I don't like the idea of anyone going to jail because what they did was in a "grey area".
Copyright infringement depends on a jury interpreting whether your defense of what you did was fair use or not. That's often a grey area.
"Well sir, you were close to the speed limit, so I'm going to write you a ticket that's close to the fine you'd get for actually speeding."
The speed limit is not a grey area. Its posted and has a measurable number. (And in my opinion that's actually pretty unreasonable, because doing 102km/h in 100km/h zone is strictly illegal and you are liable for the full fine, plus points on your license, plus (around here at least) a "victim levy", plus increased insurance when you renew. Sure you can fight it, at the cost of your time off work and possibly a lawyer; but I'm on a tangent here...)
However, the police can also cite you for all sorts "grey area" stuff: "unsafe driving" is pretty much the officer's discretion; "failure to yield" is often very arguable, "drive without due care", "drive without consideration", "unsafe lane change", and one of my favorites "speed relative to conditions" where the posted speed is X, but its raining, snowing, foggy, whatever... and now the speed limit is whatever the police feel like. Not that I think its safe to do full speed on ice in a blizzard or anything, but is it 50? 30? Grey areas: all of them.
And then we have all sorts of non-moving violation stuff...
Everything from loitering to negligent homicide has a substantial grey area between "yup you were doing it" to "no, that's not that at all"
It doesn't matter... you don't have free speech in the workplace.
And you still can't do it the pretty girl who you see eating lunch at mcdonald's either.
It's not a restraint on free speech, but a restaint on the person's proximity to another person.
As applied to an internet troll, it would mean you wouldn't be allowed on such and such forums, etc.
What is the difference between a restraint on free speech and a restraint on where you speak other than semantics?
"You are free to say anything you want, as long as the people you want to talk to can't hear you."
That's rather like the idiotic "free speech zones" they herd protesters into now.
"You are free to assemble and protest! But you have to do it here in parking lot C behind the outbuilding where no one can see or hear you."
Harrassment already is a crime. So we need to clarify what constitutes harrassment under the existing law to ensure the forms of harrassment I outlined are covered.
But then we're just splitting hairs on semantics and legal implementation. Posting offensive messages in a forum ends up a crime either way.
So you really think if I round up a dozen people and ask them whether a given behavior is offensive, all 12 of them will agree in the substantial majority of cases that it's offensive (or not)?
The substantial majority? yes.
I already stipulated there was a substantial grey area between "not offensive" and "obviously offensive".
And I already covered my ass there by stipulating that being "caught" in the grey area should be a misdemeanor at most, with even just a warning as a first "punishment".
You're interfering with a person's ability to work, something everyone needs to do to survive.
Wait what? I'm not interfering with their ability to work. Its "just" their "emotional reaction" causing any issues, and according to you I'm not liable for that.
Workplace behavior is more regulated because of that. Now if you left the workplace and did the same thing you wouldn't have that charge pending. Different circumstances, different standards.
No. Try it on the woman at the perfume counter at the mall. Or the pretty girl eating alone at McDonald's. You'll get nailed there too.... Most people solve this with restraining orders...
So, rather than a fine or a warning, you prefer a straight up restraint on free speech? Ok... to be honest I'm actually fine with that, as long as we agree that being an asshole in the fashion's outlined above is perfectly legitimate grounds for a restraining order.
And of course that violations of restraining orders is properly enforced.
The day after you spend $1000 fixing a $2000 car, you've still spent a lot less than $6000 on a replacement.
In the former case your net worth dropped by $1000. In the latter it didn't.
Of course, if you are constrained at the cash flow point, and don't have 6k to drop, then yes, absolutely that forces one into all kinds of suboptimal economic decisions.
but I've seen a strange mentality from several people I know of "I can't afford this $800 service, so I'm going to get a $300 per month car loan. Fundamentally, they just want a new car.
Right. And that's a scary place to be. If they can't afford the $800 service, they definitely can't properly afford a $300/mo car loan for the next 5 years. They also usually can't afford to be without a reliable car either. Being that broke just sucks.
But, having said that, $800 bucks they don't have is just money they don't have. The bank won't loan you $800 to fix a $2000 car. That is a dead end, but they still need a car to get to work.
However, trading it in for a $1000 and getting a newer car with a $300 loan payment... the car financing company will do that. So that is a way forward.
I've seen friends go down that road. Its sad.
The other case is that they really can afford the $800 but just don't want to; they want a new car, and the imminent service on the existing car is just the motivation to make the switch now.
My parents tend to drive used BMWs and Audis and Jaguars, and they sell them when they start becoming money pits for newer BMWs/Jaguars/Audis etc. Of course they'd be further ahead if they just bought a honda civic and drove it forever.
But as long as we realize their reasoning framework is "We want to drive a nice modern luxury car and spend the least amount of money doing that" rather than "We just want to spend the least money on a car possible" it makes perfect sense.
As long as they can afford it, (and my parents at least can), no reason they should change a thing. Me, I'm the same way, except I've had 5 Porsche's over the last 15 years, I usually buy them ~8-10* years old, and drive them for a few years, and then upgrade.
(* So on a Porsche 911 that's often with fewer miles than a 2 year old commuter car, the initial depreciation has mostly been absorbed by previous owners and they depreciate at a modest rate; its also easy to find previous owners who were fastidious about maintenance compared to other cars, who kept them in garages, and even avoided driving them in the rain and snow, etc.)
