor so they had to compensate so they're kids would feel better.
So yeah, you need some "social justice" to be a decent country, but not at all cost. Also "justice" is appropriate here: why should someone enjoy a nice clean apartment with with heating, running water, TV, Internet, food, clothing, healthcare..., all for free paid by the rest of society's hard work ? I have seen people living like that all around France. Do you find it 'just' ? So please don't bash the US for lack of 'social justice', it is really not as bad as the rest of the world believe.
the abundance of soup kitchens and charity groups out there, I find it difficult to believe than anyone has to go dumpster diving for food
Before my wife got her work permit in the US she did serve food at a local church. Some people do not want to go there because you have to comply with the "moral" rules. My wife actually stopped volunteering there because she was getting yelled at by the 'good christian' manager. Now she is only volunteering for causes that are not "I have morals because I believe in deity" based.
I know that some homeless people refuse to go to shelters because of the other bums that snore, fart, steal and even attack you during the night.
Actually I'm not a US citizen but have been living there since 2001. I'm still allowed to vote for a few of my home country elections. To do so I either vote by mail/internet or go to the consulate in San Francisco, drive 1-2hs, wait in line 2hs and risk being turned away because I don't have the proper document with me.
For the presidential elections (not the US ones) they actually opened voting booths all over the bay area and I only had to drive 5 miles to vote. There was a huge turnaround, and people in line felt that they were actually doing their civic duty.
There are new elections going on right now, but this time it's only by mail/internet, I'll try to vote if I remember before the due date, but it's very likely I will just forget to do it and remember a day or week too late.
So yes, the fact that you can go to an official place to physically place your ballot makes a big difference.
I used to be on-call a few years ago. We had a pager rotation from Thursday to Thursday followed by Friday off.
It was awesome since I could start the weekends early. Go to the movies on Friday at discount price (until 1pm or something) in an empty theatre was great. I would regularly take the following Monday off, getting a 4 days vacation and avoiding all the weekend traffic out of the bay area.
Nowadays... I have not taken a single day of vacation in the past 10 months. I swear Once I buy that house I want and pay it off I'll take a very long vacation and stop working insane hours. It will be in 30 years, I guess I'll call it retirement.
Why would he want to have yet an other device plugged to his TV and home theatre system.
The back of my TV stand is full of cables, just on the power cables side I have:
- TV
- Home Theatre
- Subwoofer
- MythTV backend
- Mac Mini (act as my dvd player too)
- Wii
- Cable modem
- Wireless Router
- Gigabit switch
Now add the cables for TV, audio and network and it's a huge hair ball back there. I was more than happy to reclaim the DVD player space and cables when I sold it last year.
To make it more believable: mom's basement can be quite small so we don't like do waste space for a freaking DVD player while the small Wii can do it when you install MPlayer on it.
They can only shoot their side arm after being buried 6 feet under?
Pretty much, yes.
Or do they have to go to the arcade like the rest of us?
I don't know what you mean, if you mean they only shoot the plastic gun from the arcade game, then yes that's the extent of it. I suppose they do shoot once at the police academy and have to miss their toes to pass the 'test'.
During the riots in 2007 a group of policemen were shot at and one of them had his leg wounded, when he reached for his gun an other policeman prevented him from shooting back. I have a link to the partial article in french (registration required for full article I suppose).
Last year a man suspected of kidnaping jump out of the police station window (or gendarme station here), the gendarm shot him in the back. Better article this time (french again).
Gendarmerie Nationale is a branch of the French army, and are not the police. One major difference is that they are allowed to shoot to kill, while the police is not allowed to shoot even after they get shot at and are injured.
Slashdot Mirror
Done at cost ? I just looked at Treasure Island to get an idea and the cheapest estimate is $14 to $17 for softcover and up to $30 for hardcover. With the price estimated at $8 for the Google Books publicdomainreprints must be doing something wrong.
Off topic but the irony and the laugh would be on you if they "harassed" you the same the British did: by harassment do you mean they forced you out of your homes, to learn their imported language, killed your friends and kidnaped your kids ?
Privoxy: works with any browser that support proxy servers. It is great if you have a server machine to install it, then you can set all your home computers to use that centralized proxy.
In the last two generations of consoles, the big winners are the ones that offer a single feature:
Backwards Compatibility.
