Precisely this. Complaints about our President's morality, mental state, etc. are opinions. Factual bases for these complaints do not exist, for some require knowing his state of mind, and well that's pretty much impossible. For anyone.
But the opposition isn't opposing him because of that. It's other things.
"Note that less than half of the GOP voted for Trump in the primaries - even though by the time of the later primaries most of the other candidates had bowed out."
That's funny. Well, all except the pathetic part. Primaries work that way, casting aside the not-quite-good-enough and leaving a winner, unless of course it's Democrat Party primaries, which are rigged all the way through the convention.
"There are plenty of Republicans who didn't want this President"
Alas, there are plenty of Republicans that DID want this President. And enough non-Republicans to make it so.
"and painting all of us with that brush is just as foolish as the prejudiced tweets from the Blowhard-In-Chief."
Your own prejudices are showing through. Fortunately you are entitled to them, and more fortunately you've chosen to oppose the forces that would defend you. The other side, not so much.
"We have got to fix the broken election systems in the US."
What? Nothing wrong with the election systems in the US. You're just complaining about the result, and that's not caused by the process. No, it is not.
"The real problem is first-past-the-post plurality voting. In any of the early primaries,"
You focus on the primaries. Consider these points:
- Primaries serve the major political parties, first, and local/state election officials, second. A convenient way to narrow the field. But these are not Constitutional provisions. How about you go to work on your local and state agencies and make the changes you think are essential where they need to be made. National primaries are an oxymoron, and pointless.
- 'Open' primaries are destructive. If the process is intended to narrow the field based on political party, then an open primary fails. It permits those not actually affiliated with the party to participate in the selection process. Though perhaps 23 states have some form of open presidential primary elections, it still is wrong. But this is a state issue.
"In any of the early primaries, Trump would have lost every single head-to-head matchup"
Well, then, tell those pesky Republicans to limit the primary contest to two candidates. Or shut the heck up, because that's stupid, and your point is lost in the noise of dumb. the real world includes multiple contestants. The Democrats had only two candidate,s and they cheated one. Better?
"so any decent electoral system (i.e. any kind of Condorcet preference balloting)"
Actually, I reject this. While there are clever and interesting election systems, when the system is well understood by the voters, I believe it yields valid results. A winner-take-all system isn't deceptive, voters know or should know they are making a choice, period. Cleverness isn't needed here, clarity is. Clarity.
"would have avoided this disaster."
What disaster? Oh, the refusal and outright revolt from the losing side? Really, an different process would have avoided the refusal of the Democrats to accept the results? They liked them when they won. Losing has exposed something else, something much more sinister and dangerous, something yet not widely understood.
"As long as we keep first-past-the-post primaries, both parties will frequently nominate miserable candidates."
Oh dear. The raw material is flawed. Changing the voting process won't change THAT.
Well it actually is. It's the funding fixes that catches everyone's attention, but the real problem is strategic decisions, re-platforming, legacy maintenance, and what gets done first.
My complaint is that these teams spend way too much time circling the poo, mostly to try and outlast us. When management gets involved things happen fast, but we have to climb the ladder.
I understood that. More interesting was the assertion that this technology would be useful from 550m to 2.5cm. Or perhaps even broader application, it seems going from AM broadcast band to LW wouldn't be a big leap if you're going from upper microwave..
Admittedly, the purpose of the call was to have all involved parties on the line, at once, so each could refuse responsibility for the issue being (not) addressed, so that management, on the call, could then step out, decide among themselves which team would in fact take this on, and then return and deliver the verdict and sentence.
It's been necessary, from time to time, to have these calls. Sometimes it even ends in the decision that the issue isn't worth fixing. And then we, right then and there, request that the teams offer us the messaging they want us to deliver to the affected population. I don't fix it, my role is to report it in an understandable manner, follo progress to fix it, engage as necessary to keep the process moving, and in these rare instances where the fix isn't going to happen, tell the reporters they are not going to get a solution. They ask why. That's the message I need the product owners to give me, since I have no reason to tell them there is no fix other than, simply, the product owners said no.
