False dichotomy, my friend. "Eat well, exercise regularly, die anyway."
Even if you do everything right, that's no guarantee that you'll be healthy or live longer. At 21, I was fit, I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, I had never done drugs, and my kidneys still quit on me -- right out of the blue. I'm now 41, and I have one of my brother's kidneys. I still eat healthy, exercise, don't smoke, don't do drugs and drink very little (like maybe one or two beers a month), but I understand that life entails risk and that nothing I do guarantees me that I'll live to a ripe old age. Claiming that drinking a 64 oz. Big Gulp is paramount to child neglect implies that you have yet to understand this fact.
I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiener".
Just because Obama managed to push his health care plan through Congress doesn't mean that all of us living in the U.S. thought it was a good idea. I didn't, for example.
"That government is best which governs least." People, left to themselves, will sometimes make bad choices. I'm okay with that. Quite frankly, it's no one else's business if I have poor eating habits, even if one were to accept your theory that obesity harms others (which I think is stretching things a bit). The alternative is for government to dictate every last detail of our lives, and to enforce their notion of what is best for us, potentially through violence (i.e., police), and I'm not at all okay with that.
Perhaps you missed the "...to tomb" part of the the post you quoted. CPS, while not perfect, serves a valid function. There are cases where yes, the government needs to intervene for the welfare of the child. Those cases should be limited to circumstances where the child is likely to be actively and clearly harmed by the parent (i.e., neglect, physical/sexual/emotional abuse, etc.). However, the need for government to intervene on the child's behalf ends when the child is no longer a child. In other words, I neither want nor need the government to protect me from myself when I become an adult.
If not, where do you draw the line between a parent who is abusing his child by living a lifestyle that leads to the parent's death and a parent who is abusing a child otherwise?
That is one of the most absurd things I have read on/., and that's saying a lot. Every one of us is going to die eventually. Some of us may live well beyond the average life span despite very unhealthy habits, and some of us may die early despite doing everything "right." Furthermore, what do you consider to be "living a lifestyle that leads to the parent's death?" Consider me, for example. I am very involved in the outdoors. I ride a motorcycle. I fly airplanes. I rock climb, white water kayak, mountain bike, and I frequently see black bears in my yard because of where I have chosen to live. I don't drink soda, however, I limit consumption of junk food and I exercise regularly. Am I more or less likely to live to see my 11 year old daughter reach adulthood than a parent who drinks a 64 oz. Big Gulp everyday? Should government tell me I can't ride my motorcycle, or do some of the other things I enjoy because those activities involve risk and therefore I might not live to see my daughter grow up?
Drinking too much sugary soda leads to obesity and diabetes mellitus.
So does lack of exercise. Should the government therefore mandate that I get out of bed an hour early to exercise?
Watching too much TV isn't good for you either. Should the government limit how much TV I watch?
Or how about this one: working too much also harms those for whom you are traditionally or even legally expected to provide (i.e., neglect), and leads to stress which in turn can lead to hypertension, heart attacks, stroke and other cardiovascular problems. Should the government prohibit me from working overtime (like I had to do last night, due to an outage)?
Face it -- NONE of these things are government's responsibilities. We're supposed to be the "Land of the Free." With freedom comes the option to really screw things up. I'm okay with that. However, I'm NOT okay with government trying to be my mommy. I already have a mom, and she did a fine job. I don't need another one, thank you.
If the market value for ${skillset} is $100K and you are only offering $50K to fill your position, then, as in other realms in life, you are only going to get what you paid for (i.e., not much). As far as there being something "intrinsic about the job that would require it to be high paying..." that can be said of any job. In IT, it's the fact that relevant experience takes time and effort to develop. If I have invested my time and effort into learning a particular skill, then I expect to be compensated for that skill -- particularly if it happens to be in demand and somewhat difficult to find. Furthermore, your argument about the supply/demand curve changing on you further reinforces my argument: in high-tech industries, including IT, you can't just rest on your laurels and assume that the work you did ten years ago in college will carry you to retirement. If you want to remain relevant in the workforce, you have to continue to invest in your education. That requires time, money and effort, and as I already said, if I am going to spend my time, money and effort to keep my skills current, then yes, I expect to be compensated for that.