But you are right, there are people who want newer or fancier cars, but can't really afford it... and unfortunately there are a LOT of those people, and the banks and car financing places readily enable them to buy cars they can't really afford.
"Could a reasonable person determine ahead of time that the behavior in question was (unambiguously) illegal?"
A reasonable person could. Sure as with all tests of reasonableness there's going to be a nebulous area between hey, that's ok, and hey holy shit you crossed a line. But so what? As long as the penalty for treading into the nebula is appropriate. (read: small -- community service, small fine, a warning the first time...) I'm fine with 'a test of reasonableness'.
No free country should have a law on the books claiming things that are offensive are illegal, anymore than people should be liable for the emotional reactions of others.
Right. As teens my friends and I thought it was hilarious to call that 11 year old boy a faggot every time any of us saw him - it was so funny we got the whole grade 6 to join in. It was just our thing. Why should we be at all liable in any way that it upset him to the point of depression and attempted suicide?
And now when I continually proposition my hot coworker for sex and compliment her ass? She should be flattered. But now I've got this sexual harrassment charge pending. WTF!
No free country should have a law on the books claiming that offending people are illegal, right?
So then I posted images of holocaust mass graves, except with little penises drawn on the bodies, and each one labelled a faggot. It was hilarious, so I posted it to the local jewish temple's public forum with the subject "the faggots deserved it"
Like what reasonable person could determine ahead of time that this was going to offend any one? Not me, that's for sure!
Now in all serious, I -am- a proponent of free speech, and I even defend our right to say something that offends, or even to be offensive.
But at the same time, I do think there should be tools in law for people to protect themselves from complete assholes who are just deliberately harassing them.
The problem I have with your scenario is that police have received anonymous tips on crimes for decades.
Someone sees a gangland slaying, has no desire whatsoever to be publicly identified as a witness for fear of reprisals, but still wants to see justice. So he calls the police from a payphone somewhere and identifies who did it, providing enough details about the killing (number of shots fired, direction victim was facing when shot, the fact that he was on his knees, etc. This convinces the police to take it seriously, so they investigate that individual see that its likely true, and start building a case against him.
Now when has the defense ever successfully argued:
"Your honor, all the evidence against my client is tainted. A mysterious shadowy figure called "anonymous" has clearly had opportunity to frame my client by planting evidence in his car and home. Then he brought this "evidence" to light and blamed my client. It should be barred from entry unless the prosecution can prove it was not tamped with by this shadowy anonymous figure in order to make my client appear guilty."
The judge never turns to the prosecutor and says "can you gaurantee blah blah blah..."
The prosecutor never then admits: No your honor, the accused's Ford Mustang where we found the murder weapon does not log the actions of its users, and according to our techs the Mustang door locks of that series are actually quite easy for a locksmith/car theif to defeat. The vehicle is fairly old and has lots of scratches and dents so it's not possible to prove whether it was tampered with or not, and the owner has not validated the integrity of the locks on a regular basis, so we can't verify how well they worked. It is entirely possible a shadowy figure planted the gun in his car.
The judge doesn't ever say "Ok, you can forget about using the evidence then."
It just doesn't happen.
If you are being framed, or suspect you are being framed, or actually did the crime and just feel like raising the possibility you were being framed as part of your defense, you don't get to just challenge all the evidence against you and have it thrown out by demanding the prosecution prove that its impossible you were framed.
Or they could have spent 6 grand and got a much newer used car that is actually worth 6 grand. Its not "blown" money, because the day after you buy a used car for 6 grand, you can turn around and sell it for 6 grand.
The day after you spend 1000 fixing a timing belt on a 2000 dollar car, you still have a 2000 dollar car.
versus the one grand for the guy who goes ahead with the maintenance and is largely set for the next ten years.
That's a big gamble. Cars start truly wearing out at that age / high mileage. The bearings in everything start wearing out, the wheels, the fans, etc they all start grinding one by one. The fuel pump fails, the catalytic converter dies, the transmission goes, etc... you -might- be largely set for the next ten years. You might spend $1,000 a year each of the next ten years.
If you want to get ahead the answer is easy. WORK! - Larry Winget
Fuck "getting ahead". Getting ahead is living the life you want.
If my employer spouted off some bullshit about how I needed to or I'd be the first let go then I'd quit on the spot. If he wants to recruit slave labor, have at it.
Exchange 2013 is very different from Exchange 2003. It will take a good several months at 15 hours a week minimum on top of your sys admin job to really start to get a handle on it.
This is where I hire or outsource 15hrs a week of tedium-thing that I do to someone else so I can spend 15hrs a week on new-thing. Anyone who thinks they just have to spend more of their own time on work every time something new is in the pipe has no sense of self worth; nor ability to balance their life.
Its called time management. I have so much time that I allocate to work, time that I allocate to other things, time that I sleep. If something comes up at work, I'll get it dealt with. But a perpetual overage of work, probably unpaid,...
If you really think this is required then you are BOTH a) not valued or respected by your employer b) not valued or respected by yourself
If you are not willing to do it then you are incompetent.
A competent person doesn't get into that situation in the first place.
go-bots actually were more fun to play with; the transformations were simple and quick, and they lended themselves to being played with. In my experience they were more durable too.
Transformers are finicky, fragile, and take far longer to transform, usually have extra-bits that don't transform and end up getting lost -- like their hands.