And they, my customers, do often want to know why. The reasons vary from 0. Cannot be fixed before it is replaced/decommissioned, 1. Is not going to be a feature/etc we intend to provide going forward, 2. Is being abandoned, best not to say why, or 3. Internal considerations will prevent resolution.
Yes, my customers have other channels to inquire through, and they come to me first... But not last.
These are never pleasant calls. And the calls made before it gets to this point are unpleasant as well, but necessary. If it were simple it would never have gotten to this, and complex is just complex.
"None of the calls has contributed much to the eventual event. I know this because my role is often to chair the eventual event."
Then yes, why did you accept the invite? A call to discuss an event? Really? I don't get these unless there is planning or action to take in advance, and then it's a call to do something...
And we get a lot of pointless calls, mostly when they fail to compel essential attendees to, well, actually attend.
Why is anyone appealing to the FCC, or the FTC? California can't mandate that emergency services receive their Internet service without degradation, at all times, and then of course pay for it? Or subsidize it, hey, it's California.
Or the local governments do so.
Seriously, don't send these decisions too far away. You've given control away. Take it back. Now.
Remember newspapers, when they were not merely cage lining or, now, superseded by online whatever?
Remember the editorial page? Letters to the Editor?
There was a time when editors and/or their staff did indeed read those letters. All of them, even the rants and threats. But they would not publish them if these writers crossed a line. Editorial staff might even let the police know.
So, Twitter etc, somewhat the modern, Internet version of Letters to the Editor, permits this spew. Maybe they should not. Maybe they should do what newspapers did, back when we more successfully pretended to be a civil society, and simply drop these upon inspection.
Certainly a reasonable filter would include spotting posts with plain physical threats, for instance, and discard them. Those old Letters to the Editor did that, and no one was the wiser.
And if these sad individuals demand a forum, they can do what they did back then, when newspapers ruled, and publish themselves. Some did.
Throwing Trump off Twitter etc. would be as pointless as throwing almost anyone off. They get it wrong so often.
For instance, almost immediately in this thread. this comment, in part:
"when he tweeted last year that if North Korean leaders continued with their rhetoric at the time, "they won't be around much longer!" "
Do you not yet know how to speak Trump? You should. He's simple to understand. This comment, "they won't be around much longer!", certainly doesn't mean "I'm gonna bomb 'em,dude!". It's reasonable to interpret it as "they risk a revolt when the world starts really, really sanctioning them". For instance.
But if his tweet was a threat of violence, then consider this scrap of a comment right here, a bit later:
"the full force of Mueller and US law on him like a ton of bricks"
A ton of bricks. Seems like a physical threat? Oh? Explain please, the language is plain and direct. Unless you choose to see nuance sometimes, and not others. Or scrap from a comment:
"Suck my nuts, moron."
Sexual abuse? Coerced? Of course not, it's just some infantile comment.
But to get further into misunderstanding Trump (and others), two quotes claiming to be from Bob Woodward's forthcoming book:
"Trump also suggested that Democrats had more power and influence within the Justice Department than Sessions.
Hopefully this is presented, in context, as a fairly direct statement, and one with a reasonable foundation. After all, he was newly elected than, and inherited a Justice Department in no way transformed from the Obama administration, so yes, lots of Democrats in positions of power and influence within Justice. Of course. Feel free to try and refute this. Facts and/or reasonable suppositions would be best, but don't let the lack of those stop you, for it hasn't before...
"Sessions responded with a rare rebuke of Trump, saying, "The actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations." "
This second quote is probably interpreted as a rebuke of Trump, as it is presented so. But Sessions could have been saying, in essence, "I won't let political considerations improperly influence the Department". Seems reasonable to me. Not even a rebuke, but both a reasonable and mandatory statement.
