You seem to have disagreed with me, then agreed with me, so I'm not really sure what you're trying to get at. On one hand you've created a convoluted example about theorised maps and then you've pointed out that maritime law already stipulates that you have to get to the wreck, whether that's physically with a person, using a robot, or just using a massive winch off the side of a ship.
This is already established in maritime law, so why overcomplicate it with meaningless examples about theoretical discovery?
You've effectively proven my point and done the exact thing I was pointing out is meaningless, you've made an argument for argument's sake (and lawyers do this to keep themselves in business) not because there is any merit to the argument, because the law already sufficiently covers it but simply for the sake of argument. If you already recognise pre-existing maritime laws then what's the point of a discussion about theorised locations? What does it have to do with anything, and how does it change the issue when we already know that's not sufficient to claim salvage rights because maritime law has long recognised that there's a big difficulty difference between knowing or guessing where a wreck is and actually physically getting to it?
That sort of example strikes me as a classic case of legal overthinking of the problem though. It sounds like the case revolved around nonsense such as whether humans were present near or at the wreck, when really the only real legal question that actually needed answering was "Should first finders get first dibs on the wreck". There's no real complexity added into the mix by robots, merely legal gymnastics introduced by lawyers because they think they can try and spin their argument with a new thing - first that was "on the internet", now it's "robots". There's only a problem because people are making money from making a problem, not because there actually needs to be one from this specific change in technology.
I've seen similar questions posed around autonomous cars and what the legal liability should be, but the rules of the road are already well established, if your autonomous car illegally drives the wrong way around the roundabout and crashes into someone then you should still legally be at fault. You may wish to try and sue the car manufacturer but that's really no different to the status quo - if you're in a car and the fucking wheel falls off making you crash into someone you're still at fault currently from an insurance perspective, but if it fell off because it was defective you make a claim against the manufacturer.
So I think the only legal complications come from broken law and legal gymnastics, and if anything robots will force us to tidy up the law so that we don't argue "You can't dive this wreck, it's not safe!" but instead argue in court about what they really mean - "You can't dive this wreck, because we found it first!".
Beyond that I don't really see robots needing to add much complexity to the law, they're a tool like any other and should be treated as such in law (at least until we have strong AI and concious robots enter the fray if that ever happens). Just as if you pull the trigger on a gun whilst pointing it at someone you can't say "I just pulled the trigger, it was the gun that ignited the gunpowder and launched the bullet into him so it's the gun's fault!" anymore than you can say "I know I pressed the go forward at 100mph button when he was in front of my car, but it was the robot that actually drove into him!". Levels of culpability degrade as they always have - if you explicitly told the robot to drive at someone it's murder, if you told the robot to drive 40mph in a 30mph zone and it hit someone then it's manslaughter, if the robot hit someone all by itself without it being anything to do with you and you did everything right legally then it's a tragic fucking accident that the victims family can sue the manufacturer of the faulty tool (robot) over. I don't see why the law needs to change whether the tool is, say, a runaway non-robotic tractor, or an automated robotic one.
(Adjust my post as necessary for whatever your current local laws say for determining different levels of culpability)
If you have a decent sized satellite constellation are there really many circumstances where typically fairly high flying aircraft like airliners and drones would lose line of sight for any kind of extended period?
Though I agree this could presumably be a weak point for military applications, which are probably likely to be a more prominent use for this tech, despite the summary trying to side step that by mentioning only civilians uses.
"Are people under the impression that the Su-37 can't get a 'look-thru' helmet cueing system? That, unlike fundamental airframe design, software capabilities cannot rapidly advance post construction of the aircraft?"
I don't think that's really the point of the F-35, it's not really it's job, it's a strike fighter, not an air superiority fighter. Comparisons to the Su-37 are the F-22 (which it would lose against, hard), and the Eurofighter, Gripen, and Rafale which could all also easily stand up to it.
The point of the F-35 is to get into airspace that isn't open because of SAM sites, and maybe enemy aircraft. It doesn't need to be a great dogfighter because that's not it's job, if there's a risk of dogfighting happening it'll be sent in with F-22s or similar.
The F-35 is intended to get in and destroy SAMs and enemy aircraft in BVR engagements before it's even detected and it does that incredibly well, possibly better than any other aircraft in existence right now. It's meant to clear a path, either by itself, or if up against other 5th gen fighters like the PAK-FA with backup from the likes of the F-22.
The Su-37 can't do this, it stands out like a sore thumb on radar and is fodder to advanced SAMs and 5th gen Western fighters. The attrition rate of using Su-37s against states with advanced air defence networks would be massively higher than using F-35s and/or F-22s.
Given the PAK-FA programme looks like it's pretty much dead - Russia cut it's order to a mere 12 aircraft, and that's before the now not so recent oil price drop that is making it bleed money faster than ever, and it's been peppered with problems so serious that the F-35 programme looks like a blistering success in comparison - it doesn't look like the F-35 will have too many threats in the near and mid distant future, with China being the only source of such a threat. So sure, a far cheaper 4th gen fighter might out dog-fight it, but that fighter has to find it and not get shot down by it in a BVR engagement which the F-35 will basically always win first - the F-35 is only likely to be dogfighting if it encounters another 5th gen fighter, at which point the question is, what other 5th gen fighters can out dogfight it? Right now the only aircraft that exists that can is the F-22, which is why the US makes that a not for export technology.
Facebook doesn't enforce it's real name policy particularly well though, it's mostly only used to beat spam accounts and so forth over the head. A number of my friends on Facebook have never used anything other than blatantly false aliases (blatant because they couldn't possibly be people's real names, or are obviously the names of well fictional characters).
In contrast, Google was trying to get people to prove their names by sending in real ID from day one no matter how harmless you were and if there's one thing people aren't going to do, it's send Google even more sensitive personal data like passport and driving license details.
