The problem is that while a full-time minimum wage job would disqualify you, there aren't a lot of those at your neighborhood Wal-Mart. They have a lot of people under 30 hours so there are no benefits - but you can dream of getting 10 more hours a week and getting the nice shiny benefits they grant your co-workers.
No, the welfare and food stamps to cover their employing twice as many people at 1/3 the cost because nobody is full-time.
Except you forgot one important step, which is where the huge fine comes into play. You download it and you deprive the retailer and copyright owner of one purchase. You then share it with the world and deprive the retailers and copyright owner of the 10,000 sales that would have resulted if your copy hadn't been shared.
The problem is there is no way to track that. Everyone was willing to look the other way when it was one copyright infringement = one (potential) lost sale. The stakes have changed now, and nobody is willing to overlook it now.
They just want to make the fine absurd so nobody in their right mind would ever consider doing it. Also, note that this isn't a "criminal" penalty where the fine is enforced by the court system - this is a civil matter. It isn't pay the fine or go to jail - as it would be in a criminal court. If you can't pay, they can't collect, just as any other unwinnable judgement.
If you accept the current beliefs on this, it is fairly obvious that we need to restrict output of CO2 to limits that will allow it to be naturally absorbed. This is pretty much pre-industrial or early industrial age limits. We are not talking about 1990 levels anymore - that is perhaps a start, but it isn't much of a start. If that is what is needed to shock people into realizing what "sustainable CO2 emissions" means, by all means, let's implement those limits.
But, if the "solution" for the problem is to implement a "sustainable" carbon cycle on the planet, there are some pretty significant changes coming down.
First off, can we take it as a given that all practical forms of energy use produce undesirable byproducts? OK, I suppose a windmill does not produce many, but it is difficult to envision the current electrical consumption being supported by wind power. Solar (PV electric generation) in a large scale will produce far more pollutants than any other generation methods except perhaps nuclear - just from manufacturing the cells in large enough quantities.
The question then becomes can we continue with current energy use levels? Wouldn't seem so. The main problem isn't just pollution - it is the waste products from energy use. CO2 is one of those. Heat is another. If the target is "sustainable" we need to look at the effects of using any form of energy over hundreds of years. Simple - if we were using sunshine as the only energy source at the same levels the planet is consuming energy at this would cause serious side effects. So, the answer must be to reduce energy consumption - not decrease energy "wastage" or increase efficiency, but actually decrease consumption. This is the only effective long-term answer.
I think you can pick a date between 1800 and 1950 where energy use became "unsustainable" over the long term. If nothing else, the waste heat from this energy consumption would spell the end for the planet. Therefore, if the goal is to have a "sustainable" environment we must reduce the energy use to those levels which will allow natural processes (heat radiation to space, carbon recyling, etc.) to cope with this energy use. Some improvements can be obtained by greater effiencies available today than were available previously, so we can actually choose a date at which previously unsustainable energy use was taking place and still be able to have a sustainable environment. However, it is not possible to make this up at today's levels. This would entail a world population of perhaps 10 million at most with a comfortable lifestyle. It might be possible for the population to be as high as 50 million, but these people would have a low life expectancy and live in conditions that could only be described as abysmal - something like Bangladesh today, or worse.
The threat is clear - if we want to choose a sustainable environment, we need to begin implementing population reduction measures immediately. There are just too many people to reduce the energy consumption levels to that which could possibly be sustainable. Anyone that says differently is deluding themselves. At the current world population level we would need to kill more than a million people a day just to make a dent in the problem, and even at that rate it would take nearly 20 years.
The other way to look at the problem is that energy use isn't sustainable at a planetary level and resources from outside are needed. We have the technology and skills to move in this direction, but it would require some understanding that this was actually necessary for our survival. I don't think we are there, and universities are churning out people that believe we must be sustainable within our planetary environment. Do you think they understand the population problem? I don't.
Why would you think anyone in the US government would say anything about official policy? It's a secret, silly!
You don't actually think these folks that get elected believe anything they are saying to get elected, do you? Kerry surely doesn't, and Bush obviously has 3 or 4 games going overseas that we know nothing about.
About the only candidate that might believe what he is saying to people would be Lyndon Larouche. Oh, I forgot - he was lying about everything also.
The resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is real simple. There are only a few possible outcomes, one of them being that Palestine gets their land back after killing every last Israeli that doesn't flee.
Israel has no "right" to any land there - it was more or less decreed in 1948 that they had a right to exist and could fight for their land. The Palestinians want it back and aren't going to stop until they are either wiped out or succeed in wiping Israel off the face of the earth.
I think the US (rightly) objects to either of those outcomes as being unncessarily brutal and is trying (on and off over the years) to arrange some kind of deal where the two sides can live together. So far, it isn't working out because while the Israelies have said "land for peace" the Palestinians insist that Israel has no right to exist and they want to return to their 1948 homes.
Sounds like these people need some help, doesn't it?
Arrested Dmitry Sklyarov for breaking US laws in Russia?
No, if he did it in Russia and kept it in Russia nobody would have a problem. However, the minute his company tried to sell the product in the US, instantly that gave Adobe in the US grounds. Sorry, but that is part of "international trade". When you screw with the laws of one country from another, don't send illegal stuff to the country where it is illegal.
Sort if like if you get caught speeding in California and live in New York you can ignore the ticket and never pay. Just don't come back to California. Well, Dmitry missed that last part.
Sadly, if the sanctions had continued, how many Iraqis would have died because Saddam was skimming the oil-for-food program? All I heard before was how hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died because of the sanctions. Now we discover they actually were working?
It is almost a certainty that the sanctions were at an end. They weren't popular anywhere, not even the US that was getting pilots shot at in the no-fly zones. So, the sanctions were going to be lifted. Then we would have seen what had been held up for the last 10 years - Saddam with a nice fat wallet and plenty of countries willing to trade with him without any sanctions in place.
Oh, and by the way, the IMF isn't run or operated by the US - it is a 100% UN institution, part of the World Bank.
Best thing in the world would be an argument with China that stopped all trade with that country. Yes, there would be some economic damage, but in two years or less there would be manufacturing jobs in the US again and the barely educatable would have a place to work.
Sure, it might be uncomfortable for a while, but it would be worth it.
Naa. The problem is that there are two sides to this issue - the side you appear to be on, and the side of the multinational megacorp.
No, I'm not talking about Disney here. I mean a company like Wal-Mart or Sony.
What do they have to do with this? It's simple. Not everyone has your net access when they want information. When everyone has utterly ubiquitous, portable high-speed connection to the Internet this won't be an issue any longer. But, until then, physical distribution of music, books, magazines and everything else will continue. Who gets paid for this physical distribution?
Today, because of copyright laws and international treaties the creator has a chance of getting something out of it. There are flaws, and it isn't perfect, but the creator has a chance. Without this, Wal-Mart will come in an out-distribute the creator and the creator's agents. Now Wal-Mart (or Sony or pick your other favorite megacorp) gets the content for free and gets 100% of the profits from distribution.
Until that little niggling detail is sorted out, we need copyright and this artificial scarcity. The alternative is just makes Wal-Mart own everything.
The Japanese Government operates the DVD Forum, of which the DVDCCA (DVD Copy Control Authority) is a part. These organizations dictate how DVDs are made, and license the CSS technology. Failure to have properly licensed CSS technology or failure to use Macrovision properly gets you a lawsuit by either Macrovision or DVDCCA or both.
The broadcast flag is pretty much a done deal. CBS said they would never move to digital broadcasts unless the broadcast flag was mandated. Since moving all television broadcasting in the US to digital is a significant goal, it was virtually a no-brainer to thus mandate the broadcast flag. I think some other broadcasters were on CBS's side but none made the big public splash that CBS did.
Basically, the only way to get rid of the broadcast flag is to (a) convince the broadcasters they should give up their copyright to digital broadcasts, and (b) ensure that without this protection the broadcasters still move to digital broadcast.
Unfortunately, this will only apply to a few million people in city centers - digital broadcasting doesn't have the range that the analog broadcasts do. Cable and satellite systems will implement the same no-copy on the digital output from satellite receivers and cable set-top boxes. I believe it is there already for those folks with an IEEE 1394 connection from the cable box to the HD TV.
