That's strange... I'm just north of the border, and small out of the way places can get satellite from companies like xplornet.
Looking a their site; for 69.99 CAD, you'd get 5Mbps down, 1Mbps up; with 50GB transfer limit. That's not all that bad really, especially compared to what you have now. Granted satellite is going to have markedly higher latency, and doesn't really compare to regular broadband... but for someone in your case (where regular broadband doesn't reach) its very decent.
No, a table interface shoehorned onto your desktop because the Ubuntu devs say so. It's so much better in Linux land.
What a mess of conflicting things...
On the one hand, the "Modern UI" in Windows 8.1 isn't nearly the issue a lot of people think it is. On the other hand it IS true that users are forced to stay on the Microsoft feature treadmill whether its headed in a direction they like or not.
While the Ubuntu comparison is humorous and somewhat apt, it also fails. Firstly, one can switch distros relatively easily, and one can switch desktop environments on the same distro relatively easily.
Finally one can also simply fork it and do what one wants -- and this is often considered the 'nuclear' option, an option which technically exists, but which is considered too impractical to do... which in this case is exactly what they did.
They are running LiMux which is literally their very own City of Munich distro.
. I would suggest you try reading up on how the 99% actually have to live in this world [..]Try moving to Nunavut for a year and see what the delivery schedules are like.
Because the 99% live in Nunvut? Less than 1% of Canada live in Nunavut. Nunavut is so far and away the exception its ridiculous. It features some of the most isolated communities in the world. So, yeah, sure, if you live in a small community in Nunavut that's only accessible by float plane, and you only get mail once every couple weeks, assuming the weather is good. And you work 70 hours a week at two jobs, and are only home at 1am on Sunday.
Then sure, I'll agree if some web company in the UK sends you a PS Vita by mistake, than it would be rather onerous to return it.
Is that how 99% of us live? Especially the 99% of us that are buying PS Vita games?
ok, so they free all the smart animals. what next?
Presumably we'd treat them the same as we treat any reduced capacity human person. Children, those suffering from dementia, or alzheimers, or in a coma...
send them back to the wild to fight for food and die fast?
Only if that's how you plan to deal with all the other people in the country today who aren't able to care for themselves.
I don't think you realize what person hood would mean at all.
In any case, I am not at all for these lawsuits, I think they are misguided at best. But ignorant arguments like yours aren't doing the conversation any favors.
But your problem amounts to a lazy / dishonest postal worker, not a problem with the system itself. Or maybe its policy in your area not to do home delivery of packages... I have no idea why I frequently get packages to the door and you don't.
As for not using the key, maybe one of your neighbors has a habit of keeping it... its not always the postal workers fault.
What I mind is my parcels don't get deposited in the box because there are only 2 parcel boxes per community mailbox.
Yeah, bummer.
But even with home delivery, they aren't supposed to leave them on your front step, and they didn't fit in the mailbox (which didn't even lock) stapled to your front porch either. So how is this 'worse'?
Now, things will vary dependng where you are, but my post office worker may leave me a key to one of the community boxes, or they may just bring parcels over to the door, knock and drop them off in person, or leave a parcel pickup tag if nobody answers.
That's all the benefits of both ideals, and still cheaper than full on home delivery of all the mail; since they only go to the door for parcels, and there aren't parcles for every door every day, so its still a huge time savings.
Now they aren't doing that everywhere, and in some cases, yeah, you get a note in the box, and then have to go somewhere inconvenient during usually inconvenient hours to pick it up. But for a lot of us, the community boxes are just as good as home delivery ever was... if not better as there is more security.
Must be nice to have an office and a receptionist. I have neither.
I said 'reception' not 'receptionist'. Nearly all businesses have someone onsite at a place during business hours to greet customers; take calls; whatever. A used car lot, a bank, a fast food restaurant, even a gas station has that.
You work two jobs, and neither of them have a person in such a role? That a courier would be able to interact with to pick up a package that's ready to go?
When the nearest town is 20 minutes away, no it's not something I could take care of in "under a minute". Where I am the post office doesn't pickup packages at the door. I'd have to drive into town, which is a 20 minute trip one way.
And you never go there yourself. Its not like you'd be asked to take tomorrow off and drive to town. You could go next week when you get gas and groceries.
Yeah, let's just ask my "neighbor" to take 45+ mins of their time because some company screwed up.
The neighbor just has to be home when the courier shows up.