And if anything they've gotten WORSE.
I wanted transformers as a kid too but a lot of them are absolutely terrible. I realize that more now as an adult than i did as a kid, especially after buying a few for my kids and watching them rapidly lose any interest in trying to play with them. Being asked to help them transform them, and realizing in the process just how abysmal some of them are.
As I a kid I had a bunch of go-bots, and a couple transformers... I was luckier than I ever knew.
I guess it comes down to different people's different interpretations of the word "bigotry"
I'm going with the dictionary defined by Merriam-Webster as "a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices."
Neither American Atheists nor any major freethought/atheist group in the US is trying to take rights away from anyone, they want things like removing religion from publicly funded institutions (schools, courtrooms, etc) and to stop oppression of the non-religious.
Yes, but are they "obstinately and intolerantly devoted to their own prejudice and option" ?
Argue semantics all you like but that anything but an open minded message of tolerance. It doesn't promote the separation of church and state. It doesn't try to stop oppression of the non-religious. It just says: "Hey christians -- you're whole religion is just ignorant hypocrisy."
Who, but a bigot, would want to put that on a billboard?
Brakes, tires,...oil changes are all normal wear items
Yes I know, that's why I separated them out.
Except for the battery which gets upwards of 10 years, and is not a normal wear item for most new car owners. Its the sort of thing that crops up when you car gets 10+ years old.
And yes, the rims were not normal wear, but they were also $75 each new for steel rims. I'm not complaining about this either.
If you neglect making small repairs all cars will turn into a piece of shit. The air leak should have nothing to do with your car's age. Outside of the oil leak, you should be able to take care of any of these rather quickly yourself for minimal cost. Possibly the oil leak too.
No. That's the issue. Those small repairs aren't "minimal cost", and I didn't even mention the various rattles and squeaks and vibrations. The list above will easily cost $3000. That's close to a $1500 more than the I figure the car is worth, even after getting the repairs done. The two sunroof items are easily $1000 together. The switch is a combo-sliding rocker switch, and costs >$300; finding one in the junk yard -- assuming I can find one, in the right color, and they don't want an arm and a leg for it * is a crapshoot -- do I really want a finicky switch with 10 years of someone else's wear and tear on it? Even if i save $100?
* I've frequently been quoted more by junkyards for parts than I can pay aftermarket for new, or even OEM. Attempts to negotiate usually fail, and I'm told if I can buy it from X cheaper, by all means do so. They know someone will come along and pay their overprice sooner or later.
Those 2 rims I replaced... new at Canadian tire for $75 apiece; steel rims are pretty easy and don't tend to wear out so I tried the junk yard route... 2 afternoons driving around with my brother and law, asking, and arguing completely wasted and got nothing. Closest I came was one place that had them at another yard 2 hrs away for $60 each. Am I really going on a 4hr road trip for $30 dollars? Maybe I would, after wasting the 2 afternoons I estimate I blew close to 8 hrs trying to save maybe $100. Not to mention my brother in-laws time.
But the even bigger issue with the "keeping up with small repairs" argument is that its nearly impossible to find a used inexpensive car where the previous owner did; especially if its for sale. After all, if there was nothing wrong with it, and he'd maintained it meticulously for years, and it ran great, then he'd probably just keep it.
So when you are looking at an older $1500 - $2500 car, you are almost inevitably inheriting a whole boat load of 'small stuff' that is worth more than the car ever will be to fix. What's even the point of worrying when the power windows start acting up 2 years after you buy it?
Just don't expect anyone to buy bullshit excuses to otherwise justify your desire for a new car.
My point wasn't that used cars are just as expensive and new cars. I agree with you completely that they are not. I just don't think your $300/year for a 10 year old car is terribly accurate or representative of the whole picture. Its only $300/year if you do a lot of work yourself, and spend a lot of time in junk yards and value your time at 0. Or you let the car gradually fall apart, which is fine too. But at some point around the 10 -15 year mark a lot of cars will become undesirable to use junk if you do that, and you'll need to get a "new" car... whether its brand new or merely someone elses 5 year old trade-in.
Me personally, I've never had a new car, and agree they are rarely good value.
I've just had enough 10 year old cars to know that they aren't generally $300/year to run if you don't want them to fall apart.
On a separate note, if maintaining a 10 year old car is too much for you, do not ever, under any circumstances, buy a house.
People renovate houses all the time. The car pretty much has to be a collectors item to avoid the inevitable scrap heap. They are completely different situations.
They're weird folks, but they're not institutionally bigots in any way, even toward the religious.
I disagree.
If a Jew walks up to a Muslim and says "Islam is really stupid, your prophet is false and and it were real its ignorant and hatemongering; but that's all beside the point because the whole thing is completely made up and wrong. Come Join our Temple!"
I'd call that a pretty bigoted message.
Its also pretty much what the American Atheist's put on their billboards; that amounts to institutionalized bigotry if you ask me.
My car is 10 years old. It runs well but costs ~$300 a year to keep running
Lucky you.
Last two years on my 10 year old car I fixed an oil leak, had the brakes done, replaced 2 tires and rims, and replaced the battery, along with regular oil changes etc. Not bad for a car that old, but not great.
