There is essentially no such thing as "indefinitely" when it comes to incarceration. It may mean that we are simply putting the execution into the hands of others, such as with Jeffery Dahlmer. Or, we face their eventually release as has nearly happened with Richard Speck and keeps coming up over and over with Charles Manson. Or, they might escape - escape from most prisons today is prevented not by bars and guards but by the unwillingness of prisoners to go to the effort. When someone is willing to go to the effort they are often successful.
So don't believe that someone that has decided that other human lifes don't count as much as theirs does can be safely put away from society forever. They can't. And what exactly do we do with them then? Would you be comfortable with a new neighbor moving in that has a history of murdering people that were inconvenient to them?
Today capital punishment isn't a deterrent because it is not swift and sure. Most crimes have appallingly low conviction rates. So a criminal can look at their friends and neighbors and see that maybe 20% of the time someone is caught, tried and convicted - and then serves a fraction of the sentance before being released. Most crimes aren't that complicated but still the police and prosecution seems to be able to screw things up. The complicated ones often are handled amazingly well but they are only a small fraction of cases.
It is about time that we understand that when someone commits certain types of crimes they need to make some sort of reparation to society as a whole. And the only currency they have is their life.
According to the Judeo-Christian ethics that most people in the West subscribe to, it could be considered wrong because we are depriving them of some valuable commodity - life. The problem with not having a death penalty is there are clearly some people that (a) their being alive constitutes a real threat to others around them, even in prison and (b) they do not consider their life to be a "valuable commodity" in any respect.
Looking it at from a different perspective, by executing people we may be simply pressing a reset button and pushing them around a big circle so they get another chance to learn from their mistakes, a chance that continuing on the same course - their current life - does not allow them.
There is also the idea that what we consider "life" and "conscientious" is a tiny portion of the existance of a soul. By executing someone we may be in fact freeing them from whatever chemical imbalances their brain had which made them into a murderer. Then they are free to go on in the universe without those chemical imbalances and learn to be better.
Confining yourself to the Judeo-Christian model and believing that the current "life" is the only thing there is of value is far too limiting.
I would say that in general there are crimes that demand a very high payment to society in return for committing. Let's put murder aside as there are indeed some justifications for such an act. How about the forcible rape of a child, one that is far too young to be able to enjoy the act simply because they are physically too small. Clearly an individual that has done this has taken something from both the child and society at large. How are they to repay society for what they have taken? I would say the only currency they have is their life and it is forfeit.
There have been some cases where people have been improperly and unjustly convicted of crimes of far lesser severity than child rape and have been found to be innocent later. This is too bad and it clearly shows that society needs to do a better job. But to say that this means there should be no death penalty in many ways trivializes some crimes. My understanding is that most places without a death penalty also do not have the idea of incarcerating someone "forever" - they talk about life in prison but that really means something like 20 years or even less. There are some crimes that make an individual unsuited to ever return to society again and if society does not fear them sufficiently to make sure they never return then society is overdue for some real comeuppance.
Boats? Well, maybe. There are a lot of ships moving stuff between the US and China and they could probably be burning cleaner stuff. Or use nuclear power instead of burning oil. But in reality there just aren't that many and the costs of a massive refit would be huge. Emission controls, by the way, don't reduce CO2 - they reduce other pollutants in the exaust.
Planes? Sure, but there is an easier way. One day, pass a law in the US (and EU) that says no more passenger air travel. It is eliminated by edict. People can drive, take a train (in the US?) or just not go. This would be about the only way to do it. Trains in the US are unlikely to make much of a comeback because over the last 40 years the passenger right-of-way has been sold off and the rails torn up. Around every major city there is a solid ring of suburbs that because of "neigborhood" style building would require massive tear-downs in order to put in a new right-of-way for rails. Could the government convince people to tear down 1,000 homes for a rail corridor into some place like Des Moines? Doubtful. Maybe doing it all underground would work.
Coal power plants are today what is keeping the lights on in the US. We could turn them off but we haven't built anything except smaller natural gas fired plants in something like 30 years. Sure, it would be nice to be off that but nuclear is a big turn-off for people and even existing serviceable nuclear plants are being taken offline - in favor of pushing the coal burning plants harder and harder. I don't think you are going to get people in the northern parts of the US to sit around the fireplace in the dark without electricity and today that is the alternative to coal plants.
Lawn mowers? Electric? Have you ever really tried to use one? No? My daughter (out of environmental respect) bought one and tried to make a go of it. The problem is unless you mow your lawn like a putting green an electric mower isn't going to cut the grass. Sure, if you need to take 0.5 inches off the top, no problem. But if you need to cut 2 inches of grass blade it will not function. So you can make it work if you cut your grass every couple of days - like a putting green. Or you can get a mower with 10x the power but has a gas engine. My daughter now has a gas mower after returning the electric one as being non-functional in her yard. Don't know anyone that has an electric one around here in Iowa either.
Yes, top loading washing machines use more water. But the price difference means you can pay for 10 years of water all at once with a front-loader or just pay for the water over 10 years. Guess what? Most people are still choosing to pay for the water over 10 years.
A. Yes, we have had a very nice time for the last 400 years or so and that may be coming to an end. Humans may have had a big hand in pushing things into a less stable configuration, but regardless of the source the fact is that climate stability should not be something that we are counting on as a whole species. Yes, things might be tougher for a while but as a species we need to roll with it.
B. Too many humans is a problem that we need to solve in one way or another. One way is to fall into the "sustainability" trap and say that we need to get the population down to a sustainable level - really, really fast. The other way is to start exporting humanity. There is no third way of dealing with this and exporting humanity may not be much of a solution for solving problems on Earth but it does solve a lot of problems for the species.
How would we reduce the population really fast? Well, nuclear warfare between multiple actors would probably have that result as would some really nasty biowar stuff. Both would likely result in lots of bodies in the streets, so many that there wouldn't be enough people to clean up before they rot and are fed upon. However, I think if we can get everyone on the "Green" bandwagon we might be able to implement mass exterminations where people simply willing go down to the local "Green" centre so they can stop being a burden on the environment. You know, do it for the sake of the planet and your children.