The problem is that you are shifting the "wronged" party from the RIAA to the state by criminalizing this. A lawsuit does not affect your future employment where as many types of convictions - even misdeamenors - can. In no way should this be criminalized. It needs to stay a civil matter.
How about the "mob" after the Detroit Tigers won their playoff in (I think) 1986? How about the LA riots after the Rodney King verdict? How about the "mobs" that assembled after Martin Luther King was assassinated? How about the Watts riot? All of these were just people assembling that got out of hand.
I think that is the whole point of this - it isn't protestors that the concern is about, it is what happens whenever there is a large group of people without much direction.
What was banned were specific models of specific guns. Therefore, when a specific model was banned, the manufacturer was free to make some minor change and introduce a new model that was not banned. About the only thing that was actually banned were larger magazines for many weapons. I do not even think that was actually useful because the limits were silly. I do not believe, for instance, that a 9mm 15-shot Berretta clip was banned.
The problem isn't that the people knocking over gas stations feel compelled to do so. 60-70 years ago social conditions were much, much worse and yet common robbery like knocking over a gas station was quite rare. Why? Because the perpitrator knew the odds of not getting caught and not going to a really unpleasent jail was about 1%. There was almost a certanity they would be caught and jailed.
What we have today is the belief in some social classes that this is almost reversed - a 1% chance of getting caught. So, it starts to look pretty attractive. Culturally, there are some minorities that hold up people that rob gas stations as role models for the young. When coupled with the perception of a low chance of punishment, this virtually assures that people are going to commit robberies.
The idea that we can solve crime problems by making sure everyone has plenty of money is a complete fallacy. It doesn't remove the real motivation, which is to get "more" at very low risk. About the only way to really implement what you are proposing would be to make "having more" utterly unacceptable to everyone - everybody gets $50,000 from the government no matter what they do. Nobody has anything "more" and there are no opportunities to get "more". Equality. Finally. Until you figure out that this was more-or-less the objective of the Stalinist Soviet Union and still is (sort of) the objective of Castro's Cuba. Neither one worked out very well and mostly people did indeed find ways to get "more".
The solution is to make the punishment certain to elevate the risk beyond any possible perception of the reward. Today, even when the punishment can be the death penalty, this has no effect when the perception is "I'll never get caught" and this is reinforced by people not getting caught.
The problem with any sort of mob protest is not that it is taking place, but that it (a) distrupts emergency services and (b) it can get out of control quickly. What does the ambulance driver do when the street is clogged with hundreds of protestors? Simple - the ambulance doesn't get through. How does a "mob" move from a peaceful demonstration to smashing everything in sight and looting? Nobody knows, but we have seen this happen even after sports events. Nobody wants to take chances on this happening.
I'm sure you have heard some interesting things about the stock market, but you should really do some more reading before spouting such nonsense.
What gives you the idea that owning stock entitles the owner to anything? Most "growth" stock today pays no dividends whatsoever - so there is no real return. It is a gamble based on the stock price going up. You buy in at $70 hoping it will go to $90. You sell out at $90 and someone else buys it hoping it will go to $100. Where does it end? At some point an individual stock may collapse in value, but there are plenty of other stocks and "investors" ready to bet on the price going up.
If you buy stock at $50 and you expect to get your $50 worth somehow, you are mistaken. It just doesn't work that way. I don't think it ever did, even at the beginning of capital markets. Anyone expecting it to work that way shouldn't invest in the stock market.
The real issue is the licensing of practioners. If in order to be a programmer or sysadmin you need to have a license issued by the state after you passed some qualifying tests, then you could have malpractice lawsuits and malpractice insurance.
Until there is that kind of licensing - as there is for doctors and lawyers - you can forget about liability for software development and administration.
This would also eliminate the kind of sales contracts and consulting agreements that specify there is no liability or consequential damages. I think you could expect the entire IT community to shrink quite a bit if this happens. Check into what it takes to be a PE (Professional Engineer) and you have an idea of what this would lead to. I do not think it would be a good idea at all.
From what I understand, the Enron collapse took away the 401K investments that were in Enron stock. It is not permitted to only offer company stock in a 401K plan, but that can be one of the alternatives. It is generally considered to be high risk.