Oh, did you notice the turn of phrase "improperly influenced"? Think that one over. Over the past 14 years now. Do you see it yet? I doubt it, but don't give up so easily.
If at the tower, well, these are the choke points to users. There's only so much capability. Stuck on an Interstate yesterday in a terrible traffic slowdown (due to an accident) I saw my data crippled from time to time. The density of users was several times more than designed for. Towers have only so much bandwidth.
If at the ISP gateway level, well, they are choosing how much to invest in peering.
How did this throttling manifest itself to users? Were YouTube videos delivered at 720p or lower resolutions? If that was by design, do the ISPs disclose this? I know T-Mobile offers me unlimited stuff if I accept lower resolution. I think I've declined those options. And I know of several places and certain times where my service is terrible, due to demand.
But the idea of 'dividing bandwidth rationally', or equally, implied that we as users 'bought' some fraction of bandwidth, and that's just stupid. We bought access to whatever is available. If none, we get 'no service', and we make complaints and refuse to pay. If what's available is almost, but not quite, enough to do what we want, we suffer, complain, and probably get the standard 'just not enough' speech.
We have to vote with our feet. And if we find there is no mobile carrier, for instance, that will deliver to us what we want, we've learned that they are not yet sufficiently motivated to do so, for whatever price. Competition could fix that, but spectrum is the first and immutable constraint. Yea, we're not going to make more of that. So we're left with clever technology, more towers, and blah blah blah that isn't being done now. It's a balancing act, for mobile carriers, how little they can deliver for how much they can charge.
Fixed services, well, I bet most of that is the Google dilemma. How to get access to right of way to get the pipes up and deliver service. Money.
"Uniform Resource Locators are the familiar web addresses you use everyday."
So far, so good.
"They are listed in the web's DNS address book"
Uh, NO. That's DNS, and that works with the part before slashes etc, right up to and including the TLD (.com,.edu,.info for example).
"and direct browsers to the right Internet Protocol addresses that identify and differentiate web servers"
Um, partly, that's DNS. Then the URL includes the info that web server needs to find and deliver whatever you were looking for.
Who writes this crap anyways? Can't we get this right now and then?
Other than that, I think the idea is not merely dangerous, it's unnecessary. Websites could solve this with simpler URLs, like their own individual versions of.bit/ly-type shortening. Let's encourage them and the software they depend on to make their visions publishable, instead of fixing what isn't broken, merely inconvenient...
On the early, early calculator craze, but I started repairing these in 76.
I was repairing Sharp calculators, desktop and handheld, back then, mostly the business machines, but I inherited the work on CS-10s and similar. These went into some engineering departments, replacing Monroematics and Divisumma 24s, which were being repaired a bench away from me still.
When the CS-10s replaced the Monroematics, engineers went from setting up a calculation, execute, and go off for coffee and a cigarette, or two. Then of course note the results, repeat, and potentially do this for two days. Elapsed work time, 16 hours. Actual work time, 12 minutes.
My predecessor congratulated me on missing out on that introduction. For the first few months those CS-10s suffered a lot of failures - keys, displays, and massive logic failures, caused by physical damage and liquid spills. The engineers were in full revolt. That ended when management explained that the New York office had made the transition successfully, and would not see layoffs for for a year. And yes, the office I serviced didn't see layoffs either until the backlog of work was finished, and 'automation' took early victims. My predecessor and I were so unwelcome at that office we started getting machines delivered to us, rather than travelling to do key and cord fixes. That was really never worth it, but my shop supervisor was a typewriter guy and believed in desktop service...
I repaired QT-8 (magnificent machine), EL-8 (ditto), EL-811, even bought an EL-814 cause I loved the look... And then leapt to the desktop business printing calculators for a while, when they were worth fixing.Some old drum printers were fun to fix, but eventually they got so simple and the disc printers were just annoying. Then the prices collapsed, and they were no longer worth fixing.