And those of us doing the IT work call that "dreaming."
While it's probably reasonable to expect someone with either network security or network operations to have some overlap with the other skillset, you are in dreamer-land if you think it is reasonable for someone who is strong in both of those categories to *also* be a skilled software developer. There's not enough time in a day to develop strong skills in every possible IT field, unless that's all you do. Most of us actually like to, you know, have a life, however.
Yep -- at 6'0", I'm not exactly "tall" but I had a heck of a time getting into the Eagle Talon I used to own while wearing a helmet for a track day. Honestly, it was a tight fit even without the helmet -- I typically drove leaning a little to the left so I wouldn't smack my head on the roof of the car.
BMI is a horrible way to determine fitness. Muscle mass is more dense than fat, and therefore, athletes tend to have more weight per unit of volume than the typical couch potato. BMI does not take that into account.
If you're not a criminal, or an "unwanted race" under some future tyranny state, what does it matter that the government tracks your phone?
That's rather shortsighted. Simply because you aren't oppressed right now doesn't mean you won't be later on. Better to stop such Orwellian policies before you need them removed than after...not to mention the ethics of allowing others to be oppressed and not giving a rip because it isn't you.
And let's face it, "criminal" is a term that is defined by the government. I'm sure everyone here on/. has seen stories where "${Ridiculous_Action} is illegal in the state of..." For example, "Men who deflower virgins, regardless of age or marital status, may face up to five years in jail," in Auburn, Alabama. How many guys do you think are "criminals" according to THAT law? Yet have they actually done anything wrong (assuming that it was consensual and both parties were over the age of consent)? Okay, so what...you've got a city full of guys who haven't actually done anything wrong, but are technically guilty of violating an absurd law in some obscure town in the south. Big deal, right? <tinfoilhat status="on">But suppose one of these guys is threatening the establishment...or is suspected of doing something wrong, even though the PD don't have enough evidence to get a warrant...or...or...or. Now, they have a technical violation of the law that can be used to arrest or harass him, which can have devastating effects, even if he is later found to be innocent. </tinfoilhat> Okay, that's a hypothetical situation that really dives into conspiracy-theorist territory, but I seem to remember a popular Ayn Rand quote warning about this.
Your cell phone pings at least three cell tower (if just at range) and selects strongest one of them.
And even that your cell phone does not connect to cell, it does not mean cell have not received its signal. Cell phone simply rejects the connection either knowing it can not boost signal so it is too weak or it is just so weak that even max boost it can not hold the stable enough connection to cell.
I live in a ravine a couple of miles from the nearest line-of-sight cell tower, and reception there is so poor that I had to install a signal booster to have even the proverbial snowball's chance of getting reception. Even with the signal booster, I've watched various geolocation apps* (with GPS turned off) try to locate the position of my cell phone. It's quite humorous to watch my position jump by several miles while I'm sitting in my living room. My point being, while I agree that it's possible to be tracked through cell towers alone -- and possibly even very, very accurately -- terrain and other factors can drastically affect the accuracy of the geolocation.
*Yes, I understand that an app trying to determine location by measuring the signals from cell towers is not exactly the same thing as the cellular service provider determining location by seeing which towers can see you, but the point still stands -- terrain affects the ability to perform geolocation.
I would say that the American people have become so intellectually lazy, complacent and ignorant that they let the President -- any President -- as well as Congress get away with crazy, illegal things...and I'm an American myself, so it's incredibly frustrating to me how many people Just. Don't. Get. It: "But we're the good guys. I don't care if a terrorist is locked up indefinitely. They should be locked up, right?"
Not quite, but you're close. Constitutionality IS law. Any laws that Congress passes that don't meet the requirements of the Constitution are, by definition, invalid (although, it takes a ruling by SCOTUS to officially determine if any given law meets the requirements of the Constitution). </pedantic>
Possession of weed or crack is still illegal in the U.S., by Federal law if not local law. Consequently, while you may not care if others "snort their brains out" I rather suspect most police departments do, whether or not the crackhead stays out of their car afterwards.
