I realize this is indeed a bit of flamebait, but I would just like to point out wiping the memories of our enemies would have a very low return for the risk and difficulty. I would be more concerned about using it on citizens. Not that we need it, the media is quite effective at making us forget more than a few months ago. But imagine how difficult it would be to bring a lawsuit against the government for "detaining" people and "questioning" them when they don't remember any of it actually happening. Imagine how hard it would be to convict anyone of wrongdoing in the government by preventing people from being able to testify because they had their memory erased.
Even worse...What about people like Rumsfeld who actively ignore information to try and get away with saying he didn't know, now they can study, plan, and erase.
How does George Herbert Walker Bush help you forget memories? Unless there is some secret here as to the truth behind why most Americans can't seem to find Iraq on the map, or have forgotten that Saddam isn't Bin Laden, and so on.
Please please please tell me that they aren't extracting anything and putting it in the water...
The fact is it is not a problem for the ad company. Why would they hire developers and support staff to handle an additional layer of complexity that would provide no significant increase in income. And like you said now there would be security issues on top of it. It would be a horrible business decision
That said, trust me when I say "any web master who... knows how to upload a php script" is completely, utterly, and totally false. Back in my freelance days I can't even begin to tell you how many people got various levels of hosting without so much as a clue as to how a web page works. Feel free to try and explain what the scripts are, what ASP and PHP and whatnot are to someone who doesn't know what HTML is. They just fire up front page and drag pretty pictures and type on the screen and hit publish.
Hush you! How else are they going to get consumers to eat the poison pill? "See, we listened to you, we are getting rid of DRM, we just wanna put a little stamp on it that you won't even notice"
Well...to be honest the whole problem isn't healthcare. It is a tangled web of problems, but it is pretty easy to trace the threads of it through the mess. Credit companies have caused an incredible level of inflationary spending because of the buy now pay later mentality that teaches people $100 less per month in payments is a good deal even when it means they pay $10,000 more over the life of the loan. Insurance companies are vile and evil beasts. Malpractice lawsuits, while good in theory, are generally becomming aweful in practice driving up costs and insurance. (Patients do need protection from negligence, however, we understand precious little about the human body, and no doctor is perfect.) Then we also have the cost involved in becomming educated and certified to work on squishy things that scream and bleed, and if you have EVER taken ANY college you are well aware of how much of a financial scam that mess is...$150 book that is on its 8th edition with minor changes but you can't use any previous edition.
More than anything actually directly related to the healthcare industry, it is simply capitolism run amok. While I hate anything that would shift the blame from the corporate/government entities ultimately responsible...the fact is the American consumer deserves a great deal of the blame. As long as you give companies the dollars, they will do whatever they can to take more away from you. It takes large numbers of educated consumers to effectively control a capitolistic economy, and there is a GREAT vested interest in the commercial and government sector to keep the people uneducated.
I know I would much rather have the hospital spending a fortune on a highly paid IT staff of experts in every section of the many many many different vendors and operations of all the different pieces of technological things that go on on a hospital network. I mean...why would I want lowered health care costs? Or maybe the hospital should hire one less cardiologist, or pathologist, or something to make sure they can pay their IT staff.
I certainly hope the courts don't let people "outsource" their responsibily for using a manufacturer not practicing good design building cars. People should have to take responsibilty and build their own car in their garage, it doesn't make sense to blame the mfg of the car because that person was dumb enough to buy from such a horrible mfg. These people should have sent their own QA and safety engineers to the factory first before they bought the car!
Seriously grow up, this is stupid. I think outsourcing technical work when you are a technical company is a bit dumb and a sign of quarterly statement thinking. Outsourcing technical work when you are in the business of working on squishy things that scream and bleed is not dumb. You outsourced the building of your home, you outsourced the building of your car, and you can bet your ass that you would outsource the responsibilty of purchasing a faulty product to the builder/mfg if your home or car fell apart due to shitty procedures or materials used in its construction, as it should be.
Ok, lets up the stakes. MS loves to tout their super success such as their claims about how machines running windows run the stock market. Boy I bet it would suck if they got hit with something obscure and nasty. Not enough, ok, lets go up again. There are tons of medical devices that run software from home grown code to Windows. Now...you can't go blindly patching a Windows box that runs complex medical equipment without intensive testing, not like "will it cause problems with our 'mission critical' intranet business portal" but "gee I hope there aren't any obscure oddities that might cause the machine to misdiagnose or kill anyone". Good thing MS slaps that label of "you can't hold us responsible for using our product if it is found to be defective". So...critical machine running power plant reactor stuff goes apeshit stupid because of a bug...oh well...good thing all the damages and deaths can't be pinned on the people who are truely responsible for allowing it to happen.