Look I clearly don't know where you live, and I don't argue that everyone's circumstances are different, but you are almost definitely grossly exaggerating the hardship it would put on you. You could probably effortlessly work it into your life, or have a friend take care of it who could effortlessly work it into theirs.
I'm confident you don't lose 8$ in gas and a day's pay every time something comes up that you actually want to take care of.
I'm not going to sit around waiting for you to pick it up,
If you are that far off the beaten path, you can just leave it on the front step.
I've sacrificed some conveniences in exchange for other lifestyle benefits.
Yeah, I don't know your situation; but I'm just not buying it. When I lived really rural; my boss would have dropped it off on his weekly trip to town to do his banking. Hell, I could even have left it with the guys at the gas station to drop off when they did their deposits. That far off the beaten path, people tend to be pretty helpful and accommodating... and wouldn't blink at going 5 minutes out of their way to help a friend... or even just a regular customer...which really makes your whole attitude that much more out of place.
So you clearly have the brains and aptitude to figure out how to arrange for a pre-paid box to end up shipped.
Also, I usually get my mail when I get home from work... at 1 AM.
And this is relevant because?
Why the hell should I have to take off of work and lose pay or give them some of my free time because they screwed up?
Why the hell would you need to take time off work for this? This is the sort of thing I could manage to take care of in under a minute, without going out of my way.
Hell, I could walk into where I work, leave it with reception and say "company shipped me an X by mistake, they're sending a courier to pick it up", and they wouldn't bat an eye.
I could leave it with my neighbor. I could ask a friend who goes by a courier on his daily commute to drop it off for me.
Let me guess... if you tried any of these exceedingly complicated solutions, the receptionist, neighbor and friend would all go off on you about how they work 70+ hours a week, and don't have 5 minutes to spend on a favor since their time is very precious to them, and why should they lift a finger for anybody but themselves anyway? In fact, they ought to invoice you for the time you wasted just asking them to help out? And besides, if the company doesn't want to send a courier to your house at 2am on a sunday morning, well then clearly they can fuck off.
I'd like bid 5$ to buy the next 1,000,000 page views served to me. That ought to buy me an ad free internet for quite a while.
If that's the market rate to throw shitty ads in my face, I'm more than willing to pay the going rate to replace them with 1x1 clear gifs for my page views. (I'll also supply hosting and bandwidth cost to serving them to me.)
Only if people were going to actually work those 15 minutes anyway, and are now instead sitting there staring blankly at the wall.
Leading to an argument only an accountant would think would work:
So if you've got 32 people, just leave the PCs on at night, you can just add up those 15 minutes to reclaim an 8 hour day, and reduce headcount by one.
The rest of us know that giving them faster computers will just mean the computer comes on faster, and then sits there idle while they go get a coffee, say hello, check their phone for personal messages, make a phone call, deal with some paperwork, and all the other stuff they were doing anyway.
Sure, sometimes they were waiting for the PC. But how often is the PC waiting for them? Odds, are most of the time, so you can theoretically get your lost productivity back by just organizing your day a little better without buying new PCs.
Finally: Desktops, schedule them to power up 15 minutes before the day starts... laptops, teach people to sleep/hibernate instead of power down. My laptops are both usually ready to go within seconds; and they are both a few years old now.
What the politicians and most of the unwashed masses don't get is making one more aspect of the event illegal doesn't magically prevent it from happening. All it does is add on one more charge. Someone who's desperate or crazy enough to commit the crime anyway, isn't going to suddenly stop because now they're violating one more law.
Yeah, I don't know why murder is illegal. People still kill people. So clearly, someone who is desperate or crazy enough is going to commit the crime anyway. And the law against it is pointless.
What the politicians and most of the unwashed masses don't get is making one more aspect of the event illegal doesn't magically prevent it from happening
There's nothing magical about it, but these techical weapons laws do give the police more opportunities to get in front of a crime. They don't have to wait until you are actually firing at children or coworkers before you've broken a law. They can potentially get involved just seeing you carrying them around, or sitting in a bag on the passenger seat of your car...
Scenario 1: Guy wants to shoot up a school - he selects an illegal clip size for more shooting between reloading. He drives to the school, gets pulled over for a broken tail-light, and his guns on the passenger seat, are taken away before he even gets to the school. Could it happen? Sure... is it likely? Maybe not so much.
Scenario 2: Guy wants to shoot up a school - he selects a legal clip size because they are easier to obtain; he can go to walmart or borrow his Dad's stuff instead of dealing with some creep behind the 7-11; and it won't cause him any problems if someone notices them. He gets to the school... starts shooting, and presumably does less damage. Its still horrific, but less than it might have been. Is this likely, actually, yes, most crimes are committed with guns that are legal; so limiting the capability of legal guns does reduce the damage criminals do.