It was a fun job, I was servicing Sony dictating machines, and the BM-10 was an awful machine. That or the BM-11 mechanism flew on Apollo I think, they had the counter-revolving flywheels to solve motion problems. Then the was the same chassis as the first Walkman, TPS-L2, good thing I fixed them. Those literally fell apart when used hard. Moving through micro cassettes to the inevitable digital recorders was interesting, but the dictation business failed when PCs and word processing made it tolerable for professionals (attorneys mostly) to draft their documents themselves and send them on to secretaries to be proofed and finished.
By then, I had migrated to Selectrics, DisplayWriters, OS/6, and electronic typewriters, and of course those gave way to word processors and then PCs so fast they piled up in closets. But those old calculators were fabulous, more reliable than should have been expected. Some weird Japanese design going on back then too, stuff that today would be lovely underneath a steampunk skin.
On the one hand, it is possible to be incredibly rude, vulgar, even truly violent towards people you don't know, to their face, in person. Watch the media.
On the other hand, as an AC, you don't even have a face. Try posting as a person, unless of course you think it's dangerous. Which, here, I doubt it is.
Millions of firearms. All sorts... Millions of firearm owners. Many skilled... Trillions of rounds of ammunition.
So, if you're in charge of planning to take those by force, and to leave some useful land behind, how would you plan? Or would you encourage your leadership to reconsider?
And yes, some firearm owners consider that possibility sufficiently, well, possible, that they decided to be prepared, just in case. Because if you're charged with suppressing a revolt you want less opposition, and less effective opposition.
And, to answer the obvious question, it seems to me there is an actual political movement that is willing to consider violent means to prevail. Also it already has, in fact, demonstrated the willingness to propose that to their followers, who have, actually done so. Not many, but real numbers...
What? I just moved my mail server between hosts and VMs. It's been my responsibility since 1998, and I did day to day on it from 1996. WTF, is anybody reading anything?
I worked as a sysadmin for 12 years and it's just not interesting.
Currently in working in the financial sector as a technical analyst, but I might move into a new specialist role here, or go into API work, or maybe get self-employed. I know a lot now. And I'm having to relearn my role here every 3 years. Yes, that's now almost 4 full turnovers of my role so far here.
You seem well enough off, though. Don't quit your day job. Hard times are coming.
Our own war of independence was one of ordinary citizens, with leadership, defeating a professional military.
Our own professional military has been defeated by:
The sad combination of political ineptitude and a determined, well trained adversary with marginal equipment and limited resources.
A determined force of poorly equipped but resourceful militants.
And again by a similar force.
I guarantee you that some of our military leaders have, individually and privately, considered how they might prosecute a domestic war either of oppression or liberation. And I suspect they see the sheer number of weapons as a challenge to be avoided. It's just in the mindset of a military leader to test their knowledge and skills against even an imaginary foe, in their mind, as an exercise.
I'm betting they mostly come to the conclusion that it would be a bloody affair, and would destroy, or render without value, whatever they thought they were defending or creating.
And those who actually contemplate such a battle as 'winnable' likely think they can suffer the cost, since they don't care about the lives lost, just winning.
Around 30% of Americans own a gun, a total of around 390 million guns.
If it comes to a rebellion, are we going to watch one in four (some will surrender) Americans fight and die, without a real response?
Armed oppression in America is not a successful strategy. Certainly not when the alternatives have worked so well, so far. That alone inspires a lot of gun ownership, since deterrence is the highest and most effective form of defense.
Slashdot Mirror
Blah blah blah. Useful Leftist idiot.
Precisely this. Complaints about our President's morality, mental state, etc. are opinions. Factual bases for these complaints do not exist, for some require knowing his state of mind, and well that's pretty much impossible. For anyone.
But the opposition isn't opposing him because of that. It's other things.
"Note that less than half of the GOP voted for Trump in the primaries - even though by the time of the later primaries most of the other candidates had bowed out."
