<quote>They figure given the asteroid's speed the cost of the speeding ticket could balance the budget.</quote>
Brilliant!!!! Now the only problem is who to send the ticket to...
According to Fox, we are becoming a godless nation so... God?
The house? They're the only ones with blame here? Then how come congress refuses to pass (or even discuss) any of the budgets passed by the house?
It's BOTH side's fault, and it's not new. They've been doing it for years.
Correct me of I'm wrong but I recall budgets and other spending bills need to originate from the House. Nothing from the House means nothing for anyone else to do.
The counterpoint to this argument is the following:
Assume that you are a lawyer for a criminal who is at a trial for murder. Your client admitted it, people saw him do it, there's video of him doing it, audio, 300 witnesses, etc. In short, there's no doubt he did it. But you stand up and tell the jury that, despite all this evidence, they should not convict because there is some possibility that some unspecified evidence at some point in the future may come to light that will exonerate your client.
Correct. It's basically the John Conner defense (except not the savior in the future) and holds no merit in court.
Regardless of what your theological view is, we can't know all of the future effects of events today (some are obvious, many aren't) or know all the possible outcomes if things happened differently in days gone by. I posed a question that has no true, provable answer; only theoretical ones.
I know this is going to kill my mod points, but I'll throw it out anyway...
What if WWII wasn't the worst thing in the web of possible 20th century events? What if there was no WWII and the Cold War started pre or early-nuke with a (mostly) demilitarized Europe and America had minimal troops and arms factories setup (as is the case in almost every "somebody went back in time and killed Hitler" story)? What if the European powers continued pointless and frequent war, treating it as a sport as they did in the 19th century and before?
If you look at WWII as the almost-inevitable epilogue to WWI due to the terms put on Germany, WWI/WWII were sort of the "War to end all wars [in Europe]" (ignoring smaller, regional conflicts). No one has invaded London, Paris, Berlin (although it was divided), Brussels, or Rome in almost 70 years.
Imagine going back to the days when a tremor in the market causes a run on any the bank for cash because you might not be able to access it tomorrow to buy food and preventing all other banks from issuing loans in fear of a similar run.
Guess which one I prefer?
FIFY. I get the point you are making and I don't disagree. The annoyingly tricky part of this problem is that it's very hard to make changes that are net-positive and not zero-sum at best.
China isn't exactly unified. The cities are, but much of the country is still rural - small villages, far from central government, where the law is a distant force and the local officials can easily look the other way.
Add to this the well-known practice of bribing officials in China, the local government might already have been in the practice of looking the other way.
As bad as child labor is in the West, laws against it plus compulsory education ignore the real-life challenges such as starving while growing up or not having skilled jobs available in the area (which is a chicken / egg issue if there isn't skilled labor in the area to begin with). I do think Apple's efforts would minimize the practice and hope to see them continue seeking ethically-sourced (by Western standards) manufacturing.
Not to be too much of an ass, but shouldn't there be a nominal baseline percentage subtracted from that representing the understood cyclical unemployment of the system?
I don't see it as an ass thing. Take the GP's idea, factor in a base-line and there you go. Maybe add some industry-specific unemployment baselines (because why would we cut back on tech H1B visas if 90% of unemployment is due to construction or non-technical jobs?).
It's almost to the point where the terrorists don't need to actually pull off an attack. They just release "chatter" about an attack and watch the West scurry around.
It's pretty close to how the U.S. brought down our big enemy during the cold war, U.S.S.R. We made these big plans about Star Wars, and having satellites that would be able to shoot down any missile. Our side was mostly talk. On their side they spend enormous amounts of money trying to keep up with what they thought we were doing. Our president actually hired science fiction writers to come up with some of these fantastic ideas that sounded plausible and expensive. If the terrorists figure this out they can just up the chatter until we spend ourselves into bankruptcy and fall like Rome. Then the terrorists win.
The Russians did the same to us frequently. They would have airshows with the same planes flying over and over to hint they had more long range bombers than they did. They showed off a fake nuclear-powered long-range bomber to freak us out and waste time on our own (which we did, until Ike stepped in and said "you're wasting money on something that doesn't work").
LTE is nice, but given the pervasiveness of wifi and the fact that most people are dealing with data caps, it didn't drive sales.
It might not have been a big selling point for others, but it was for me. Even 3G seems to get a better signal than my 4 did. Also, the CPU is faster and makes using it much snappier (where my 4 would get sluggish at times).
That said, the nitpicks in the Galaxy commercials going after iPhone 5 buyers just came off as obnoxious. There are plenty of little design decisions to poke fun at on any phone (including the Galaxy).