If that new social network is one that respect anonymity and freedom from censorship like 4chan then is that a bad thing? Those things alone would already make it a better social network than just about every other one out there.
Part the reason Google+ failed so early on was because Google insisted hard on a real name policy and that got them a bad reputation for their social network from day 1. If they now have someone looking at social who actually understands the real internet than the pretend internet then it may well work out.
"If you want to say we should "improve" things, then Ok, lets try to do that. Arguing seriously that governments and societies can be "optimized" is maniacal"
What exactly do you think optimisation in such a condition is if not improvement towards a better state? You seem to have an incredibly odd definition of optimisation because you then go on to suggest optimisation is the exact opposite, of, well, optimisation by suggesting optimisation would mean heading towards failed state status like North Korea:
"Arguing seriously that governments and societies can be "optimized" is maniacal -- something a North Korean leader might say. What do you propose to do to people who refuse to act "optimally", in service to your "optimal" society?""
The type of society you're referring too has been proven time and time again to be about as far from optimal as possible. I'd like to think you'd therefore see why your whole argument is full of shit, but I wont count on it.
You basically just godwinned the argument, except substituting the Nazis for North Korea. Try growing up a bit before joining discussions in future, you wont learn anything if you're perpetually stuck in full on retard mode when you debate.
"The Ukrainian Armed Forces had the only fighters in the country at that time. (They may all have rusted to bits by now, or fallen to pieces for lack of maintenance). So if a fighter did the deed, it could only have been on the orders of the Kiev junta."
Not that using words like "Kiev junta" don't give the fact away that you're a Putin apologist, but might I note that the plane was hit from a missile at the front when it's position was extremely close to the Russian border meaning any aircraft in that position to fire at the airliner from that position would have had to cross into Russia proper to get into the correct firing position?
This would beg the question as to: a) Why Russia didn't intercept or shoot down the intruding aircraft.
b) Why it has no radar or photograph evidence of this incursion.
c) What type of Ukrainian aircraft could possibly both carry and launch a BUK missile given that report evidence shows that this is what the missile was and that Ukraine has no air-launch platform for this missile type and also remain completely undetected by the Russian military (Hint: No such aircraft exists).
"Here is some insight into the feelings of the victims' relatives: http://www.rt.com/news/310195-..."...on Russia's very own state propagandist's website. That doesn't paint a very strong picture for your argument. It's equivalent to posting a link to Fox News as evidence that George Bush never did anything wrong ever.
Stop apologising for Putin, you're making a fool of yourself in trying to defend the indefensible and acting as someone who thinks it's okay for a nation state to kill hundreds of civilians (it's not, no matter who does it - just because America has fucked up a lot too doesn't mean Russia gets a free pass on murder).
Which is really all a load of nonsense because the fact that countries exist with greater freedom, and greater quality of political debate whilst maintaining greater successes in other areas such as education, personal happiness, health as is the case in most of the Scandinavian nations then we have the data points we need to prove that it's possible to have better political systems without going full on Hitler and godwinning the discussion as you seem to believe.
Your viewpoint is effectively full on conservativism - don't change anything ever, just in case it's not quite as good because we couldn't possibly change it back or find an alternative that is better if we change something, which is great, except we didn't get where we are by not changing anything ever, to suggest humanity needs to stop now is somewhat laughable. Were anything you said remotely true we'd all still be living in caves fighting sabre tooth tigers, you know, just in case changing anything makes us all Nazis.
Right, but the mere existence of something doesn't make it automatically optimal, and that's really the point I'm getting at - is the constitution really optimal if it's this kind of thing you treat as absolute except not actually?
You say it's not meaningless but why isn't it meaningless if other countries do just as well without having it? It's not as if America is the pinnacle of freedom and democracy, many countries do a much better job on that front. This is really my question, it's not clear what it achieves when everyone accepts that it has to be routinely ignored all the time anyway and arguments about it seem to detract from the actual issue at hand - when someone is on the losing side of an argument, rather than trying to argue their case on merit they seem to declare their arbitrary interpretation of the constitution is king without explanation. It effectively lowers the quality of political discourse in American politics quite drastically - it switches between a thing to ignore when it suits, and a thing to beat people with when you don't have a reasoned political counter-argument but want to have your way anyway.
Of course, if it was actually a free and fair referendum then we'd know the truth from international observers, except, oh wait, they were kept away at gunpoint too.
Did you? The link you posted is dated December 2015, the hospital bombings happened only a week or two ago. Whether you're purposefully trying to conflate two reports I've no idea. Here's the actual MSF report:
The other hospitals hit weren't MSF hospitals but were independent (see just about every news source on the planet).
"So they don't even have evidence it was Russia, since they didn't see or hear the plane. Does Russia even have stealth bombers?"
Stealth isn't invisibility, it doesn't hide aircraft from visual view, so what has stealth got to do with anything? Sophisticated in this context simply means they were bombing from high altitude such as not to be visually identifiable. This is why we know it was Russian aircraft because Syria doesn't have anything anymore to hit from that height, and because air flight records show now US/coalition aircraft in the area at that time (in fact, the US/coalition folk don't even operate over that city anyway because they're not bombing friendly rebels, nor are they bombing Assad's forces - the US et. al. operate to the East against ISIS - they have no business there and if they were there the Russians would have radar record of it, which they don't).
Still, I doubt for a second you're the type of person judging by your comments that would absolve the US in the same way - "Well they didn't actually see that it was predator drones that blew up the wedding party because they fired from too high altitude so the US must be innocent!".
So I'd say nice try at deflection, but it really wasn't, you basically failed on all counts from using the wrong article to conflating things like stealth with invisibility. F for fail, must try harder next time, I hope Putin doesn't take your family's food away for this.