PS1->PS2 = WIN (against DC which was a superb system)
GameCube -> Wii = Win (against VASTLY superior hardware)
You forgot to mention PS2->PS3 = FAIL.
Remember that the recruiting is Worldwide: how do you hire someone with no work authorization for 30 days ? Would you relocate to a foreign country for 30 days ? If I get similar offers the one where they say "you're hired, when can you start" and the one "we'll try you for thirty day, then if we don't like you return to your country" it's pretty obvious which one I will pick: a little bit more potential money is not worth a much bigger risk. How do you know the company is not hiring 3 candidates for 30 days, meaning that not only you have to do a good job, but you're still competing with 2 other guys and have a high risk to be unemployed at the end of the trial.
For example a few years ago I refused a 12% bigger offer for a more stable company which actually was quicker to make the offer. When I look back, I have no regrets: the better paying company had massive layoffs and is now sleeping with M$. The company I picked has great perks to help offset the lower base salary.
Agreed. I did sit in class jut waiting for the hours to pass. It was especially true in Computer Science classes (I started programming when I was 7 or 8).
I'm pretty sure I could have been a decent developer without going to college or even finishing high school. But I did complete a Masters in Engineering and Business Management and this background is useful to move my career forward, let me better understand people in other disciplines and have a good understanding of most aspect of business.
There are often problems at work that I can find a solution for because I've sit in a class 10+ years ago.
Now ... when I look back at what I've learned 'before' college, then yes, it was pretty much useless. I actually remember getting an F in math because I did "7-10=-3": the answer the teacher wanted was 'impossible': we had not learned negative numbers in class yet. The point is the school was restrictive and all about 'you must fit in the mold' rather than "we want you to learn".
you can not really do much with JavaScript (e.g. write a multimedia player)
HTML 5 is pushing the envelope enough to do most of what you need Flash and Silverlight for.
Take a look at the webkit blog to get an idea of all the things possible in HTML 5 and CSS 3.0, now:
- CSS masks: http://webkit.org/blog/181/css-masks/
- CSS reflections: http://webkit.org/blog/182/css-reflections/
- CSS animations: http://webkit.org/blog/324/css-animation-2/
- CSS 3D animations: http://webkit.org/blog/386/3d-transforms/
- video tag, already in use by dailymotion: http://openvideo.dailymotion.com/
I use the nightly builds of WebKit and it's been an excellent browser for me for the past few years.
So actually a multimedia player will be pretty easy to implement, child play compared to a native application doing the same thing on Linux.
Sure it won't help much to watch a DVD, but netbooks don't have dvd players anyhow. The trend is to all of your data online. Even Netflix is moving toward streaming rather than physical media, once DRM dies with the MPAA I'm sure they'll adopt HTML 5 instead of Silverlight.
There's one thing that disturbed me about Facebook: I wanted to apply for a position there, but you need a Facebook account in order to do so. So why not ? You have to provide some personal information especially your birth date, which is illegal for a prospect employer to ask.
I understand the recruiters might not look actively look for your birth date, yet now it's there for them to look at, forever in their database.
At 13 I pretty much assume he has 'people' to take care of the landlord for him: mom and dad.
Bullshit! you can't buy happiness with money.
Well to some extend. I have a job that pays well and am able to save money and have no debt, while I saved up enough for a 25% down payment I am not making enough to actually buy a single family house in my neighborhood. Well I 'could' but this would put me at a level of debt that I am really not comfortable with. I'm not asking for a mansion, just a 3 bedroom house, no pool, and a big enough backyard so I can have a BBQ with friends. I really don't care about the $ value of the house, to me money is just something to pay the bills, and in the future the mortgage.
It's not about being rich, it's about not lacking the money when you really need it, for example not having to delay a visit to the dentist because you can't afford it. And this, to me, is part of happiness.
Oddly enough, the highest combined life span is Hawaii
Must be all the Spam they eat. Clearly the healthiest food in the United States.
Sometimes you have to say "NO".
Oh sure, and it would work for a company in a strong position, like Apple. If the company is hurting like Motorola, or Palm then you really cannot afford to not be sold by them. There is much more manufacturer competition than carrier competition and the big 4 carriers use that. Apple has reversed the roles a bit by having a true *must have* device. Sprint and Verizon got bitten by their own strategy and see a mass exodus to AT&T (I think customer support is not neutral on this).