It amuses me to no end that even tech people are so blind to the fact that a computer runs damn near everything these days, and software problems causing life and death situations are far more common than you might imagine. The computer is not for gaming and business servers only anymore folks. Shit, go look up the rumors behind the software problems with Chernobyl
Well trusting them and given them respect are different. I respect them and try not to be a prick with them because of what they do and have to go through. I don't always trust them because of what they do and have to go through, on top of the whole authority/corruption issue. Even more so in the large cities, when every day is a bit more of a gamble to survive, I understand cops being kinda twitchy and not always doing the right thing. Certainly doesn't excuse it, but I think precious few of them are actually out to be assholes, just a condition of the paranoia of not being able to really trust any of the citizenship.
Wow...bit of resentment towards cops it seems. You are being unbelievably obtuse even though I was using a hypothetical situation. At least my hypothetical situation involves what the cops job is, AND a very likely occurance, AND actually happens compared to anything you dreamed up. I'm glad that you are able to latch on to my use of a hypothetical situation to devalue the point that most people are assholes to cops without blinking an eye or thinking about what that cop actually does for you.
These people sign up to put themselves in harms way and all manner of dangerous situations to try to keep the general populace safe. Your innane chatter about jet flying IRS agents and mailmen stopping runaway tankers is an impressive insult equating all public servants with the ones that actually put themselves in harms way rather than stuff envelopes or manage tax income.
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Yeah....that would be why Vista was released right? I kid I kid...or not...
Now for the Godwin's Law. There were poor Nazi soldiers that just wanted to make the world a better place while they were operating the concentration camps. It's not like it was THEIR decision to round up the jews and gas em all right?
For the car analogy now. This would be like your company paying to keep everyone else locked into litigation and waste resources on fighting instead of producing a 4 wheeled car that gets 50mi/gal while you still were making a 3 wheeled car that gets 5mi/gal with backroom deals with the oil companies.
Now for my serious response. No...you are right, it doesn't make you evil, it makes you gullible. Because of the 75,000 employees at MS 75,000 just want their paycheck and aren't concerned about who gets fucked in the process so long as they get paid at the end of the week.
*CLAP* It is about time someone mentioned this. People seem to act like cops are all part of some vast conspiracy network, when the reality is, most of them are just trying to survive another night and get home and see their wife and kids. People here have some rather paranoid delusions, but look at it from the cop side, there are alot of people out to get them, and they can't hide. They wear uniforms (so help me God the first person who spouts off trying to split hairs about plain clothes cops gets a swift kick in the nuts) so they are easily identified by citizen and criminal alike, they carry shiney badges, and drive marked cars. They walk around with a big ass target on themselves to protect you.
That same cop that is infringing on your "right" to speed by hitting you with radar and fining you for having jammers is also the same cop that pushes you to the ground and takes a bullet for you when someone decides to hold up the convenience store. Guess what, even off duty, cops frequently wind up doing their job in emergency situations like this because that is what they were trained to do. Unfortunately for them, they usually don't have all their protective gear when something like that happens, so that bullet is far more likely to be fatal. I would hate to think how you would feel if you had just hastled that cop a day or two before for pulling you over for something.
Much like the military, the police force really is one of those jobs that "just doing their job" actually has to take precedence over their personal feelings. They have to rely on what the politicians decide and enforce that. I mean...if you have a military and police force just doing whatever they want...that is generally a really bad police state kinda environment. When you have them following orders one way or another, you just have to bear responsibility for putting the clowns in place that gave them the stupid marching orders. The solution is to fix the clowns and quit bitching about the people who are ultimately the few that are willing to make sacrifices for others which is rare enough, but they are also willing to potentially sacrifice their lives, which in our whiney self serving culture is all but nonexistant.
Well I wasn't meaning it to be that specific. I mean the general awareness in its general meaning that the constant usage of the symbol gives to people even if they aren't officially trained as to what it means in various situations.
That being said "Neutral" is most certainly not the case. Combat medics for example can and do carry firearms and still remain under the protection of the Geneva Convention. Further, you can be sure that while medics are supposed to treat everyone, they will usually treat their own side first making them a little less than neutral, they aren't going to stop what they are doing to go treat the enemy as their team members shoot them. The big difference is that if a medic is carrying a weapon classified as an offensive/assault weapon, THEN they lose their protection, or if they use their defensive weapons in an attack or assault. As long as they use their weapons to defend themselves or their patients they remain protected.