That's a very eloquent post, but it does nothing to negate GPP's point: the government should be as big as necessary to ensure liberty, but no bigger. Even the "rather large government" you describe above is still smaller than the bloated monstrosity we have today, and quite a bit less restrictive. IMHO, while "Libertarian" covers the gamut from complete wacko anarchists to small government moderates, they are the lesser of all evils.
Regarding knives and guns: Pre-9/11, I used to travel with a pocket knife because it used to be okay to do that. Guess how many airplanes I hijacked during that time? And there have been numerous documented cases where someone realized they had packed a weapon inadvertently and went public about it after the fact because they were concerned that TSA had missed the prohibited item (Adam Savage from "Mythbusters," for starters). Guess how many of those cases resulted in hijackings? Furthermore, even for the detected and confiscated weapons, quite frequently, the owner of said knives and guns had plausible reasons for why they were there (for example, I seem to remember an off-duty police officer who had one in a backpack).
To my mind, at least, all of this strongly suggests that there is far, far less need for TSA -- or at least for the overly intrusive methods TSA has employed for the last three years -- than TSA or DHS wants us to believe.
That's why I swapped out the lamps in my driving lights and my tail lights with LEDs -- from ~120 watts to ~20 watts, IIRC. As for why your buddy wanted his bike lit up like the Vegas strip, I'd assume he wanted to make sure he was seen. I ride as if every cager out there is trying to kill me (and from time to time, it certainly seems that way), but knowing that I'm not always at 100%, I try to stack the odds in my favor by being as conspicuous as possible:) Still...sounds like your friend may have overdone it a bit, lol.
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False dichotomy, my friend. "Eat well, exercise regularly, die anyway."
Even if you do everything right, that's no guarantee that you'll be healthy or live longer. At 21, I was fit, I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, I had never done drugs, and my kidneys still quit on me -- right out of the blue. I'm now 41, and I have one of my brother's kidneys. I still eat healthy, exercise, don't smoke, don't do drugs and drink very little (like maybe one or two beers a month), but I understand that life entails risk and that nothing I do guarantees me that I'll live to a ripe old age. Claiming that drinking a 64 oz. Big Gulp is paramount to child neglect implies that you have yet to understand this fact.
I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiener".
ROFL. You just made my day. Really :)
Just because Obama managed to push his health care plan through Congress doesn't mean that all of us living in the U.S. thought it was a good idea. I didn't, for example.
"That government is best which governs least." People, left to themselves, will sometimes make bad choices. I'm okay with that. Quite frankly, it's no one else's business if I have poor eating habits, even if one were to accept your theory that obesity harms others (which I think is stretching things a bit). The alternative is for government to dictate every last detail of our lives, and to enforce their notion of what is best for us, potentially through violence (i.e., police), and I'm not at all okay with that.
Would you end child protective services entirely?
Perhaps you missed the "...to tomb" part of the the post you quoted. CPS, while not perfect, serves a valid function. There are cases where yes, the government needs to intervene for the welfare of the child. Those cases should be limited to circumstances where the child is likely to be actively and clearly harmed by the parent (i.e., neglect, physical/sexual/emotional abuse, etc.). However, the need for government to intervene on the child's behalf ends when the child is no longer a child. In other words, I neither want nor need the government to protect me from myself when I become an adult.
If not, where do you draw the line between a parent who is abusing his child by living a lifestyle that leads to the parent's death and a parent who is abusing a child otherwise?
That is one of the most absurd things I have read on /., and that's saying a lot. Every one of us is going to die eventually. Some of us may live well beyond the average life span despite very unhealthy habits, and some of us may die early despite doing everything "right." Furthermore, what do you consider to be "living a lifestyle that leads to the parent's death?" Consider me, for example. I am very involved in the outdoors. I ride a motorcycle. I fly airplanes. I rock climb, white water kayak, mountain bike, and I frequently see black bears in my yard because of where I have chosen to live. I don't drink soda, however, I limit consumption of junk food and I exercise regularly. Am I more or less likely to live to see my 11 year old daughter reach adulthood than a parent who drinks a 64 oz. Big Gulp everyday? Should government tell me I can't ride my motorcycle, or do some of the other things I enjoy because those activities involve risk and therefore I might not live to see my daughter grow up?