Isn't that completely contradictory? In your first paragraph you seem to be suggesting laws can't use interpretation to restrict something like the constitution, and in your second paragraph you seem to be saying that that's effectively exactly what they do do. Surely it's rather binary, either the constitution is taken exactly as face value one way or the other - either it allows any arms, or it allows an arbitrarily restricted definition of arms, and if it's the latter (which it appears to be) then that restriction is merely decided by the people in power at a particular time, typically influenced by the current thinking of the electorate.
Given that, I don't see how the constitution is different to having no constitution but merely having politically or judicially determined laws.
Effectively I'm trying to understand what the constitution actually even adds to society if everyone agrees that it needs to be interpreted arbitrarily based on the norms of the time rather than as a timeless absolute.
The problem is though that humanity is on a constant path of miniaturisation, arms from 1776 held by an infantryman were far less deadly than arms now carried by an infantryman. A handheld rapid fire grenade launcher now like an RG-6 is more deadly than a massive single ship or fort mounted cannon was back in 1776. Am I correct in assuming that your definition also hence includes things like shoulder launched missiles such as Stingers?
So if the definition drops to those weapons carryable by infantry, then what happens as this path continues? How would technology such as an exo-suit fit in? Does the weapon have to be carryable under the person's own strength or does augmentation tech count?
I'll admit I don't really understand the logic of a piece of law like the constitution being treated as a never changing document because the world does change, but my intrigue was rather how people who do believe in the constitution cater to that change. To me it was rather telling that everyone that has answered has effectively argued that yes WMDs should be excluded from that right to bear arms, but that each person's argument is slightly different - it suggests that the constitution is ultimately already in a state of flux because barely anyone is willing to accept it's statements as absolutes (because that inherently means allowing private WMD stockpiles) but that because they wont accept absolutes they have to instead come up with their own arbitrary interpretation, at which point it's a question of whose interpretation is correct? That typically sounds like it's the people in government or manning the courts, but those people change, and so the defined interpretation of the constitution will change meaning the constitution isn't the static unchanging document it's professed to be. I see many arguments about politicians et. al. going against the constitution, but unless the constitution is treated as an absolute (which no one seems willing to do, again, because of what that implies - even in areas like free speech I understand the US has at least some restrictions - i.e. the classic shouting fire in a crowded theatre) then isn't that ultimately inevitable? Aren't politicians merely going against the constitution because almost everyone agrees that it's not practical to treat it as an absolute? Isn't the discussion therefore simply about how much the constitution should be ignored as an absolute with people commonly declaring their own personal interpretation of it as the correct interpretation when anything other than an absolute interpretation is ultimately going to be subjective?
Like I say I'm genuinely intrigued to better understand the thinking and discussions around the constitution as it's so different to what we have here - here if the law needs to change we just have a discussion about changing it and that's the end of it - there's no getting caught up in a pissing match about whose interpretation of a constitution is correct when neither sides view is objectively any more valid.
"There's no explicitly enumerated Constitutional right to drive a car. The right to bear arms is enumerated clearly."
I'm not an American so I'll have to profess my ignorance of the details of your constitution, but I'm intrigued, does the constitution state the right to bear all or any arms? if it doesn't then the constitution could legally satisfied by defining a pillow as the only type of arms legally allowed - i.e. you have the right to bear arms, just not necessarily very good ones. If it does then doesn't that mean American citizens (including the crazies and terrorists) can and should be given access to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as well?
Or does it explicitly define which arms are allowed?
"Once Saudi Arabia will have driven North America's tar sand business to bankrupt, they will rise oil prices again, and..."...and North America's tar sand business will become financially viable again and the infrastructure to exploit it such as roads, and pipelines, will already be in place meaning it'll be cheap to start back up!
Really, the only way out of this is economic diversification. Until exploitable oil available decreases prices are never going to go back up because to keep those North American tar pits closed the price can only really go up a little bit - it's going to have to stabilise at $50 - $60 for the foreseeable future to keep those other sources of oil suppressed and that can only last until Russia and Saudi's own oil reserves don't start to drain and end up becoming ever more expensive to exploit meaning they're not able to produce any cheaper than North American tar sands and fracking.
...at gunpoint, in a non-transparent election that Putin admits the outcome of was decided before it even began.
Or in other words, no they didn't.
You seem to be confusing a pretend vote with an actual referendum. Here's some actual polling from just before Putin ran his pretend poll and held everyone in Crimea at gunpoint that shows that most people didn't actually want to be part of Russia:
Consider that basically all those things are American. If you're not American where your media is infatuated with this Kardashian crap whatever the flying fuck a Kardashian actually is or where your awards ceremonies are meaningless because we have our own artists and our own awards ceremonies then you've really no idea to know much about this guy. Consider that those of us outside the US really don't give an utter toss about what award has been handed to some artist that we've never heard of or who they've married.
I've heard of him from seeing his name on a few news articles but I couldn't tell you why he's famous, why he's apparently the centre of attention in the US or why anyone should care. I suspect outside of America it's pretty trivial to have not heard of this guy - again, it's only because I almost religiously read every news headline on a daily basis ever that I have heard of him even. I've no idea what songs he's done or anything else he's ever done or anything like that.
How else do you think Obama managed to get Cuba to come in from the cold and start warming ties with the US? They finally relented and offered him anything he wanted if they'd just stop torturing their island after he blasted the Frozen song at them off the coast for the 3087th time whilst they were forced to watch a hundred Mickey Mouses dance around on the deck every time they tried to simply enjoy their beautiful beaches.
The whole country since the recession has been in cost cutting mode, and the 60+ generation is basically that which has been protected from everything in every way both in government and elsewhere.
BBC3 has been cut because the BBC has decided to cater almost in it's entirety to the 60+ demographic, and this is highlighted by the fact that the average age of a BBC viewer has crept up from just under 50 to 59 since the recession started and cuts began.
But it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy for them, they've cut everything for the younger demographics, and so the younger demographics have stopped watching, and in turn they justify further cuts by pretending the younger demographic just isn't interested.