I don't believe there were any "defined contribution" pensions that people paid into and could expect to be supported on for the rest of their lives.
So, some people that bet the company would never collapse lost their investment. Mostly, because they took the highest risk selection in the 401K portfolio. I'm not sure I have all that much sympathy for those folks. The days of the "defined contribution" pension plan where you pay in and take from it forever is over. The days of not taking any responsibility for your retirement investments are pretty much over. Too bad, but there isn't much that can be done about it.
Of course, we can just force the government to supply a pension to everyone so that when they retire they are 100% funded by the government. Of course, this would have to be at least as good as the job they left to retire, or no one would want to retire.
Any application that needs to be truly secure and immune from viruses and such that could be implemented on a mainframe system probably should at least be considered that way. The advantages are things like:
No viruses.
No Windows.
No worms.
No web surfing.
...
Of course, if you are trying to cut-and-paste between email and the database, this sort of advantage is quickly lost. Similarly, if you are going to try to locate something with Google and put it in the database that would be a problem as well. But, it would seem that the DMV wouldn't be doing much of that.
The big downside, which was alluded to above, is there aren't many "mainframe terminals" (3270-type) around and just about everybody is doing emulation on a PC. This has the nasty effect of combining the PC disavantages with the mainframe disadvantages, but you still see systems implemented this way.
I guess another point is a 15" LCD monitor and a legacy-free PC probably draw less power than a mainframe terminal would. So, I wouldn't make a decision like that based on power consumption, and I certainly wouldn't crow about power consumption with what they are doing.
So, anybody know of a good TN3270 package for Linux?
He might want to consider a ban on showing caskets of people killed on California highways, as this senseless and needless death is over four times (4,138 for 2002).
Do you believe that people killed on California (or any other state) highways are more or less senseless than people killed in Iraq? There will never be any benefit to people killed in these accidents, and the total for all of the US is something like 50,000 a year. Come on, if you want to rally behind some senseless killings, let's solve a problem that we are in control of!
There are people that for legitimate reasons wish to conceal their identity in various ways.
However, there are also people that are doing things online that, if they were done on a streetcorner, would get them arrested. They "know" that they cannot be caught, punished or prosecuted in any way because "online" is a law-free zone.
Why should this be the case? This means that not only spammers and the like can hide in plain sight, but also people that are actively making the Internet truely horrible are allowed to continue. Their actions are decried by governments and corporations alike and, unfortunately, those are the folks that can actually do something to change the nature of the Internet in ways that will be worse for everyone. For example, what would it serve if in order to register a domain you had to be registered as a business? Well, for one thing it would cut out kiddy-porn vendors and 19 sorts of scammers. But, it would also affect a lot of individuals.
I'm all for people protecting their privacy, but owning a domain and being private are not necessarily the same thing. Being able to hide your identity while posting on various dicussion boards is fine. Being able to set up a store where people can buy perscription drugs without a prescription for 10x the normal price isn't fine - but it is almost impossible to track these people down given the current system. Warez boards can be considered a true benefit to society - until you are a software developer with your sole income from sales of software.
I think the best example of this is where someone decides in a vindictive moment to register a domain "johnsmithsucks.com" and puts up pictures of John Smith and his family. Photoshopped pictures. Obscene photoshopped pictures. And amusing stories about John, his children and their dog. Try getting such a thing shut down if you have only "N.B." as the name on the domain registration. Yes, you might be able to track down the hosting, but maybe they are unhelpful or a bargin hosting company in Korea. You might be able to get it shut down, but I doubt it without an incredible amount of work. It would probably be better if you just left down quietly and changed your name.
Is this fair? It can happen today. Would you laugh if it happened to your neighbor? Sure you would, admit it.
OK, let's see here. Someone registers a domain using your last name and the suffix "sucks" and proceeds to publish photoshopped pictures of you, your children and goes on to write amusing stories about your habits and illegal acts. You find this out because it is linked to on Slashdot or other Internet news board.
I guess there are a couple of things you could do, but after your children start getting harrassed at school you probably find a lawyer and try to get the site taken down. Sorry, that domain is registered to "N.B." with no address - can't contact them and the registrar isn't cooperating. It's against their policy, and besides, they don't really have any better information than what is on WHOIS. Your lawyer suggest you change your name and move to a new city because that is the best that you can do.