Let us assume for a moment that what we are seeing is 100% the effect of human-produced CO2. I know a lot of people believe that already, but there is little in the way of actual proof of it being so. But just for a moment, let's assume that is the case.
Do we know that reducing the CO2 level in the atmosphere - by whatever means necessary - will reverse or start to reverse climate change?
Do we know at what rate atmospheric CO2 would decrease should we eliminate producing all CO2 immediately? (However impractical or impossible that might be.)
I'd say the answers to those two is no, and no. That means that should we implement draconian means to reduce CO2 we have no real idea of the benefits, other than having (eventually) less CO2 in the atmosphere. This makes it rather difficult to make the case of for such draconian measures as they have unclear benefits after some unknown span of time. No one can say if we close all the cities to cars X will happen in 12 months or if we turn off all coal power plants Y will be the result.
There is another aspect of this. People talk all the time about there being a cult following of climate change believers and how this is nearly a religion. Religious fevor has through the ages produced some very dedicated individuals willing to go to incredible lengths in pursuit of their beliefs. Even without the specter of religion, people with very strong beliefs do things unthinkable to others. Think for a moment about Joan of Arc or Patrick (Give me liberty or give me death!) Henry. At the surface there would appear to be people (James Hanson?) that believe this strongly about climate change and the role of human energy use.
So where are the extraordinary acts? Coal-fired power plants are somewhat on the wane in the US but there are still plenty of them around and they are clearly contributing in a significant way to atmospheric CO2. Here are a number of hard targets with little or zero in the way of real defenses against dedicated individuals and yet no person or group has attacked a power plant in the name of shutting it down to preserve the climate. Some dynamite in the right (wrong?) place could turn a functioning, CO2-spewing power plant into a building that is impractical to repair in a few seconds forever removing that as a source of CO2.
Why has there not been even a single such incident? Are the believers beliefs simply not strong enough when it comes down to it?
The reality is that apparently even the believers do not believe strongly enough to commit extraordinary acts and while there is a clear benefit to ending CO2 production (less atmospheric CO2) the benefits of that in and of itself are somewhat sketchy. The costs associated with even turning down CO2 production in the US through various subtle mechanisms would be huge and life-changing for people - a nationwide cap and trade program with real caps and real costs or a nationwide carbon tax would immediately raise the price of everything in stores; food, clothing, toilet paper, everything. And why would the population of the US put up with that unless some concrete benefit can be shown with a timeline when these benefits are going to come? Any government that tried to implement this would find itself replaced.
(California may be trying to implement something on their own, but because it is not nationwide it is easily circumvented by businesses. What it does is make California increasingly unattractive for businesses and employing people - which has its own rewards as Californians are finding out.)
Yes, but there are other ways of dealing with police corruption.
Instead of trying to stay on the lam in the country with the corruption problem he might take his case somewhere that would be disinclined to extradite him without a hearing and some real indications that he committed a crime. Say, maybe the US. Or the UK.
Of course, this would be stupid to do if he really is guilty.
If the alternatives were clearly a choice between paying for a huge welfare state and living in a community of thugs out to take whatever is lying around, then you, Elizabeth Warren and President Obama would be correct.
The problem is, civilization does not necessarily lead to corruption without the influences of a huge welfare state. And in the US there is clear evidence that the presence of the police, fire and other protective services aren't part of the welfare state - we have had them long before we had the idea of a welfare state.
There is also clear evidence that you can pick two people off the street and pretty easily identify the "entrepreneur" - someone that will be successful in building a new business and pretty easily identify the other sort that would prefer to live off your contributions. If this were not the case and such things were completely dependent on the government then the "You didn't build that" folks might have a point. The facts are more like if you do not have the ambition, focus and energy you aren't going to build anything no matter what. If you do, then mostly all the government can do is stand in the way - there were plenty of people building businesses in the 1700s when there was very little government in the way and no organized police.
It all comes down to the individual. You might like the "it takes a village" concept better, but it has little to no basis in reality. Reality is that you have it or you don't, and if you don't no amount of government "help" is going to make the difference.
Hard to say exactly what Romney might or might not have done. But we clearly have an uncertain tax future with Obama declaring he wants to finance the government from "rich people" and not cut anything vs. the House which will certainly not originate anything that calls for tax increases on high income people without some big cuts somewhere.
Not sure where it started but we have been living with the situation where a Republican president vows not to raise taxes and a Democratic House votes in a lot of new spending. It certainly was the case with Reagan and I believe both Bush presidents as well. Now we have a Democratic president wanting to not cut spending and a Republican House that will not raise taxes. Might bring some balance to things after all.
I suspect Romney might have a very difficult time getting anything through the Senate that he might have wanted to do. Spending cuts would have been possible through the House but probably nothing else just out of partisian spite. I think the stock market might have done better in 2013, but I suspect the coming crash there would have happened anyway - too many people are predicting a huge fall there.
The difference between the US healthcare system and most of the rest of the world is the insane way money is spent. In the US around 90% of all health care spending is on the last year of life - basically keeping nearly-dead people alive for a few months longer. The US cannot have health care spending like that and have the government pay for it - there simply isn't enough money in the country to do it.
What will drive single payer is the government running out of money when all companies discontinue offering health coverage in 2014. The fine and penalty system is structured to force this, and the result of plenty of meetings has been everyone in the HR area saying they are dropping coverage when the fines go into effect. See, there is a huge fine if you offer a plan that even one employee doesn't like and goes outside to the health care exchanges. This is designed to make sure that companies offer only expensive plans but what it does instead is put too much risk on offering any plan at all.
With everyone going to the health care exchanges for subsidized coverage the government will be picking up the tab (or most of it) the bill will be over $2 trillion. In a mad scramble to save as much money as possible, the government will push it all onto a single-payer plan and eliminate the health insurance companies, brokers, reinsurers and all the people in the health care industry that are today involved with coding and billing. Expect the unemployment roles to expand by a few million people. But the government will then be in a position to dictate the reimbursement for everything in health care and be able to reign in the costs.