The net result is that you've got a majority of license fee payers no longer being catered to by the license fee. The BBC still churns out the odd age-neutral show that younger viewers can enjoy, but honestly, every time I'm bored and I stick the TV on to see if there's anything worth watching it's either a boring medical drama, a boring poorly acted costume drama, a shit talk show, or Clare Balding doing something entirely uninteresting.
And it pains me because I've always loved the BBC, but I'm genuinely having a hard time justifying continuing with the TV license. It's £120 or whatever it is now each year that I simply no longer need to spend, that no longer serves me, but the government is talking about legislating so I need the TV license even if I never watch broadcast TV ever again but watch things like Netflix, and Amazon Instant Video which I already pay for separately. The license fee is turning into an actual tax on watching video all because the BBC has failed to keep earning it by doing it's fucking job and catering to a broad audience and so has been losing fee payers like no tomorrow.
Isn't that the case anyway? 99% of games that come out nowadays seem to be based on things like Unreal, Unity, or the big publishers own in house engines like Frostbite.
The amount of people actually doing low level stuff seems to have diminished rapidly over the last decade as engines have become more flexible and it's really just turned into a battle over who has the best toolset and content pipeline now.
So even the big engineering teams don't seem to be expending much effort into engine development - publishers like Ubisoft and EA seem to have many tens of development teams and yet only seem to be using a few different engines across all those teams - certainly the days of every team building their game up from scratch engine and all are long long gone.
"Wishful thinking, and straight out of scifi unfortunately."
That's why I advocate arming airliners with Brimstone missiles instead set to laser guidance mode that will follow the laser to target. They're even designed to minimise collateral damage, and if the pointer is turned off whilst in flight they're also designed to fly off harmlessly to a safe area and detonate with no one around.
(Yeah, I'm also joking for all those humour impaired who apparently also thought the GP was serious)
More to the point, I'm wondering if there's any actual science here. A Torygraph news article referencing a PBS documentary doesn't exactly scream "science" to me. We're basically hearing it from a tertiary source.
So does anyone have a link to the actual research and the primary source behind this?
You're assuming I'm not aware of this, and yet you've explained yourself why you'll always struggle to get rid of them in practice - it's politically untenable to tell people you're drastically raising their taxes, even if you do explain to them that stuff they buy will become cheaper.
I fully agree that in an ideal world we'd follow the path you suggest, and similarly I've always argued that true costs should be pursued in other ways. For example, I've long been an advocate of the fact that health service costs for health issues that stem from pollution (i.e. asthma) should be levied against carbon emitting companies, such that the price of coal would reflect it's true cost, rather than have it's true costs hidden by subsidy to the tax payer. This would force energy bills up to reflect the true cost of coal and would bring down the healthcare bill drastically reducing the need for high taxes whilst also encouraging companies to move to clean energy because when the real cost of coal is realised it's astoundingly expensive compared to nuclear etc.
But as nice as doing this would be, and forcing people to understand the real cost and value of things allowing the market to work in places it doesn't currently because true costs are hidden, it's just never going to happen. The idealist in me comes second to the realist - I don't believe there's much value in arguing that we're stupid for not basing our lives around that which is simply not practical and never going to happen in the near term. It's a great philosophical discussion to have, and great as a very long term goal (decades away), but it really doesn't help us right now in the reality we live in.
The thing that's new about the story was the grilling Google's EMEA boss got in front of a parliamentary select committee yesterday and what came out of that.
Whatever you think about large corps and taxes, that guy got absolutely slaughtered and it's incredible Google sent anyone that inept to represent themselves as it's done Google more harm than good on the tax front.
The MPs basically asked him why Google has only paid 3% tax for the period when the rate is 20%, to which he replied that they do pay the 20% owed by law. They ask him on what figure the 20% was paid given that the tax paid only amounts to 3% of declared profit and he simply couldn't answer. This means he's either incredibly inept in that he was wholly unprepared to answer an obvious question on the topic at hand, or Google is afraid to admit how it comes to it's profit figure because it's still hiding something that may get it in bother - if it was legal and in good standing, why hide your profit figure that you're paying tax on?
He was also asked if he felt the £130 million was fair, to which the Google guy replied yes, and then the MP followed up with the question "If it's fair, why didn't you pay it in the first place?", for which he had no answer. He was later asked a similar question as to whether he agreed the £130 million was legally owed, to which he answered yes.
He claimed there's no legal mechanism to pay more tax in the UK and therefore he can't, to which it was pointed out that that's simply false.
The problem is, even if you're of the belief that it's okay for companies like Google to only pay what is legally required, rather than what is intended, Google's exec here twice said the £130 million bill was both acceptable and legally owed, which inherently means that he has now admitted that Google didn't simply carry out tax avoidance, but carried out outright tax evasion.
Which is why in my opinion the whole large corporation tax debacle isn't as clear as many have argued - the often parroted large corporation line of "We pay what we legally have to" is slowly unraveling, and it's becoming increasingly clear that large corps haven't even been paying what they legally have to, let alone what the law intended (even if badly). The fact is that in many jurisdictions where this is an issue it's simply not clear that these companies are merely only engaging in legal avoidance rather than illegal evasion whatever the companies themselves may now claim. At least one corporation, Google, has now admitted that it carried out tax evasion by accepting that it did in fact legally owe these £130 million in taxes but previously chose not to pay them.
The question now really is what happens with all the other big players. In many ways Google may have gotten off easy by going first, because there's more pressure than ever for government to more tightly scrutinise these deals and to charge penalty costs (which Google was let off from). Google got off lightly for committing tax evasion in the UK, but it's not clear due to the backlash from that whether all the others will get off so lightly. We already know there will at least be some others given that Amazon and Starbucks' tax deal with Luxembourg has already previously been found to have been illegal.
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You seem to have disagreed with me, then agreed with me, so I'm not really sure what you're trying to get at. On one hand you've created a convoluted example about theorised maps and then you've pointed out that maritime law already stipulates that you have to get to the wreck, whether that's physically with a person, using a robot, or just using a massive winch off the side of a ship.
