For reasons not known or understood by me I am unfortunately aware that some arm of government does, and has for some time, collected in depth information about some people who have no criminal history at all nor have done anything considered wrong either. It gets rough when someone hands you some of that information and because of the life spans of people who apparently contributed that information it is obvious that it was compiled over a period of years and some effort was applied to knowing about your life.
Jolly old Ronald Reagen unleashed advertising on TV to a point where TV became too stupid to tolerate. Ad after ad after ad with shards of bad programs stuffed between the endless ads was the final blow. As usual the bean counters started off the decline. Going back to the bad old days we watched the number of new episodes "per season" lessen and lessen. People no longer followed a series as the new shows became too rare. Concepts such as mini series with only a handful of shows each year, followed ad nauseum by re-runs simply turned audiences away. With smaller and smaller audiences advertisers sought to pay less and less. They wanted tens or hundreds of millions of eyeballs seeing that ad. So cutting to less new shows per year, producing lower quality shows and then the final insult of wanting viewers stupid enough to buy lousy products were forces against better programs. After all, people able to distinguish art from trash just might nor spend big money on the new Bass Blender or newest weight loss rip off. A stupid president followed by bean counters who were brainless controlling content and seeking free spending yokels without a brain in their heads pretty much describes why no one wants to view network TV these days.
Essentially if one nation allows copying it sort of opens up the issue for the entire world. Obviously all kinds of people in Switzerland will be posting what is now declared legal materials and that should cause huge legal issues in other nations. The folks that made Toy Story may feel one way but it is very hard to argue that a guy sitting in the US downloaded from Switzerland an item considered perfectly legal to copy. There simply has to be some serious legal conflict in downloading an item from a nation that says it is legal to copy it and copying the same material from a nation that declares that it is illegal.
This issue gets funny at times. Cartoons could focus on this issue.
One way or another those that have wealth are forced to invest. Inflation and taxation will eat a large fortune that is not invested. Often huge business end up owning strip malls that employ a lot of people or they invest in companies that produce hard goods. One issue is that those labor providing investments are not made in the US. Investors seem to have few issues with slave labor or starvation wages in non- advanced nations. America could criminalise the investment in companies that use child labor, starvation wage labor or conscripted labor over seas. Yes, the idea is to put bad people out of business and into jails and lives of poverty. Show the rich that the fast lane to poverty is the bad treatment of people, anywhere.
The right wing in America are terrorists. They have caused pain. death and loss the majority of American people. If we were to ban terrorist sites the current House of Representatives would have to be called terrorists. Look at Rush Limbaugh asking the people in Congress to cripple the American economy so that the right wing could gather more power. Or how about Cain and his 999 nonsense? Is he more of a terrorist when he spouts that nonsense or when he is molesting women? Treason is where you find it.
I can accept easily the idea that poverty can make people dangerous. But dark skin has nothing to do with it. Cops arrest people who are easy to catch. Certain types of crime tend to stand out and make for easy arrests. The poor often suffer educational issues and poor diet and habitus of life style also tend to make criminals foolish in the types and methods of crimes that they commit. Very few cops set out to arrest more black people than white people. And getting convictions on black folks can be difficult as well as there are usually black folks on juries. There is another factor in that it is not unusual for black youth to be somewhat in rebellion as history indicates to them that the system is somewhat in debt to them. If people want to get away with their crimes they need a lot more education and intelligence and had best understand that successful criminals are lonely and isolated as they must never admit to any elements of their crimes to anyone at all. They can't even put their money in a bank or anything that might draw questions about how they made their money. There really are crooks who walk about with a suit case with a life's earnings in it. There are even motels that specialise in keeping them safe and happy as they can spend cash with ease.
I have difficulty in allowing the EU to remark about censorship when their member nations often have far greater censorship than the US. The fanatical laws about selling relics from WWII leap to mind. Or having news freezes until a suspect is arrested and the completion of his trial, or the harsh notions of what constitutes slander don't indicate free speech doing well in Europe at all.
I guess kids who attend this school have no intentions of joining the NFL, the NBA and I suppose pro boxing is off the list as well. Really, physical development is important. Getting hurt is part of life.
Back in the bad old days businesses just kept two sets of books.One was a fantasy either for tax purposes or to make the business look good to a potential buyer.
Now some small and slightly larger businesses just create their books from whole cloth. Customer lists or other vital items might be kept elsewhere. But a lost computer means little as the entire financial history of the business is fabricated every year.
I doubt that even ten percent of beauty salons have books that report the truth. Methods include not reporting cash purchasers at all. Usually they are smart enough to know how to get around paying taxes and feel justified in doing so. After all waitresses don't declare all of their tips and the rich have artful constructs to avoid taxation. Other people feel the same privilege should be theirs as well. So who cares if the computer crashes a lot?
College is not a trade school. The desire for knowledge should be the driving force for scholars. The ability to earn money is not a normal part of college training although we now are in a declining nation where lines are being blurred. These days one can go to college to be a mortician or a cop. It is not a legitimate use of college resources.