Sure a hardened well connected criminal who has outstanding warrants, is driving a stolen car... sure... he's not going to be deterred or have his behaviour altered by yet another law. But he is not the ONLY scenario. Nor even the most common one.
I'm not saying I agree with these laws per se, but its not just about throwing another charge on after the shooting spree. You are willfully ignoring that they will impact some crime.
Not easy to do. HDMI's 'HDCP' scheme requires that hardware frustrate attempts to defeat the content protection requirements. Can never be bullet-proof, of course, but it'd be a hurdle.
Point a good camera at a good TV under good lighting in a controlled environment. HDCP defeated. You lose a bit of 'fidelity' during the digital analog digital conversion, but its a one time loss. Future copies of the copy won't lose anything further, and only one person has to do it once. That's not much of an obstacle.
So, Microsoft finally does something no geek could object to
Its a good thing on its own; and I applaud MS for taking this step. It will stop all kinds of potential snooping on our data from malicious 3rd parties.
However, in the context of the NSA being the big snoop that's triggering all this, its worthless. We can safely presume the NSA gets whatever they want from Microsoft whether its encrypted or not.
Micrsoft's ability to provide its users any security versus "legal" searches by the NSA is nil.
There is nothing wrong with calling them out on that.
An iPad isn't going to replace a dedicated home cinema room any time soon, or a hardcore gamer's custom rig, or a CAD workstation at the office.
So far so good.
But for routine use, that ship already sailed. Smartphones are ubiquitous when people are out. Tablets are becoming ubiquitous around the house, for the kind of household that used to have multiple PCs or laptops instead. Bazillions of people are quite happy sending e-mails,[...].
Yes, but they all go back to using a desktop as soon as they're serious...
I'll look up a stock on my smartphone or tablet, but if I'm going to review my portfolio? Forget about it; I'm on a desktop with a big screen. I need to see more.
My accounting? My taxes? Sure I'll look something up from a tablet, but actually doing them? Don't be absurd.
Writing a letter to my lawyer? Reviewing the blueprints for the house I'm building... all on the big screen.
Hell, I was buying a new car the other day, and while I poked around on the tablet casually; as soon as I was serious I was back at the desktop.. because I wanted to see more than one image from one listing at a time. I wanted to see multiple listings, make notes (and see the notes i was making), etc.
The desktop isn't going anywhere, with one possible exception; it might go the way of docking. Instead of a desktop PC, I'll still have a desktop setup... a desk, a chair, big screen monitor, mouse, keyboard... but I might drop my smartphone into a stand to drive it all.... one day.
Because while the desktop has the ergonomics i require for all those tasks, the smartphone's of the future could easily have sufficient computing power for them. And 'docking' might replace a dedicated PC for all but people who really actually need leading edge computation power (gamers, 3D cad, etc...)
That's not how computer security works though. This was a DDoS attack.
Right... so its like haveing 40,000 people crowding your front lawn for a few hours so you can't get to the door.
They never even broke your lock, they just crowded all over your sidewalk.
So then you pick one person out of the crowd, arresting him for outrageous crimes (all he did himself was at most loitering / tresspassing), and then making him pay for the Blackwater mercenaries and Haliburton contractors you hired to push the other 39,999 other people out of the way and keep them from coming back while you built a 12 lane superhighway to your door just in case they came back, and you couldn't get in again.
Was the guy 'guilty' sure... $50 to $500 fine guilty... tops.
heel enough that you would make the turn normally, then depress the clutch, rev up to say 5 or 6 thousand RPM, then pop the clutch, one of the following things will happen:
or C, you pop the clutch at that RPM and blow the rear diff and stall.
BTDT. In a Porsche no less.:(
Driving like that may be fun, but the wear and tear will catch up with you sooner than later. Still drive Porsches, stilll not afraid to rev them high or drive them hard, but I'm damned careful not to pop the clutch. Once bitten... and all that.
The RS has always been a pure racing car, stripped down for weight, and homlogated as a road car. And the new RS cars are a nod to the classic 1973 911 carrera RS 'supercar'
But make no mistake, the classic RS isn't just a 911 with some bits taken out, its built from the ground up to reduce weight, even featuring thinner metal in the body panels, and thinner glass in the windows.