And unfortunately "Don't Shoot" isn't really accurate either. That is most certainly what we would like it to mean, but the reality is that many militaries have actively targeted medical personnel as primary targets. While to most it seems a tad barbaric (and rightfully so), it is however incredibly effective and unfortunately a much better strategic decision than allowing the medics to continue to bring your enemy back to the battlefield.
Even in the past the American Red Cross has done a great deal of important and good things. One of the major things they do is handle various notifications for US military personnel and their families. They also do plenty of emergency response themselves, though they have been better in the past about it. This certainly doesn't excuse them from being asshats about other nonsense.
Haven't you been reading the news lately? The Red Cross had stated they were going to police the use of the logo in every form and use. They were going after video games for using the symbol to denote health packs. I can't even begin to count the number of places I have seen the symbol used to denote various types of medical assistance in games, media, etc, so the Red Cross needs a ton of funding to hire enough people to search through all media everywhere looking for violations and even more for the lawyers to attack the offenders.
I think the most moronic part about that is that they claim their mark is being misused or diluted or whatever. But because of its widespread use in modern media and the like EVERYONE is going to know by the age of 10 what the symbol means...Medical Help Here!
While I have no love for J&J for this stunt, I have no sympathy for the Red Cross. Taste of their own poison serves them right. They may have done wonderful things in the past, and they are a terribly important organization overall, but they need a swift kick in the balls to get themselves back on track and helping people instead of going after innane bullshit. They have been a monsterous waste of resources as of late, and it is about time someone steps up and fixes it.
Now, you may not do this personally, or you may just not admit to it, but 99% of the people I have talked to that say this kind of thing love to gloat when our own spies and such get caught and punished in other countries. Just a bit of a double standard.
That being said, things like treason and espionage have pretty much been illegal and often punishable by death with good reason from the dawn of government.
I don't agree with the super paranoia and "islamofacist" talk that has been going on lately, but that does not change the fact that there are sick and twisted people that come here, or even started here, with the intent of causing harm to us. Just to remove the typical cry of racism or whatever about our latest favorite enemy, lets talk about a different one. I think you will have a hard time finding anyone that would not have wished someone put a chunk of high velocity metal into ol Timmy McVeighs face before he was able to detonate his bomb.
I would mod you up, and I even have the points, but you are already at a 5. So instead I will offer you this fun little game. You hit the nail right on the damned head, and so many people are so pathetic at math and are afraid of stupid things noone can seem to change our course of paranoid overreaction. The administration and media want us to keep overreacting, the government gets more power, the media gets better ratings. They are in it for different reasons, but their actions are mutually beneficial to eachother and horrible for "we the people".
The game. It may be different for non US citizens, but the same principle applies. Go to state.gov or the CDC site and probably a few other places. Go back 10 years and do the numbers. state.gov is really good because not only does it combat the "omg they are going to kill us all" but it shows without a doubt that "all terrorists are muslim" is such a load of horse shit, and the most of the major terrorist attacks up until recently were in fact not muslim at all. But anyways, you add up all the people killed in terrorist attacks, and I even am kind enough to call attacks on military targets terrorist attacks even though it really isn't. Then you add up all the deaths by alcohol related incidents, teen drivers, the common fucking cold, influenza. Then...you make nice presentations out of the numbers and modify the current propoganda "the $threat hates our freedom" and "war on $threat" stuff with whatever the highest per year killer you get. I cannot even begin to tell you how enjoyable the look on peoples faces can be when their brains get locked up on this. The plain and simple numbers conflicting with their media programmed fear. Most people ARE indeed able to see reason quite well, it just has to be presented right (and unfortunately to the lowest common denominator type person). Now, mind you, be careful with what you pick, because while an excellent demonstration overall, it can backfire and they will agree that the government should wage a war on your threat of choice.
Be sure to remember that when that hacker breaking in without criminal intent gets you injured or killed because of any number of the following. The computer they broke into and subsequently crashed or fiddled with operates complex medical equipment, from MR machines to CT scanners to any of the new latest and greatest wizbang remote surgery technologies. How are you going to feel when the specialist cutting on you from thousands of miles away can't complete the surgery because some "innocent" "non criminal" hacker satisfied his curiosity on a critical piece of equipment. We can also talk about industry jobs...where the innocent hacker causes problems with a mfg machine controlled by the computer they are in. I had the pleasure of watching a laser cutter start to cut through itself due to an accidental oversight in simple software settings, the guy running it caught it really quick, but it still left a nice small cut in the frame.