But in addition to that, over the last few years on my 10 year old car, the sunroof switch broke off but could still be operated, then the actual sunroof retraction mechanism broke. The manual trunk release at the rear of the car broke (but the electric release in the glove box still works), the rear door speaker cover broke, a piece of plastic trim on the door fell off, the radio no longer turns off automatically when the car is turned off, the alarm goes off occasionally when I open the trunk. One wheel still has a slow air leak. And its got another small oil leak.
Of course, I didn't fix any of that because it would cost several thousand dollars more than the car is worth.
So while, sure, I can keep it "running" for a few hundred dollars a year and I might get 2 or 3 or even 5 more years out of it. The car is steadily turning into a piece of shit.
Because huge parts of the world are still on dialup. And even more of it is on bottom of the barrel ADSL where it will take all day to download a couple GB.
And a website, complete with art assets, original stock photography, and commissioned photos easily will run that. Hell... I worked on a website once where just the pro photos done of the managment team took up an entire DVD. Sure the cropped shots that made it to the site were a couple dozen k, but the complete project deliverables included all the source assets.
I can also anticipate kids having fun with this by "faking out" the autonomous vehicles for a laugh.
Given the system uses unauthenticated inter-car communications to report to eachother on safety issues... when it comes to faking out autonomous vehicles, forget standing close to the edge of a sidewalk:
I'd really hate to see how Excel performs on a 1 GB spreadsheet.
Just fine. I'm sure it would go to shit in a hurry if it was a GB of complicated formulas... but typically its just stuff like general ledger and sales ledger dumps; with a few running total columns, or a bit of conditional formatting, filtering and sorts.
We did real work on computers slower than current low end smartphones less than 20 years ago.
We did real mining with pickaxes once upon a time too.
We used the best tools we had at the time. Tablets are not a step forward from the current state of the art, the fact that they are better than my old 386 is rather irrelevant.
. No, its not ideal for graphic design, CAD, or software development, but in a corporation of 10K users, the percentage doing this is tiny.
Yes, lets put accounting on an ipad; nevermind the spreadsheet he's larger than an ipads RAM; and he's got 5 of them open at the same time... and he'd rip your face off if he had to use them full screen swiping from one to other and back again. And then he'd put your face back on just to rip it off again when you told him he couldn't use Microsoft Excel.
Legal? iPad's all round - I heard legal likes to put all their documents on iCloud anyway, right guys?
And I could go on indefinitely.
That covers 90% of what 90% of what corporate office monkeys need to do.
What is a corporate office monkey and what do they do?
Sure the legion of cubicle grunts doing data entry from handwritten submitted forms for an insurance company -- sure they can probably have their cheap desktop replaced with a docking tablet... but why? The PCs they are using are already cheaper than a tablet.
And really anyone further up the food chain than that? Well you said it yourself... "That covers 90%...." meaning 10% of what they do isn't covered. So what's your solution? They just don't do those things?
Someone in sales needs to post some product photos to the company twitter account... except he used an actual digital camera so they didn't look like shit... but he can't get his photos from his camera to his company issued tablet.
The girl managing the cellular assets gets an iphone back from the field that's locked up... no problem documenting the issue in the web-crm-pos system on her tablet... but really she needs to attach it to a computer with itunes to revive it.
The advertising manager who needs to sign off on the new website design can't see it on their tablet because the outsourced designer sent them a physical DVD. So wandering around the halls with a disk looking for the face-ripper from accounts receivable because he knows he got a proper PC...
Anyone who thinks tablets can replace general purpose pc's is only ever looking at 90% of the problem. That other 10% will kill you.
There will never be a "year of Linux on the desktop", not so long as these kinds of restrictions exist.
And without those restrictions there will never be a "year of linux on the desktop" because after you bolt enough proprietary stuff onto it it's not really linux anymore, and the whole point of having an open source operating system will have been entirely subverted.
Linux's greatest enemy is quite often itself.
Not really. Its greatest enemy are those willing to compromise on the ideals for convenience or marketshare.
To use a car analogy; suppose I started a car company with the goal of releasing an affordable all-electric emissions free vehicle. Sounds great. But the range is kind of low, and its a hard problem to solve.
We could install a diesel engine in it, which is inexpensive and gives us the range we want. Sure it subverts the entire idea of making an all-electric emissions free vehicle... but hey did we want to get a car to mass market this year or not?
Richard Stallman's fierce stance on freedom may be seen as a hindrance to Linux adoption by many; but he's the guy drawing a line in the sand saying "No, you can't put a diesel engine into the all-electric emission free car because."
He, and the people who draw a line in the sand are the ones that ensure Linux can exist in a meaningful way at all.
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I don't like the idea of anyone going to jail because what they did was in a "grey area".
Copyright infringement depends on a jury interpreting whether your defense of what you did was fair use or not. That's often a grey area.
"Well sir, you were close to the speed limit, so I'm going to write you a ticket that's close to the fine you'd get for actually speeding."
The speed limit is not a grey area. Its posted and has a measurable number. (And in my opinion that's actually pretty unreasonable, because doing 102km/h in 100km/h zone is strictly illegal and you are liable for the full fine, plus points on your license, plus (around here at least) a "victim levy", plus increased insurance when you renew. Sure you can fight it, at the cost of your time off work and possibly a lawyer; but I'm on a tangent here...)