This is already established in maritime law, so why overcomplicate it with meaningless examples about theoretical discovery?
You've effectively proven my point and done the exact thing I was pointing out is meaningless, you've made an argument for argument's sake (and lawyers do this to keep themselves in business) not because there is any merit to the argument, because the law already sufficiently covers it but simply for the sake of argument. If you already recognise pre-existing maritime laws then what's the point of a discussion about theorised locations? What does it have to do with anything, and how does it change the issue when we already know that's not sufficient to claim salvage rights because maritime law has long recognised that there's a big difficulty difference between knowing or guessing where a wreck is and actually physically getting to it?
That sort of example strikes me as a classic case of legal overthinking of the problem though. It sounds like the case revolved around nonsense such as whether humans were present near or at the wreck, when really the only real legal question that actually needed answering was "Should first finders get first dibs on the wreck". There's no real complexity added into the mix by robots, merely legal gymnastics introduced by lawyers because they think they can try and spin their argument with a new thing - first that was "on the internet", now it's "robots". There's only a problem because people are making money from making a problem, not because there actually needs to be one from this specific change in technology.
I've seen similar questions posed around autonomous cars and what the legal liability should be, but the rules of the road are already well established, if your autonomous car illegally drives the wrong way around the roundabout and crashes into someone then you should still legally be at fault. You may wish to try and sue the car manufacturer but that's really no different to the status quo - if you're in a car and the fucking wheel falls off making you crash into someone you're still at fault currently from an insurance perspective, but if it fell off because it was defective you make a claim against the manufacturer.
So I think the only legal complications come from broken law and legal gymnastics, and if anything robots will force us to tidy up the law so that we don't argue "You can't dive this wreck, it's not safe!" but instead argue in court about what they really mean - "You can't dive this wreck, because we found it first!".
Beyond that I don't really see robots needing to add much complexity to the law, they're a tool like any other and should be treated as such in law (at least until we have strong AI and concious robots enter the fray if that ever happens). Just as if you pull the trigger on a gun whilst pointing it at someone you can't say "I just pulled the trigger, it was the gun that ignited the gunpowder and launched the bullet into him so it's the gun's fault!" anymore than you can say "I know I pressed the go forward at 100mph button when he was in front of my car, but it was the robot that actually drove into him!". Levels of culpability degrade as they always have - if you explicitly told the robot to drive at someone it's murder, if you told the robot to drive 40mph in a 30mph zone and it hit someone then it's manslaughter, if the robot hit someone all by itself without it being anything to do with you and you did everything right legally then it's a tragic fucking accident that the victims family can sue the manufacturer of the faulty tool (robot) over. I don't see why the law needs to change whether the tool is, say, a runaway non-robotic tractor, or an automated robotic one.
(Adjust my post as necessary for whatever your current local laws say for determining different levels of culpability)
If you have a decent sized satellite constellation are there really many circumstances where typically fairly high flying aircraft like airliners and drones would lose line of sight for any kind of extended period?
Though I agree this could presumably be a weak point for military applications, which are probably likely to be a more prominent use for this tech, despite the summary trying to side step that by mentioning only civilians uses.
"Are people under the impression that the Su-37 can't get a 'look-thru' helmet cueing system? That, unlike fundamental airframe design, software capabilities cannot rapidly advance post construction of the aircraft?"
I don't think that's really the point of the F-35, it's not really it's job, it's a strike fighter, not an air superiority fighter. Comparisons to the Su-37 are the F-22 (which it would lose against, hard), and the Eurofighter, Gripen, and Rafale which could all also easily stand up to it.
The point of the F-35 is to get into airspace that isn't open because of SAM sites, and maybe enemy aircraft. It doesn't need to be a great dogfighter because that's not it's job, if there's a risk of dogfighting happening it'll be sent in with F-22s or similar.
The F-35 is intended to get in and destroy SAMs and enemy aircraft in BVR engagements before it's even detected and it does that incredibly well, possibly better than any other aircraft in existence right now. It's meant to clear a path, either by itself, or if up against other 5th gen fighters like the PAK-FA with backup from the likes of the F-22.
The Su-37 can't do this, it stands out like a sore thumb on radar and is fodder to advanced SAMs and 5th gen Western fighters. The attrition rate of using Su-37s against states with advanced air defence networks would be massively higher than using F-35s and/or F-22s.
Given the PAK-FA programme looks like it's pretty much dead - Russia cut it's order to a mere 12 aircraft, and that's before the now not so recent oil price drop that is making it bleed money faster than ever, and it's been peppered with problems so serious that the F-35 programme looks like a blistering success in comparison - it doesn't look like the F-35 will have too many threats in the near and mid distant future, with China being the only source of such a threat. So sure, a far cheaper 4th gen fighter might out dog-fight it, but that fighter has to find it and not get shot down by it in a BVR engagement which the F-35 will basically always win first - the F-35 is only likely to be dogfighting if it encounters another 5th gen fighter, at which point the question is, what other 5th gen fighters can out dogfight it? Right now the only aircraft that exists that can is the F-22, which is why the US makes that a not for export technology.
Facebook doesn't enforce it's real name policy particularly well though, it's mostly only used to beat spam accounts and so forth over the head. A number of my friends on Facebook have never used anything other than blatantly false aliases (blatant because they couldn't possibly be people's real names, or are obviously the names of well fictional characters).
In contrast, Google was trying to get people to prove their names by sending in real ID from day one no matter how harmless you were and if there's one thing people aren't going to do, it's send Google even more sensitive personal data like passport and driving license details.
If that new social network is one that respect anonymity and freedom from censorship like 4chan then is that a bad thing? Those things alone would already make it a better social network than just about every other one out there.
Part the reason Google+ failed so early on was because Google insisted hard on a real name policy and that got them a bad reputation for their social network from day 1. If they now have someone looking at social who actually understands the real internet than the pretend internet then it may well work out.