Can we talk about Everyone should be allowed to (and is) publish their opinions anonymously, that's what America's about. in a little different context now? Sure, they have broken some laws, but so what? You can't find them and they can freely continue.
If you do not have a standard-format signed release for use of their image in your picture, you get sued. I have seen people getting these forms filled out at public parks because other people have gotten into a picture they are taking of their children. Absurd? Maybe, but if you don't have the release and publish the picture you can be in big, big trouble. This is the sort of thing you want to have happen to you - get your picture taken, no release and have the picture appear in Time magazine. You will get a nice check to go away quietly.
OK, so maybe Joe Sixpack not having a release form for taking your picture isn't worth that much. But, if it is published, anywhere, even on the web, you certainly have rights. This is what nails a lot of "paparizzi" photographers - not having a release for someone that isn't really a "public figure".
Hiroshima was selected specifically because it was a factory city. Unlike how factories worked in the US and Europe at that time - you know, homes over here and factory over there - Japan had quite a different system. There was a factory, but many of the workers actually worked in little shops at their homes. Therefore, bombing a factory wasn't attacking a centralized target but instead a heavily decentralized one. It did make Japanese industry almost immune to the same sort of bombing campaign that wiped out German factories.
So, we had massive incendary raids that were necessary to have any real impact on production capacity. And, unlike many places even in Germany that regarded the end of the war as a good thing, Japanese were conditioned to believe that suicide was far, far preferrable to the Emperor losing the war. When conventional forces landed on Saipan and Okinawa they were met with senseless attacks by civilians and mass suicides. Think of 10 villagers attacking a patrol with pitchforks. Women holding babies jumping off cliffs to avoid being captured and (as they were told) raped and tortured.
Because of this, it is not difficult to believe there were actually fewer civilian casualties from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than there would have been if we had invaded the "home islands". If the military wasn't finally convinced that we would burn the island down to bare rock they might never have surrendered and fought to the last civilian, all while the Emperor and military leaders quietly evacuated.
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No, the welfare and food stamps to cover their employing twice as many people at 1/3 the cost because nobody is full-time.
The problem is there is no way to track that. Everyone was willing to look the other way when it was one copyright infringement = one (potential) lost sale. The stakes have changed now, and nobody is willing to overlook it now.
They just want to make the fine absurd so nobody in their right mind would ever consider doing it. Also, note that this isn't a "criminal" penalty where the fine is enforced by the court system - this is a civil matter. It isn't pay the fine or go to jail - as it would be in a criminal court. If you can't pay, they can't collect, just as any other unwinnable judgement.
But, if the "solution" for the problem is to implement a "sustainable" carbon cycle on the planet, there are some pretty significant changes coming down.
First off, can we take it as a given that all practical forms of energy use produce undesirable byproducts? OK, I suppose a windmill does not produce many, but it is difficult to envision the current electrical consumption being supported by wind power. Solar (PV electric generation) in a large scale will produce far more pollutants than any other generation methods except perhaps nuclear - just from manufacturing the cells in large enough quantities.
The question then becomes can we continue with current energy use levels? Wouldn't seem so. The main problem isn't just pollution - it is the waste products from energy use. CO2 is one of those. Heat is another. If the target is "sustainable" we need to look at the effects of using any form of energy over hundreds of years. Simple - if we were using sunshine as the only energy source at the same levels the planet is consuming energy at this would cause serious side effects. So, the answer must be to reduce energy consumption - not decrease energy "wastage" or increase efficiency, but actually decrease consumption. This is the only effective long-term answer.
I think you can pick a date between 1800 and 1950 where energy use became "unsustainable" over the long term. If nothing else, the waste heat from this energy consumption would spell the end for the planet. Therefore, if the goal is to have a "sustainable" environment we must reduce the energy use to those levels which will allow natural processes (heat radiation to space, carbon recyling, etc.) to cope with this energy use. Some improvements can be obtained by greater effiencies available today than were available previously, so we can actually choose a date at which previously unsustainable energy use was taking place and still be able to have a sustainable environment. However, it is not possible to make this up at today's levels. This would entail a world population of perhaps 10 million at most with a comfortable lifestyle. It might be possible for the population to be as high as 50 million, but these people would have a low life expectancy and live in conditions that could only be described as abysmal - something like Bangladesh today, or worse.