It also means that if you smoke, your habit will become part of a public record and it is indeed everyone's business that you are spending every taxpayer's money on your habits. If you do drugs, same thing - it is now a matter of public policy. You are spending my money, so it is my business.
Understand that every company is going to be getting out of the healthcare business in 2014.
If you don't offer health care, there is a fine that is 10% or less of the cost of offering health care to one employee. Maximum fine is like $5000 no matter how many employees you have.
If you do offer health care coverage the fine is 100% or more of the cost of health coverage for each employee that decides to go with the health care exchange plan instead.
These two incentives together make it absurd for a company to offer health care coverage once this goes into effect. The employees will not lose as the health care exchange policy will be heavily subsidized by the government.
What this does mean is that we will be seeing single-payer health care (without ever voting for it in any manner) by 2016. What Papa Johns does or does not do is immaterial. No company will have health insurance past 2014 - as soon as the renewal comes up in 2014 is it done.
Cutting back? Obviously. Everyone will be cutting back as the economy as a whole is growing at a rate less than inflation. Everything is getting smaller, not larger.
Acting independently in a legal matter - which this clearly is - get you in a world of hurt very, very quickly. You see, a person acting on their own when they have a connection with a company as an employee or even outside contractor gets you the status as an "agent" acting on behalf of the company. It doesn't even matter if you are an unauthorized agent, everything you do that can be attributed to being an agent of the company suddenly is the responsibility of the company.
You will see this being specifically disclaimed in many contracts and NDA's - stating clearly that the person being contracted is not an agent of the company and has no rights or responsiblities to act as an agent. Why? Because should you do something silly and could be considered to be an agent the company is then responsible for everything.
If this guy is a Red Hat employee then the idea of "free speach" doesn't enter into things at all. He is certainly acting as an agent for the company and the company, whether they like it or not, is doing this. Sure, if the company was in fact doing this officially they would have the legal department on board. But that doesn't matter here - with their employee acting as their agent in this matter the company has been dragged into it whether they like it or not.
This is one of those little things that is important to understand when you are running a company. Your employees can get you in a world of hurt unless they have been told specifically they are not to do things like this. Agency is something that be difficult to escape from if you aren't careful.
What agreement? The service as quoted to the customer is pretty much that they will deliver the Internet on a best-effort basis and the customer pays for that service. What does "best-effort" mean? Pretty much whatever the provider wants it to mean.
There are no service guarantees, there are no assurances against outages and there is no recourse when there are outages.
Bandwidth is also rather ephemeral in that they promise "up to" some value that you can assume you are getting less than that. When you get less, it is part of "up to". Again, there are no guarantees or assurances of any sort of bandwidth being available.
This is what residential Internet service is all about. If you want to pay 4-5x the residential rate get a business account and you can begin to get some real guarantees. For a price they will deliver assured bandwidth capacity. For a bigger price they will deliver uptime guarantees. But the starting point is paying a lot more.
I have a business cable connection at the office - 50Mb for $279 a month. At home we have TV+Phone+Internet at 20Mb for $100. But when the office Internet goes down we have a business support number to call and can get a tech out in 2 hours.
I would think we would have mastered genetics sufficiently so that when you want a cup of hot coffee you go over to the coffee plant and squeeze some out into your cup. Hot and steaming, fresh from the plant.
A lot of the really rich ones aren't trying to create new wealth, they're trying to monopolize the old wealth. When Bain Capital shuts down a profitable factory in the States you'd think somebody would come along, say hey, I can make money doing that! and reopen it. They don't. That's because the guys at the top all just sorta agree not to step on each other's toes (aka compete)...
It has little to do with competing and a lot to do with ROI. A huge problem with the US today is that we have a lot of the economy structured around a low cost of labor but in fact have a very high cost of labor. This means that in order for things to work it is necessary to find someplace where the cost of labor is low - or we have to restructure the economy.
This means that once the production from a factory has moved to a lower-wage location it isn't coming back. Sure, it might be possible with enough government tariffs and protection to squeeze some local profits out of a factory staffed with high-wage workers but it can't compete economically on a global scale with the low-wage version that has already been set up. This means there is no possibility of success for building a factory in the US these days except in very specialized areas. It isn't a matter of competition, it is a matter of economic sense. People that invest to build a factory will only do so if they have an expectation of making a return on their investment. Today not even the government can guarantee there will be market for expensive goods made in the US when the same item is available cheaper from offshore.
Rich people are that way because they invest in things that pay off in the end. If they don't do that, they will not be rich long and there are many examples of that happening. I suppose the government could try to resurrect the factory economy in the US, but it would only work with both lots of government spending and military force - we would need to blockade the ports to prevent smugglers from bringing in the goods that US citizens would want at cheaper prices. And the blockade runners would have a huge economic incentive to deliver the goods people want. It would be an amazing time for some people.
Another huge problem that we have yet to face is what to do with the current labor pool of unskilled labor. The idea (rather wrongheaded) was that it would be possible to retrain unskilled laborers into high-skill technology jobs. Dockworkers into programmers, if you like. This has been found to not be terribly successful so we are left with a large number of unemployed unskilled laborers. They are never going to get their old jobs back because the economy will not support paying them high wages when low wages can be paid elsewhere just as easily.
Every year a new crop of unskilled folks comes into the labor market and they are finding it harder and harder to find work. Looking at the unemployment statistics will show that young people without high-tech skills are having about as tough a time as people over 50. What exactly are we going to do with these people if the jobs have moved on?
From a liability perspective, it is obvious why they would shut this down.
While it would never occur to most people on this site, please understand that once you have other people in control of your documentation and distributing it, they can do whatever they want with it. There is no assurance that a manual hosted on a third-party site is in fact the original manual as published by Toshiba.