That's funny. Well, all except the pathetic part. Primaries work that way, casting aside the not-quite-good-enough and leaving a winner, unless of course it's Democrat Party primaries, which are rigged all the way through the convention.
"There are plenty of Republicans who didn't want this President"
Alas, there are plenty of Republicans that DID want this President. And enough non-Republicans to make it so.
"and painting all of us with that brush is just as foolish as the prejudiced tweets from the Blowhard-In-Chief."
Your own prejudices are showing through. Fortunately you are entitled to them, and more fortunately you've chosen to oppose the forces that would defend you. The other side, not so much.
"We have got to fix the broken election systems in the US."
What? Nothing wrong with the election systems in the US. You're just complaining about the result, and that's not caused by the process. No, it is not.
"The real problem is first-past-the-post plurality voting. In any of the early primaries,"
You focus on the primaries. Consider these points:
- Primaries serve the major political parties, first, and local/state election officials, second. A convenient way to narrow the field. But these are not Constitutional provisions. How about you go to work on your local and state agencies and make the changes you think are essential where they need to be made. National primaries are an oxymoron, and pointless.
- 'Open' primaries are destructive. If the process is intended to narrow the field based on political party, then an open primary fails. It permits those not actually affiliated with the party to participate in the selection process. Though perhaps 23 states have some form of open presidential primary elections, it still is wrong. But this is a state issue.
"In any of the early primaries, Trump would have lost every single head-to-head matchup"
Well, then, tell those pesky Republicans to limit the primary contest to two candidates. Or shut the heck up, because that's stupid, and your point is lost in the noise of dumb. the real world includes multiple contestants. The Democrats had only two candidate,s and they cheated one. Better?
"so any decent electoral system (i.e. any kind of Condorcet preference balloting)"
Actually, I reject this. While there are clever and interesting election systems, when the system is well understood by the voters, I believe it yields valid results. A winner-take-all system isn't deceptive, voters know or should know they are making a choice, period. Cleverness isn't needed here, clarity is. Clarity.
"would have avoided this disaster."
What disaster? Oh, the refusal and outright revolt from the losing side? Really, an different process would have avoided the refusal of the Democrats to accept the results? They liked them when they won. Losing has exposed something else, something much more sinister and dangerous, something yet not widely understood.
"As long as we keep first-past-the-post primaries, both parties will frequently nominate miserable candidates."
Oh dear. The raw material is flawed. Changing the voting process won't change THAT.
My wife's MKX has THX sound, and it is truly amazing. But in the living room we make do, somehow, with Paradigm, Harman Kardon, and a no name sub.
And my living room would not support an upgraded sound system, it's the wrong shape/materials, and ain't worth it. Maybe a superior screen, some day.
Well it actually is. It's the funding fixes that catches everyone's attention, but the real problem is strategic decisions, re-platforming, legacy maintenance, and what gets done first.
My complaint is that these teams spend way too much time circling the poo, mostly to try and outlast us. When management gets involved things happen fast, but we have to climb the ladder.
I understood that. More interesting was the assertion that this technology would be useful from 550m to 2.5cm. Or perhaps even broader application, it seems going from AM broadcast band to LW wouldn't be a big leap if you're going from upper microwave..
I've had useful calls with 40+ attendees.
Admittedly, the purpose of the call was to have all involved parties on the line, at once, so each could refuse responsibility for the issue being (not) addressed, so that management, on the call, could then step out, decide among themselves which team would in fact take this on, and then return and deliver the verdict and sentence.
It's been necessary, from time to time, to have these calls. Sometimes it even ends in the decision that the issue isn't worth fixing. And then we, right then and there, request that the teams offer us the messaging they want us to deliver to the affected population. I don't fix it, my role is to report it in an understandable manner, follo progress to fix it, engage as necessary to keep the process moving, and in these rare instances where the fix isn't going to happen, tell the reporters they are not going to get a solution. They ask why. That's the message I need the product owners to give me, since I have no reason to tell them there is no fix other than, simply, the product owners said no.