However, the police can also cite you for all sorts "grey area" stuff: "unsafe driving" is pretty much the officer's discretion; "failure to yield" is often very arguable, "drive without due care", "drive without consideration", "unsafe lane change", and one of my favorites "speed relative to conditions" where the posted speed is X, but its raining, snowing, foggy, whatever... and now the speed limit is whatever the police feel like. Not that I think its safe to do full speed on ice in a blizzard or anything, but is it 50? 30? Grey areas: all of them.
And then we have all sorts of non-moving violation stuff...
Everything from loitering to negligent homicide has a substantial grey area between "yup you were doing it" to "no, that's not that at all"
It doesn't matter... you don't have free speech in the workplace.
And you still can't do it the pretty girl who you see eating lunch at mcdonald's either.
It's not a restraint on free speech, but a restaint on the person's proximity to another person.
As applied to an internet troll, it would mean you wouldn't be allowed on such and such forums, etc.
What is the difference between a restraint on free speech and a restraint on where you speak other than semantics?
"You are free to say anything you want, as long as the people you want to talk to can't hear you."
That's rather like the idiotic "free speech zones" they herd protesters into now.
"You are free to assemble and protest! But you have to do it here in parking lot C behind the outbuilding where no one can see or hear you."
Both are restraint on free speech.
Harrassment already is a crime. So we need to clarify what constitutes harrassment under the existing law to ensure the forms of harrassment I outlined are covered.
But then we're just splitting hairs on semantics and legal implementation. Posting offensive messages in a forum ends up a crime either way.
So you really think if I round up a dozen people and ask them whether a given behavior is offensive, all 12 of them will agree in the substantial majority of cases that it's offensive (or not)?
The substantial majority? yes.
I already stipulated there was a substantial grey area between "not offensive" and "obviously offensive".
And I already covered my ass there by stipulating that being "caught" in the grey area should be a misdemeanor at most, with even just a warning as a first "punishment".
You're interfering with a person's ability to work, something everyone needs to do to survive.
Wait what? I'm not interfering with their ability to work. Its "just" their "emotional reaction" causing any issues, and according to you I'm not liable for that.
Workplace behavior is more regulated because of that. Now if you left the workplace and did the same thing you wouldn't have that charge pending. Different circumstances, different standards.
No. Try it on the woman at the perfume counter at the mall. Or the pretty girl eating alone at McDonald's. You'll get nailed there too. ... Most people solve this with restraining orders...
So, rather than a fine or a warning, you prefer a straight up restraint on free speech? Ok... to be honest I'm actually fine with that, as long as we agree that being an asshole in the fashion's outlined above is perfectly legitimate grounds for a restraining order.
And of course that violations of restraining orders is properly enforced.
The day after you spend $1000 fixing a $2000 car, you've still spent a lot less than $6000 on a replacement.
In the former case your net worth dropped by $1000. In the latter it didn't.
Of course, if you are constrained at the cash flow point, and don't have 6k to drop, then yes, absolutely that forces one into all kinds of suboptimal economic decisions.
but I've seen a strange mentality from several people I know of "I can't afford this $800 service, so I'm going to get a $300 per month car loan. Fundamentally, they just want a new car.
Right. And that's a scary place to be. If they can't afford the $800 service, they definitely can't properly afford a $300/mo car loan for the next 5 years. They also usually can't afford to be without a reliable car either. Being that broke just sucks.
But, having said that, $800 bucks they don't have is just money they don't have. The bank won't loan you $800 to fix a $2000 car. That is a dead end, but they still need a car to get to work.
However, trading it in for a $1000 and getting a newer car with a $300 loan payment... the car financing company will do that. So that is a way forward.
I've seen friends go down that road. Its sad.
The other case is that they really can afford the $800 but just don't want to; they want a new car, and the imminent service on the existing car is just the motivation to make the switch now.
My parents tend to drive used BMWs and Audis and Jaguars, and they sell them when they start becoming money pits for newer BMWs/Jaguars/Audis etc. Of course they'd be further ahead if they just bought a honda civic and drove it forever.
But as long as we realize their reasoning framework is "We want to drive a nice modern luxury car and spend the least amount of money doing that" rather than "We just want to spend the least money on a car possible" it makes perfect sense.
As long as they can afford it, (and my parents at least can), no reason they should change a thing. Me, I'm the same way, except I've had 5 Porsche's over the last 15 years, I usually buy them ~8-10* years old, and drive them for a few years, and then upgrade.
(* So on a Porsche 911 that's often with fewer miles than a 2 year old commuter car, the initial depreciation has mostly been absorbed by previous owners and they depreciate at a modest rate; its also easy to find previous owners who were fastidious about maintenance compared to other cars, who kept them in garages, and even avoided driving them in the rain and snow, etc.)
But you are right, there are people who want newer or fancier cars, but can't really afford it... and unfortunately there are a LOT of those people, and the banks and car financing places readily enable them to buy cars they can't really afford.
You countered your own argument:
"Could a reasonable person determine ahead of time that the behavior in question was (unambiguously) illegal?"
A reasonable person could. Sure as with all tests of reasonableness there's going to be a nebulous area between hey, that's ok, and hey holy shit you crossed a line. But so what? As long as the penalty for treading into the nebula is appropriate. (read: small -- community service, small fine, a warning the first time...) I'm fine with 'a test of reasonableness'.
No free country should have a law on the books claiming things that are offensive are illegal, anymore than people should be liable for the emotional reactions of others.