So imagine the scenario where someone hosting such a copied manual adds a page that implies that certain persons of an African descent (referred to only by the "N" word) cannot possibly use Toshiba computers because they are too stupid. Of course nothing else, including the Toshiba copyright page, is changed in this manual. This page comes to the attention of some politically connected person who launches a very public tirade about the racist people at Toshiba. How much do you think it would cost Toshiba to get out of this sort of a problem?
Why would someone do this? Well, a better question might be why wouldn't an irate customer do this? Any large company would find itself nearly defenseless against this sort of an attack. The only pre-emptive defense possible is to keep a very tight control over anything they publish so they can easily disclaim any rogue documents as clearly being malicious alterations as opposed to something that was discovered by a whistleblower.
The Internet makes this sort of thing possible and even makes it possible for such things to be done anonymously and nearly untraceably.
If you believe that FIOA applies to classified MILITARY secrets, you are very much mistaken. If you believe that you would be allowed to speak openly about classified matters that you gained knowledge of while in the military, you are also mistaken.
If you believe that you first owe loyalty to "humanity" and then to your country and it's military it is doubtful that you would ever gain a security clearance in the first place. It takes a pretty specific mindset to rise above the level of grunt in the military and they are quite good at figuring out who has it and who does not.
Certainly people that believe their country is doing evil in their name and that all politicians are corrupt and deserving of zero respect have a place - it just isn't in the military. I would say it is similar to the private that wants to debate an order with an officer because he believes there is a better way or a less risky way of accomplishing his understanding of the goal. Sure, there are times and places where such insight may be valuable, but again certainly not in the military. And having that sort of attitude will assure that you do not rise above the level of grunt in any military service on the planet.
Clearly the military isn't withholding much, if anything, if State department diplomatic cables are discussing things.
Why would you ever believe that the military is taking things upon itself when there is ample evidence that the government is aware and directing things?
Now, in the new spirit of there not being any more terrorism in the world, at least there isn't if we do not call it terrorism, I suspect the military may have some views on the matter of being told to leave people unsupported in battle. The repercussions of this can certainly lead to the military simply ignoring the civilian government which hasn't really happened since the founding of the country. Having an administration that believes they can direct the military to "stand down" in the face of an armed enemy can certainly bring that about. Now who's fault might that be?
Bradley Manning's "revelations" might have surprised some people, but clearly it did not surprise most people in governments around the world. Had it really been a surprise there would have been diplomatic consequences at the very least. So while it got some people incensed about what they didn't know their government was doing, it did no good and did not lead to anything changing. Except the rest of Bradley's life.
But the relevance of a test from eight years ago is approximately zero.
The only possible use of such a test would be to compare it against something current, but likely as not any real relevance would only be obtained if you had tests more frequently to compare against. And still, what does the current doctor want with an eight year old test? Most of the time anything over three or four years old is ignored and new tests are ordered.
The truth of the matter is that people's bodies change over time.
The federal government has rules that say for a car to be sold in the US there must be a 10 year committment to supply parts for that car. Funny, but I had a 1998 Dodge Stealth which was actually made by Mitsubishi. In 2001 the antilock brake controller failed and I was told that not only was it a $2900 part but the part was no longer available and they would have to try to find one in a junkyard.
Government regulation only works when the regulations are followed.
By the way, the cost for this is certainly just to penalize someone - having worked with a number of companies that do obsolete format media conversion this is a price that says "I don't want to do this so the price is 10x normal". It could also be that the patient is just being annoying about this and being charged for being annoying. An 8-year-old test likely has as much relevance as an 8-year-old sandwich.
Not sure you can say the Canadian system has "failed". They have had their problems and when there isn't enough government money to go around, their system is terrible. But conversely, when the government is rolling in dough the system works fine.
I suspect the US will have the same experience shortly. But post-Vietnam when has the government had enough money? For a little while during the dot-com boom, I suppose, but not really any other time. So I would expect that if you look at Canada in the 1980s when people were waiting months for any sort of health service and the answer to a lot of health care questions was that they used up the budget for that operation already - you have to wait until next year - this will reflect the US experience soon to come.
Oh, and don't forget that the government tax load in Canada is more like 70% of your income. That is what it is going to take here as well, if not more. With the local taxes and state taxes added in you may find yourself getting 10% of your gross pay as take-home.
English not being the official language means when I was in Arizona I could go to the polling place and ask for a ballot in Navajo and they were required to provide it.
It also means that anyone that goes into a government building can request a translator for whatever language they choose to speak and the government office is required to provide it. This can be anything from Spanish, Russian to obscure African dialects that are only spoken by a few people. I am not sure what the reaction to Klingon would be, so I wouldn't recommend it.
What language is this paper ballot printed in? English? Or the language the person selected when requesting a ballot?
You see, the US does not have an official language that is used for all government interaction like many other countries have. Partly because of this it is a requirement in many locations to supply ballots in any language the voter requests. This includes Navajo, Spanish, Russian and a whole bunch of other languages. This is one of the main reasons why electronic voting machines are required in some places. Printing ballots in obscure African languages was not going to happen.
One way out of this is for English to become the official and only government interaction language for the US. Another is for all government interaction to be done in some electronic fashion with the screen displaying whatever language the user selects, probably up to and including Klingon.
That is the deal for land lines - 100% reliable in the face of... well, anything.
Cell service was never designed to be reliable. Cell towers do not have to stay running without power - most do not have generators and they have only minutes of time on a UPS.
The cable company provides "fone service" which is completely dissimilar from land line telephone service. There are few, if any, tariffs that exist to require such "fone service" to have any reliability at all. So when the lights go out, so does the phone - because their equipment throughout the network is also down.
So, if we go back to a pair of wires coming from a big building filled with batteries and 1000s of gallons of diesel fuel for each and every phone we can have reliablity. Once you have 20 different companies controlling the hardware and the data path, you can just forget about reliablity unless you really want to force all of these companies to provide 100% reliable service.