Recent 911s have gotten somewhat away from pure racing car, to more of a high performance touring car. And the 'RS' edition is a nod to that 911 purity, tradition, and history.
Its not *just* paying more for less, its paying more for an RS, and all that goes with that.
As per the subject, What makes it better than hydro electricity? Hydro is great, is clean, is renewal; really the only downside the ecological destruction associated with damming up the rivers.
I speculate that this new solution is going to have all the same issues as hydro does, at scale. If not, why not? I see a 'membrane' across the mouth of the river, i see turbines, I see "environmentalists protesting that the fish hatchery is being disrupted..."
Actually our legal system allows for those humans to be declared incompetent and legally have most of their rights revoked or retained by their guardian/power of attorney
Which is a circle that goes nowhere with many of these people.
Similarly minors have very few legal rights and probably aren't technically "persons" in the legal sense in many cases.
Minors and the "declared incompetent" are indisputably recognized as persons in pretty much all cases.
Many laws require dealing with a "competent adult", which is what you are alluding to, but not being a competent adult is not the same of being denied personhood.
Note that animals already do have rights, but that most of what is considered legal "personhood" requires the ability to understand, and abide by laws. Thus animals are generally considered property and legal responsibilities fall on the animal's owner,
Just as children are generally considered property; as they also can't understand or enter into contracts? No, clearly, children (and the infirm) are in an entirely different category than your pets or livestock.
Indeed elevating chimps to the status of children and shifting their current owner to a status of guardian would be the most practical approach really... and it would still be a massive shift in the law.
Keeping them in cages and zoos would be categorically illegal. Killing a chimp would be homicide. If they were violent and bit someone animal control could not put them down. They would be eligible for health care. They would be able to own property the same as a child or a person in a coma can (managed by a guardian or estate trustee) etc.
I'm not saying it should be done. I don't think it should be done. But it could be, and while it would be a major shift in the law, it does not rise to the level of idiocy that many posters assume... chimps driving, running for political office, credit cards, and other nonsense... we already have lots of people who can't legally do any of these things. Making chimps persons wouldn't open those cans of worms... they'd clearly be reduced capacity and treated like children or the infirm.
Granting personhood to X would require that X demonstrate the ability to uphold the responsibilities that come with personhood,.
I'm always leery of that form of argument. If your daughter is born with irreversible brain damage such that she will never be able to understand the lease terms on a new BMW, is she not a person?
On the other hand, and with some sarcasm, corporations cannot intrinsically do anything except through the actions of its competent adult human officers. Yet they're granted a certain form of personhood. If we can assign a form of personhood to an abstract concept... its hard to see how chimp fails to pass muster.
Assign it a guardian and it leapfrogs past corporations to sit on par with a child.
All that said, I'm against doing it. I'd favor stronger protections of chimps, but not personhood.
You mean, homeless on the streets as many folks are already?
Most of the homeless are there for reasons more complicated than "society dumped them out". Many are homeless by choice, preferring it to welfare alterantives, many are mentally ill, but not criminal or dangerous so while they may not be able to properly manage things, the law is also hampered from directly intervening.
Dude was attacked by his son who had been turned away from a mental hospitals for lack of beds....
It happens but its not representative of the larger issue.
So yes, we're pretty much releasing the mentally ill into the bushes..
We're caught between respecting their rights as people and helping them. If they do not wish to be helped, and they aren't criminals we're between a rock and a hard place.
My point is, these creatures cannot care for themselves in human society. [...] They cannot be expected to participate in human society, nor should they be!
This is true of many people, mentally or physically infirm. That's not a sufficient reason to deprive them of human rights, and human dignity.
All that said, I don't agree with extending human rights to chimps; but like you I think we should be more compassionate to the other higher life forms in accordance with their intelligence etc. And I am not against extending more legal protections to them. Personhood is not the solution.
Slashdot Mirror
That's strange... I'm just north of the border, and small out of the way places can get satellite from companies like xplornet.
Looking a their site; for 69.99 CAD, you'd get 5Mbps down, 1Mbps up; with 50GB transfer limit. That's not all that bad really, especially compared to what you have now. Granted satellite is going to have markedly higher latency, and doesn't really compare to regular broadband... but for someone in your case (where regular broadband doesn't reach) its very decent.
No, a table interface shoehorned onto your desktop because the Ubuntu devs say so. It's so much better in Linux land.
What a mess of conflicting things...
On the one hand, the "Modern UI" in Windows 8.1 isn't nearly the issue a lot of people think it is. On the other hand it IS true that users are forced to stay on the Microsoft feature treadmill whether its headed in a direction they like or not.