The insurgent war changes when the big-bad military isn't a foreign invader but is the government. The insurgents don't have the same safe-haven and the government's people wouldn't get tired of the war the same way and call them home.
... a black market for guns that don't have these features should it ever come to pass.
That's the problem with overly-aggressive legislation. It will only affect the law-abiding citizens. Small things like how ARs are designed and magazine size will have wide affects but extra penalties for your kid getting his hands on your gun just isn't. Neither would nanny-state software that could also be overridden to shoot when you don't pull the trigger.
Bottom 50% of the country is exempt from federal taxes because they can't pay any - and that is the real problem.
They are exempt because either a) they don't make enough b) are elderly and already spent a lifetime paying into the system and have little to no income c) are students. They (mostly) pay social security, state taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, and real estate taxes.
Oh, and don't forget those unpatriotic soldiers in combat zones. Those moochers who want free food and ammo, I mean can't they just go to Walmart!
Also, you don't have the worries of fingerprints, bent spines, dogeared pages, and everything else that drives a book-lover like me nuts with a physical copy.
But you do have the worry of DRM. It might be better but it's not perfect.
...actually, being a Canadian, I started giving my life story until she told me to shut up. I think the only thing people can really do to defend themselves against the TSA is to waste the agency's time.
How can you waste the time of an agency setup to waste time AND money?
Test scores have a huge filter. Since at least the 70s/80s that filter has been widely studied and debated. The only thing op used occams razor for was to cut up his lines of meth.
I've heard about it filtering on wealth or region, but I've yet to hear it filter in gender.
You raise an excellent point (both the classes of problems and the costs). If you keep things busy, it's cheaper to own it yourself. It's hard to keep machine usage that high (not to say NOAA or others aren't doing that).
Slashdot Mirror
<quote>They figure given the asteroid's speed the cost of the speeding ticket could balance the budget.</quote> Brilliant!!!! Now the only problem is who to send the ticket to...
According to Fox, we are becoming a godless nation so... God?
The house? They're the only ones with blame here? Then how come congress refuses to pass (or even discuss) any of the budgets passed by the house?
It's BOTH side's fault, and it's not new. They've been doing it for years.
Correct me of I'm wrong but I recall budgets and other spending bills need to originate from the House. Nothing from the House means nothing for anyone else to do.
There's always room for another bug tracking app.
So sad yet so true.
The counterpoint to this argument is the following: Assume that you are a lawyer for a criminal who is at a trial for murder. Your client admitted it, people saw him do it, there's video of him doing it, audio, 300 witnesses, etc. In short, there's no doubt he did it. But you stand up and tell the jury that, despite all this evidence, they should not convict because there is some possibility that some unspecified evidence at some point in the future may come to light that will exonerate your client.
Correct. It's basically the John Conner defense (except not the savior in the future) and holds no merit in court.
Regardless of what your theological view is, we can't know all of the future effects of events today (some are obvious, many aren't) or know all the possible outcomes if things happened differently in days gone by. I posed a question that has no true, provable answer; only theoretical ones.
I know this is going to kill my mod points, but I'll throw it out anyway...
What if WWII wasn't the worst thing in the web of possible 20th century events? What if there was no WWII and the Cold War started pre or early-nuke with a (mostly) demilitarized Europe and America had minimal troops and arms factories setup (as is the case in almost every "somebody went back in time and killed Hitler" story)? What if the European powers continued pointless and frequent war, treating it as a sport as they did in the 19th century and before?
If you look at WWII as the almost-inevitable epilogue to WWI due to the terms put on Germany, WWI/WWII were sort of the "War to end all wars [in Europe]" (ignoring smaller, regional conflicts). No one has invaded London, Paris, Berlin (although it was divided), Brussels, or Rome in almost 70 years.
Imagine going back to the days when a tremor in the market causes a run on any the bank for cash because you might not be able to access it tomorrow to buy food and preventing all other banks from issuing loans in fear of a similar run.
Guess which one I prefer?
FIFY. I get the point you are making and I don't disagree. The annoyingly tricky part of this problem is that it's very hard to make changes that are net-positive and not zero-sum at best.
Too bad theres no such thing as FDIC insurance.
That fact alone makes me think you have no idea what youre talking about.
FDIC insures but it doesn't guarantee no interruption of service. Imagine losing access to your bank account for 7 days.
So if I pay the difference back to cancel my contract what is the reasoning behind paying $500K and going to jail for 5 years?
Same reasoning behind $250k per 99 cent song.
Also, keep in mind that it takes several years to get a patent because the office is understaffed (and many patent officers are not very technical).
China isn't exactly unified. The cities are, but much of the country is still rural - small villages, far from central government, where the law is a distant force and the local officials can easily look the other way.
