1) Now try typing a few letters of what you are searching for. Much better.
2) Yes, I agree, the default layout of the start screen is terrible. The default tiles MS chose to show is terrible. Many of the defaults for a desktop system are terrible.
But that doesn't change the fact that the heirarchical popup start menu is also a pretty much unusable mess.
" But if you're in one of the instances where you're trying to access a program that you don't use very often, and don't remember the exact name of it, the hierarchical menu is light years beyond the start screen."
That's just not true. It takes longer to find anything in the start menu. navigating around that tiny window is a pain.
You're one of those people who prefer to keep all their filing in a nice big pile right on their desktop, aren't you? Sure, you have to reach around the pile every time you want to use the phone, or grab your stapler, but hey, all your papers are 'at your fingertips'! No more need to open those pesky filing cabinets, or flip through individual folders!
Except they aren't on my desktop. That person would be someone who has a desktop full of icons. The start screen comes and goes away as needed.
But still its a good metaphor, and I'll extend it. The existing start menu is like taking all your papers, documents, and everything you own and stuffing them into that little pencil drawer on your desk. Everything is just crammed into it and its really much too small and awkward for the task of being a filing system for everything you have.
What I *especially* love about the start screen is how it pretty much makes my family wallpapers useless.
On Windows 7, I put the shortcuts around the edges of the desktop, then I can see the wallpaper subject (and smile) every time I go back to the desktop.
a) You do realize you can do that with windows 8 too. This has nothing to do with the start menu vs start screen at all.
b) Oh... so you ARE one of those peoples who has shortcuts all over their desktop.
No, ClassicStart and Start8 have pretty much saved Microsoft's ass on this release. If I were them, I'd be asking for a reward or something...
Agreed. There's no question MS really botched the desktop on Win 8. I'm not saying otherwise; the start screen is FAR from perfect, but the start menu is a disaster too; everything and the kitchen sink in a non-resizable popup? That NEEDED to be fixed.
Almost every Customer I have wants the windows 7 start menu. I usually install classic start menu for them. Only 1 out of over 100 customers has preferred the windows 8 tile system.
And when XP arrived almost every customer I had wanted the "Classic Start Menu" from windows 2000. People don't like to learn new things regardless of whether they are better or worse than what they had before.
There are a lot of programs that I don't use every day that I don't need anywhere near a first level.
Gotcha. So your horrendously offended by the start screen as way to access applications that you use infrequently? That seems like much ado about nothing.
What if its been long enough that you can't quite remember what the application or program group is called? Does a scrollable hierarchical popup window really sound like the best way of finding it?
Yes, there is a start button there now. But all it does is bring up the start screen, the same as pressing the Windows key. The start menu, which is what most people really want back, is still missing from the OS.
I disagree. Most people were just confused by the lack of a physical button to click on to do anything.
A MUCH smaller subset actually wanted the old start menu back. I know I don't. There are elements of the old start menu that I liked, but most of it was a bad idea. Start -> All Programs was a complete disaster -- lets put a hierarchy of everything installed on your computer in a small non-resizable popup menu. Sorry that was just awful. For anything you need the start MENU for, the start screen is a LOT better.
Pinned aps on the start menu? Use a toolbar if you want a popup menu for those on the taskbar.
The only real loss is the search box that many power users use as a quick launcher - the start screen works for this, and is better if you are actually doing any sort of real search. But a desktop widget would be more appropriate for the "quick launch task of things we already know about."
But this is a power user function / feature not something "most users" do. Personally I'm looking for good 3rd party options, that just address this small shortcoming, rather than try to recreate the disaster that the old start menu was.
The IQ test scoring is literally defined by taking the median of all test results; such that half is above, and half below, and assigning that median as 100 IQ. And distribute the rest within that to create a bell curve. 68% of the population will be within a standard deviation regardless of their score. 95% will be within 2 regardless of their score. 99% will be within 3 etc.
On sufficiently long enough tests not everyone who is assigned 100 IQ necessarily even gets the same score on the test. Its not about what you score on the test, its about how many people you did better than, and how many people you did worse than. That is all.
One person in the world has a 100 IQ and everyone else has something 99 and lower or 101 and higher.
The definition of the curve literally requires that x% of the population be assigned 100 IQ. It doesn't require those people be exactly equal in intelligence. In fact, assuming a sufficiently complex IQ test, it will assign 100 IQ to a range of scores.