"If you want to say we should "improve" things, then Ok, lets try to do that. Arguing seriously that governments and societies can be "optimized" is maniacal"
What exactly do you think optimisation in such a condition is if not improvement towards a better state? You seem to have an incredibly odd definition of optimisation because you then go on to suggest optimisation is the exact opposite, of, well, optimisation by suggesting optimisation would mean heading towards failed state status like North Korea:
"Arguing seriously that governments and societies can be "optimized" is maniacal -- something a North Korean leader might say. What do you propose to do to people who refuse to act "optimally", in service to your "optimal" society?""
The type of society you're referring too has been proven time and time again to be about as far from optimal as possible. I'd like to think you'd therefore see why your whole argument is full of shit, but I wont count on it.
You basically just godwinned the argument, except substituting the Nazis for North Korea. Try growing up a bit before joining discussions in future, you wont learn anything if you're perpetually stuck in full on retard mode when you debate.
"The Ukrainian Armed Forces had the only fighters in the country at that time. (They may all have rusted to bits by now, or fallen to pieces for lack of maintenance). So if a fighter did the deed, it could only have been on the orders of the Kiev junta."
Not that using words like "Kiev junta" don't give the fact away that you're a Putin apologist, but might I note that the plane was hit from a missile at the front when it's position was extremely close to the Russian border meaning any aircraft in that position to fire at the airliner from that position would have had to cross into Russia proper to get into the correct firing position?
This would beg the question as to:
a) Why Russia didn't intercept or shoot down the intruding aircraft.
b) Why it has no radar or photograph evidence of this incursion.
c) What type of Ukrainian aircraft could possibly both carry and launch a BUK missile given that report evidence shows that this is what the missile was and that Ukraine has no air-launch platform for this missile type and also remain completely undetected by the Russian military (Hint: No such aircraft exists).
"Here is some insight into the feelings of the victims' relatives: http://www.rt.com/news/310195-..." ...on Russia's very own state propagandist's website. That doesn't paint a very strong picture for your argument. It's equivalent to posting a link to Fox News as evidence that George Bush never did anything wrong ever.
Stop apologising for Putin, you're making a fool of yourself in trying to defend the indefensible and acting as someone who thinks it's okay for a nation state to kill hundreds of civilians (it's not, no matter who does it - just because America has fucked up a lot too doesn't mean Russia gets a free pass on murder).
Which is really all a load of nonsense because the fact that countries exist with greater freedom, and greater quality of political debate whilst maintaining greater successes in other areas such as education, personal happiness, health as is the case in most of the Scandinavian nations then we have the data points we need to prove that it's possible to have better political systems without going full on Hitler and godwinning the discussion as you seem to believe.
Your viewpoint is effectively full on conservativism - don't change anything ever, just in case it's not quite as good because we couldn't possibly change it back or find an alternative that is better if we change something, which is great, except we didn't get where we are by not changing anything ever, to suggest humanity needs to stop now is somewhat laughable. Were anything you said remotely true we'd all still be living in caves fighting sabre tooth tigers, you know, just in case changing anything makes us all Nazis.
"We have the process we have."
Right, but the mere existence of something doesn't make it automatically optimal, and that's really the point I'm getting at - is the constitution really optimal if it's this kind of thing you treat as absolute except not actually?
You say it's not meaningless but why isn't it meaningless if other countries do just as well without having it? It's not as if America is the pinnacle of freedom and democracy, many countries do a much better job on that front. This is really my question, it's not clear what it achieves when everyone accepts that it has to be routinely ignored all the time anyway and arguments about it seem to detract from the actual issue at hand - when someone is on the losing side of an argument, rather than trying to argue their case on merit they seem to declare their arbitrary interpretation of the constitution is king without explanation. It effectively lowers the quality of political discourse in American politics quite drastically - it switches between a thing to ignore when it suits, and a thing to beat people with when you don't have a reasoned political counter-argument but want to have your way anyway.
Er, I think you need to get a clue if you think otherwise. The polling stations were surrounded by armed Russian troops.
Or are you the sort of retard that things this guy is wearing a clown suit and that thing he's holding is just a pea shooter?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0...
Of course, if it was actually a free and fair referendum then we'd know the truth from international observers, except, oh wait, they were kept away at gunpoint too.
"So then I went to the source: https://www.amnesty.org/en/lat..."
Did you? The link you posted is dated December 2015, the hospital bombings happened only a week or two ago. Whether you're purposefully trying to conflate two reports I've no idea. Here's the actual MSF report:
http://www.msf.org.uk/country-...
The other hospitals hit weren't MSF hospitals but were independent (see just about every news source on the planet).
"So they don't even have evidence it was Russia, since they didn't see or hear the plane. Does Russia even have stealth bombers?"
Stealth isn't invisibility, it doesn't hide aircraft from visual view, so what has stealth got to do with anything? Sophisticated in this context simply means they were bombing from high altitude such as not to be visually identifiable. This is why we know it was Russian aircraft because Syria doesn't have anything anymore to hit from that height, and because air flight records show now US/coalition aircraft in the area at that time (in fact, the US/coalition folk don't even operate over that city anyway because they're not bombing friendly rebels, nor are they bombing Assad's forces - the US et. al. operate to the East against ISIS - they have no business there and if they were there the Russians would have radar record of it, which they don't).
Still, I doubt for a second you're the type of person judging by your comments that would absolve the US in the same way - "Well they didn't actually see that it was predator drones that blew up the wedding party because they fired from too high altitude so the US must be innocent!".
So I'd say nice try at deflection, but it really wasn't, you basically failed on all counts from using the wrong article to conflating things like stealth with invisibility. F for fail, must try harder next time, I hope Putin doesn't take your family's food away for this.