Add to this the well-known practice of bribing officials in China, the local government might already have been in the practice of looking the other way.
As bad as child labor is in the West, laws against it plus compulsory education ignore the real-life challenges such as starving while growing up or not having skilled jobs available in the area (which is a chicken / egg issue if there isn't skilled labor in the area to begin with). I do think Apple's efforts would minimize the practice and hope to see them continue seeking ethically-sourced (by Western standards) manufacturing.
Not to be too much of an ass, but shouldn't there be a nominal baseline percentage subtracted from that representing the understood cyclical unemployment of the system?
I don't see it as an ass thing. Take the GP's idea, factor in a base-line and there you go. Maybe add some industry-specific unemployment baselines (because why would we cut back on tech H1B visas if 90% of unemployment is due to construction or non-technical jobs?).
TFS says 88% of faculty members who committed misconduct were men, but were ~88% of faculty members men?
It's almost to the point where the terrorists don't need to actually pull off an attack. They just release "chatter" about an attack and watch the West scurry around.
It's pretty close to how the U.S. brought down our big enemy during the cold war, U.S.S.R. We made these big plans about Star Wars, and having satellites that would be able to shoot down any missile. Our side was mostly talk. On their side they spend enormous amounts of money trying to keep up with what they thought we were doing. Our president actually hired science fiction writers to come up with some of these fantastic ideas that sounded plausible and expensive. If the terrorists figure this out they can just up the chatter until we spend ourselves into bankruptcy and fall like Rome. Then the terrorists win.
The Russians did the same to us frequently. They would have airshows with the same planes flying over and over to hint they had more long range bombers than they did. They showed off a fake nuclear-powered long-range bomber to freak us out and waste time on our own (which we did, until Ike stepped in and said "you're wasting money on something that doesn't work").
LTE is nice, but given the pervasiveness of wifi and the fact that most people are dealing with data caps, it didn't drive sales.
It might not have been a big selling point for others, but it was for me. Even 3G seems to get a better signal than my 4 did. Also, the CPU is faster and makes using it much snappier (where my 4 would get sluggish at times).
That said, the nitpicks in the Galaxy commercials going after iPhone 5 buyers just came off as obnoxious. There are plenty of little design decisions to poke fun at on any phone (including the Galaxy).
The insurgent war changes when the big-bad military isn't a foreign invader but is the government. The insurgents don't have the same safe-haven and the government's people wouldn't get tired of the war the same way and call them home.
... a black market for guns that don't have these features should it ever come to pass.
That's the problem with overly-aggressive legislation. It will only affect the law-abiding citizens. Small things like how ARs are designed and magazine size will have wide affects but extra penalties for your kid getting his hands on your gun just isn't. Neither would nanny-state software that could also be overridden to shoot when you don't pull the trigger.
I'm sure all this technology will make a huge difference for the millions of guns already in circulation in the US.
To get around "no other gun" constraint, bring two!
Bottom 50% of the country is exempt from federal taxes because they can't pay any - and that is the real problem.
They are exempt because either a) they don't make enough b) are elderly and already spent a lifetime paying into the system and have little to no income c) are students. They (mostly) pay social security, state taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, and real estate taxes.
Oh, and don't forget those unpatriotic soldiers in combat zones. Those moochers who want free food and ammo, I mean can't they just go to Walmart!
What was it that Mitt Romney said he paid? 15%? Their tax rate might be 35% but they're not paying 35%
It was 13.9% for the 2010 and 14.1% for 2011 (after not taking all of his deductions; don't worry he'll amend to get his proper lower rate).
Also, you don't have the worries of fingerprints, bent spines, dogeared pages, and everything else that drives a book-lover like me nuts with a physical copy.
But you do have the worry of DRM. It might be better but it's not perfect.
Terrorist win.
I don't know who modded this down. They changed our lives forever between TSA, NDAA and other intrusions into our constitutional rights.
If you want to start a campaign to bring down TSA, go out and make the case how it's the cornerstone of the terrorists winning.
...actually, being a Canadian, I started giving my life story until she told me to shut up. I think the only thing people can really do to defend themselves against the TSA is to waste the agency's time.
How can you waste the time of an agency setup to waste time AND money?
If it was purely a monetary subsidy, why would the trial lawyers be fighting it (since they could get paid either way)?
Test scores have a huge filter. Since at least the 70s/80s that filter has been widely studied and debated. The only thing op used occams razor for was to cut up his lines of meth.
I've heard about it filtering on wealth or region, but I've yet to hear it filter in gender.
You raise an excellent point (both the classes of problems and the costs). If you keep things busy, it's cheaper to own it yourself. It's hard to keep machine usage that high (not to say NOAA or others aren't doing that).