Your mistake is thinking that being assigned 100 IQ means you are as intelligent as any one else assigned 100 IQ.
Its more like being ranked by percentile. If you are in the 1st percentile for running speed, that just means 99% of people run slower than you. It doesn't mean you run the same speed as others in the first percentile. You could be the slowest person in the first percentile.... or the fastest.
The percentiles are like buckets, containing a group of people of varying ability within a range.
IQ ratings are exactly the same, each rating is just a bucket. Assuming the IQ test is perfectly accurate, then If you have an IQ of 100 you are smarter than anyone with a 99 and dumber than anyone with a 101, but you could be smarter than some, all, or even none of the rest of the people assigned 100.
. That bell curve you like to force into this in order to "win" is actually a bathtub curve with a large portion of the people at or near enough identical intelligence in the middle and a much smaller portion of people above and below that middle.
I put it in a bell curve, because that's what IQ is:
The IQ tests are DESIGNED to produce a bell curve.
From wikipedia: "When current IQ tests are developed, the median raw score of the norming sample is defined as IQ 100 and scores each standard deviation (SD) up or down are defined as 15 IQ points greater or less..."
Unless you can give me a test that says two people with a 100 IQ don't have the exact same intelligence than [...]
Really? 6+ billion people on earth and everyone with 100 IQ score is exactly the same intelligence. Let me guess you think everyone who is 6 foot 2 inches on their drivers license is exactly the same height too, right?
IQ tests are designed to produce a bell curve, that's how the various test scores are normalized to an IQ number.
We could take everyone who scored exactly 100 on an IQ test, and normalize their scores onto a bell curve of their own if we wanted to. You do understand what I'm saying here right?
Because in the middle of the range there will be a large number of people with the exact same IQ or inteligence or what ever no matter how you test it.
Exact same IQ "rating" is not exactly the same intelligence. Its absurd to suggest that two people with 100 IQ have the exact same intelligence.
What your saying is like having 6 12" rulers and 20 yard sticks and saying exactly half of my measuring devices are below 30.4 inches. It's just not true.
Human intelligence approximates a bell curve. With the smartest and the dumbest as statistical outliers, and the majority clumped around the average. The IQ test in particular is designed to put people on a bell curve.
So we have a bell curve, with several billion people making up the data points. Are you now seriously going to suggest the curve modelling intelligence in any way even slightly resembles the double peaked thing you've suggested with rulers and yard sticks?
The current IQ tests are precise to whole numbers only.
The current IQ tests aren't all that great to begin with.
with close to 7 billion people is there really an intelligence test that will get to 100.000000001 accuracy?
Why would I need a test like that?
Let me give you a hint, the real world is all about precision and not perfection.
Aw shucks, thanks for the hint.
But I don't need a perfect or even particularly precise test to know that half of humanity is below average intelligence. I may not be able to identify precisely who is above and below, but that doesn't matter in the least.
If we look a a set if IQ scores (the current best estimate for intelligence)
Are you really asserting that all 10 of those people with 100 IQ are EXACTLY the same intelligence?
Or is it an estimate, that neatly rounds things off?
I mean, I can round height to the nearest meter, and suddenly almost everybody is 2m tall. But that's an artifact of the estimation, not a reflection of reality.
If the Windows Apps store were doing well, at this early point in its existence you'd hope the number of apps would be increasing an order of magnitude faster than that.
Why? Because someone would sit and browse through 4000 new apps a day, every day?
The reality is that as long as the major apps people care about are on the platform, and there is a steady treadmill of games to burn through, its good enough.
I'll never even see a tiny fraction of the apps on either app store. So the fact that they are "there at all" is pretty worthless.
The controversial bit here [...] is how drones have converted the entire world into a battlefield
Drones haven't done that. American foreign policy has.
And I agree its not merely controversial but idiotic, demented, short-sighted, and any number of other adjectives I could add.
A war is fought between nations over territory and resources. Anything else is ultimately a police matter. Terrorists are criminals ranging from a lone lunatic to groups as large and well funded as international organized crime. They should be treated as such.
Armed, dangerous, organized... but criminals all the same. The CIA can infiltrate them abroad. The FBI can keep tabs on them at home.
There is no group that has the resources to effect a long range strike on the USA. They have to come here to attack us, and they have to bring there weapons with them, or get them here.
We don't need to kill them with drones in pakistan.