And they, my customers, do often want to know why. The reasons vary from 0. Cannot be fixed before it is replaced/decommissioned, 1. Is not going to be a feature/etc we intend to provide going forward, 2. Is being abandoned, best not to say why, or 3. Internal considerations will prevent resolution.
Yes, my customers have other channels to inquire through, and they come to me first... But not last.
These are never pleasant calls. And the calls made before it gets to this point are unpleasant as well, but necessary. If it were simple it would never have gotten to this, and complex is just complex.
"None of the calls has contributed much to the eventual event. I know this because my role is often to chair the eventual event."
Then yes, why did you accept the invite? A call to discuss an event? Really? I don't get these unless there is planning or action to take in advance, and then it's a call to do something...
And we get a lot of pointless calls, mostly when they fail to compel essential attendees to, well, actually attend.
What happens when you decline?
Why is anyone appealing to the FCC, or the FTC? California can't mandate that emergency services receive their Internet service without degradation, at all times, and then of course pay for it? Or subsidize it, hey, it's California.
Or the local governments do so.
Seriously, don't send these decisions too far away. You've given control away. Take it back. Now.
And there is precedent...
Remember newspapers, when they were not merely cage lining or, now, superseded by online whatever?
Remember the editorial page? Letters to the Editor?
There was a time when editors and/or their staff did indeed read those letters. All of them, even the rants and threats. But they would not publish them if these writers crossed a line. Editorial staff might even let the police know.
So, Twitter etc, somewhat the modern, Internet version of Letters to the Editor, permits this spew. Maybe they should not. Maybe they should do what newspapers did, back when we more successfully pretended to be a civil society, and simply drop these upon inspection.
Certainly a reasonable filter would include spotting posts with plain physical threats, for instance, and discard them. Those old Letters to the Editor did that, and no one was the wiser.
And if these sad individuals demand a forum, they can do what they did back then, when newspapers ruled, and publish themselves. Some did.
How did this get from C to Q band to AM/FM? Quite a leap, not mere octaves.
Or do I have to wade through this to see that antenna tech that can span in one device from 55,000 to 2.5 cm?
Yeah, that is impressive. Now to hook this into a SDR and have some real fun, if it's smaller than a camper.
Throwing Trump off Twitter etc. would be as pointless as throwing almost anyone off. They get it wrong so often.
For instance, almost immediately in this thread. this comment, in part:
"when he tweeted last year that if North Korean leaders continued with their rhetoric at the time, "they won't be around much longer!" "
Do you not yet know how to speak Trump? You should. He's simple to understand. This comment, "they won't be around much longer!", certainly doesn't mean "I'm gonna bomb 'em ,dude!". It's reasonable to interpret it as "they risk a revolt when the world starts really, really sanctioning them". For instance.
But if his tweet was a threat of violence, then consider this scrap of a comment right here, a bit later:
"the full force of Mueller and US law on him like a ton of bricks"
A ton of bricks. Seems like a physical threat? Oh? Explain please, the language is plain and direct. Unless you choose to see nuance sometimes, and not others. Or scrap from a comment:
"Suck my nuts, moron."
Sexual abuse? Coerced? Of course not, it's just some infantile comment.
But to get further into misunderstanding Trump (and others), two quotes claiming to be from Bob Woodward's forthcoming book:
"Trump also suggested that Democrats had more power and influence within the Justice Department than Sessions.
Hopefully this is presented, in context, as a fairly direct statement, and one with a reasonable foundation. After all, he was newly elected than, and inherited a Justice Department in no way transformed from the Obama administration, so yes, lots of Democrats in positions of power and influence within Justice. Of course. Feel free to try and refute this. Facts and/or reasonable suppositions would be best, but don't let the lack of those stop you, for it hasn't before...
"Sessions responded with a rare rebuke of Trump, saying, "The actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations." "
This second quote is probably interpreted as a rebuke of Trump, as it is presented so. But Sessions could have been saying, in essence, "I won't let political considerations improperly influence the Department". Seems reasonable to me. Not even a rebuke, but both a reasonable and mandatory statement.