Hackers can play with their own shit all they want, they can set up VMs and any number of other setups to play and tinker and test. I'm sure you will have a wonderful time explaining to the cops that you didn't want to steal anything when you get caught bumping locks that don't belong to you "out of curiousity".
I cannot believe you are calling tofu a meat substitute of any form or fashion. I'm not sure if you have never had tofu or never had meat, but you have never had one of them.
"tempeh was referred as 'Javanese meat', and sometimes it was used as a way to bully javanese." Right from your link this line about how calling it Javanese meat was meant to insult javanese people. (If this is not what this sentence was intended to mean someone needs to be shot because the full sentence is rather broken)
I will give you that veggie burgers can taste like burgers, but only so long as we both are the understanding that ground beef is on the bottom of the totem pole of "good meat" just barely above hotdogs and other meat products made out of leftover parts of the animal. Oh, and that they are both frequently over cooked and have a tendency to taste like juicy charred material.
Go eat filet mignon, or sushi, or any number of high quality animal parts and then talk to me about "Meat Analogue" creation.
It has been patented. I patented it right after my similar method for doing the same using the spinning dead bodies of the members of the Second Continental Congress. Further, I have patented the method for suing potential infringers, such as yourself, of insane patents as a method to increase the rotational speed of the dead bodies increasing the power output of the motor.
I am not even going to argue with you at this point. I only reply to congratulate you on the fact that I had to read "you go out of your way to be racially blind in a society that is not racially blind and that it indicates that you are in fact not racially blind" no less than 3 times in a sort of stunned awe of your logic. So I go out of my way to be something, and because noone else is, that makes me not be that something too? And then the idea that because I go out of my way to ignore someones race that it makes me racist... You sir have executed the most stunning display of circular logic beyond "the Bible is true because it was inspired by God, and I know it was inspired by God because the Bible said so" while at the same time performing a most amazing feat of doublespeak that would even put Karl Rove or Dick Cheney to shame. Bravo...Bravo... I have been entirely entertaining.
Just in case that isn't what you were attempting, I will go ahead and include the definitions of racism. The Merriam-Webster's Webster's Dictionary dictionary defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race, and that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief.[2] The Macquarie Dictionary defines racism thus: the belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule or dominate others. So like I said before...with your "white people are rich immigrants" and your "black people are all poor kidnapped slaves" line of crap...you have proven yourself quite racist based on the actual definitions.
You know I guess I didn't think that deep into it, but there is another one that is going to be a HUGE FUCKING NAIL in their coffin. Chain of Custody is going to fucking murder them. So...when their hired goons steal crap off your computer and it over and then rush to court... I don't think a lawyer with half a braincell would let that be entered in, by the end of the day if they can even get a trial going, it will boil down to "we are pretty sure that the people we paid to catch him doing this caught him doing this". The police will actually have to start getting involved, real warrants for things, and they will have to actually declare exactly what it is they are looking for instead of trolling around for anything they can find.
Uhm...here is the sad and pathetic thing. There have been laws on the books regarding media outlet ownership for a long time to prevent this. But a couple bucks and a handjob or two later and the media companies have completely ignored anything the government/fcc/etc have said about it. We already have the laws to mitigate this problem, its just noone bothers enforcing them, or allows them to use weak loopholes to get around the spirit of the law. In the meantime, the FCC and crew rattle their sabers at crap like open drivers for wireless cards.
In a strange way, the fact that they are attempting to make this criminal may actually work out for the better. This kind of crap frequently doesn't get a jury. Criminal trials get juries. As long as juries can be educated that they can agree that they can declare laws unjust and kill the mess.
I pretty much agree with that, except I will point out the amusing irony of talking about digital music type folks seeking greater personal social contact on their nights out. I have worked for a few of these people, not just the using the computer to make music with software and maybe a few plugins, but the guys that have invested six figures or more into a wide array of digital whatnots that are all chained together through a computer. Dual screen with edge to edge monitors (the type with no border) so that they can use their editing and sequencing software better, with all manner of strange digital drumsets, samplers, converters, etc. The irony here is that you talk about these people on slashdot of all places like they actually endeavor to have nights out, let alone social contact on those nights out. I realize this is not the case for all of them, but as I said, having worked freelance for a few of these guys maintaining their rigs...well...they are certainly their own brand of geek and do kinda fit with many of the standard geek stereotypes.