Right. As teens my friends and I thought it was hilarious to call that 11 year old boy a faggot every time any of us saw him - it was so funny we got the whole grade 6 to join in. It was just our thing. Why should we be at all liable in any way that it upset him to the point of depression and attempted suicide?
And now when I continually proposition my hot coworker for sex and compliment her ass? She should be flattered. But now I've got this sexual harrassment charge pending. WTF!
No free country should have a law on the books claiming that offending people are illegal, right?
So then I posted images of holocaust mass graves, except with little penises drawn on the bodies, and each one labelled a faggot. It was hilarious, so I posted it to the local jewish temple's public forum with the subject "the faggots deserved it"
Like what reasonable person could determine ahead of time that this was going to offend any one? Not me, that's for sure!
Now in all serious, I -am- a proponent of free speech, and I even defend our right to say something that offends, or even to be offensive.
But at the same time, I do think there should be tools in law for people to protect themselves from complete assholes who are just deliberately harassing them.
There IS a balance that needs to be struck.
The problem I have with your scenario is that police have received anonymous tips on crimes for decades.
Someone sees a gangland slaying, has no desire whatsoever to be publicly identified as a witness for fear of reprisals, but still wants to see justice. So he calls the police from a payphone somewhere and identifies who did it, providing enough details about the killing (number of shots fired, direction victim was facing when shot, the fact that he was on his knees, etc. This convinces the police to take it seriously, so they investigate that individual see that its likely true, and start building a case against him.
Now when has the defense ever successfully argued:
"Your honor, all the evidence against my client is tainted. A mysterious shadowy figure called "anonymous" has clearly had opportunity to frame my client by planting evidence in his car and home. Then he brought this "evidence" to light and blamed my client. It should be barred from entry unless the prosecution can prove it was not tamped with by this shadowy anonymous figure in order to make my client appear guilty."
The judge never turns to the prosecutor and says "can you gaurantee blah blah blah..."
The prosecutor never then admits: No your honor, the accused's Ford Mustang where we found the murder weapon does not log the actions of its users, and according to our techs the Mustang door locks of that series are actually quite easy for a locksmith/car theif to defeat. The vehicle is fairly old and has lots of scratches and dents so it's not possible to prove whether it was tampered with or not, and the owner has not validated the integrity of the locks on a regular basis, so we can't verify how well they worked. It is entirely possible a shadowy figure planted the gun in his car.
The judge doesn't ever say "Ok, you can forget about using the evidence then."
It just doesn't happen.
If you are being framed, or suspect you are being framed, or actually did the crime and just feel like raising the possibility you were being framed as part of your defense, you don't get to just challenge all the evidence against you and have it thrown out by demanding the prosecution prove that its impossible you were framed.
Any one who thinks that is in fantasy land.
They're out twenty grand on a new car
Or they could have spent 6 grand and got a much newer used car that is actually worth 6 grand. Its not "blown" money, because the day after you buy a used car for 6 grand, you can turn around and sell it for 6 grand.
The day after you spend 1000 fixing a timing belt on a 2000 dollar car, you still have a 2000 dollar car.
versus the one grand for the guy who goes ahead with the maintenance and is largely set for the next ten years.
That's a big gamble. Cars start truly wearing out at that age / high mileage. The bearings in everything start wearing out, the wheels, the fans, etc they all start grinding one by one. The fuel pump fails, the catalytic converter dies, the transmission goes, etc... you -might- be largely set for the next ten years. You might spend $1,000 a year each of the next ten years.
THIS. If you're not motivated to work 80 hours a week as a grad student, you're in the wrong field.
Grad students can, and do have lives, girlfriends, they can participate in sports, play video games, see movies.
Its one thing to be passionate about your academic pursuits. But to the exclusion of everything else? Get a life. Seriously.
If you want to get ahead the answer is easy. WORK! - Larry Winget
Fuck "getting ahead". Getting ahead is living the life you want.
If my employer spouted off some bullshit about how I needed to or I'd be the first let go then I'd quit on the spot. If he wants to recruit slave labor, have at it.
Exchange 2013 is very different from Exchange 2003. It will take a good several months at 15 hours a week minimum on top of your sys admin job to really start to get a handle on it.
This is where I hire or outsource 15hrs a week of tedium-thing that I do to someone else so I can spend 15hrs a week on new-thing. Anyone who thinks they just have to spend more of their own time on work every time something new is in the pipe has no sense of self worth; nor ability to balance their life.
Its called time management. I have so much time that I allocate to work, time that I allocate to other things, time that I sleep. If something comes up at work, I'll get it dealt with. But a perpetual overage of work, probably unpaid, ...
If you really think this is required then you are BOTH
a) not valued or respected by your employer
b) not valued or respected by yourself
If you are not willing to do it then you are incompetent.
A competent person doesn't get into that situation in the first place.
I don't see any situations where Anonymous' action result in a more positive outcome than would have come about through other choices.
How about the situation where the crime would have been ignored and forgotten if they hadn't done what they did?
Going public is a time honored method to get those that enforce the law to pay attention to a particular crime or injustice.
That said, I agree with you that forwarding evidence to the police first is probably generally the best course of action.
go-bots actually were more fun to play with; the transformations were simple and quick, and they lended themselves to being played with. In my experience they were more durable too.
Transformers are finicky, fragile, and take far longer to transform, usually have extra-bits that don't transform and end up getting lost -- like their hands.