Isn't that completely contradictory? In your first paragraph you seem to be suggesting laws can't use interpretation to restrict something like the constitution, and in your second paragraph you seem to be saying that that's effectively exactly what they do do. Surely it's rather binary, either the constitution is taken exactly as face value one way or the other - either it allows any arms, or it allows an arbitrarily restricted definition of arms, and if it's the latter (which it appears to be) then that restriction is merely decided by the people in power at a particular time, typically influenced by the current thinking of the electorate.
Given that, I don't see how the constitution is different to having no constitution but merely having politically or judicially determined laws.
Effectively I'm trying to understand what the constitution actually even adds to society if everyone agrees that it needs to be interpreted arbitrarily based on the norms of the time rather than as a timeless absolute.
The problem is though that humanity is on a constant path of miniaturisation, arms from 1776 held by an infantryman were far less deadly than arms now carried by an infantryman. A handheld rapid fire grenade launcher now like an RG-6 is more deadly than a massive single ship or fort mounted cannon was back in 1776. Am I correct in assuming that your definition also hence includes things like shoulder launched missiles such as Stingers?
So if the definition drops to those weapons carryable by infantry, then what happens as this path continues? How would technology such as an exo-suit fit in? Does the weapon have to be carryable under the person's own strength or does augmentation tech count?
I'll admit I don't really understand the logic of a piece of law like the constitution being treated as a never changing document because the world does change, but my intrigue was rather how people who do believe in the constitution cater to that change. To me it was rather telling that everyone that has answered has effectively argued that yes WMDs should be excluded from that right to bear arms, but that each person's argument is slightly different - it suggests that the constitution is ultimately already in a state of flux because barely anyone is willing to accept it's statements as absolutes (because that inherently means allowing private WMD stockpiles) but that because they wont accept absolutes they have to instead come up with their own arbitrary interpretation, at which point it's a question of whose interpretation is correct? That typically sounds like it's the people in government or manning the courts, but those people change, and so the defined interpretation of the constitution will change meaning the constitution isn't the static unchanging document it's professed to be. I see many arguments about politicians et. al. going against the constitution, but unless the constitution is treated as an absolute (which no one seems willing to do, again, because of what that implies - even in areas like free speech I understand the US has at least some restrictions - i.e. the classic shouting fire in a crowded theatre) then isn't that ultimately inevitable? Aren't politicians merely going against the constitution because almost everyone agrees that it's not practical to treat it as an absolute? Isn't the discussion therefore simply about how much the constitution should be ignored as an absolute with people commonly declaring their own personal interpretation of it as the correct interpretation when anything other than an absolute interpretation is ultimately going to be subjective?
Like I say I'm genuinely intrigued to better understand the thinking and discussions around the constitution as it's so different to what we have here - here if the law needs to change we just have a discussion about changing it and that's the end of it - there's no getting caught up in a pissing match about whose interpretation of a constitution is correct when neither sides view is objectively any more valid.
"There's no explicitly enumerated Constitutional right to drive a car. The right to bear arms is enumerated clearly."
I'm not an American so I'll have to profess my ignorance of the details of your constitution, but I'm intrigued, does the constitution state the right to bear all or any arms? if it doesn't then the constitution could legally satisfied by defining a pillow as the only type of arms legally allowed - i.e. you have the right to bear arms, just not necessarily very good ones. If it does then doesn't that mean American citizens (including the crazies and terrorists) can and should be given access to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as well?
Or does it explicitly define which arms are allowed?
"Once Saudi Arabia will have driven North America's tar sand business to bankrupt, they will rise oil prices again, and..." ...and North America's tar sand business will become financially viable again and the infrastructure to exploit it such as roads, and pipelines, will already be in place meaning it'll be cheap to start back up!
Really, the only way out of this is economic diversification. Until exploitable oil available decreases prices are never going to go back up because to keep those North American tar pits closed the price can only really go up a little bit - it's going to have to stabilise at $50 - $60 for the foreseeable future to keep those other sources of oil suppressed and that can only last until Russia and Saudi's own oil reserves don't start to drain and end up becoming ever more expensive to exploit meaning they're not able to produce any cheaper than North American tar sands and fracking.
...at gunpoint, in a non-transparent election that Putin admits the outcome of was decided before it even began.
Or in other words, no they didn't.
You seem to be confusing a pretend vote with an actual referendum. Here's some actual polling from just before Putin ran his pretend poll and held everyone in Crimea at gunpoint that shows that most people didn't actually want to be part of Russia:
http://www.cityam.com/blog/139...
Consider that basically all those things are American. If you're not American where your media is infatuated with this Kardashian crap whatever the flying fuck a Kardashian actually is or where your awards ceremonies are meaningless because we have our own artists and our own awards ceremonies then you've really no idea to know much about this guy. Consider that those of us outside the US really don't give an utter toss about what award has been handed to some artist that we've never heard of or who they've married.
I've heard of him from seeing his name on a few news articles but I couldn't tell you why he's famous, why he's apparently the centre of attention in the US or why anyone should care. I suspect outside of America it's pretty trivial to have not heard of this guy - again, it's only because I almost religiously read every news headline on a daily basis ever that I have heard of him even. I've no idea what songs he's done or anything else he's ever done or anything like that.
How else do you think Obama managed to get Cuba to come in from the cold and start warming ties with the US? They finally relented and offered him anything he wanted if they'd just stop torturing their island after he blasted the Frozen song at them off the coast for the 3087th time whilst they were forced to watch a hundred Mickey Mouses dance around on the deck every time they tried to simply enjoy their beautiful beaches.
The whole country since the recession has been in cost cutting mode, and the 60+ generation is basically that which has been protected from everything in every way both in government and elsewhere.
BBC3 has been cut because the BBC has decided to cater almost in it's entirety to the 60+ demographic, and this is highlighted by the fact that the average age of a BBC viewer has crept up from just under 50 to 59 since the recession started and cuts began.