The threat is clear - if we want to choose a sustainable environment, we need to begin implementing population reduction measures immediately. There are just too many people to reduce the energy consumption levels to that which could possibly be sustainable. Anyone that says differently is deluding themselves. At the current world population level we would need to kill more than a million people a day just to make a dent in the problem, and even at that rate it would take nearly 20 years.
The other way to look at the problem is that energy use isn't sustainable at a planetary level and resources from outside are needed. We have the technology and skills to move in this direction, but it would require some understanding that this was actually necessary for our survival. I don't think we are there, and universities are churning out people that believe we must be sustainable within our planetary environment. Do you think they understand the population problem? I don't.
You don't actually think these folks that get elected believe anything they are saying to get elected, do you? Kerry surely doesn't, and Bush obviously has 3 or 4 games going overseas that we know nothing about.
About the only candidate that might believe what he is saying to people would be Lyndon Larouche. Oh, I forgot - he was lying about everything also.
Israel has no "right" to any land there - it was more or less decreed in 1948 that they had a right to exist and could fight for their land. The Palestinians want it back and aren't going to stop until they are either wiped out or succeed in wiping Israel off the face of the earth.
I think the US (rightly) objects to either of those outcomes as being unncessarily brutal and is trying (on and off over the years) to arrange some kind of deal where the two sides can live together. So far, it isn't working out because while the Israelies have said "land for peace" the Palestinians insist that Israel has no right to exist and they want to return to their 1948 homes.
Sounds like these people need some help, doesn't it?
No, if he did it in Russia and kept it in Russia nobody would have a problem. However, the minute his company tried to sell the product in the US, instantly that gave Adobe in the US grounds. Sorry, but that is part of "international trade". When you screw with the laws of one country from another, don't send illegal stuff to the country where it is illegal.
Sort if like if you get caught speeding in California and live in New York you can ignore the ticket and never pay. Just don't come back to California. Well, Dmitry missed that last part.
It is almost a certainty that the sanctions were at an end. They weren't popular anywhere, not even the US that was getting pilots shot at in the no-fly zones. So, the sanctions were going to be lifted. Then we would have seen what had been held up for the last 10 years - Saddam with a nice fat wallet and plenty of countries willing to trade with him without any sanctions in place.
Oh, and by the way, the IMF isn't run or operated by the US - it is a 100% UN institution, part of the World Bank.
Sure, it might be uncomfortable for a while, but it would be worth it.
No, I'm not talking about Disney here. I mean a company like Wal-Mart or Sony.
What do they have to do with this? It's simple. Not everyone has your net access when they want information. When everyone has utterly ubiquitous, portable high-speed connection to the Internet this won't be an issue any longer. But, until then, physical distribution of music, books, magazines and everything else will continue. Who gets paid for this physical distribution?
Today, because of copyright laws and international treaties the creator has a chance of getting something out of it. There are flaws, and it isn't perfect, but the creator has a chance. Without this, Wal-Mart will come in an out-distribute the creator and the creator's agents. Now Wal-Mart (or Sony or pick your other favorite megacorp) gets the content for free and gets 100% of the profits from distribution.
Until that little niggling detail is sorted out, we need copyright and this artificial scarcity. The alternative is just makes Wal-Mart own everything.
The broadcast flag is pretty much a done deal. CBS said they would never move to digital broadcasts unless the broadcast flag was mandated. Since moving all television broadcasting in the US to digital is a significant goal, it was virtually a no-brainer to thus mandate the broadcast flag. I think some other broadcasters were on CBS's side but none made the big public splash that CBS did.
Basically, the only way to get rid of the broadcast flag is to (a) convince the broadcasters they should give up their copyright to digital broadcasts, and (b) ensure that without this protection the broadcasters still move to digital broadcast.
Unfortunately, this will only apply to a few million people in city centers - digital broadcasting doesn't have the range that the analog broadcasts do. Cable and satellite systems will implement the same no-copy on the digital output from satellite receivers and cable set-top boxes. I believe it is there already for those folks with an IEEE 1394 connection from the cable box to the HD TV.