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There is essentially no such thing as "indefinitely" when it comes to incarceration. It may mean that we are simply putting the execution into the hands of others, such as with Jeffery Dahlmer. Or, we face their eventually release as has nearly happened with Richard Speck and keeps coming up over and over with Charles Manson. Or, they might escape - escape from most prisons today is prevented not by bars and guards but by the unwillingness of prisoners to go to the effort. When someone is willing to go to the effort they are often successful.
So don't believe that someone that has decided that other human lifes don't count as much as theirs does can be safely put away from society forever. They can't. And what exactly do we do with them then? Would you be comfortable with a new neighbor moving in that has a history of murdering people that were inconvenient to them?
Today capital punishment isn't a deterrent because it is not swift and sure. Most crimes have appallingly low conviction rates. So a criminal can look at their friends and neighbors and see that maybe 20% of the time someone is caught, tried and convicted - and then serves a fraction of the sentance before being released. Most crimes aren't that complicated but still the police and prosecution seems to be able to screw things up. The complicated ones often are handled amazingly well but they are only a small fraction of cases.
It is about time that we understand that when someone commits certain types of crimes they need to make some sort of reparation to society as a whole. And the only currency they have is their life.
Wrong? According to whom?
According to the Judeo-Christian ethics that most people in the West subscribe to, it could be considered wrong because we are depriving them of some valuable commodity - life. The problem with not having a death penalty is there are clearly some people that (a) their being alive constitutes a real threat to others around them, even in prison and (b) they do not consider their life to be a "valuable commodity" in any respect.
Looking it at from a different perspective, by executing people we may be simply pressing a reset button and pushing them around a big circle so they get another chance to learn from their mistakes, a chance that continuing on the same course - their current life - does not allow them.
There is also the idea that what we consider "life" and "conscientious" is a tiny portion of the existance of a soul. By executing someone we may be in fact freeing them from whatever chemical imbalances their brain had which made them into a murderer. Then they are free to go on in the universe without those chemical imbalances and learn to be better.
Confining yourself to the Judeo-Christian model and believing that the current "life" is the only thing there is of value is far too limiting.
I would say that in general there are crimes that demand a very high payment to society in return for committing. Let's put murder aside as there are indeed some justifications for such an act. How about the forcible rape of a child, one that is far too young to be able to enjoy the act simply because they are physically too small. Clearly an individual that has done this has taken something from both the child and society at large. How are they to repay society for what they have taken? I would say the only currency they have is their life and it is forfeit.
There have been some cases where people have been improperly and unjustly convicted of crimes of far lesser severity than child rape and have been found to be innocent later. This is too bad and it clearly shows that society needs to do a better job. But to say that this means there should be no death penalty in many ways trivializes some crimes. My understanding is that most places without a death penalty also do not have the idea of incarcerating someone "forever" - they talk about life in prison but that really means something like 20 years or even less. There are some crimes that make an individual unsuited to ever return to society again and if society does not fear them sufficiently to make sure they never return then society is overdue for some real comeuppance.
Oh come on!
Boats? Well, maybe. There are a lot of ships moving stuff between the US and China and they could probably be burning cleaner stuff. Or use nuclear power instead of burning oil. But in reality there just aren't that many and the costs of a massive refit would be huge. Emission controls, by the way, don't reduce CO2 - they reduce other pollutants in the exaust.
Planes? Sure, but there is an easier way. One day, pass a law in the US (and EU) that says no more passenger air travel. It is eliminated by edict. People can drive, take a train (in the US?) or just not go. This would be about the only way to do it. Trains in the US are unlikely to make much of a comeback because over the last 40 years the passenger right-of-way has been sold off and the rails torn up. Around every major city there is a solid ring of suburbs that because of "neigborhood" style building would require massive tear-downs in order to put in a new right-of-way for rails. Could the government convince people to tear down 1,000 homes for a rail corridor into some place like Des Moines? Doubtful. Maybe doing it all underground would work.
Coal power plants are today what is keeping the lights on in the US. We could turn them off but we haven't built anything except smaller natural gas fired plants in something like 30 years. Sure, it would be nice to be off that but nuclear is a big turn-off for people and even existing serviceable nuclear plants are being taken offline - in favor of pushing the coal burning plants harder and harder. I don't think you are going to get people in the northern parts of the US to sit around the fireplace in the dark without electricity and today that is the alternative to coal plants.
Lawn mowers? Electric? Have you ever really tried to use one? No? My daughter (out of environmental respect) bought one and tried to make a go of it. The problem is unless you mow your lawn like a putting green an electric mower isn't going to cut the grass. Sure, if you need to take 0.5 inches off the top, no problem. But if you need to cut 2 inches of grass blade it will not function. So you can make it work if you cut your grass every couple of days - like a putting green. Or you can get a mower with 10x the power but has a gas engine. My daughter now has a gas mower after returning the electric one as being non-functional in her yard. Don't know anyone that has an electric one around here in Iowa either.
Yes, top loading washing machines use more water. But the price difference means you can pay for 10 years of water all at once with a front-loader or just pay for the water over 10 years. Guess what? Most people are still choosing to pay for the water over 10 years.
A. Yes, we have had a very nice time for the last 400 years or so and that may be coming to an end. Humans may have had a big hand in pushing things into a less stable configuration, but regardless of the source the fact is that climate stability should not be something that we are counting on as a whole species. Yes, things might be tougher for a while but as a species we need to roll with it.
B. Too many humans is a problem that we need to solve in one way or another. One way is to fall into the "sustainability" trap and say that we need to get the population down to a sustainable level - really, really fast. The other way is to start exporting humanity. There is no third way of dealing with this and exporting humanity may not be much of a solution for solving problems on Earth but it does solve a lot of problems for the species.
How would we reduce the population really fast? Well, nuclear warfare between multiple actors would probably have that result as would some really nasty biowar stuff. Both would likely result in lots of bodies in the streets, so many that there wouldn't be enough people to clean up before they rot and are fed upon. However, I think if we can get everyone on the "Green" bandwagon we might be able to implement mass exterminations where people simply willing go down to the local "Green" centre so they can stop being a burden on the environment. You know, do it for the sake of the planet and your children.
