"Also, as far as young men go in the US at least*, there is mandatory draft registration. Any man in that age range could be deployed."
While males are supposed to sign up for selective service when they reach 18, there hasn't been a draft in the US since 1973. Anyone in the military today signed up by choice. Also, while there have been measures in place recently to limit or "stop loss" people from leaving the military, those have reduced greatly in the last few years.
Short of the US being invaded, I can't imagine a draft being put in place. Even then, there could likely be enough volunteers that a draft would not be necessary.
"Self-driving cars will have a lot less impact than the internet. A handful of cab drivers, whoopee do."
Don't forget every over the road trucker out there. And what about all the UPS, FedEx, mail and other delivery people. They will still have some people on the road, but I suspect they will give a major discount if they can pull the vehicle up and drop a box off at your business rather than have a person carry it itside.
"There is a good reason for the rule but a some exceptions are not a problem if the reason is good enough"
I agree with this, but then it must be universally enforced. When a 5 year old gets expelled from school and called a terrorist for shooting another kid with his finger, those zero tolerance rules needs exceptions. The fact that a finger cannot shoot bullet seems like a good enough reason.
"As long as insurance is required by the government, there is no reason for the rates to drop, even if they never have to pay out a dime."
Your own sentence proves your wrong. Ig GEIKO, Allstate, or someone else charges you $2000 a year and never needs to pay out, someone else will start a new insurance company that only charges $200, knowing they won't ever have to pay out.
This reminds me of when digital cameras started becoming mainstream. A lot of people poo pooed them and said they would never replace real cameras. They had to be able to feel and hold pictures. Well, we see how Poloroid and Kodak fared. A similar attitude was had when automatic transmissions first appeared. People wanted the freedom to shift when they wanted and not when some mechanism decided it should be done.
I expect driverless cars to follow a similar path. Once available, they will slowly be adopted and then a tidal wave. There will always be the Jenny McCarthys of the world who have some freak incident and blame technology on their woes, but 99% of those who can afford a driverless car will use them 99% of the time.
I wonder how uch this could hurt the average citizen.
What if a cop frisks you for a legitimate reason and finds a joint. Say he would normally toss it and let you go, but being on video would be be afraid to not enforce the law as written. Same goes for pulling you over for going 79 mph in a 65 zone and writing you a ticket for 75. Would they have to write all tickets out and lose any descression for giving warning? The hot blondes of the world will be getting a lot more tickets if that is the case!
If you can get 10000 followers for a few bucks, why doesn't twitter set up fake accounts, pay the people to follow that account, then assume all followers are fake and delete those accounts. They could also determine the IPs and other identifiers around those accounts and block them in the future. If they have sweat shop people doing this, then the cost of creating accounts would be higher and likely not profitable.
"They have generally shown themselves to be rather incompetent at entering new markets..."
Sure they have had failures, but also successes. Its a stretch to call Windows, Office, and the XBox failures. They didn't get that $50B in reserves selling things that don't make money.
All that sounds cool, but what do you have that is so valuable that needs that kind of protection yet also needs to be available to the masses on the internet?
Our founding fathers were not perfect. Neither are the documents they wrote. The Constitution endorsed slavery. Many will argue it was a necessary evil in order to get a compromise and have all colonies endorse the document. If that's the case, then there is no reason to believe there are other compromises in the document and it isn't flawed in other aspects.
I've seen bad resumes from both educated and non educated people . Usually the more eduacted are the ones with the excedingly long resumes. A bad resume will get you excluded from a job 10 times faster than no degree ever will.
That's assuming the car's computer system keeps perfect time. What if its 3 minutes fast/slow. Also, what if the clock on your phone is a few minutes off? Is the cop doing a forensic investigation in the field to determine if you were texting during an accident?
I don't believe the tornadoes took the roads away. Anyone can drive a semi truck to OK with loads of supplies. What is a quadcoptor doing that a truck can't?
Same thing for Sandy. NY/NJ were not inaccessable. Small parts were for short periods. Still, those areas were so dense you'd need thousands of coptors to supply those people with supplies. A truck would still be a better faster option.