While the Ubuntu comparison is humorous and somewhat apt, it also fails. Firstly, one can switch distros relatively easily, and one can switch desktop environments on the same distro relatively easily.
Finally one can also simply fork it and do what one wants -- and this is often considered the 'nuclear' option, an option which technically exists, but which is considered too impractical to do... which in this case is exactly what they did.
They are running LiMux which is literally their very own City of Munich distro.
. I would suggest you try reading up on how the 99% actually have to live in this world [..]Try moving to Nunavut for a year and see what the delivery schedules are like.
Because the 99% live in Nunvut? Less than 1% of Canada live in Nunavut. Nunavut is so far and away the exception its ridiculous. It features some of the most isolated communities in the world. So, yeah, sure, if you live in a small community in Nunavut that's only accessible by float plane, and you only get mail once every couple weeks, assuming the weather is good. And you work 70 hours a week at two jobs, and are only home at 1am on Sunday.
Then sure, I'll agree if some web company in the UK sends you a PS Vita by mistake, than it would be rather onerous to return it.
Is that how 99% of us live? Especially the 99% of us that are buying PS Vita games?
Dear shit for brains,
Is how you should address a mirror.
ok, so they free all the smart animals. what next?
Presumably we'd treat them the same as we treat any reduced capacity human person. Children, those suffering from dementia, or alzheimers, or in a coma...
send them back to the wild to fight for food and die fast?
Only if that's how you plan to deal with all the other people in the country today who aren't able to care for themselves.
I don't think you realize what person hood would mean at all.
In any case, I am not at all for these lawsuits, I think they are misguided at best. But ignorant arguments like yours aren't doing the conversation any favors.
I hear ya.
But your problem amounts to a lazy / dishonest postal worker, not a problem with the system itself. Or maybe its policy in your area not to do home delivery of packages ... I have no idea why I frequently get packages to the door and you don't.
As for not using the key, maybe one of your neighbors has a habit of keeping it... its not always the postal workers fault.
Although, in some cases it absolutely is.
What I mind is my parcels don't get deposited in the box because there are only 2 parcel boxes per community mailbox.
Yeah, bummer.
But even with home delivery, they aren't supposed to leave them on your front step, and they didn't fit in the mailbox (which didn't even lock) stapled to your front porch either. So how is this 'worse'?
Now, things will vary dependng where you are, but my post office worker may leave me a key to one of the community boxes, or they may just bring parcels over to the door, knock and drop them off in person, or leave a parcel pickup tag if nobody answers.
That's all the benefits of both ideals, and still cheaper than full on home delivery of all the mail; since they only go to the door for parcels, and there aren't parcles for every door every day, so its still a huge time savings.
Now they aren't doing that everywhere, and in some cases, yeah, you get a note in the box, and then have to go somewhere inconvenient during usually inconvenient hours to pick it up. But for a lot of us, the community boxes are just as good as home delivery ever was... if not better as there is more security.
Must be nice to have an office and a receptionist. I have neither.
I said 'reception' not 'receptionist'. Nearly all businesses have someone onsite at a place during business hours to greet customers; take calls; whatever. A used car lot, a bank, a fast food restaurant, even a gas station has that.
You work two jobs, and neither of them have a person in such a role? That a courier would be able to interact with to pick up a package that's ready to go?
When the nearest town is 20 minutes away, no it's not something I could take care of in "under a minute". Where I am the post office doesn't pickup packages at the door. I'd have to drive into town, which is a 20 minute trip one way.
And you never go there yourself. Its not like you'd be asked to take tomorrow off and drive to town. You could go next week when you get gas and groceries.
Yeah, let's just ask my "neighbor" to take 45+ mins of their time because some company screwed up.
The neighbor just has to be home when the courier shows up.
Look I clearly don't know where you live, and I don't argue that everyone's circumstances are different, but you are almost definitely grossly exaggerating the hardship it would put on you. You could probably effortlessly work it into your life, or have a friend take care of it who could effortlessly work it into theirs.
I'm confident you don't lose 8$ in gas and a day's pay every time something comes up that you actually want to take care of.
I'm not going to sit around waiting for you to pick it up,
If you are that far off the beaten path, you can just leave it on the front step.
I've sacrificed some conveniences in exchange for other lifestyle benefits.