Let us assume for a moment that what we are seeing is 100% the effect of human-produced CO2. I know a lot of people believe that already, but there is little in the way of actual proof of it being so. But just for a moment, let's assume that is the case.
Do we know that reducing the CO2 level in the atmosphere - by whatever means necessary - will reverse or start to reverse climate change?
Do we know at what rate atmospheric CO2 would decrease should we eliminate producing all CO2 immediately? (However impractical or impossible that might be.)
I'd say the answers to those two is no, and no. That means that should we implement draconian means to reduce CO2 we have no real idea of the benefits, other than having (eventually) less CO2 in the atmosphere. This makes it rather difficult to make the case of for such draconian measures as they have unclear benefits after some unknown span of time. No one can say if we close all the cities to cars X will happen in 12 months or if we turn off all coal power plants Y will be the result.
There is another aspect of this. People talk all the time about there being a cult following of climate change believers and how this is nearly a religion. Religious fevor has through the ages produced some very dedicated individuals willing to go to incredible lengths in pursuit of their beliefs. Even without the specter of religion, people with very strong beliefs do things unthinkable to others. Think for a moment about Joan of Arc or Patrick (Give me liberty or give me death!) Henry. At the surface there would appear to be people (James Hanson?) that believe this strongly about climate change and the role of human energy use.
So where are the extraordinary acts? Coal-fired power plants are somewhat on the wane in the US but there are still plenty of them around and they are clearly contributing in a significant way to atmospheric CO2. Here are a number of hard targets with little or zero in the way of real defenses against dedicated individuals and yet no person or group has attacked a power plant in the name of shutting it down to preserve the climate. Some dynamite in the right (wrong?) place could turn a functioning, CO2-spewing power plant into a building that is impractical to repair in a few seconds forever removing that as a source of CO2.
Why has there not been even a single such incident? Are the believers beliefs simply not strong enough when it comes down to it?
The reality is that apparently even the believers do not believe strongly enough to commit extraordinary acts and while there is a clear benefit to ending CO2 production (less atmospheric CO2) the benefits of that in and of itself are somewhat sketchy. The costs associated with even turning down CO2 production in the US through various subtle mechanisms would be huge and life-changing for people - a nationwide cap and trade program with real caps and real costs or a nationwide carbon tax would immediately raise the price of everything in stores; food, clothing, toilet paper, everything. And why would the population of the US put up with that unless some concrete benefit can be shown with a timeline when these benefits are going to come? Any government that tried to implement this would find itself replaced.
(California may be trying to implement something on their own, but because it is not nationwide it is easily circumvented by businesses. What it does is make California increasingly unattractive for businesses and employing people - which has its own rewards as Californians are finding out.)
As for a 747 not spying on you, Russia certainly seemed to think otherwise with KAL 103.
Yes, but there are other ways of dealing with police corruption.
Instead of trying to stay on the lam in the country with the corruption problem he might take his case somewhere that would be disinclined to extradite him without a hearing and some real indications that he committed a crime. Say, maybe the US. Or the UK.
Of course, this would be stupid to do if he really is guilty.
If the alternatives were clearly a choice between paying for a huge welfare state and living in a community of thugs out to take whatever is lying around, then you, Elizabeth Warren and President Obama would be correct.
The problem is, civilization does not necessarily lead to corruption without the influences of a huge welfare state. And in the US there is clear evidence that the presence of the police, fire and other protective services aren't part of the welfare state - we have had them long before we had the idea of a welfare state.
There is also clear evidence that you can pick two people off the street and pretty easily identify the "entrepreneur" - someone that will be successful in building a new business and pretty easily identify the other sort that would prefer to live off your contributions. If this were not the case and such things were completely dependent on the government then the "You didn't build that" folks might have a point. The facts are more like if you do not have the ambition, focus and energy you aren't going to build anything no matter what. If you do, then mostly all the government can do is stand in the way - there were plenty of people building businesses in the 1700s when there was very little government in the way and no organized police.
It all comes down to the individual. You might like the "it takes a village" concept better, but it has little to no basis in reality. Reality is that you have it or you don't, and if you don't no amount of government "help" is going to make the difference.
Hard to say exactly what Romney might or might not have done. But we clearly have an uncertain tax future with Obama declaring he wants to finance the government from "rich people" and not cut anything vs. the House which will certainly not originate anything that calls for tax increases on high income people without some big cuts somewhere.
Not sure where it started but we have been living with the situation where a Republican president vows not to raise taxes and a Democratic House votes in a lot of new spending. It certainly was the case with Reagan and I believe both Bush presidents as well. Now we have a Democratic president wanting to not cut spending and a Republican House that will not raise taxes. Might bring some balance to things after all.
I suspect Romney might have a very difficult time getting anything through the Senate that he might have wanted to do. Spending cuts would have been possible through the House but probably nothing else just out of partisian spite. I think the stock market might have done better in 2013, but I suspect the coming crash there would have happened anyway - too many people are predicting a huge fall there.
The difference between the US healthcare system and most of the rest of the world is the insane way money is spent. In the US around 90% of all health care spending is on the last year of life - basically keeping nearly-dead people alive for a few months longer. The US cannot have health care spending like that and have the government pay for it - there simply isn't enough money in the country to do it.
What will drive single payer is the government running out of money when all companies discontinue offering health coverage in 2014. The fine and penalty system is structured to force this, and the result of plenty of meetings has been everyone in the HR area saying they are dropping coverage when the fines go into effect. See, there is a huge fine if you offer a plan that even one employee doesn't like and goes outside to the health care exchanges. This is designed to make sure that companies offer only expensive plans but what it does instead is put too much risk on offering any plan at all.
With everyone going to the health care exchanges for subsidized coverage the government will be picking up the tab (or most of it) the bill will be over $2 trillion. In a mad scramble to save as much money as possible, the government will push it all onto a single-payer plan and eliminate the health insurance companies, brokers, reinsurers and all the people in the health care industry that are today involved with coding and billing. Expect the unemployment roles to expand by a few million people. But the government will then be in a position to dictate the reimbursement for everything in health care and be able to reign in the costs.