And if anything they've gotten WORSE.
I wanted transformers as a kid too but a lot of them are absolutely terrible. I realize that more now as an adult than i did as a kid, especially after buying a few for my kids and watching them rapidly lose any interest in trying to play with them. Being asked to help them transform them, and realizing in the process just how abysmal some of them are.
As I a kid I had a bunch of go-bots, and a couple transformers... I was luckier than I ever knew.
No-one around here seems to be in an uproar about it.
Anyone around there that objected to it would just leave and find somewhere else to work.
And that's sums up the difference between choice and coercion.
I guess it comes down to different people's different interpretations of the word "bigotry"
I'm going with the dictionary defined by Merriam-Webster as "a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices."
Neither American Atheists nor any major freethought/atheist group in the US is trying to take rights away from anyone, they want things like removing religion from publicly funded institutions (schools, courtrooms, etc) and to stop oppression of the non-religious.
Yes, but are they "obstinately and intolerantly devoted to their own prejudice and option" ?
A sign that says:
Christianity:
Sadistic God; Useless Savior
30,000+ versions of "Truth"
Pomotes Hate, Calls it "Love"
Atheism:
Simply Reasonable
Join American Atheists
https://atheists.org/sites/default/files/20120813FallBillboardsChristianity.jpg
Argue semantics all you like but that anything but an open minded message of tolerance. It doesn't promote the separation of church and state. It doesn't try to stop oppression of the non-religious. It just says: "Hey christians -- you're whole religion is just ignorant hypocrisy."
Who, but a bigot, would want to put that on a billboard?
Brakes, tires,...oil changes are all normal wear items
Yes I know, that's why I separated them out.
Except for the battery which gets upwards of 10 years, and is not a normal wear item for most new car owners. Its the sort of thing that crops up when you car gets 10+ years old.
And yes, the rims were not normal wear, but they were also $75 each new for steel rims. I'm not complaining about this either.
If you neglect making small repairs all cars will turn into a piece of shit. The air leak should have nothing to do with your car's age. Outside of the oil leak, you should be able to take care of any of these rather quickly yourself for minimal cost. Possibly the oil leak too.
No. That's the issue. Those small repairs aren't "minimal cost", and I didn't even mention the various rattles and squeaks and vibrations. The list above will easily cost $3000. That's close to a $1500 more than the I figure the car is worth, even after getting the repairs done. The two sunroof items are easily $1000 together. The switch is a combo-sliding rocker switch, and costs >$300; finding one in the junk yard -- assuming I can find one, in the right color, and they don't want an arm and a leg for it * is a crapshoot -- do I really want a finicky switch with 10 years of someone else's wear and tear on it? Even if i save $100?
* I've frequently been quoted more by junkyards for parts than I can pay aftermarket for new, or even OEM. Attempts to negotiate usually fail, and I'm told if I can buy it from X cheaper, by all means do so. They know someone will come along and pay their overprice sooner or later.
Those 2 rims I replaced... new at Canadian tire for $75 apiece; steel rims are pretty easy and don't tend to wear out so I tried the junk yard route... 2 afternoons driving around with my brother and law, asking, and arguing completely wasted and got nothing. Closest I came was one place that had them at another yard 2 hrs away for $60 each. Am I really going on a 4hr road trip for $30 dollars? Maybe I would, after wasting the 2 afternoons I estimate I blew close to 8 hrs trying to save maybe $100. Not to mention my brother in-laws time.
But the even bigger issue with the "keeping up with small repairs" argument is that its nearly impossible to find a used inexpensive car where the previous owner did; especially if its for sale. After all, if there was nothing wrong with it, and he'd maintained it meticulously for years, and it ran great, then he'd probably just keep it.
So when you are looking at an older $1500 - $2500 car, you are almost inevitably inheriting a whole boat load of 'small stuff' that is worth more than the car ever will be to fix. What's even the point of worrying when the power windows start acting up 2 years after you buy it?
Just don't expect anyone to buy bullshit excuses to otherwise justify your desire for a new car.
My point wasn't that used cars are just as expensive and new cars. I agree with you completely that they are not. I just don't think your $300/year for a 10 year old car is terribly accurate or representative of the whole picture. Its only $300/year if you do a lot of work yourself, and spend a lot of time in junk yards and value your time at 0. Or you let the car gradually fall apart, which is fine too. But at some point around the 10 -15 year mark a lot of cars will become undesirable to use junk if you do that, and you'll need to get a "new" car... whether its brand new or merely someone elses 5 year old trade-in.
Me personally, I've never had a new car, and agree they are rarely good value.
I've just had enough 10 year old cars to know that they aren't generally $300/year to run if you don't want them to fall apart.
On a separate note, if maintaining a 10 year old car is too much for you, do not ever, under any circumstances, buy a house.
People renovate houses all the time. The car pretty much has to be a collectors item to avoid the inevitable scrap heap. They are completely different situations.
They're weird folks, but they're not institutionally bigots in any way, even toward the religious.
I disagree.
If a Jew walks up to a Muslim and says "Islam is really stupid, your prophet is false and and it were real its ignorant and hatemongering; but that's all beside the point because the whole thing is completely made up and wrong. Come Join our Temple!"
I'd call that a pretty bigoted message.
Its also pretty much what the American Atheist's put on their billboards; that amounts to institutionalized bigotry if you ask me.