Look at the last Treo model that was sold without carrier support. Sure you can use it with AT&T and TMobile but you have to pay the full price for it. I'm not even sure they've recouped development cost on this one.
As a customer I would much rather get lower monthly bill and no 2 year lock-in than getting a subsidized phone. This is pretty much paying a high interest perpetual loan on a device that is not that expensive anyway.
I used to work for a big name smart phone manufacturer. The versions for Sprint/Verizon were crippled at the carrier's request, i.e.: disabling internet sharing to your laptop. The unlocked (GSM) versions of the phones had all the features, not because they were more expensive, just because there was nobody requiring to remove the features.
One of the problems with Sprint and Verizon is that the radio has to be specifically designed for them which mean you can only use a phone that they sell directly. With GSM providers (AT&T, T-Mobile, and most of the world) you just need to put the SIM card in and it works (granted the local frequencies are supported by the phone).
Normally the manufacturer has no interest to cripple it's own product, but when the carrier control what devices will work on their network you don't have any choice but to comply. It is pretty much the same situation as when you had to use the land phone from the One phone company and were not allowed to plug you own.
Google is using a code review tool called Mondrian. It was originally written by Guido van Rossum (Python's creator).
He created an open source clone to be used with Subversion, Rietveld:
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/05/guido-van-rossum-releases-mondrian.html
http://codereview.appspot.com/
These tools are great but they are only as good as the guidelines for the reviews. Some reviewers will always say yes to requests, while others will be too anal. What happens? Most people will avoid strict reviewers and send their code to the easy ones. Doing a good review takes time so there need to be incentives to give good reviews: if you spend 2-3hs doing reviews in a day you just lost 25% productivity on your code, while helping an other developer write better code. Overall it's better for the team and the company but can actually hurt the perceived performance of your better developers while in fact they're pulling everyone else up. Just make sure good reviewers are getting as much recognition as good/productive code writers. Same thing goes with lenient reviewers, they should share the blame when bad code they reviewed brake the build. If you don't understand the new code, then it needs to be re-factored by the submitter to improve readability or you are not the right person to do the review.
And remember that the recent plane crash in NY was caused by human error: the autopilot responded to the ice buildup by diving to maintain speed, the pilot 'corrected' what he though was an error and the plane fell to the ground like a stone.
The truth is, modern computers can be much much better pilots than 95% of the pilots out there. I don't think the autopilot would have even attempted the landing in the Hudson river, here the pilot was clearly one of the top pilots that I want on every single I fly. Also I'm pretty sure that good pilot was not overworked and was well rested before his flight. Whatever good training you have humans will always make mistakes and they get worse with fatigue. The computer does not get tired, or emotional.
So with an average pilot, I think the autopilot is much more trustable. In case of exceptional emergency, a true outstanding pilot might pull it off where the computer will not. I'm not sure the data (if it exists) favor the humans though.
I NEVER want to live in the USA and I'm so glad I don't live there. It makes my so angry that wealth and technology are more important than social justice.
I don't know if your rant was targeted toward me but I'll respond since I used to live in a country leaning toward socialism for more than half of my life (France) and now live in California. I've been saying for a while that if you want to be rich go to the US, if you want to be poor and taken care of by a nanny state, France is a good place.
While it is a bad thing to be homeless, I would MUCH rather be homeless in the US than China (communist but not socialist at all) or India (see Slumdog Millionaire for a rough idea). At least in the US you have a rather easy access to 'decent' food from charity or from dumpsters (it can still be clean when wrapped, etc...).
I've often heard that in the US, if you're homeless and sick or injured they let you die in the gutter. This is not true, you can get free medical attention and supplies from non profits like Planned Parenthood or the emergency rooms of *any* hospital (if seriously injured in this case).
As for housing, I do believe that the us does have housing safety nets and welfare safety nets. They're just not always entirely government funded, and not to the level of other countries. I am personally convinced that the long term homeless people in the US are so either by choice (they don't want to go back in the system, having a job, see Into the Wild) or crazy, but not enough to be legally interned.
Now I am not against some socialism, but while I was in France I was somewhat discussed at the welfare abuses in general. A lot of people are very happy to be in a nanny state that distributes wealth as if it's free. For example, the cheap health care there is so much abused and bankrupt that there is now a mandatory $2 fee when you visit the doctor and a lot of people complained when the fee got applied. I also know a few people that make a living purely by gaming the system, making sure they never ever become employable. Why would they ever want to work since they are permanently on vacation, with free housing, and access to free or cheap food. I even remember seeing on TV a father and mother explaining that they had to request (free) food deliveries to feed their kids because they ran out of money. They showed the kids bedroom, with a brand new TV and playstation: they're poor so they had to compensate so they're kids would feel better.