It also means that if you smoke, your habit will become part of a public record and it is indeed everyone's business that you are spending every taxpayer's money on your habits. If you do drugs, same thing - it is now a matter of public policy. You are spending my money, so it is my business.
Understand that every company is going to be getting out of the healthcare business in 2014.
If you don't offer health care, there is a fine that is 10% or less of the cost of offering health care to one employee. Maximum fine is like $5000 no matter how many employees you have.
If you do offer health care coverage the fine is 100% or more of the cost of health coverage for each employee that decides to go with the health care exchange plan instead.
These two incentives together make it absurd for a company to offer health care coverage once this goes into effect. The employees will not lose as the health care exchange policy will be heavily subsidized by the government.
What this does mean is that we will be seeing single-payer health care (without ever voting for it in any manner) by 2016. What Papa Johns does or does not do is immaterial. No company will have health insurance past 2014 - as soon as the renewal comes up in 2014 is it done.
Cutting back? Obviously. Everyone will be cutting back as the economy as a whole is growing at a rate less than inflation. Everything is getting smaller, not larger.
Acting independently in a legal matter - which this clearly is - get you in a world of hurt very, very quickly. You see, a person acting on their own when they have a connection with a company as an employee or even outside contractor gets you the status as an "agent" acting on behalf of the company. It doesn't even matter if you are an unauthorized agent, everything you do that can be attributed to being an agent of the company suddenly is the responsibility of the company.
You will see this being specifically disclaimed in many contracts and NDA's - stating clearly that the person being contracted is not an agent of the company and has no rights or responsiblities to act as an agent. Why? Because should you do something silly and could be considered to be an agent the company is then responsible for everything.
If this guy is a Red Hat employee then the idea of "free speach" doesn't enter into things at all. He is certainly acting as an agent for the company and the company, whether they like it or not, is doing this. Sure, if the company was in fact doing this officially they would have the legal department on board. But that doesn't matter here - with their employee acting as their agent in this matter the company has been dragged into it whether they like it or not.
This is one of those little things that is important to understand when you are running a company. Your employees can get you in a world of hurt unless they have been told specifically they are not to do things like this. Agency is something that be difficult to escape from if you aren't careful.
What agreement? The service as quoted to the customer is pretty much that they will deliver the Internet on a best-effort basis and the customer pays for that service. What does "best-effort" mean? Pretty much whatever the provider wants it to mean.
There are no service guarantees, there are no assurances against outages and there is no recourse when there are outages.
Bandwidth is also rather ephemeral in that they promise "up to" some value that you can assume you are getting less than that. When you get less, it is part of "up to". Again, there are no guarantees or assurances of any sort of bandwidth being available.
This is what residential Internet service is all about. If you want to pay 4-5x the residential rate get a business account and you can begin to get some real guarantees. For a price they will deliver assured bandwidth capacity. For a bigger price they will deliver uptime guarantees. But the starting point is paying a lot more.
I have a business cable connection at the office - 50Mb for $279 a month. At home we have TV+Phone+Internet at 20Mb for $100. But when the office Internet goes down we have a business support number to call and can get a tech out in 2 hours.
I would think we would have mastered genetics sufficiently so that when you want a cup of hot coffee you go over to the coffee plant and squeeze some out into your cup. Hot and steaming, fresh from the plant.
A lot of the really rich ones aren't trying to create new wealth, they're trying to monopolize the old wealth. When Bain Capital shuts down a profitable factory in the States you'd think somebody would come along, say hey, I can make money doing that! and reopen it. They don't. That's because the guys at the top all just sorta agree not to step on each other's toes (aka compete)...
It has little to do with competing and a lot to do with ROI. A huge problem with the US today is that we have a lot of the economy structured around a low cost of labor but in fact have a very high cost of labor. This means that in order for things to work it is necessary to find someplace where the cost of labor is low - or we have to restructure the economy.
This means that once the production from a factory has moved to a lower-wage location it isn't coming back. Sure, it might be possible with enough government tariffs and protection to squeeze some local profits out of a factory staffed with high-wage workers but it can't compete economically on a global scale with the low-wage version that has already been set up. This means there is no possibility of success for building a factory in the US these days except in very specialized areas. It isn't a matter of competition, it is a matter of economic sense. People that invest to build a factory will only do so if they have an expectation of making a return on their investment. Today not even the government can guarantee there will be market for expensive goods made in the US when the same item is available cheaper from offshore.
Rich people are that way because they invest in things that pay off in the end. If they don't do that, they will not be rich long and there are many examples of that happening. I suppose the government could try to resurrect the factory economy in the US, but it would only work with both lots of government spending and military force - we would need to blockade the ports to prevent smugglers from bringing in the goods that US citizens would want at cheaper prices. And the blockade runners would have a huge economic incentive to deliver the goods people want. It would be an amazing time for some people.
Another huge problem that we have yet to face is what to do with the current labor pool of unskilled labor. The idea (rather wrongheaded) was that it would be possible to retrain unskilled laborers into high-skill technology jobs. Dockworkers into programmers, if you like. This has been found to not be terribly successful so we are left with a large number of unemployed unskilled laborers. They are never going to get their old jobs back because the economy will not support paying them high wages when low wages can be paid elsewhere just as easily.
Every year a new crop of unskilled folks comes into the labor market and they are finding it harder and harder to find work. Looking at the unemployment statistics will show that young people without high-tech skills are having about as tough a time as people over 50. What exactly are we going to do with these people if the jobs have moved on?
From a liability perspective, it is obvious why they would shut this down.
While it would never occur to most people on this site, please understand that once you have other people in control of your documentation and distributing it, they can do whatever they want with it. There is no assurance that a manual hosted on a third-party site is in fact the original manual as published by Toshiba.