"Anyone with access to a modern metal working shop can produce a decent weapon."
I hate to pull the "think of the children" card but...
3D printers aren't common now. In a few years they may be and available at Best Buy for $399. When that happens many people will have them in their house. You usually don't have to worry about your kids printing dangerous items. Kids also don't generally have access to a modern metal working shop. Kids do have access to the home computer and the printer attached. If they can download gun blueprints and print out a few I'm sure they will. Assuming they can come up with some bullets you know they will end up testing their "toys" out. Just something to think about.
"- Fines, cost of repairs, and insurance premiums eat away at their citizens' bank accounts. Less money = less spending = less sales taxes, and a lot of angry, pissed off citizens."
When you have repairs, higher insurance, and fines you are still spending just as much. You merely aren't spending it where you want to. The state still gets to tax those repairs and insurance premiums and gets all the money from fines.
"A 90 year old grandmother can defend herself against a knife wielding rapist if she has a gun. Without it she is relegated to only being a victim."
I guess there is no way she could own a knife also. Or pepper spray, or a taser, or mace. Without a gun the elderly are generally helpless against a knife wielding rapist?
You are atypical. Most people would prefer to but less comfortable for maybe 2 hours than to be on a train for 21 hours. You could literally day trip from Chicago to Boston and back on a plane. Via train the way you did it, it would be 42 hours of travel plus the time spent in Boston. Thats nearly 4 solid days of sitting on a train! I also suspect you can get multiple flights a day to/from those locations while trains may be daily at best.
I ordered one about 3 weeks ago from Newark and it arrived in a week. Their site said it was out of stock but I did get one. I suspect they have a revolving outage. Even if they didn't, its only $35. If that breaks the bank then you shouldn't be playing.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent strategy holding that trump card! If we can hit that bullseye the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards, checkmate!
"Also, as far as young men go in the US at least*, there is mandatory draft registration. Any man in that age range could be deployed."
While males are supposed to sign up for selective service when they reach 18, there hasn't been a draft in the US since 1973. Anyone in the military today signed up by choice. Also, while there have been measures in place recently to limit or "stop loss" people from leaving the military, those have reduced greatly in the last few years.
Short of the US being invaded, I can't imagine a draft being put in place. Even then, there could likely be enough volunteers that a draft would not be necessary.
"Self-driving cars will have a lot less impact than the internet. A handful of cab drivers, whoopee do."
Don't forget every over the road trucker out there. And what about all the UPS, FedEx, mail and other delivery people. They will still have some people on the road, but I suspect they will give a major discount if they can pull the vehicle up and drop a box off at your business rather than have a person carry it itside.
"There is a good reason for the rule but a some exceptions are not a problem if the reason is good enough"
I agree with this, but then it must be universally enforced. When a 5 year old gets expelled from school and called a terrorist for shooting another kid with his finger, those zero tolerance rules needs exceptions. The fact that a finger cannot shoot bullet seems like a good enough reason.
"Often, the schleps running such a business have no clue about things like the Streisand effect."
Barbara Streisand herself was not even aware of the effect's existance!
Free speech is for those people who know how to keep their mouths shut!
"As long as insurance is required by the government, there is no reason for the rates to drop, even if they never have to pay out a dime."
Your own sentence proves your wrong. Ig GEIKO, Allstate, or someone else charges you $2000 a year and never needs to pay out, someone else will start a new insurance company that only charges $200, knowing they won't ever have to pay out.
This reminds me of when digital cameras started becoming mainstream. A lot of people poo pooed them and said they would never replace real cameras. They had to be able to feel and hold pictures. Well, we see how Poloroid and Kodak fared. A similar attitude was had when automatic transmissions first appeared. People wanted the freedom to shift when they wanted and not when some mechanism decided it should be done.
I expect driverless cars to follow a similar path. Once available, they will slowly be adopted and then a tidal wave. There will always be the Jenny McCarthys of the world who have some freak incident and blame technology on their woes, but 99% of those who can afford a driverless car will use them 99% of the time.
I wonder how uch this could hurt the average citizen.