So yeah, you need some "social justice" to be a decent country, but not at all cost. Also "justice" is appropriate here: why should someone enjoy a nice clean apartment with with heating, running water, TV, Internet, food, clothing, healthcare ..., all for free paid by the rest of society's hard work ? I have seen people living like that all around France. Do you find it 'just' ? So please don't bash the US for lack of 'social justice', it is really not as bad as the rest of the world believe.
the abundance of soup kitchens and charity groups out there, I find it difficult to believe than anyone has to go dumpster diving for food
Before my wife got her work permit in the US she did serve food at a local church. Some people do not want to go there because you have to comply with the "moral" rules. My wife actually stopped volunteering there because she was getting yelled at by the 'good christian' manager. Now she is only volunteering for causes that are not "I have morals because I believe in deity" based.
I know that some homeless people refuse to go to shelters because of the other bums that snore, fart, steal and even attack you during the night.
I've seen bums showering who didn't even have a towel
But that's the most important thing to have !!! I means there is a whole series of books about how important it is to have a towel.
Actually I'm not a US citizen but have been living there since 2001. I'm still allowed to vote for a few of my home country elections. To do so I either vote by mail/internet or go to the consulate in San Francisco, drive 1-2hs, wait in line 2hs and risk being turned away because I don't have the proper document with me.
For the presidential elections (not the US ones) they actually opened voting booths all over the bay area and I only had to drive 5 miles to vote. There was a huge turnaround, and people in line felt that they were actually doing their civic duty.
There are new elections going on right now, but this time it's only by mail/internet, I'll try to vote if I remember before the due date, but it's very likely I will just forget to do it and remember a day or week too late.
So yes, the fact that you can go to an official place to physically place your ballot makes a big difference.
I used to be on-call a few years ago. We had a pager rotation from Thursday to Thursday followed by Friday off.
It was awesome since I could start the weekends early. Go to the movies on Friday at discount price (until 1pm or something) in an empty theatre was great. I would regularly take the following Monday off, getting a 4 days vacation and avoiding all the weekend traffic out of the bay area.
Nowadays ... I have not taken a single day of vacation in the past 10 months. I swear Once I buy that house I want and pay it off I'll take a very long vacation and stop working insane hours. It will be in 30 years, I guess I'll call it retirement.
Mac OS X ?
Most of the of the Atom based NetBooks run Leopard quite well. Not perfectly but well enough to be used as cheap MacBook Air alternative.
I know the answer is 'No', MacOS X is x86 only these days with the PPC line being almost obsolete.
Rick will know who to thank for the spike of junk mail he'll get starting tomorrow.
Why would he want to have yet an other device plugged to his TV and home theatre system.
The back of my TV stand is full of cables, just on the power cables side I have:
- TV
- Home Theatre
- Subwoofer
- MythTV backend
- Mac Mini (act as my dvd player too)
- Wii
- Cable modem
- Wireless Router
- Gigabit switch
Now add the cables for TV, audio and network and it's a huge hair ball back there. I was more than happy to reclaim the DVD player space and cables when I sold it last year.
To make it more believable: mom's basement can be quite small so we don't like do waste space for a freaking DVD player while the small Wii can do it when you install MPlayer on it.
They can only shoot their side arm after being buried 6 feet under?
Pretty much, yes.
Or do they have to go to the arcade like the rest of us?
I don't know what you mean, if you mean they only shoot the plastic gun from the arcade game, then yes that's the extent of it. I suppose they do shoot once at the police academy and have to miss their toes to pass the 'test'.
During the riots in 2007 a group of policemen were shot at and one of them had his leg wounded, when he reached for his gun an other policeman prevented him from shooting back. I have a link to the partial article in french (registration required for full article I suppose).
Last year a man suspected of kidnaping jump out of the police station window (or gendarme station here), the gendarm shot him in the back. Better article this time (french again).
Gendarmerie Nationale is a branch of the French army, and are not the police. One major difference is that they are allowed to shoot to kill, while the police is not allowed to shoot even after they get shot at and are injured.