My car is 10 years old. It runs well but costs ~$300 a year to keep running
Lucky you.
Last two years on my 10 year old car I fixed an oil leak, had the brakes done, replaced 2 tires and rims, and replaced the battery, along with regular oil changes etc. Not bad for a car that old, but not great.
But in addition to that, over the last few years on my 10 year old car, the sunroof switch broke off but could still be operated, then the actual sunroof retraction mechanism broke. The manual trunk release at the rear of the car broke (but the electric release in the glove box still works), the rear door speaker cover broke, a piece of plastic trim on the door fell off, the radio no longer turns off automatically when the car is turned off, the alarm goes off occasionally when I open the trunk. One wheel still has a slow air leak. And its got another small oil leak.
Of course, I didn't fix any of that because it would cost several thousand dollars more than the car is worth.
So while, sure, I can keep it "running" for a few hundred dollars a year and I might get 2 or 3 or even 5 more years out of it. The car is steadily turning into a piece of shit.
I assume its these guys:
http://www.atheists.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Atheists
Why would you deliver a website on a DVD?
Because huge parts of the world are still on dialup. And even more of it is on bottom of the barrel ADSL where it will take all day to download a couple GB.
And a website, complete with art assets, original stock photography, and commissioned photos easily will run that. Hell... I worked on a website once where just the pro photos done of the managment team took up an entire DVD. Sure the cropped shots that made it to the site were a couple dozen k, but the complete project deliverables included all the source assets.
I can also anticipate kids having fun with this by "faking out" the autonomous vehicles for a laugh.
Given the system uses unauthenticated inter-car communications to report to eachother on safety issues ... when it comes to faking out autonomous vehicles, forget standing close to the edge of a sidewalk:
"There's an app for that."
I'd really hate to see how Excel performs on a 1 GB spreadsheet.
Just fine. I'm sure it would go to shit in a hurry if it was a GB of complicated formulas... but typically its just stuff like general ledger and sales ledger dumps; with a few running total columns, or a bit of conditional formatting, filtering and sorts.
Pretty simple stuff.
We did real work on computers slower than current low end smartphones less than 20 years ago.
We did real mining with pickaxes once upon a time too.
We used the best tools we had at the time.
Tablets are not a step forward from the current state of the art, the fact that they are better than my old 386 is rather irrelevant.
. No, its not ideal for graphic design, CAD, or software development, but in a corporation of 10K users, the percentage doing this is tiny.
Yes, lets put accounting on an ipad; nevermind the spreadsheet he's larger than an ipads RAM; and he's got 5 of them open at the same time... and he'd rip your face off if he had to use them full screen swiping from one to other and back again. And then he'd put your face back on just to rip it off again when you told him he couldn't use Microsoft Excel.
Legal? iPad's all round - I heard legal likes to put all their documents on iCloud anyway, right guys?
And I could go on indefinitely.
That covers 90% of what 90% of what corporate office monkeys need to do.
What is a corporate office monkey and what do they do?
Sure the legion of cubicle grunts doing data entry from handwritten submitted forms for an insurance company -- sure they can probably have their cheap desktop replaced with a docking tablet... but why? The PCs they are using are already cheaper than a tablet.
And really anyone further up the food chain than that? Well you said it yourself... "That covers 90%...." meaning 10% of what they do isn't covered. So what's your solution? They just don't do those things?
Someone in sales needs to post some product photos to the company twitter account... except he used an actual digital camera so they didn't look like shit... but he can't get his photos from his camera to his company issued tablet.
The girl managing the cellular assets gets an iphone back from the field that's locked up... no problem documenting the issue in the web-crm-pos system on her tablet... but really she needs to attach it to a computer with itunes to revive it.
The advertising manager who needs to sign off on the new website design can't see it on their tablet because the outsourced designer sent them a physical DVD. So wandering around the halls with a disk looking for the face-ripper from accounts receivable because he knows he got a proper PC...
Anyone who thinks tablets can replace general purpose pc's is only ever looking at 90% of the problem. That other 10% will kill you.
Yeah, it would probably end up being something that's better and more usable than Linux.
It would probably end up being like OSX. Which is fine, but it belongs to Apple not the community that built BSD.
There will never be a "year of Linux on the desktop", not so long as these kinds of restrictions exist.
And without those restrictions there will never be a "year of linux on the desktop" because after you bolt enough proprietary stuff onto it it's not really linux anymore, and the whole point of having an open source operating system will have been entirely subverted.
Linux's greatest enemy is quite often itself.
Not really. Its greatest enemy are those willing to compromise on the ideals for convenience or marketshare.
To use a car analogy; suppose I started a car company with the goal of releasing an affordable all-electric emissions free vehicle. Sounds great. But the range is kind of low, and its a hard problem to solve.
We could install a diesel engine in it, which is inexpensive and gives us the range we want. Sure it subverts the entire idea of making an all-electric emissions free vehicle... but hey did we want to get a car to mass market this year or not?
Richard Stallman's fierce stance on freedom may be seen as a hindrance to Linux adoption by many; but he's the guy drawing a line in the sand saying "No, you can't put a diesel engine into the all-electric emission free car because."
He, and the people who draw a line in the sand are the ones that ensure Linux can exist in a meaningful way at all.
No noticeable difference from Windows XP on an SSD
There are lots of OTHER reasons to upgrade from XP.