But it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy for them, they've cut everything for the younger demographics, and so the younger demographics have stopped watching, and in turn they justify further cuts by pretending the younger demographic just isn't interested.
The net result is that you've got a majority of license fee payers no longer being catered to by the license fee. The BBC still churns out the odd age-neutral show that younger viewers can enjoy, but honestly, every time I'm bored and I stick the TV on to see if there's anything worth watching it's either a boring medical drama, a boring poorly acted costume drama, a shit talk show, or Clare Balding doing something entirely uninteresting.
And it pains me because I've always loved the BBC, but I'm genuinely having a hard time justifying continuing with the TV license. It's £120 or whatever it is now each year that I simply no longer need to spend, that no longer serves me, but the government is talking about legislating so I need the TV license even if I never watch broadcast TV ever again but watch things like Netflix, and Amazon Instant Video which I already pay for separately. The license fee is turning into an actual tax on watching video all because the BBC has failed to keep earning it by doing it's fucking job and catering to a broad audience and so has been losing fee payers like no tomorrow.
Isn't that the case anyway? 99% of games that come out nowadays seem to be based on things like Unreal, Unity, or the big publishers own in house engines like Frostbite.
The amount of people actually doing low level stuff seems to have diminished rapidly over the last decade as engines have become more flexible and it's really just turned into a battle over who has the best toolset and content pipeline now.
So even the big engineering teams don't seem to be expending much effort into engine development - publishers like Ubisoft and EA seem to have many tens of development teams and yet only seem to be using a few different engines across all those teams - certainly the days of every team building their game up from scratch engine and all are long long gone.
"Wishful thinking, and straight out of scifi unfortunately."
That's why I advocate arming airliners with Brimstone missiles instead set to laser guidance mode that will follow the laser to target. They're even designed to minimise collateral damage, and if the pointer is turned off whilst in flight they're also designed to fly off harmlessly to a safe area and detonate with no one around.
(Yeah, I'm also joking for all those humour impaired who apparently also thought the GP was serious)
More to the point, I'm wondering if there's any actual science here. A Torygraph news article referencing a PBS documentary doesn't exactly scream "science" to me. We're basically hearing it from a tertiary source.
So does anyone have a link to the actual research and the primary source behind this?
You're assuming I'm not aware of this, and yet you've explained yourself why you'll always struggle to get rid of them in practice - it's politically untenable to tell people you're drastically raising their taxes, even if you do explain to them that stuff they buy will become cheaper.
I fully agree that in an ideal world we'd follow the path you suggest, and similarly I've always argued that true costs should be pursued in other ways. For example, I've long been an advocate of the fact that health service costs for health issues that stem from pollution (i.e. asthma) should be levied against carbon emitting companies, such that the price of coal would reflect it's true cost, rather than have it's true costs hidden by subsidy to the tax payer. This would force energy bills up to reflect the true cost of coal and would bring down the healthcare bill drastically reducing the need for high taxes whilst also encouraging companies to move to clean energy because when the real cost of coal is realised it's astoundingly expensive compared to nuclear etc.
But as nice as doing this would be, and forcing people to understand the real cost and value of things allowing the market to work in places it doesn't currently because true costs are hidden, it's just never going to happen. The idealist in me comes second to the realist - I don't believe there's much value in arguing that we're stupid for not basing our lives around that which is simply not practical and never going to happen in the near term. It's a great philosophical discussion to have, and great as a very long term goal (decades away), but it really doesn't help us right now in the reality we live in.
The thing that's new about the story was the grilling Google's EMEA boss got in front of a parliamentary select committee yesterday and what came out of that.
Whatever you think about large corps and taxes, that guy got absolutely slaughtered and it's incredible Google sent anyone that inept to represent themselves as it's done Google more harm than good on the tax front.
The MPs basically asked him why Google has only paid 3% tax for the period when the rate is 20%, to which he replied that they do pay the 20% owed by law. They ask him on what figure the 20% was paid given that the tax paid only amounts to 3% of declared profit and he simply couldn't answer. This means he's either incredibly inept in that he was wholly unprepared to answer an obvious question on the topic at hand, or Google is afraid to admit how it comes to it's profit figure because it's still hiding something that may get it in bother - if it was legal and in good standing, why hide your profit figure that you're paying tax on?
He was also asked if he felt the £130 million was fair, to which the Google guy replied yes, and then the MP followed up with the question "If it's fair, why didn't you pay it in the first place?", for which he had no answer. He was later asked a similar question as to whether he agreed the £130 million was legally owed, to which he answered yes.
He claimed there's no legal mechanism to pay more tax in the UK and therefore he can't, to which it was pointed out that that's simply false.
The problem is, even if you're of the belief that it's okay for companies like Google to only pay what is legally required, rather than what is intended, Google's exec here twice said the £130 million bill was both acceptable and legally owed, which inherently means that he has now admitted that Google didn't simply carry out tax avoidance, but carried out outright tax evasion.
Which is why in my opinion the whole large corporation tax debacle isn't as clear as many have argued - the often parroted large corporation line of "We pay what we legally have to" is slowly unraveling, and it's becoming increasingly clear that large corps haven't even been paying what they legally have to, let alone what the law intended (even if badly). The fact is that in many jurisdictions where this is an issue it's simply not clear that these companies are merely only engaging in legal avoidance rather than illegal evasion whatever the companies themselves may now claim. At least one corporation, Google, has now admitted that it carried out tax evasion by accepting that it did in fact legally owe these £130 million in taxes but previously chose not to pay them.
The question now really is what happens with all the other big players. In many ways Google may have gotten off easy by going first, because there's more pressure than ever for government to more tightly scrutinise these deals and to charge penalty costs (which Google was let off from). Google got off lightly for committing tax evasion in the UK, but it's not clear due to the backlash from that whether all the others will get off so lightly. We already know there will at least be some others given that Amazon and Starbucks' tax deal with Luxembourg has already previously been found to have been illegal.