For the purposes of illustration, suppose the US was able to listen in on a North Korean spy that had just delivered a load of man portable anti-aircraft missiles to an al Qaida cell*. If the al Qaida leader had told the North Korean spy that he had a plan to shoot down a passenger jet at San Francisco airport, and the spy reported that back to headquarters, the US could intercept that message and know about it. There might be enough information in the spy's report (to whom the missiles were delivered, where, when, what they would be used for) to lead to an arrest of the terrorist.
Sheesh, this isn't a problem. Its just NOT. Regular police deal with it ALL the time.
Suppose run of the mill police informant witnesses a crime, but if he testifies in court it blows his cover and the powers that be know that the inside information & access he has is worth far more than the arrest of one person, so they don't use it. But they still know who committed the crime and will keep an eye on him and try to find another chain of evidence with which to go after him. Or go after him for something else... for a famous example: tax evasion.
NSA secret evidence is really no different at all. And it should be treated the same. As far as the civil court system is concerned, if it "too classified" to be presented in court and made available to the defendant, then it is not admissible in court and can't be used to convict. If the NSA's access to North Korean terrorist communications is to valuable to compromise, then so be it, don't use it to arrest the guy. Find some other way. If he goes free, for a while, until they can find something else that's the price of keeping the access to the terrorist communications network. I can live with that.
You can't have both. And you shouldn't want both. Otherwise, we're a short hop away from witch hunts. The police informant with high level gang access can decide you slighted him at the bar the other day, and reports he saw you arguing and then beating on a now deceased hooker. You get arrested, and at trial, they tell you a secret witness saw you attack her. Good luck.
Substitute NSA agent for police informant? What's the difference? Secret evidence is bad. If that's all you have, and you want it to remain a secret, you shouldn't be able to use it in court.
If it's legal to do the latter, you can't make it illegal to do the former, just because it has more throughput.
You can and should. The balance of police surveillance is maintained in part by the expense and inefficiency of conducting it.
If the efficiency of an aspect of law enforcement is greatly improved, that will shift the balance.
And it is right and appropriate to restore the balance. Not necessarily by prohibiting the new technology, but by imposing stricter limits on when it is used, or by shrinking the surveillance budget so that they can conduct the same level of surveillance they could before, but a fraction of the cost. Or shift the surveillance budget to putting more cops walking the beat.
Society doesn't necessarily want "more surveillance". And just because the cost has come down isn't a valid reason to increase it. That surveillance has become more efficient is great... now lets do the same level surveillance we did before, and use the money freed up for something else. Lowering taxes. More beat cops. Dusting for fingerprints at break ins. Improving response times for emergencies. There all kinds of things the police are perpetually saying they don't have enough money for... if they can replace 5 helicopters with 5 drones and free up a bunch of money for something ELSE do that. But replacing 5 helicopters with 50 drones is just silly.
Do note that the executed citizens were promoting terrorist activities against the USA from countries unable to arrest them. Had these people surrendered themselves they would have been brought to trial.
Its true because someone in the government said so? So we can kill them. Based on just that.
We know he was a terrorist because he had a trial? Where the prosecution and defense made there case and a jury agreed he was guilty? No. We didn't do any of that. So we don't know he was terrorist.
Next you'll be saying why bother with a trial for murderers? The prosecution wouldn't be after them if they weren't murderers. We don't need checks and balances. If the prosecution just decides someone is guilty, that's good enough for you right?
Why would the prosecution lie? That would never happen. Could they make a mistake? Surely not!
Bradley Manning on the other hand I have nothing but contempt for and whatever sentence he gets will not be sufficient to satisfy me that he's been punished for what he did.
Nothing but contempt for a person who did what he believed was right, who took tremendous personal risks, and knew what the penalties would be, but carried on because of his conscious? That's the man you have nothing but contempt for?
He is not a bad person, nor a corrupt one. He was merely wrong. In a world full of truly evil and corrupt people seeking personal power, and to erode our freedom... here's a guy who genuinely wants to do the right thing. And you can't punish him enough?
The guy deserves a light sentence. He is not the enemy of america.
You, however, might be. With your acceptence of a transformed america where the government decides which citizens are guilty without trials, and then kills them with drones.
That kind of raises the same question. Could the police now testify that the moment they arrived, you immediately invoked your right to counsel. Before they'd spoken to you, before you'd been charged,before anything.
Could they suggest to the jury that it speaks to a guilty conscious, seeking a defense lawyer before anything had even been asked?
As much as I don't necessarily agree with the logic of this USSC ruling, you've got how it works completely wrong.