The problem is that you are shifting the "wronged" party from the RIAA to the state by criminalizing this. A lawsuit does not affect your future employment where as many types of convictions - even misdeamenors - can. In no way should this be criminalized. It needs to stay a civil matter.
I think that is the whole point of this - it isn't protestors that the concern is about, it is what happens whenever there is a large group of people without much direction.
What was banned were specific models of specific guns. Therefore, when a specific model was banned, the manufacturer was free to make some minor change and introduce a new model that was not banned. About the only thing that was actually banned were larger magazines for many weapons. I do not even think that was actually useful because the limits were silly. I do not believe, for instance, that a 9mm 15-shot Berretta clip was banned.
What we have today is the belief in some social classes that this is almost reversed - a 1% chance of getting caught. So, it starts to look pretty attractive. Culturally, there are some minorities that hold up people that rob gas stations as role models for the young. When coupled with the perception of a low chance of punishment, this virtually assures that people are going to commit robberies.
The idea that we can solve crime problems by making sure everyone has plenty of money is a complete fallacy. It doesn't remove the real motivation, which is to get "more" at very low risk. About the only way to really implement what you are proposing would be to make "having more" utterly unacceptable to everyone - everybody gets $50,000 from the government no matter what they do. Nobody has anything "more" and there are no opportunities to get "more". Equality. Finally. Until you figure out that this was more-or-less the objective of the Stalinist Soviet Union and still is (sort of) the objective of Castro's Cuba. Neither one worked out very well and mostly people did indeed find ways to get "more".
The solution is to make the punishment certain to elevate the risk beyond any possible perception of the reward. Today, even when the punishment can be the death penalty, this has no effect when the perception is "I'll never get caught" and this is reinforced by people not getting caught.
The problem with any sort of mob protest is not that it is taking place, but that it (a) distrupts emergency services and (b) it can get out of control quickly. What does the ambulance driver do when the street is clogged with hundreds of protestors? Simple - the ambulance doesn't get through. How does a "mob" move from a peaceful demonstration to smashing everything in sight and looting? Nobody knows, but we have seen this happen even after sports events. Nobody wants to take chances on this happening.
What gives you the idea that owning stock entitles the owner to anything? Most "growth" stock today pays no dividends whatsoever - so there is no real return. It is a gamble based on the stock price going up. You buy in at $70 hoping it will go to $90. You sell out at $90 and someone else buys it hoping it will go to $100. Where does it end? At some point an individual stock may collapse in value, but there are plenty of other stocks and "investors" ready to bet on the price going up.
If you buy stock at $50 and you expect to get your $50 worth somehow, you are mistaken. It just doesn't work that way. I don't think it ever did, even at the beginning of capital markets. Anyone expecting it to work that way shouldn't invest in the stock market.
Until there is that kind of licensing - as there is for doctors and lawyers - you can forget about liability for software development and administration.
This would also eliminate the kind of sales contracts and consulting agreements that specify there is no liability or consequential damages. I think you could expect the entire IT community to shrink quite a bit if this happens. Check into what it takes to be a PE (Professional Engineer) and you have an idea of what this would lead to. I do not think it would be a good idea at all.
I don't believe there were any "defined contribution" pensions that people paid into and could expect to be supported on for the rest of their lives.
So, some people that bet the company would never collapse lost their investment. Mostly, because they took the highest risk selection in the 401K portfolio. I'm not sure I have all that much sympathy for those folks. The days of the "defined contribution" pension plan where you pay in and take from it forever is over. The days of not taking any responsibility for your retirement investments are pretty much over. Too bad, but there isn't much that can be done about it.
Of course, we can just force the government to supply a pension to everyone so that when they retire they are 100% funded by the government. Of course, this would have to be at least as good as the job they left to retire, or no one would want to retire.
- No viruses.
- No Windows.
- No worms.
- No web surfing.
- ...