Oh, did you notice the turn of phrase "improperly influenced"? Think that one over. Over the past 14 years now. Do you see it yet? I doubt it, but don't give up so easily.
No. Where is this throttling occurring?
If at the tower, well, these are the choke points to users. There's only so much capability. Stuck on an Interstate yesterday in a terrible traffic slowdown (due to an accident) I saw my data crippled from time to time. The density of users was several times more than designed for. Towers have only so much bandwidth.
If at the ISP gateway level, well, they are choosing how much to invest in peering.
How did this throttling manifest itself to users? Were YouTube videos delivered at 720p or lower resolutions? If that was by design, do the ISPs disclose this? I know T-Mobile offers me unlimited stuff if I accept lower resolution. I think I've declined those options. And I know of several places and certain times where my service is terrible, due to demand.
But the idea of 'dividing bandwidth rationally', or equally, implied that we as users 'bought' some fraction of bandwidth, and that's just stupid. We bought access to whatever is available. If none, we get 'no service', and we make complaints and refuse to pay. If what's available is almost, but not quite, enough to do what we want, we suffer, complain, and probably get the standard 'just not enough' speech.
We have to vote with our feet. And if we find there is no mobile carrier, for instance, that will deliver to us what we want, we've learned that they are not yet sufficiently motivated to do so, for whatever price. Competition could fix that, but spectrum is the first and immutable constraint. Yea, we're not going to make more of that. So we're left with clever technology, more towers, and blah blah blah that isn't being done now. It's a balancing act, for mobile carriers, how little they can deliver for how much they can charge.
Fixed services, well, I bet most of that is the Google dilemma. How to get access to right of way to get the pipes up and deliver service. Money.
"Uniform Resource Locators are the familiar web addresses you use everyday."
So far, so good.
"They are listed in the web's DNS address book"
Uh, NO. That's DNS, and that works with the part before slashes etc, right up to and including the TLD (.com, .edu, .info for example).
"and direct browsers to the right Internet Protocol addresses that identify and differentiate web servers"
Um, partly, that's DNS. Then the URL includes the info that web server needs to find and deliver whatever you were looking for.
Who writes this crap anyways? Can't we get this right now and then?
Other than that, I think the idea is not merely dangerous, it's unnecessary. Websites could solve this with simpler URLs, like their own individual versions of .bit/ly-type shortening. Let's encourage them and the software they depend on to make their visions publishable, instead of fixing what isn't broken, merely inconvenient...
On the early, early calculator craze, but I started repairing these in 76.
I was repairing Sharp calculators, desktop and handheld, back then, mostly the business machines, but I inherited the work on CS-10s and similar. These went into some engineering departments, replacing Monroematics and Divisumma 24s, which were being repaired a bench away from me still.
When the CS-10s replaced the Monroematics, engineers went from setting up a calculation, execute, and go off for coffee and a cigarette, or two. Then of course note the results, repeat, and potentially do this for two days. Elapsed work time, 16 hours. Actual work time, 12 minutes.
My predecessor congratulated me on missing out on that introduction. For the first few months those CS-10s suffered a lot of failures - keys, displays, and massive logic failures, caused by physical damage and liquid spills. The engineers were in full revolt. That ended when management explained that the New York office had made the transition successfully, and would not see layoffs for for a year. And yes, the office I serviced didn't see layoffs either until the backlog of work was finished, and 'automation' took early victims. My predecessor and I were so unwelcome at that office we started getting machines delivered to us, rather than travelling to do key and cord fixes. That was really never worth it, but my shop supervisor was a typewriter guy and believed in desktop service...
I repaired QT-8 (magnificent machine), EL-8 (ditto), EL-811, even bought an EL-814 cause I loved the look... And then leapt to the desktop business printing calculators for a while, when they were worth fixing.Some old drum printers were fun to fix, but eventually they got so simple and the disc printers were just annoying. Then the prices collapsed, and they were no longer worth fixing.