I wasn't really arguing the actual ruling here, I was arguing the poster who asserted that you couldn't invoke the 5th selectively after answering a few questions.
Seriously.. explain it to me without resorting to a hatred.
Ok. There will be a bit of sarcasm, but no hatred. Deal?
Explain to everyone why it is that when they get a higher price when they sell and a lower price when they buy that its "bad."
How about "common sense"?
First, if "they" are getting a higher price when they sell, and a lower price when they buy, then "we" are buying at higher prices, and selling at lower ones, because we're buying and selling from them. Their gain is our loss.
They provide no real value to the system. If I am selling a stock, and you are buying one. The trade will go through. There is no need for an HFT middleman to rush in, grab my stock before you can, and then sell it to you for a fractionally higher amount.
That doesn't benefit me. I lost the opportunity to sell it to you for that extra fraction of a cent that you were willing to pay. And it doesn't benefit you, because you lost the opportunity to buy it for a fraction of a cent less that I was willing to sell at. We both lost.
High freq traders are like the middleman in a transaction. And like all middlemen in all transactions they want to make money. How do they make there money? By slicing a tiny percentage of every transaction for themselves.
Who pays for that? The people at the ends of the transaction. The real investors. You and I. Every dollar they collectively make is a dollar real investors collectively lost.
They are leeches.
I happen to like paying less for things when I buy, and getting more for things when I sell.
I do to. But HFT accomplishes the opposite of that.
Now, turn the question on its side, and ask what benefits HFT thinks it brings?
Improved liquidity? Because long term investors care if there trade is executed in microseconds rather than mere seconds?
Improved price efficiency? Yes and no. HFT does all the arbitrage between buyers and sellers so while HFT does find the 'true' market price faster, there is no REAL market efficiency gained by doing so. The financial 'benefit' of finding the 'true' price are simply extracted by them. So you and I don't benefit, we still pay the less efficient prices. They take the difference.
Improved stability? That one's just a bald faced lie. The markets are not more stable now.
The reality is that online trading, discount online brokerages, and just the computerization of the exchanges in general have created all the cheap liquidity and market efficiency we really need.
It's an all-or-nothing situation. As sick and tired as I am of this government's shenanigans, even I get this.
Ah, so...
Officer: Hi there, do you work here? You: Yes. Officer: Ok, so did you kill Fred? You: ??? Uh... I should probably talk to a lawyer before I answer any more questions. I have the right to remain silent. 5th amendment. Officer: You can't selectively apply the 5th amendment, picking and choosing what questions to apply it to. Its an all or nothing situation.
It's an all-or-nothing situation. As sick and tired as I am of this government's shenanigans, even I get this.
I was not aware of this inability to answer a question, and have that mean you can't stop answering questions in the future.
It seems truly ridiculous as demonstrated above. Similarly ridiculous situations apply to interrogation or even on the stand...
Prosecutor: So, you are Jane Doe, that is correct? You: Yes, that is my name. Prosecutor: And you've lived here in [city] how many years now? You: 14 Prosecutor: Did you purchase the knife used to kill Fred? You: I invoke my 5th... Prosecutor: Oh... no... gotcha.. You can't start answering some questions and then clam up! Judge: Answer the question or be held in contempt...
Redhat is all about servers so the desktop isn't really a valid comparison. I don't know whether they'll stick with it or not, but openstack llooks more up their alley than a linux desktop, not to mention more profit potential.
Agreed. But if you consider that, then that just shifts the average intelligence up a bit, and means that somewhat more than half the population is below the average.
The underlying assumption is that it's possible for two people to have exactly the same intelligence. Whether or not that assumption is true, I honestly have no idea.
"exactly the same" intelligence? Seems HIGHLY unlikely. The only way that would arise if the test deliberately rounded things off to create large groups. Like if they divided the population into pentiles... then, sure less than 2/5ths the population would be below the middle pentile.
But that seems like a deliberate manipulation to achieve that result. After all, even if you divided the population into pentiles it would be implausible that everyone in each pentile was exactly the same as other members of that pentile.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Now try typing a few letters of what you are searching for. Much better.
2) Yes, I agree, the default layout of the start screen is terrible. The default tiles MS chose to show is terrible. Many of the defaults for a desktop system are terrible.
But that doesn't change the fact that the heirarchical popup start menu is also a pretty much unusable mess.