We are seeing the same thing in the high schools. Training people to be fast food cooks or professional sewers is not a good path for either the student or the high school. Sewing is a dead trade in the US and always offered miserable wages. Fast food cooks are everywhere and it is usually a low paying job in a hot, nasty and often filthy environment. It's like training people to live in hell. And we have more fast food cooks than openings.
What would count Dracula think of these mild punishments. Perhaps a scarlet letter branded on the cheek or forehead or maybe death by perpetual incarceration would satisfy the lust of the law. What kind of wimp nation are we if we can't kill our young for copying music?
Look at what has been done to individual hackers in the US over trivial hacking or piracy. Copy a few pieces of music online and an individual can easily lose an entire life of earnings. Hack into a site and you can actually receive a life sentence. So here we have a major power company getting caught and no suggestion is made of long prison sentences or total financial destruction of the business. That is the very type of thing that is fuelling the 99% , occupy, movement. Equal justice for all is taking a beating when a power company gets less punishment than some lowly nerd banging away trying to get info about About Area 57.
Often success involves attracting either investors or partners into a business. If one is only looking at the money angle then one will tend to invest or partner with individuals most likely to succeed. When there is clearly a majority race it is usual that members of that majority race can make it much more easily than minority members so investors and potential partners jump on board with a "model" of what the business community eagerly accepts. That locks minorities into a negative loop that is very hard to over come. I suspect that the issue is universal and not related to individual nations. If I lived in Egypt I suspect that if I was what the public saw as an ideal Egyptian business person then I would have an edge over others. Surely the same is true around the world.
If we associate hatred with prejudice it becomes a very difficult proposition to deal with. Obviously preference and prejudice are identical in many cases if no hatred attaches. I like Coca Cola better than Pepsi. I like women with a tiny waist line. Yes that keeps fat women from getting certain jobs. But what kind of person would I be if I denied what I like?
I have been free of Microsoft products for several years now and find little to miss at all. But I will say that when it comes to expecting gimmicks like cameras, those all in one printers and numerous third party devices it is easier to run Windows as long as you don't mind the inevitable infestations, crashes and loss of data. Linux works better in ways that really count. But as far as pretty, polished programs, one can either go broke buying from Apple at outrageous prices or one can buy for some flavor of Windows. Powerful programs exist for Linux and many are free but there is a learning curve attached to most of them or they have a high degree of function without the bells and whistles of commercial software. Given a choice I run Mint or Ultimate Edition or in some cases Puppy.
Big online retailers have to tax people in several states as they often have physical spaces in several states. But small online retailers do not tend to have multi state addresses and have a tiny pricing advantage. That enables the small to compete on a slightly more level playing field with the large sellers. It would be a shame for that to be taken away from small sellers.
Then we have the problem of product needing to be shipped too individual addresses which offsets the savings available by not having a brick and mortar sales outlet. Taxing online sales might tilt the table so badly that most internet sales are dead meat. Maybe we would all be better served if no internet sales are taxed. Keep in mind that international sales bring money into the US. Obstruction of sales by taxation costs us money and jobs as well.
The tracking device in question might be an attempt to check on someone that he visits or transports from time to time. Suppose a bad guy interacts a lot with eight people. Maybe only four of them know or have anything to do with the bad guys crimes. By tracking people that he interacts with they can usually figure out who is a go between with other criminal elements or somehow benefits from the bad guys crimes. The purpose of investigation can be to eliminate people as suspects and need not be seen as an effort to get somebody for no reason.
My feeling now is that any military combat aircraft is obsolete if it carries a human pilot. Whether it is s trike force fighter bomber or a plane designed to attack other fighters or bombers human life support slows down and restricts the ability of the craft. Whether it is excessive fuel or less range caused by human life support systems or simply the ability to take very high G forces in a dog fight humans simply are not needed for combat. And if a plane is shot down we don't have a highly trained pilot lost nor his family to support for the next 80 years. Drones are working out just fine.
Now the Japanese will miniaturise the monster, make it the size of a cell phone that uses very little power, market to people in the US and Microsoft will sue just because Microsoft always sues people.
There are concepts within the law that sometimes allow information to be hidden. An ongoing investigation denotes special needs for secrets as anyone who inquires and obtains information can pass it on to the criminals being investigated.
It may be quite difficult to get transparency in government as laws will conflict with each other and they will tend to use those laws to the government's advantage.
Other examples will be considered as national security issues. For example how much money did the US spend last year for funding war by proxy to other entities? How much hostile action did we pay for against Libya? We will not get good answers.
I have seen drunken or reckless drivers that were such an immediate threat that another citizen using a gun to stop them would be justified. And it is not a thought based upon morality but upon mercy. I have no clue as to why a car might be speeding and out of control. The driver might be having a heart attack or loaded with heroin or any number of things. But if it is obvious that a crash will most likely take place and that third parties will be severely injured or killed I think it is reasonable to act and would never find such a person guilty that stops that car either by ramming it or by shooting the driver.