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I realize this is indeed a bit of flamebait, but I would just like to point out wiping the memories of our enemies would have a very low return for the risk and difficulty. I would be more concerned about using it on citizens. Not that we need it, the media is quite effective at making us forget more than a few months ago. But imagine how difficult it would be to bring a lawsuit against the government for "detaining" people and "questioning" them when they don't remember any of it actually happening. Imagine how hard it would be to convict anyone of wrongdoing in the government by preventing people from being able to testify because they had their memory erased.
Even worse...What about people like Rumsfeld who actively ignore information to try and get away with saying he didn't know, now they can study, plan, and erase.
How does George Herbert Walker Bush help you forget memories? Unless there is some secret here as to the truth behind why most Americans can't seem to find Iraq on the map, or have forgotten that Saddam isn't Bin Laden, and so on.
Please please please tell me that they aren't extracting anything and putting it in the water...
The fact is it is not a problem for the ad company. Why would they hire developers and support staff to handle an additional layer of complexity that would provide no significant increase in income. And like you said now there would be security issues on top of it. It would be a horrible business decision
... knows how to upload a php script" is completely, utterly, and totally false. Back in my freelance days I can't even begin to tell you how many people got various levels of hosting without so much as a clue as to how a web page works. Feel free to try and explain what the scripts are, what ASP and PHP and whatnot are to someone who doesn't know what HTML is. They just fire up front page and drag pretty pictures and type on the screen and hit publish.
That said, trust me when I say "any web master who
Hush you! How else are they going to get consumers to eat the poison pill? "See, we listened to you, we are getting rid of DRM, we just wanna put a little stamp on it that you won't even notice"
Well...to be honest the whole problem isn't healthcare. It is a tangled web of problems, but it is pretty easy to trace the threads of it through the mess. Credit companies have caused an incredible level of inflationary spending because of the buy now pay later mentality that teaches people $100 less per month in payments is a good deal even when it means they pay $10,000 more over the life of the loan. Insurance companies are vile and evil beasts. Malpractice lawsuits, while good in theory, are generally becomming aweful in practice driving up costs and insurance. (Patients do need protection from negligence, however, we understand precious little about the human body, and no doctor is perfect.) Then we also have the cost involved in becomming educated and certified to work on squishy things that scream and bleed, and if you have EVER taken ANY college you are well aware of how much of a financial scam that mess is...$150 book that is on its 8th edition with minor changes but you can't use any previous edition.
More than anything actually directly related to the healthcare industry, it is simply capitolism run amok. While I hate anything that would shift the blame from the corporate/government entities ultimately responsible...the fact is the American consumer deserves a great deal of the blame. As long as you give companies the dollars, they will do whatever they can to take more away from you. It takes large numbers of educated consumers to effectively control a capitolistic economy, and there is a GREAT vested interest in the commercial and government sector to keep the people uneducated.
I know I would much rather have the hospital spending a fortune on a highly paid IT staff of experts in every section of the many many many different vendors and operations of all the different pieces of technological things that go on on a hospital network. I mean...why would I want lowered health care costs? Or maybe the hospital should hire one less cardiologist, or pathologist, or something to make sure they can pay their IT staff.
I certainly hope the courts don't let people "outsource" their responsibily for using a manufacturer not practicing good design building cars. People should have to take responsibilty and build their own car in their garage, it doesn't make sense to blame the mfg of the car because that person was dumb enough to buy from such a horrible mfg. These people should have sent their own QA and safety engineers to the factory first before they bought the car!
Seriously grow up, this is stupid. I think outsourcing technical work when you are a technical company is a bit dumb and a sign of quarterly statement thinking. Outsourcing technical work when you are in the business of working on squishy things that scream and bleed is not dumb. You outsourced the building of your home, you outsourced the building of your car, and you can bet your ass that you would outsource the responsibilty of purchasing a faulty product to the builder/mfg if your home or car fell apart due to shitty procedures or materials used in its construction, as it should be.
Ok, lets up the stakes. MS loves to tout their super success such as their claims about how machines running windows run the stock market. Boy I bet it would suck if they got hit with something obscure and nasty. Not enough, ok, lets go up again. There are tons of medical devices that run software from home grown code to Windows. Now...you can't go blindly patching a Windows box that runs complex medical equipment without intensive testing, not like "will it cause problems with our 'mission critical' intranet business portal" but "gee I hope there aren't any obscure oddities that might cause the machine to misdiagnose or kill anyone". Good thing MS slaps that label of "you can't hold us responsible for using our product if it is found to be defective". So...critical machine running power plant reactor stuff goes apeshit stupid because of a bug...oh well...good thing all the damages and deaths can't be pinned on the people who are truely responsible for allowing it to happen.