Drinking too much sugary soda leads to obesity and diabetes mellitus.
So does lack of exercise. Should the government therefore mandate that I get out of bed an hour early to exercise?
Watching too much TV isn't good for you either. Should the government limit how much TV I watch?
Or how about this one: working too much also harms those for whom you are traditionally or even legally expected to provide (i.e., neglect), and leads to stress which in turn can lead to hypertension, heart attacks, stroke and other cardiovascular problems. Should the government prohibit me from working overtime (like I had to do last night, due to an outage)?
Face it -- NONE of these things are government's responsibilities. We're supposed to be the "Land of the Free." With freedom comes the option to really screw things up. I'm okay with that. However, I'm NOT okay with government trying to be my mommy. I already have a mom, and she did a fine job. I don't need another one, thank you.
^^This^^
I'd mod you up if I only had mod points.
You apparently don't understand economics.
If the market value for ${skillset} is $100K and you are only offering $50K to fill your position, then, as in other realms in life, you are only going to get what you paid for (i.e., not much). As far as there being something "intrinsic about the job that would require it to be high paying..." that can be said of any job. In IT, it's the fact that relevant experience takes time and effort to develop. If I have invested my time and effort into learning a particular skill, then I expect to be compensated for that skill -- particularly if it happens to be in demand and somewhat difficult to find. Furthermore, your argument about the supply/demand curve changing on you further reinforces my argument: in high-tech industries, including IT, you can't just rest on your laurels and assume that the work you did ten years ago in college will carry you to retirement. If you want to remain relevant in the workforce, you have to continue to invest in your education. That requires time, money and effort, and as I already said, if I am going to spend my time, money and effort to keep my skills current, then yes, I expect to be compensated for that.
And those of us doing the IT work call that "dreaming."
While it's probably reasonable to expect someone with either network security or network operations to have some overlap with the other skillset, you are in dreamer-land if you think it is reasonable for someone who is strong in both of those categories to *also* be a skilled software developer. There's not enough time in a day to develop strong skills in every possible IT field, unless that's all you do. Most of us actually like to, you know, have a life, however.
Yeah, I owned both a '92 non-turbo and a '97 TSi. The 1G was a little roomier than the 2G, but the turbo was SOOOO worth it :)
Yep -- at 6'0", I'm not exactly "tall" but I had a heck of a time getting into the Eagle Talon I used to own while wearing a helmet for a track day. Honestly, it was a tight fit even without the helmet -- I typically drove leaning a little to the left so I wouldn't smack my head on the roof of the car.
BMI is a horrible way to determine fitness. Muscle mass is more dense than fat, and therefore, athletes tend to have more weight per unit of volume than the typical couch potato. BMI does not take that into account.
Different frequencies on each unit, perhaps?
I want to come live in your world.
If you're not a criminal, or an "unwanted race" under some future tyranny state, what does it matter that the government tracks your phone?
That's rather shortsighted. Simply because you aren't oppressed right now doesn't mean you won't be later on. Better to stop such Orwellian policies before you need them removed than after...not to mention the ethics of allowing others to be oppressed and not giving a rip because it isn't you.
/. has seen stories where "${Ridiculous_Action} is illegal in the state of..." For example, "Men who deflower virgins, regardless of age or marital status, may face up to five years in jail," in Auburn, Alabama. How many guys do you think are "criminals" according to THAT law? Yet have they actually done anything wrong (assuming that it was consensual and both parties were over the age of consent)? Okay, so what...you've got a city full of guys who haven't actually done anything wrong, but are technically guilty of violating an absurd law in some obscure town in the south. Big deal, right? <tinfoilhat status="on">But suppose one of these guys is threatening the establishment...or is suspected of doing something wrong, even though the PD don't have enough evidence to get a warrant...or...or...or. Now, they have a technical violation of the law that can be used to arrest or harass him, which can have devastating effects, even if he is later found to be innocent. </tinfoilhat> Okay, that's a hypothetical situation that really dives into conspiracy-theorist territory, but I seem to remember a popular Ayn Rand quote warning about this.