What if a cop frisks you for a legitimate reason and finds a joint. Say he would normally toss it and let you go, but being on video would be be afraid to not enforce the law as written. Same goes for pulling you over for going 79 mph in a 65 zone and writing you a ticket for 75. Would they have to write all tickets out and lose any descression for giving warning? The hot blondes of the world will be getting a lot more tickets if that is the case!
If you can get 10000 followers for a few bucks, why doesn't twitter set up fake accounts, pay the people to follow that account, then assume all followers are fake and delete those accounts. They could also determine the IPs and other identifiers around those accounts and block them in the future. If they have sweat shop people doing this, then the cost of creating accounts would be higher and likely not profitable.
"They have generally shown themselves to be rather incompetent at entering new markets..."
Sure they have had failures, but also successes. Its a stretch to call Windows, Office, and the XBox failures. They didn't get that $50B in reserves selling things that don't make money.
All that sounds cool, but what do you have that is so valuable that needs that kind of protection yet also needs to be available to the masses on the internet?
Unless you set it to automatically login with no password, the thief will never be able to boot it up to allow your tracking software to work.
Our founding fathers were not perfect. Neither are the documents they wrote. The Constitution endorsed slavery. Many will argue it was a necessary evil in order to get a compromise and have all colonies endorse the document. If that's the case, then there is no reason to believe there are other compromises in the document and it isn't flawed in other aspects.
I've seen bad resumes from both educated and non educated people . Usually the more eduacted are the ones with the excedingly long resumes. A bad resume will get you excluded from a job 10 times faster than no degree ever will.
What if you butt texted / dialed someone? Would that be a violation?
That's assuming the car's computer system keeps perfect time. What if its 3 minutes fast/slow. Also, what if the clock on your phone is a few minutes off? Is the cop doing a forensic investigation in the field to determine if you were texting during an accident?
I don't believe the tornadoes took the roads away. Anyone can drive a semi truck to OK with loads of supplies. What is a quadcoptor doing that a truck can't?
Same thing for Sandy. NY/NJ were not inaccessable. Small parts were for short periods. Still, those areas were so dense you'd need thousands of coptors to supply those people with supplies. A truck would still be a better faster option.
"Anyone with access to a modern metal working shop can produce a decent weapon."
I hate to pull the "think of the children" card but...
3D printers aren't common now. In a few years they may be and available at Best Buy for $399. When that happens many people will have them in their house. You usually don't have to worry about your kids printing dangerous items. Kids also don't generally have access to a modern metal working shop. Kids do have access to the home computer and the printer attached. If they can download gun blueprints and print out a few I'm sure they will. Assuming they can come up with some bullets you know they will end up testing their "toys" out. Just something to think about.
"- Fines, cost of repairs, and insurance premiums eat away at their citizens' bank accounts. Less money = less spending = less sales taxes, and a lot of angry, pissed off citizens."
When you have repairs, higher insurance, and fines you are still spending just as much. You merely aren't spending it where you want to. The state still gets to tax those repairs and insurance premiums and gets all the money from fines.
"A 90 year old grandmother can defend herself against a knife wielding rapist if she has a gun. Without it she is relegated to only being a victim."
I guess there is no way she could own a knife also. Or pepper spray, or a taser, or mace. Without a gun the elderly are generally helpless against a knife wielding rapist?
You are atypical. Most people would prefer to but less comfortable for maybe 2 hours than to be on a train for 21 hours. You could literally day trip from Chicago to Boston and back on a plane. Via train the way you did it, it would be 42 hours of travel plus the time spent in Boston. Thats nearly 4 solid days of sitting on a train! I also suspect you can get multiple flights a day to/from those locations while trains may be daily at best.
I ordered one about 3 weeks ago from Newark and it arrived in a week. Their site said it was out of stock but I did get one. I suspect they have a revolving outage. Even if they didn't, its only $35. If that breaks the bank then you shouldn't be playing.
I know Jabberjaw dates back to 1976.I didn't read the article, but are they implying there was marine life even before that?
Are you sure that wasn't Kalvin and Hobbes. That kid can think up some whacky stuff!