It amuses me to no end that even tech people are so blind to the fact that a computer runs damn near everything these days, and software problems causing life and death situations are far more common than you might imagine. The computer is not for gaming and business servers only anymore folks. Shit, go look up the rumors behind the software problems with Chernobyl
Well trusting them and given them respect are different. I respect them and try not to be a prick with them because of what they do and have to go through. I don't always trust them because of what they do and have to go through, on top of the whole authority/corruption issue. Even more so in the large cities, when every day is a bit more of a gamble to survive, I understand cops being kinda twitchy and not always doing the right thing. Certainly doesn't excuse it, but I think precious few of them are actually out to be assholes, just a condition of the paranoia of not being able to really trust any of the citizenship.
Wow...bit of resentment towards cops it seems. You are being unbelievably obtuse even though I was using a hypothetical situation. At least my hypothetical situation involves what the cops job is, AND a very likely occurance, AND actually happens compared to anything you dreamed up. I'm glad that you are able to latch on to my use of a hypothetical situation to devalue the point that most people are assholes to cops without blinking an eye or thinking about what that cop actually does for you.
These people sign up to put themselves in harms way and all manner of dangerous situations to try to keep the general populace safe. Your innane chatter about jet flying IRS agents and mailmen stopping runaway tankers is an impressive insult equating all public servants with the ones that actually put themselves in harms way rather than stuff envelopes or manage tax income.
Yeah....that would be why Vista was released right? I kid I kid...or not...
Now for the Godwin's Law. There were poor Nazi soldiers that just wanted to make the world a better place while they were operating the concentration camps. It's not like it was THEIR decision to round up the jews and gas em all right?
For the car analogy now. This would be like your company paying to keep everyone else locked into litigation and waste resources on fighting instead of producing a 4 wheeled car that gets 50mi/gal while you still were making a 3 wheeled car that gets 5mi/gal with backroom deals with the oil companies.
Now for my serious response. No...you are right, it doesn't make you evil, it makes you gullible. Because of the 75,000 employees at MS 75,000 just want their paycheck and aren't concerned about who gets fucked in the process so long as they get paid at the end of the week.
*CLAP* It is about time someone mentioned this. People seem to act like cops are all part of some vast conspiracy network, when the reality is, most of them are just trying to survive another night and get home and see their wife and kids. People here have some rather paranoid delusions, but look at it from the cop side, there are alot of people out to get them, and they can't hide. They wear uniforms (so help me God the first person who spouts off trying to split hairs about plain clothes cops gets a swift kick in the nuts) so they are easily identified by citizen and criminal alike, they carry shiney badges, and drive marked cars. They walk around with a big ass target on themselves to protect you.
That same cop that is infringing on your "right" to speed by hitting you with radar and fining you for having jammers is also the same cop that pushes you to the ground and takes a bullet for you when someone decides to hold up the convenience store. Guess what, even off duty, cops frequently wind up doing their job in emergency situations like this because that is what they were trained to do. Unfortunately for them, they usually don't have all their protective gear when something like that happens, so that bullet is far more likely to be fatal. I would hate to think how you would feel if you had just hastled that cop a day or two before for pulling you over for something.
Much like the military, the police force really is one of those jobs that "just doing their job" actually has to take precedence over their personal feelings. They have to rely on what the politicians decide and enforce that. I mean...if you have a military and police force just doing whatever they want...that is generally a really bad police state kinda environment. When you have them following orders one way or another, you just have to bear responsibility for putting the clowns in place that gave them the stupid marching orders. The solution is to fix the clowns and quit bitching about the people who are ultimately the few that are willing to make sacrifices for others which is rare enough, but they are also willing to potentially sacrifice their lives, which in our whiney self serving culture is all but nonexistant.
Well I wasn't meaning it to be that specific. I mean the general awareness in its general meaning that the constant usage of the symbol gives to people even if they aren't officially trained as to what it means in various situations.
That being said "Neutral" is most certainly not the case. Combat medics for example can and do carry firearms and still remain under the protection of the Geneva Convention. Further, you can be sure that while medics are supposed to treat everyone, they will usually treat their own side first making them a little less than neutral, they aren't going to stop what they are doing to go treat the enemy as their team members shoot them. The big difference is that if a medic is carrying a weapon classified as an offensive/assault weapon, THEN they lose their protection, or if they use their defensive weapons in an attack or assault. As long as they use their weapons to defend themselves or their patients they remain protected.