And let's face it, "criminal" is a term that is defined by the government. I'm sure everyone here on
Your cell phone pings at least three cell tower (if just at range) and selects strongest one of them. And even that your cell phone does not connect to cell, it does not mean cell have not received its signal. Cell phone simply rejects the connection either knowing it can not boost signal so it is too weak or it is just so weak that even max boost it can not hold the stable enough connection to cell.
I live in a ravine a couple of miles from the nearest line-of-sight cell tower, and reception there is so poor that I had to install a signal booster to have even the proverbial snowball's chance of getting reception. Even with the signal booster, I've watched various geolocation apps* (with GPS turned off) try to locate the position of my cell phone. It's quite humorous to watch my position jump by several miles while I'm sitting in my living room. My point being, while I agree that it's possible to be tracked through cell towers alone -- and possibly even very, very accurately -- terrain and other factors can drastically affect the accuracy of the geolocation.
*Yes, I understand that an app trying to determine location by measuring the signals from cell towers is not exactly the same thing as the cellular service provider determining location by seeing which towers can see you, but the point still stands -- terrain affects the ability to perform geolocation.
We have departed quite a ways from the original design for this country, haven't we?
I would say that the American people have become so intellectually lazy, complacent and ignorant that they let the President -- any President -- as well as Congress get away with crazy, illegal things...and I'm an American myself, so it's incredibly frustrating to me how many people Just. Don't. Get. It: "But we're the good guys. I don't care if a terrorist is locked up indefinitely. They should be locked up, right?"
Sigh...
Constitutionality is more important than law...
Not quite, but you're close. Constitutionality IS law. Any laws that Congress passes that don't meet the requirements of the Constitution are, by definition, invalid (although, it takes a ruling by SCOTUS to officially determine if any given law meets the requirements of the Constitution). </pedantic>
Otherwise, yeah -- I'm totally with you.
Possession of weed or crack is still illegal in the U.S., by Federal law if not local law. Consequently, while you may not care if others "snort their brains out" I rather suspect most police departments do, whether or not the crackhead stays out of their car afterwards.
That's a very eloquent post, but it does nothing to negate GPP's point: the government should be as big as necessary to ensure liberty, but no bigger. Even the "rather large government" you describe above is still smaller than the bloated monstrosity we have today, and quite a bit less restrictive. IMHO, while "Libertarian" covers the gamut from complete wacko anarchists to small government moderates, they are the lesser of all evils.
So Facebook is the social network and Google+ is the anti-social network? No wonder I like G+ better ;)
...and 90,000 watts of Dolby sound!
Point taken.
Regarding knives and guns: Pre-9/11, I used to travel with a pocket knife because it used to be okay to do that. Guess how many airplanes I hijacked during that time? And there have been numerous documented cases where someone realized they had packed a weapon inadvertently and went public about it after the fact because they were concerned that TSA had missed the prohibited item (Adam Savage from "Mythbusters," for starters). Guess how many of those cases resulted in hijackings? Furthermore, even for the detected and confiscated weapons, quite frequently, the owner of said knives and guns had plausible reasons for why they were there (for example, I seem to remember an off-duty police officer who had one in a backpack).
To my mind, at least, all of this strongly suggests that there is far, far less need for TSA -- or at least for the overly intrusive methods TSA has employed for the last three years -- than TSA or DHS wants us to believe.
That's why I swapped out the lamps in my driving lights and my tail lights with LEDs -- from ~120 watts to ~20 watts, IIRC. As for why your buddy wanted his bike lit up like the Vegas strip, I'd assume he wanted to make sure he was seen. I ride as if every cager out there is trying to kill me (and from time to time, it certainly seems that way), but knowing that I'm not always at 100%, I try to stack the odds in my favor by being as conspicuous as possible :) Still...sounds like your friend may have overdone it a bit, lol.