" But if you're in one of the instances where you're trying to access a program that you don't use very often, and don't remember the exact name of it, the hierarchical menu is light years beyond the start screen."
That's just not true. It takes longer to find anything in the start menu. navigating around that tiny window is a pain.
You're one of those people who prefer to keep all their filing in a nice big pile right on their desktop, aren't you? Sure, you have to reach around the pile every time you want to use the phone, or grab your stapler, but hey, all your papers are 'at your fingertips'! No more need to open those pesky filing cabinets, or flip through individual folders!
Except they aren't on my desktop. That person would be someone who has a desktop full of icons. The start screen comes and goes away as needed.
But still its a good metaphor, and I'll extend it. The existing start menu is like taking all your papers, documents, and everything you own and stuffing them into that little pencil drawer on your desk. Everything is just crammed into it and its really much too small and awkward for the task of being a filing system for everything you have.
What I *especially* love about the start screen is how it pretty much makes my family wallpapers useless.
On Windows 7, I put the shortcuts around the edges of the desktop, then I can see the wallpaper subject (and smile) every time I go back to the desktop.
a) You do realize you can do that with windows 8 too. This has nothing to do with the start menu vs start screen at all.
b) Oh... so you ARE one of those peoples who has shortcuts all over their desktop.
No, ClassicStart and Start8 have pretty much saved Microsoft's ass on this release. If I were them, I'd be asking for a reward or something...
Agreed. There's no question MS really botched the desktop on Win 8. I'm not saying otherwise; the start screen is FAR from perfect, but the start menu is a disaster too; everything and the kitchen sink in a non-resizable popup? That NEEDED to be fixed.
Almost every Customer I have wants the windows 7 start menu. I usually install classic start menu for them. Only 1 out of over 100 customers has preferred the windows 8 tile system.
And when XP arrived almost every customer I had wanted the "Classic Start Menu" from windows 2000. People don't like to learn new things regardless of whether they are better or worse than what they had before.
There are a lot of programs that I don't use every day that I don't need anywhere near a first level.
Gotcha. So your horrendously offended by the start screen as way to access applications that you use infrequently? That seems like much ado about nothing.
What if its been long enough that you can't quite remember what the application or program group is called? Does a scrollable hierarchical popup window really sound like the best way of finding it?
Yes, there is a start button there now. But all it does is bring up the start screen, the same as pressing the Windows key. The start menu, which is what most people really want back, is still missing from the OS.
I disagree. Most people were just confused by the lack of a physical button to click on to do anything.
A MUCH smaller subset actually wanted the old start menu back. I know I don't. There are elements of the old start menu that I liked, but most of it was a bad idea. Start -> All Programs was a complete disaster -- lets put a hierarchy of everything installed on your computer in a small non-resizable popup menu. Sorry that was just awful. For anything you need the start MENU for, the start screen is a LOT better.
Pinned aps on the start menu? Use a toolbar if you want a popup menu for those on the taskbar.
The only real loss is the search box that many power users use as a quick launcher - the start screen works for this, and is better if you are actually doing any sort of real search. But a desktop widget would be more appropriate for the "quick launch task of things we already know about."
But this is a power user function / feature not something "most users" do. Personally I'm looking for good 3rd party options, that just address this small shortcoming, rather than try to recreate the disaster that the old start menu was.
The IQ test scoring is literally defined by taking the median of all test results; such that half is above, and half below, and assigning that median as 100 IQ. And distribute the rest within that to create a bell curve. 68% of the population will be within a standard deviation regardless of their score. 95% will be within 2 regardless of their score. 99% will be within 3 etc.
On sufficiently long enough tests not everyone who is assigned 100 IQ necessarily even gets the same score on the test. Its not about what you score on the test, its about how many people you did better than, and how many people you did worse than. That is all.
One person in the world has a 100 IQ and everyone else has something 99 and lower or 101 and higher.
The definition of the curve literally requires that x% of the population be assigned 100 IQ. It doesn't require those people be exactly equal in intelligence. In fact, assuming a sufficiently complex IQ test, it will assign 100 IQ to a range of scores.
Your mistake is thinking that being assigned 100 IQ means you are as intelligent as any one else assigned 100 IQ.
Its more like being ranked by percentile. If you are in the 1st percentile for running speed, that just means 99% of people run slower than you. It doesn't mean you run the same speed as others in the first percentile. You could be the slowest person in the first percentile.... or the fastest.
The percentiles are like buckets, containing a group of people of varying ability within a range.