Yeah, I don't know your situation; but I'm just not buying it. When I lived really rural; my boss would have dropped it off on his weekly trip to town to do his banking. Hell, I could even have left it with the guys at the gas station to drop off when they did their deposits. That far off the beaten path, people tend to be pretty helpful and accommodating... and wouldn't blink at going 5 minutes out of their way to help a friend... or even just a regular customer...which really makes your whole attitude that much more out of place.
Yeah, it is a big deal.
No its not.
I work two jobs, 65-70 hours a week.
So you clearly have the brains and aptitude to figure out how to arrange for a pre-paid box to end up shipped.
Also, I usually get my mail when I get home from work... at 1 AM.
And this is relevant because?
Why the hell should I have to take off of work and lose pay or give them some of my free time because they screwed up?
Why the hell would you need to take time off work for this? This is the sort of thing I could manage to take care of in under a minute, without going out of my way.
Hell, I could walk into where I work, leave it with reception and say "company shipped me an X by mistake, they're sending a courier to pick it up", and they wouldn't bat an eye.
I could leave it with my neighbor. I could ask a friend who goes by a courier on his daily commute to drop it off for me.
Let me guess... if you tried any of these exceedingly complicated solutions, the receptionist, neighbor and friend would all go off on you about how they work 70+ hours a week, and don't have 5 minutes to spend on a favor since their time is very precious to them, and why should they lift a finger for anybody but themselves anyway? In fact, they ought to invoice you for the time you wasted just asking them to help out? And besides, if the company doesn't want to send a courier to your house at 2am on a sunday morning, well then clearly they can fuck off.
Pathetic.
Does $5 buy 10,000 or a million page views at that 5/100ths of a cent each?
Sigh; yeah. I read $0.0005; as 0.00005 cents, not 0.005 cents.
Still $5 even for 10,000 views... I wonder how many months that would last me.
No doubt!
I'd like bid 5$ to buy the next 1,000,000 page views served to me. That ought to buy me an ad free internet for quite a while.
If that's the market rate to throw shitty ads in my face, I'm more than willing to pay the going rate to replace them with 1x1 clear gifs for my page views. (I'll also supply hosting and bandwidth cost to serving them to me.)
Only if people were going to actually work those 15 minutes anyway, and are now instead sitting there staring blankly at the wall.
Leading to an argument only an accountant would think would work:
So if you've got 32 people, just leave the PCs on at night, you can just add up those 15 minutes to reclaim an 8 hour day, and reduce headcount by one.
The rest of us know that giving them faster computers will just mean the computer comes on faster, and then sits there idle while they go get a coffee, say hello, check their phone for personal messages, make a phone call, deal with some paperwork, and all the other stuff they were doing anyway.
Sure, sometimes they were waiting for the PC. But how often is the PC waiting for them? Odds, are most of the time, so you can theoretically get your lost productivity back by just organizing your day a little better without buying new PCs.
Finally: Desktops, schedule them to power up 15 minutes before the day starts... laptops, teach people to sleep/hibernate instead of power down. My laptops are both usually ready to go within seconds; and they are both a few years old now.
So you should cook it first?
Treat it like beef, and make sure you kill the e coli etc.
What the politicians and most of the unwashed masses don't get is making one more aspect of the event illegal doesn't magically prevent it from happening. All it does is add on one more charge. Someone who's desperate or crazy enough to commit the crime anyway, isn't going to suddenly stop because now they're violating one more law.
Yeah, I don't know why murder is illegal. People still kill people. So clearly, someone who is desperate or crazy enough is going to commit the crime anyway. And the law against it is pointless.
What the politicians and most of the unwashed masses don't get is making one more aspect of the event illegal doesn't magically prevent it from happening
There's nothing magical about it, but these techical weapons laws do give the police more opportunities to get in front of a crime. They don't have to wait until you are actually firing at children or coworkers before you've broken a law. They can potentially get involved just seeing you carrying them around, or sitting in a bag on the passenger seat of your car...
Scenario 1: Guy wants to shoot up a school - he selects an illegal clip size for more shooting between reloading. He drives to the school, gets pulled over for a broken tail-light, and his guns on the passenger seat, are taken away before he even gets to the school. Could it happen? Sure... is it likely? Maybe not so much.
Scenario 2: Guy wants to shoot up a school - he selects a legal clip size because they are easier to obtain; he can go to walmart or borrow his Dad's stuff instead of dealing with some creep behind the 7-11; and it won't cause him any problems if someone notices them. He gets to the school... starts shooting, and presumably does less damage. Its still horrific, but less than it might have been. Is this likely, actually, yes, most crimes are committed with guns that are legal; so limiting the capability of legal guns does reduce the damage criminals do.