It was a fun job, I was servicing Sony dictating machines, and the BM-10 was an awful machine. That or the BM-11 mechanism flew on Apollo I think, they had the counter-revolving flywheels to solve motion problems. Then the was the same chassis as the first Walkman, TPS-L2, good thing I fixed them. Those literally fell apart when used hard. Moving through micro cassettes to the inevitable digital recorders was interesting, but the dictation business failed when PCs and word processing made it tolerable for professionals (attorneys mostly) to draft their documents themselves and send them on to secretaries to be proofed and finished.
By then, I had migrated to Selectrics, DisplayWriters, OS/6, and electronic typewriters, and of course those gave way to word processors and then PCs so fast they piled up in closets. But those old calculators were fabulous, more reliable than should have been expected. Some weird Japanese design going on back then too, stuff that today would be lovely underneath a steampunk skin.
HP45 NiCd battery packs show up on eBay regularly. For less than $10. I bet they even work from the looks of them.
And if you have the old carrier, fix it.
"If you wouldn't say it to their face"
On the one hand, it is possible to be incredibly rude, vulgar, even truly violent towards people you don't know, to their face, in person. Watch the media.
On the other hand, as an AC, you don't even have a face. Try posting as a person, unless of course you think it's dangerous. Which, here, I doubt it is.
Good, you got my point.
Millions of firearms. All sorts...
Millions of firearm owners. Many skilled...
Trillions of rounds of ammunition.
So, if you're in charge of planning to take those by force, and to leave some useful land behind, how would you plan? Or would you encourage your leadership to reconsider?
And yes, some firearm owners consider that possibility sufficiently, well, possible, that they decided to be prepared, just in case. Because if you're charged with suppressing a revolt you want less opposition, and less effective opposition.
And, to answer the obvious question, it seems to me there is an actual political movement that is willing to consider violent means to prevail. Also it already has, in fact, demonstrated the willingness to propose that to their followers, who have, actually done so. Not many, but real numbers...
Oh, and it's not my job, it's my hobby. My personal server.
What? I just moved my mail server between hosts and VMs. It's been my responsibility since 1998, and I did day to day on it from 1996. WTF, is anybody reading anything?
Seriously.
I worked as a sysadmin for 12 years and it's just not interesting.
Currently in working in the financial sector as a technical analyst, but I might move into a new specialist role here, or go into API work, or maybe get self-employed. I know a lot now. And I'm having to relearn my role here every 3 years. Yes, that's now almost 4 full turnovers of my role so far here.
You seem well enough off, though. Don't quit your day job. Hard times are coming.
Was there a problem?
Was it solved?
Our own war of independence was one of ordinary citizens, with leadership, defeating a professional military.
Our own professional military has been defeated by:
The sad combination of political ineptitude and a determined, well trained adversary with marginal equipment and limited resources.
A determined force of poorly equipped but resourceful militants.
And again by a similar force.
I guarantee you that some of our military leaders have, individually and privately, considered how they might prosecute a domestic war either of oppression or liberation. And I suspect they see the sheer number of weapons as a challenge to be avoided. It's just in the mindset of a military leader to test their knowledge and skills against even an imaginary foe, in their mind, as an exercise.
I'm betting they mostly come to the conclusion that it would be a bloody affair, and would destroy, or render without value, whatever they thought they were defending or creating.
And those who actually contemplate such a battle as 'winnable' likely think they can suffer the cost, since they don't care about the lives lost, just winning.
Around 30% of Americans own a gun, a total of around 390 million guns.
If it comes to a rebellion, are we going to watch one in four (some will surrender) Americans fight and die, without a real response?
Armed oppression in America is not a successful strategy. Certainly not when the alternatives have worked so well, so far. That alone inspires a lot of gun ownership, since deterrence is the highest and most effective form of defense.