IQ ratings are exactly the same, each rating is just a bucket. Assuming the IQ test is perfectly accurate, then If you have an IQ of 100 you are smarter than anyone with a 99 and dumber than anyone with a 101, but you could be smarter than some, all, or even none of the rest of the people assigned 100.
. That bell curve you like to force into this in order to "win" is actually a bathtub curve with a large portion of the people at or near enough identical intelligence in the middle and a much smaller portion of people above and below that middle.
I put it in a bell curve, because that's what IQ is:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=iq+distribution
https://www.google.com/search?q=iq+test+curve&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=Nzw&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=fflb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=BNbIUYfRDInkiAKri4DQCA&ved=0CDkQsAQ&biw=1354&bih=844
The IQ tests are DESIGNED to produce a bell curve.
From wikipedia: "When current IQ tests are developed, the median raw score of the norming sample is defined as IQ 100 and scores each standard deviation (SD) up or down are defined as 15 IQ points greater or less..."
Unless you can give me a test that says two people with a 100 IQ don't have the exact same intelligence than [...]
Really? 6+ billion people on earth and everyone with 100 IQ score is exactly the same intelligence. Let me guess you think everyone who is 6 foot 2 inches on their drivers license is exactly the same height too, right?
IQ tests are designed to produce a bell curve, that's how the various test scores are normalized to an IQ number.
We could take everyone who scored exactly 100 on an IQ test, and normalize their scores onto a bell curve of their own if we wanted to. You do understand what I'm saying here right?
Because in the middle of the range there will be a large number of people with the exact same IQ or inteligence or what ever no matter how you test it.
Exact same IQ "rating" is not exactly the same intelligence. Its absurd to suggest that two people with 100 IQ have the exact same intelligence.
What your saying is like having 6 12" rulers and 20 yard sticks and saying exactly half of my measuring devices are below 30.4 inches. It's just not true.
Human intelligence approximates a bell curve. With the smartest and the dumbest as statistical outliers, and the majority clumped around the average. The IQ test in particular is designed to put people on a bell curve.
So we have a bell curve, with several billion people making up the data points. Are you now seriously going to suggest the curve modelling intelligence in any way even slightly resembles the double peaked thing you've suggested with rulers and yard sticks?
The current IQ tests are precise to whole numbers only.
The current IQ tests aren't all that great to begin with.
with close to 7 billion people is there really an intelligence test that will get to 100.000000001 accuracy?
Why would I need a test like that?
Let me give you a hint, the real world is all about precision and not perfection.
Aw shucks, thanks for the hint.
But I don't need a perfect or even particularly precise test to know that half of humanity is below average intelligence. I may not be able to identify precisely who is above and below, but that doesn't matter in the least.
If we look a a set if IQ scores (the current best estimate for intelligence)
Are you really asserting that all 10 of those people with 100 IQ are EXACTLY the same intelligence?
Or is it an estimate, that neatly rounds things off?
I mean, I can round height to the nearest meter, and suddenly almost everybody is 2m tall. But that's an artifact of the estimation, not a reflection of reality.
If the Windows Apps store were doing well, at this early point in its existence you'd hope the number of apps would be increasing an order of magnitude faster than that.
Why? Because someone would sit and browse through 4000 new apps a day, every day?
The reality is that as long as the major apps people care about are on the platform, and there is a steady treadmill of games to burn through, its good enough.
I'll never even see a tiny fraction of the apps on either app store. So the fact that they are "there at all" is pretty worthless.
Reason probably being that they don't put hopeless cases there.
And conversely that normal people don't in turn BECOME hopeless cases simply because they went to prison.
The controversial bit here [...] is how drones have converted the entire world into a battlefield
Drones haven't done that. American foreign policy has.
And I agree its not merely controversial but idiotic, demented, short-sighted, and any number of other adjectives I could add.
A war is fought between nations over territory and resources. Anything else is ultimately a police matter. Terrorists are criminals ranging from a lone lunatic to groups as large and well funded as international organized crime. They should be treated as such.
Armed, dangerous, organized... but criminals all the same. The CIA can infiltrate them abroad. The FBI can keep tabs on them at home.
There is no group that has the resources to effect a long range strike on the USA. They have to come here to attack us, and they have to bring there weapons with them, or get them here.
We don't need to kill them with drones in pakistan.