Of course, if you are trying to cut-and-paste between email and the database, this sort of advantage is quickly lost. Similarly, if you are going to try to locate something with Google and put it in the database that would be a problem as well. But, it would seem that the DMV wouldn't be doing much of that.The big downside, which was alluded to above, is there aren't many "mainframe terminals" (3270-type) around and just about everybody is doing emulation on a PC. This has the nasty effect of combining the PC disavantages with the mainframe disadvantages, but you still see systems implemented this way.
I guess another point is a 15" LCD monitor and a legacy-free PC probably draw less power than a mainframe terminal would. So, I wouldn't make a decision like that based on power consumption, and I certainly wouldn't crow about power consumption with what they are doing.
So, anybody know of a good TN3270 package for Linux?
Do you believe that people killed on California (or any other state) highways are more or less senseless than people killed in Iraq? There will never be any benefit to people killed in these accidents, and the total for all of the US is something like 50,000 a year. Come on, if you want to rally behind some senseless killings, let's solve a problem that we are in control of!
However, there are also people that are doing things online that, if they were done on a streetcorner, would get them arrested. They "know" that they cannot be caught, punished or prosecuted in any way because "online" is a law-free zone.
Why should this be the case? This means that not only spammers and the like can hide in plain sight, but also people that are actively making the Internet truely horrible are allowed to continue. Their actions are decried by governments and corporations alike and, unfortunately, those are the folks that can actually do something to change the nature of the Internet in ways that will be worse for everyone. For example, what would it serve if in order to register a domain you had to be registered as a business? Well, for one thing it would cut out kiddy-porn vendors and 19 sorts of scammers. But, it would also affect a lot of individuals.
I'm all for people protecting their privacy, but owning a domain and being private are not necessarily the same thing. Being able to hide your identity while posting on various dicussion boards is fine. Being able to set up a store where people can buy perscription drugs without a prescription for 10x the normal price isn't fine - but it is almost impossible to track these people down given the current system. Warez boards can be considered a true benefit to society - until you are a software developer with your sole income from sales of software.
I think the best example of this is where someone decides in a vindictive moment to register a domain "johnsmithsucks.com" and puts up pictures of John Smith and his family. Photoshopped pictures. Obscene photoshopped pictures. And amusing stories about John, his children and their dog. Try getting such a thing shut down if you have only "N.B." as the name on the domain registration. Yes, you might be able to track down the hosting, but maybe they are unhelpful or a bargin hosting company in Korea. You might be able to get it shut down, but I doubt it without an incredible amount of work. It would probably be better if you just left down quietly and changed your name.
Is this fair? It can happen today. Would you laugh if it happened to your neighbor? Sure you would, admit it.
I guess there are a couple of things you could do, but after your children start getting harrassed at school you probably find a lawyer and try to get the site taken down. Sorry, that domain is registered to "N.B." with no address - can't contact them and the registrar isn't cooperating. It's against their policy, and besides, they don't really have any better information than what is on WHOIS. Your lawyer suggest you change your name and move to a new city because that is the best that you can do.
Can we talk about Everyone should be allowed to (and is) publish their opinions anonymously, that's what America's about. in a little different context now? Sure, they have broken some laws, but so what? You can't find them and they can freely continue.
OK, so maybe Joe Sixpack not having a release form for taking your picture isn't worth that much. But, if it is published, anywhere, even on the web, you certainly have rights. This is what nails a lot of "paparizzi" photographers - not having a release for someone that isn't really a "public figure".
Registration is the only way to collect punitive damages, but even without registration statutory damages apply.
No, I'm not a lawyer, but I think I'm pretty well informed on this subject.
So, we had massive incendary raids that were necessary to have any real impact on production capacity. And, unlike many places even in Germany that regarded the end of the war as a good thing, Japanese were conditioned to believe that suicide was far, far preferrable to the Emperor losing the war. When conventional forces landed on Saipan and Okinawa they were met with senseless attacks by civilians and mass suicides. Think of 10 villagers attacking a patrol with pitchforks. Women holding babies jumping off cliffs to avoid being captured and (as they were told) raped and tortured.
Because of this, it is not difficult to believe there were actually fewer civilian casualties from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than there would have been if we had invaded the "home islands". If the military wasn't finally convinced that we would burn the island down to bare rock they might never have surrendered and fought to the last civilian, all while the Emperor and military leaders quietly evacuated.