And unfortunately "Don't Shoot" isn't really accurate either. That is most certainly what we would like it to mean, but the reality is that many militaries have actively targeted medical personnel as primary targets. While to most it seems a tad barbaric (and rightfully so), it is however incredibly effective and unfortunately a much better strategic decision than allowing the medics to continue to bring your enemy back to the battlefield.
Even in the past the American Red Cross has done a great deal of important and good things. One of the major things they do is handle various notifications for US military personnel and their families. They also do plenty of emergency response themselves, though they have been better in the past about it. This certainly doesn't excuse them from being asshats about other nonsense.
Haven't you been reading the news lately? The Red Cross had stated they were going to police the use of the logo in every form and use. They were going after video games for using the symbol to denote health packs. I can't even begin to count the number of places I have seen the symbol used to denote various types of medical assistance in games, media, etc, so the Red Cross needs a ton of funding to hire enough people to search through all media everywhere looking for violations and even more for the lawyers to attack the offenders.
I think the most moronic part about that is that they claim their mark is being misused or diluted or whatever. But because of its widespread use in modern media and the like EVERYONE is going to know by the age of 10 what the symbol means...Medical Help Here!
While I have no love for J&J for this stunt, I have no sympathy for the Red Cross. Taste of their own poison serves them right. They may have done wonderful things in the past, and they are a terribly important organization overall, but they need a swift kick in the balls to get themselves back on track and helping people instead of going after innane bullshit. They have been a monsterous waste of resources as of late, and it is about time someone steps up and fixes it.
Now, you may not do this personally, or you may just not admit to it, but 99% of the people I have talked to that say this kind of thing love to gloat when our own spies and such get caught and punished in other countries. Just a bit of a double standard.
That being said, things like treason and espionage have pretty much been illegal and often punishable by death with good reason from the dawn of government.
I don't agree with the super paranoia and "islamofacist" talk that has been going on lately, but that does not change the fact that there are sick and twisted people that come here, or even started here, with the intent of causing harm to us. Just to remove the typical cry of racism or whatever about our latest favorite enemy, lets talk about a different one. I think you will have a hard time finding anyone that would not have wished someone put a chunk of high velocity metal into ol Timmy McVeighs face before he was able to detonate his bomb.
I would mod you up, and I even have the points, but you are already at a 5. So instead I will offer you this fun little game. You hit the nail right on the damned head, and so many people are so pathetic at math and are afraid of stupid things noone can seem to change our course of paranoid overreaction. The administration and media want us to keep overreacting, the government gets more power, the media gets better ratings. They are in it for different reasons, but their actions are mutually beneficial to eachother and horrible for "we the people".
The game. It may be different for non US citizens, but the same principle applies. Go to state.gov or the CDC site and probably a few other places. Go back 10 years and do the numbers. state.gov is really good because not only does it combat the "omg they are going to kill us all" but it shows without a doubt that "all terrorists are muslim" is such a load of horse shit, and the most of the major terrorist attacks up until recently were in fact not muslim at all. But anyways, you add up all the people killed in terrorist attacks, and I even am kind enough to call attacks on military targets terrorist attacks even though it really isn't. Then you add up all the deaths by alcohol related incidents, teen drivers, the common fucking cold, influenza. Then...you make nice presentations out of the numbers and modify the current propoganda "the $threat hates our freedom" and "war on $threat" stuff with whatever the highest per year killer you get. I cannot even begin to tell you how enjoyable the look on peoples faces can be when their brains get locked up on this. The plain and simple numbers conflicting with their media programmed fear. Most people ARE indeed able to see reason quite well, it just has to be presented right (and unfortunately to the lowest common denominator type person). Now, mind you, be careful with what you pick, because while an excellent demonstration overall, it can backfire and they will agree that the government should wage a war on your threat of choice.
Be sure to remember that when that hacker breaking in without criminal intent gets you injured or killed because of any number of the following. The computer they broke into and subsequently crashed or fiddled with operates complex medical equipment, from MR machines to CT scanners to any of the new latest and greatest wizbang remote surgery technologies. How are you going to feel when the specialist cutting on you from thousands of miles away can't complete the surgery because some "innocent" "non criminal" hacker satisfied his curiosity on a critical piece of equipment. We can also talk about industry jobs...where the innocent hacker causes problems with a mfg machine controlled by the computer they are in. I had the pleasure of watching a laser cutter start to cut through itself due to an accidental oversight in simple software settings, the guy running it caught it really quick, but it still left a nice small cut in the frame.