For the purposes of illustration, suppose the US was able to listen in on a North Korean spy that had just delivered a load of man portable anti-aircraft missiles to an al Qaida cell*. If the al Qaida leader had told the North Korean spy that he had a plan to shoot down a passenger jet at San Francisco airport, and the spy reported that back to headquarters, the US could intercept that message and know about it. There might be enough information in the spy's report (to whom the missiles were delivered, where, when, what they would be used for) to lead to an arrest of the terrorist.
Sheesh, this isn't a problem. Its just NOT. Regular police deal with it ALL the time.
Suppose run of the mill police informant witnesses a crime, but if he testifies in court it blows his cover and the powers that be know that the inside information & access he has is worth far more than the arrest of one person, so they don't use it. But they still know who committed the crime and will keep an eye on him and try to find another chain of evidence with which to go after him. Or go after him for something else... for a famous example: tax evasion.
NSA secret evidence is really no different at all. And it should be treated the same. As far as the civil court system is concerned, if it "too classified" to be presented in court and made available to the defendant, then it is not admissible in court and can't be used to convict. If the NSA's access to North Korean terrorist communications is to valuable to compromise, then so be it, don't use it to arrest the guy. Find some other way. If he goes free, for a while, until they can find something else that's the price of keeping the access to the terrorist communications network. I can live with that.
You can't have both. And you shouldn't want both. Otherwise, we're a short hop away from witch hunts. The police informant with high level gang access can decide you slighted him at the bar the other day, and reports he saw you arguing and then beating on a now deceased hooker. You get arrested, and at trial, they tell you a secret witness saw you attack her. Good luck.
Substitute NSA agent for police informant? What's the difference? Secret evidence is bad. If that's all you have, and you want it to remain a secret, you shouldn't be able to use it in court.
If it's legal to do the latter, you can't make it illegal to do the former, just because it has more throughput.
You can and should. The balance of police surveillance is maintained in part by the expense and inefficiency of conducting it.
If the efficiency of an aspect of law enforcement is greatly improved, that will shift the balance.
And it is right and appropriate to restore the balance. Not necessarily by prohibiting the new technology, but by imposing stricter limits on when it is used, or by shrinking the surveillance budget so that they can conduct the same level of surveillance they could before, but a fraction of the cost. Or shift the surveillance budget to putting more cops walking the beat.
Society doesn't necessarily want "more surveillance". And just because the cost has come down isn't a valid reason to increase it. That surveillance has become more efficient is great... now lets do the same level surveillance we did before, and use the money freed up for something else. Lowering taxes. More beat cops. Dusting for fingerprints at break ins. Improving response times for emergencies. There all kinds of things the police are perpetually saying they don't have enough money for... if they can replace 5 helicopters with 5 drones and free up a bunch of money for something ELSE do that. But replacing 5 helicopters with 50 drones is just silly.
Do note that the executed citizens were promoting terrorist activities against the USA from countries unable to arrest them. Had these people surrendered themselves they would have been brought to trial.
Its true because someone in the government said so? So we can kill them. Based on just that.
We know he was a terrorist because he had a trial? Where the prosecution and defense made there case and a jury agreed he was guilty? No. We didn't do any of that. So we don't know he was terrorist.
Next you'll be saying why bother with a trial for murderers? The prosecution wouldn't be after them if they weren't murderers. We don't need checks and balances. If the prosecution just decides someone is guilty, that's good enough for you right?
Why would the prosecution lie? That would never happen. Could they make a mistake? Surely not!
Bradley Manning on the other hand I have nothing but contempt for and whatever sentence he gets will not be sufficient to satisfy me that he's been punished for what he did.
Nothing but contempt for a person who did what he believed was right, who took tremendous personal risks, and knew what the penalties would be, but carried on because of his conscious? That's the man you have nothing but contempt for?
He is not a bad person, nor a corrupt one. He was merely wrong. In a world full of truly evil and corrupt people seeking personal power, and to erode our freedom... here's a guy who genuinely wants to do the right thing. And you can't punish him enough?
The guy deserves a light sentence. He is not the enemy of america.
You, however, might be. With your acceptence of a transformed america where the government decides which citizens are guilty without trials, and then kills them with drones.
That kind of raises the same question. Could the police now testify that the moment they arrived, you immediately invoked your right to counsel. Before they'd spoken to you, before you'd been charged,before anything.
Could they suggest to the jury that it speaks to a guilty conscious, seeking a defense lawyer before anything had even been asked?
As much as I don't necessarily agree with the logic of this USSC ruling, you've got how it works completely wrong.