So imagine the scenario where someone hosting such a copied manual adds a page that implies that certain persons of an African descent (referred to only by the "N" word) cannot possibly use Toshiba computers because they are too stupid. Of course nothing else, including the Toshiba copyright page, is changed in this manual. This page comes to the attention of some politically connected person who launches a very public tirade about the racist people at Toshiba. How much do you think it would cost Toshiba to get out of this sort of a problem?
Why would someone do this? Well, a better question might be why wouldn't an irate customer do this? Any large company would find itself nearly defenseless against this sort of an attack. The only pre-emptive defense possible is to keep a very tight control over anything they publish so they can easily disclaim any rogue documents as clearly being malicious alterations as opposed to something that was discovered by a whistleblower.
The Internet makes this sort of thing possible and even makes it possible for such things to be done anonymously and nearly untraceably.
If you believe that FIOA applies to classified MILITARY secrets, you are very much mistaken. If you believe that you would be allowed to speak openly about classified matters that you gained knowledge of while in the military, you are also mistaken.
If you believe that you first owe loyalty to "humanity" and then to your country and it's military it is doubtful that you would ever gain a security clearance in the first place. It takes a pretty specific mindset to rise above the level of grunt in the military and they are quite good at figuring out who has it and who does not.
Certainly people that believe their country is doing evil in their name and that all politicians are corrupt and deserving of zero respect have a place - it just isn't in the military. I would say it is similar to the private that wants to debate an order with an officer because he believes there is a better way or a less risky way of accomplishing his understanding of the goal. Sure, there are times and places where such insight may be valuable, but again certainly not in the military. And having that sort of attitude will assure that you do not rise above the level of grunt in any military service on the planet.
Clearly the military isn't withholding much, if anything, if State department diplomatic cables are discussing things.
Why would you ever believe that the military is taking things upon itself when there is ample evidence that the government is aware and directing things?
Now, in the new spirit of there not being any more terrorism in the world, at least there isn't if we do not call it terrorism, I suspect the military may have some views on the matter of being told to leave people unsupported in battle. The repercussions of this can certainly lead to the military simply ignoring the civilian government which hasn't really happened since the founding of the country. Having an administration that believes they can direct the military to "stand down" in the face of an armed enemy can certainly bring that about. Now who's fault might that be?
Bradley Manning's "revelations" might have surprised some people, but clearly it did not surprise most people in governments around the world. Had it really been a surprise there would have been diplomatic consequences at the very least. So while it got some people incensed about what they didn't know their government was doing, it did no good and did not lead to anything changing. Except the rest of Bradley's life.
But the relevance of a test from eight years ago is approximately zero.
The only possible use of such a test would be to compare it against something current, but likely as not any real relevance would only be obtained if you had tests more frequently to compare against. And still, what does the current doctor want with an eight year old test? Most of the time anything over three or four years old is ignored and new tests are ordered.
The truth of the matter is that people's bodies change over time.
You are joking, right?
The federal government has rules that say for a car to be sold in the US there must be a 10 year committment to supply parts for that car. Funny, but I had a 1998 Dodge Stealth which was actually made by Mitsubishi. In 2001 the antilock brake controller failed and I was told that not only was it a $2900 part but the part was no longer available and they would have to try to find one in a junkyard.
Government regulation only works when the regulations are followed.
By the way, the cost for this is certainly just to penalize someone - having worked with a number of companies that do obsolete format media conversion this is a price that says "I don't want to do this so the price is 10x normal". It could also be that the patient is just being annoying about this and being charged for being annoying. An 8-year-old test likely has as much relevance as an 8-year-old sandwich.
Not sure you can say the Canadian system has "failed". They have had their problems and when there isn't enough government money to go around, their system is terrible. But conversely, when the government is rolling in dough the system works fine.
I suspect the US will have the same experience shortly. But post-Vietnam when has the government had enough money? For a little while during the dot-com boom, I suppose, but not really any other time. So I would expect that if you look at Canada in the 1980s when people were waiting months for any sort of health service and the answer to a lot of health care questions was that they used up the budget for that operation already - you have to wait until next year - this will reflect the US experience soon to come.
Oh, and don't forget that the government tax load in Canada is more like 70% of your income. That is what it is going to take here as well, if not more. With the local taxes and state taxes added in you may find yourself getting 10% of your gross pay as take-home.
English not being the official language means when I was in Arizona I could go to the polling place and ask for a ballot in Navajo and they were required to provide it.
It also means that anyone that goes into a government building can request a translator for whatever language they choose to speak and the government office is required to provide it. This can be anything from Spanish, Russian to obscure African dialects that are only spoken by a few people. I am not sure what the reaction to Klingon would be, so I wouldn't recommend it.
What language is this paper ballot printed in? English? Or the language the person selected when requesting a ballot?
You see, the US does not have an official language that is used for all government interaction like many other countries have. Partly because of this it is a requirement in many locations to supply ballots in any language the voter requests. This includes Navajo, Spanish, Russian and a whole bunch of other languages. This is one of the main reasons why electronic voting machines are required in some places. Printing ballots in obscure African languages was not going to happen.
One way out of this is for English to become the official and only government interaction language for the US. Another is for all government interaction to be done in some electronic fashion with the screen displaying whatever language the user selects, probably up to and including Klingon.
Those posts in Germany that offer WiFi service are powered from the mains. No power = no service.
Not good for any sort of disaster use.
That is the deal for land lines - 100% reliable in the face of ... well, anything.
Cell service was never designed to be reliable. Cell towers do not have to stay running without power - most do not have generators and they have only minutes of time on a UPS.
The cable company provides "fone service" which is completely dissimilar from land line telephone service. There are few, if any, tariffs that exist to require such "fone service" to have any reliability at all. So when the lights go out, so does the phone - because their equipment throughout the network is also down.
So, if we go back to a pair of wires coming from a big building filled with batteries and 1000s of gallons of diesel fuel for each and every phone we can have reliablity. Once you have 20 different companies controlling the hardware and the data path, you can just forget about reliablity unless you really want to force all of these companies to provide 100% reliable service.