Sure a hardened well connected criminal who has outstanding warrants, is driving a stolen car... sure... he's not going to be deterred or have his behaviour altered by yet another law. But he is not the ONLY scenario. Nor even the most common one.
I'm not saying I agree with these laws per se, but its not just about throwing another charge on after the shooting spree. You are willfully ignoring that they will impact some crime.
How many write limits does this have?
The larger the drive, the less an issue write limits become because the writes get spread over an increasingly large area.
Granted in certain specific niche server use cases it may still be a concern, but write limits is a rapidly disappearing problem for nearly all of us.
Not easy to do. HDMI's 'HDCP' scheme requires that hardware frustrate attempts to defeat the content protection requirements. Can never be bullet-proof, of course, but it'd be a hurdle.
Point a good camera at a good TV under good lighting in a controlled environment. HDCP defeated. You lose a bit of 'fidelity' during the digital analog digital conversion, but its a one time loss. Future copies of the copy won't lose anything further, and only one person has to do it once. That's not much of an obstacle.
Hell, I bet dedicated audiophiles could probably come up with studio quality stuff using nothing more complex than Audacity.
Dedicated musicians could.
Dedicated audiophiles would blow the entire project budget on a 4 foot patch cord.
So, Microsoft finally does something no geek could object to
Its a good thing on its own; and I applaud MS for taking this step. It will stop all kinds of potential snooping on our data from malicious 3rd parties.
However, in the context of the NSA being the big snoop that's triggering all this, its worthless. We can safely presume the NSA gets whatever they want from Microsoft whether its encrypted or not.
Micrsoft's ability to provide its users any security versus "legal" searches by the NSA is nil.
There is nothing wrong with calling them out on that.
An iPad isn't going to replace a dedicated home cinema room any time soon, or a hardcore gamer's custom rig, or a CAD workstation at the office.
So far so good.
But for routine use, that ship already sailed. Smartphones are ubiquitous when people are out. Tablets are becoming ubiquitous around the house, for the kind of household that used to have multiple PCs or laptops instead. Bazillions of people are quite happy sending e-mails,[...].
Yes, but they all go back to using a desktop as soon as they're serious...
I'll look up a stock on my smartphone or tablet, but if I'm going to review my portfolio? Forget about it; I'm on a desktop with a big screen. I need to see more.
My accounting? My taxes? Sure I'll look something up from a tablet, but actually doing them? Don't be absurd.
Writing a letter to my lawyer? Reviewing the blueprints for the house I'm building... all on the big screen.
Hell, I was buying a new car the other day, and while I poked around on the tablet casually; as soon as I was serious I was back at the desktop.. because I wanted to see more than one image from one listing at a time. I wanted to see multiple listings, make notes (and see the notes i was making), etc.
The desktop isn't going anywhere, with one possible exception; it might go the way of docking. Instead of a desktop PC, I'll still have a desktop setup... a desk, a chair, big screen monitor, mouse, keyboard... but I might drop my smartphone into a stand to drive it all.... one day.
Because while the desktop has the ergonomics i require for all those tasks, the smartphone's of the future could easily have sufficient computing power for them. And 'docking' might replace a dedicated PC for all but people who really actually need leading edge computation power (gamers, 3D cad, etc...)
That's not how computer security works though. This was a DDoS attack.
Right... so its like haveing 40,000 people crowding your front lawn for a few hours so you can't get to the door.
They never even broke your lock, they just crowded all over your sidewalk.
So then you pick one person out of the crowd, arresting him for outrageous crimes (all he did himself was at most loitering / tresspassing), and then making him pay for the Blackwater mercenaries and Haliburton contractors you hired to push the other 39,999 other people out of the way and keep them from coming back while you built a 12 lane superhighway to your door just in case they came back, and you couldn't get in again.
Was the guy 'guilty' sure... $50 to $500 fine guilty... tops.
heel enough that you would make the turn normally, then depress the clutch, rev up to say 5 or 6 thousand RPM, then pop the clutch, one of the following things will happen:
or C, you pop the clutch at that RPM and blow the rear diff and stall.
BTDT. In a Porsche no less. :(
Driving like that may be fun, but the wear and tear will catch up with you sooner than later. Still drive Porsches, stilll not afraid to rev them high or drive them hard, but I'm damned careful not to pop the clutch. Once bitten... and all that.
Its a WIN-WIN situation for everyone!