I wasn't really arguing the actual ruling here, I was arguing the poster who asserted that you couldn't invoke the 5th selectively after answering a few questions.
Seriously.. explain it to me without resorting to a hatred.
Ok. There will be a bit of sarcasm, but no hatred. Deal?
Explain to everyone why it is that when they get a higher price when they sell and a lower price when they buy that its "bad."
How about "common sense"?
First, if "they" are getting a higher price when they sell, and a lower price when they buy, then "we" are buying at higher prices, and selling at lower ones, because we're buying and selling from them. Their gain is our loss.
They provide no real value to the system. If I am selling a stock, and you are buying one. The trade will go through. There is no need for an HFT middleman to rush in, grab my stock before you can, and then sell it to you for a fractionally higher amount.
That doesn't benefit me. I lost the opportunity to sell it to you for that extra fraction of a cent that you were willing to pay. And it doesn't benefit you, because you lost the opportunity to buy it for a fraction of a cent less that I was willing to sell at. We both lost.
High freq traders are like the middleman in a transaction. And like all middlemen in all transactions they want to make money. How do they make there money? By slicing a tiny percentage of every transaction for themselves.
Who pays for that? The people at the ends of the transaction. The real investors. You and I. Every dollar they collectively make is a dollar real investors collectively lost.
They are leeches.
I happen to like paying less for things when I buy, and getting more for things when I sell.
I do to. But HFT accomplishes the opposite of that.
Now, turn the question on its side, and ask what benefits HFT thinks it brings?
Improved liquidity? Because long term investors care if there trade is executed in microseconds rather than mere seconds?
Improved price efficiency? Yes and no. HFT does all the arbitrage between buyers and sellers so while HFT does find the 'true' market price faster, there is no REAL market efficiency gained by doing so. The financial 'benefit' of finding the 'true' price are simply extracted by them. So you and I don't benefit, we still pay the less efficient prices. They take the difference.
Improved stability? That one's just a bald faced lie. The markets are not more stable now.
The reality is that online trading, discount online brokerages, and just the computerization of the exchanges in general have created all the cheap liquidity and market efficiency we really need.
It's an all-or-nothing situation. As sick and tired as I am of this government's shenanigans, even I get this.
Ah, so...
Officer: Hi there, do you work here?
You: Yes.
Officer: Ok, so did you kill Fred?
You: ??? Uh... I should probably talk to a lawyer before I answer any more questions. I have the right to remain silent. 5th amendment.
Officer: You can't selectively apply the 5th amendment, picking and choosing what questions to apply it to. Its an all or nothing situation.
It's an all-or-nothing situation. As sick and tired as I am of this government's shenanigans, even I get this.
I was not aware of this inability to answer a question, and have that mean you can't stop answering questions in the future.
It seems truly ridiculous as demonstrated above. Similarly ridiculous situations apply to interrogation or even on the stand...
Prosecutor: So, you are Jane Doe, that is correct?
You: Yes, that is my name.
Prosecutor: And you've lived here in [city] how many years now?
You: 14
Prosecutor: Did you purchase the knife used to kill Fred?
You: I invoke my 5th...
Prosecutor: Oh... no... gotcha.. You can't start answering some questions and then clam up!
Judge: Answer the question or be held in contempt...
The rest of the country: WTFBBQ?!
I know I didn't kill someone with a shotgun.
I don't know that.
And I might be on your jury.
Never, under any circumstances, talk to the police. If you are free to go, then leave.
And according to this ruling, apparently your refusal to talk to the police and leave can be brought up in court as evidence of your guilt.
Your move, smart guy.
Redhat is all about servers so the desktop isn't really a valid comparison. I don't know whether they'll stick with it or not, but openstack llooks more up their alley than a linux desktop, not to mention more profit potential.
Agreed. But if you consider that, then that just shifts the average intelligence up a bit, and means that somewhat more than half the population is below the average.
The underlying assumption is that it's possible for two people to have exactly the same intelligence. Whether or not that assumption is true, I honestly have no idea.
"exactly the same" intelligence? Seems HIGHLY unlikely. The only way that would arise if the test deliberately rounded things off to create large groups. Like if they divided the population into pentiles... then, sure less than 2/5ths the population would be below the middle pentile.
But that seems like a deliberate manipulation to achieve that result. After all, even if you divided the population into pentiles it would be implausible that everyone in each pentile was exactly the same as other members of that pentile.