Hackers can play with their own shit all they want, they can set up VMs and any number of other setups to play and tinker and test. I'm sure you will have a wonderful time explaining to the cops that you didn't want to steal anything when you get caught bumping locks that don't belong to you "out of curiousity".
I cannot believe you are calling tofu a meat substitute of any form or fashion. I'm not sure if you have never had tofu or never had meat, but you have never had one of them.
"tempeh was referred as 'Javanese meat', and sometimes it was used as a way to bully javanese." Right from your link this line about how calling it Javanese meat was meant to insult javanese people. (If this is not what this sentence was intended to mean someone needs to be shot because the full sentence is rather broken)
I will give you that veggie burgers can taste like burgers, but only so long as we both are the understanding that ground beef is on the bottom of the totem pole of "good meat" just barely above hotdogs and other meat products made out of leftover parts of the animal. Oh, and that they are both frequently over cooked and have a tendency to taste like juicy charred material.
Go eat filet mignon, or sushi, or any number of high quality animal parts and then talk to me about "Meat Analogue" creation.
It has been patented. I patented it right after my similar method for doing the same using the spinning dead bodies of the members of the Second Continental Congress. Further, I have patented the method for suing potential infringers, such as yourself, of insane patents as a method to increase the rotational speed of the dead bodies increasing the power output of the motor.
I am not even going to argue with you at this point. I only reply to congratulate you on the fact that I had to read "you go out of your way to be racially blind in a society that is not racially blind and that it indicates that you are in fact not racially blind" no less than 3 times in a sort of stunned awe of your logic. So I go out of my way to be something, and because noone else is, that makes me not be that something too? And then the idea that because I go out of my way to ignore someones race that it makes me racist... You sir have executed the most stunning display of circular logic beyond "the Bible is true because it was inspired by God, and I know it was inspired by God because the Bible said so" while at the same time performing a most amazing feat of doublespeak that would even put Karl Rove or Dick Cheney to shame. Bravo...Bravo... I have been entirely entertaining.
Just in case that isn't what you were attempting, I will go ahead and include the definitions of racism. The Merriam-Webster's Webster's Dictionary dictionary defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race, and that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief.[2] The Macquarie Dictionary defines racism thus: the belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule or dominate others. So like I said before...with your "white people are rich immigrants" and your "black people are all poor kidnapped slaves" line of crap...you have proven yourself quite racist based on the actual definitions.
I was hoping someone had noticed the similarities. There was a wonderful South Park episode featuring this.
You know I guess I didn't think that deep into it, but there is another one that is going to be a HUGE FUCKING NAIL in their coffin. Chain of Custody is going to fucking murder them. So...when their hired goons steal crap off your computer and it over and then rush to court... I don't think a lawyer with half a braincell would let that be entered in, by the end of the day if they can even get a trial going, it will boil down to "we are pretty sure that the people we paid to catch him doing this caught him doing this". The police will actually have to start getting involved, real warrants for things, and they will have to actually declare exactly what it is they are looking for instead of trolling around for anything they can find.
Uhm...here is the sad and pathetic thing. There have been laws on the books regarding media outlet ownership for a long time to prevent this. But a couple bucks and a handjob or two later and the media companies have completely ignored anything the government/fcc/etc have said about it. We already have the laws to mitigate this problem, its just noone bothers enforcing them, or allows them to use weak loopholes to get around the spirit of the law. In the meantime, the FCC and crew rattle their sabers at crap like open drivers for wireless cards.
In a strange way, the fact that they are attempting to make this criminal may actually work out for the better. This kind of crap frequently doesn't get a jury. Criminal trials get juries. As long as juries can be educated that they can agree that they can declare laws unjust and kill the mess.
I pretty much agree with that, except I will point out the amusing irony of talking about digital music type folks seeking greater personal social contact on their nights out. I have worked for a few of these people, not just the using the computer to make music with software and maybe a few plugins, but the guys that have invested six figures or more into a wide array of digital whatnots that are all chained together through a computer. Dual screen with edge to edge monitors (the type with no border) so that they can use their editing and sequencing software better, with all manner of strange digital drumsets, samplers, converters, etc. The irony here is that you talk about these people on slashdot of all places like they actually endeavor to have nights out, let alone social contact on those nights out. I realize this is not the case for all of them, but as I said, having worked freelance for a few of these guys maintaining their rigs...well...they are certainly their own brand of geek and do kinda fit with many of the standard geek stereotypes.