Well...except for the IT staff (whom you fired)
And maybe the company's customers (who will have to find a new vendor shortly.)
But otherwise, yes. Pure WIN!
Yeah, that's the RS.
The RS has always been a pure racing car, stripped down for weight, and homlogated as a road car. And the new RS cars are a nod to the classic 1973 911 carrera RS 'supercar'
But make no mistake, the classic RS isn't just a 911 with some bits taken out, its built from the ground up to reduce weight, even featuring thinner metal in the body panels, and thinner glass in the windows.
And yes, this is what the door panel looked like:
http://cprclassiceast.com/wp/wp-content/gallery/1973_911t/1973_911_door_640.jpg
And you can see the red nylon pull loop.
Recent 911s have gotten somewhat away from pure racing car, to more of a high performance touring car. And the 'RS' edition is a nod to that 911 purity, tradition, and history.
Its not *just* paying more for less, its paying more for an RS, and all that goes with that.
As per the subject, What makes it better than hydro electricity? Hydro is great, is clean, is renewal; really the only downside the ecological destruction associated with damming up the rivers.
I speculate that this new solution is going to have all the same issues as hydro does, at scale. If not, why not? I see a 'membrane' across the mouth of the river, i see turbines, I see "environmentalists protesting that the fish hatchery is being disrupted..."
Actually our legal system allows for those humans to be declared incompetent and legally have most of their rights revoked or retained by their guardian/power of attorney
Which is a circle that goes nowhere with many of these people.
Similarly minors have very few legal rights and probably aren't technically "persons" in the legal sense in many cases.
Minors and the "declared incompetent" are indisputably recognized as persons in pretty much all cases.
Many laws require dealing with a "competent adult", which is what you are alluding to, but not being a competent adult is not the same of being denied personhood.
Note that animals already do have rights, but that most of what is considered legal "personhood" requires the ability to understand, and abide by laws. Thus animals are generally considered property and legal responsibilities fall on the animal's owner,
Just as children are generally considered property; as they also can't understand or enter into contracts? No, clearly, children (and the infirm) are in an entirely different category than your pets or livestock.
Indeed elevating chimps to the status of children and shifting their current owner to a status of guardian would be the most practical approach really... and it would still be a massive shift in the law.
Keeping them in cages and zoos would be categorically illegal. Killing a chimp would be homicide. If they were violent and bit someone animal control could not put them down. They would be eligible for health care. They would be able to own property the same as a child or a person in a coma can (managed by a guardian or estate trustee) etc.
I'm not saying it should be done. I don't think it should be done. But it could be, and while it would be a major shift in the law, it does not rise to the level of idiocy that many posters assume... chimps driving, running for political office, credit cards, and other nonsense... we already have lots of people who can't legally do any of these things. Making chimps persons wouldn't open those cans of worms... they'd clearly be reduced capacity and treated like children or the infirm.
Granting personhood to X would require that X demonstrate the ability to uphold the responsibilities that come with personhood,.
I'm always leery of that form of argument. If your daughter is born with irreversible brain damage such that she will never be able to understand the lease terms on a new BMW, is she not a person?
On the other hand, and with some sarcasm, corporations cannot intrinsically do anything except through the actions of its competent adult human officers. Yet they're granted a certain form of personhood. If we can assign a form of personhood to an abstract concept... its hard to see how chimp fails to pass muster.
Assign it a guardian and it leapfrogs past corporations to sit on par with a child.
All that said, I'm against doing it. I'd favor stronger protections of chimps, but not personhood.
You mean, homeless on the streets as many folks are already?
Most of the homeless are there for reasons more complicated than "society dumped them out". Many are homeless by choice, preferring it to welfare alterantives, many are mentally ill, but not criminal or dangerous so while they may not be able to properly manage things, the law is also hampered from directly intervening.
Dude was attacked by his son who had been turned away from a mental hospitals for lack of beds....
It happens but its not representative of the larger issue.
So yes, we're pretty much releasing the mentally ill into the bushes..
We're caught between respecting their rights as people and helping them. If they do not wish to be helped, and they aren't criminals we're between a rock and a hard place.
My point is, these creatures cannot care for themselves in human society. [...] They cannot be expected to participate in human society, nor should they be!
This is true of many people, mentally or physically infirm. That's not a sufficient reason to deprive them of human rights, and human dignity.
All that said, I don't agree with extending human rights to chimps; but like you I think we should be more compassionate to the other higher life forms in accordance with their intelligence etc. And I am not against extending more legal protections to them. Personhood is not the solution.