Flight is a felony in itself. There is an assumption that a person fleeing from police, even on foot, is a danger to the public and in the past Florida cops would stop any fleeing suspect with gunfire.
If you do not deal in such things that seems like a blood thirsty action. But since being shot simply for flight is no longer standard practice the number of people fleeing has risen from rare to common place. So now we have some very dangerous people escaping who often kill, rape and commit every horror known to man we also have car crashes from suspects in flight that kill the innocent and even the squad car that looses control while trying to catch suspects. We also suffer the loss of cops when a suspect wheels about and shoots a cop in foot pursuit right in the face.
So we need an accounting type of approach to see what the kind act is and what the violent act is. Sadly I believe that failure to gun down subjects in flight is probably costing us a lot of deaths, destruction and expense as well.
These are common issues and cops are caught smack in the middle. One cop told me that if he ran into a 15 year old waving a pistol while running from a convenience store with a paper bag full of money in the other hand and he shot the kid whether he would have trouble or not depending not on law but depending on which watch commander was on duty at the time.
From a tax payer view point the problem is more whether the bad guy lives or dies. If he is well shot but not killed then the exhaustive medical care, the trial, the cost on incarceration all fall upon the city. Whereas if the suspect is dead no trial, no medical care, no prison expenses, follow the event. A live but injured suspect can cause huge loss to the tax payers. Keep in mind that innocent children go hungry in America every day. Where does justice apply?
I think that you would be surprised at the difficulties in breaking up corruption in any governmental agency. You have to be able to offer proofs that those above you can not wiggle out of. And they are very good at wiggling. You also very quickly discover that people are in terror of job loss when they have years invested and their pensions and health care could easily be lost.
When it comes to fighting corruption any tiny victory comes at a huge price to a whistle blower.
Burning fossil fuels does great harm. There is no doubt of that. But covering the land with asphalt and concrete and removal of trees fro large areas as will as destruction of the oceans all are causes of warming. We are rather like a race car at full speed headed for a concrete wall. But that is not what our eyes tell us. It seems to be an issue with very slow consequences. Yet in fact the consequences are severe and a lot faster than they seem to be.
In order to have much of a chance of surviving this emergency we need to stress population reduction, the end of urban sprawl, the restoration of natural areas, control of chemical pollution and a host of other things that are painful. For example a total ban on all salt water fishing would have an astounding effect on restoring fish in our seas. We also need to make use of invasive plant species in absorbing CO2. Plants such as kudzo can go a long way in helping restore our planet. Bamboo is fast growing and could eliminate a lot of softwood harvesting for paper and fabric fiber and bamboo grows almost everywhere.
Actually before we had a science called chemistry the alchemists had created a pretty good atomic chart. Sometimes those on the outside of what we define as science accomplish quite a bit even if some of their beliefs are off track.
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For reasons not known or understood by me I am unfortunately aware that some arm of government does, and has for some time, collected in depth information about some people who have no criminal history at all nor have done anything considered wrong either. It gets rough when someone hands you some of that information and because of the life spans of people who apparently contributed that information it is obvious that it was compiled over a period of years and some effort was applied to knowing about your life.
Jolly old Ronald Reagen unleashed advertising on TV to a point where TV became too stupid to tolerate. Ad after ad after ad with shards of bad programs stuffed between the endless ads was the final blow. As usual the bean counters started off the decline. Going back to the bad old days we watched the number of new episodes "per season" lessen and lessen. People no longer followed a series as the new shows became too rare. Concepts such as mini series with only a handful of shows each year, followed ad nauseum by re-runs simply turned audiences away. With smaller and smaller audiences advertisers sought to pay less and less. They wanted tens or hundreds of millions of eyeballs seeing that ad. So cutting to less new shows per year, producing lower quality shows and then the final insult of wanting viewers stupid enough to buy lousy products were forces against better programs. After all, people able to distinguish art from trash just might nor spend big money on the new Bass Blender or newest weight loss rip off. A stupid president followed by bean counters who were brainless controlling content and seeking free spending yokels without a brain in their heads pretty much describes why no one wants to view network TV these days.
Essentially if one nation allows copying it sort of opens up the issue for the entire world. Obviously all kinds of people in Switzerland will be posting what is now declared legal materials and that should cause huge legal issues in other nations. The folks that made Toy Story may feel one way but it is very hard to argue that a guy sitting in the US downloaded from Switzerland an item considered perfectly legal to copy. There simply has to be some serious legal conflict in downloading an item from a nation that says it is legal to copy it and copying the same material from a nation that declares that it is illegal. This issue gets funny at times. Cartoons could focus on this issue.
One way or another those that have wealth are forced to invest. Inflation and taxation will eat a large fortune that is not invested. Often huge business end up owning strip malls that employ a lot of people or they invest in companies that produce hard goods. One issue is that those labor providing investments are not made in the US. Investors seem to have few issues with slave labor or starvation wages in non- advanced nations. America could criminalise the investment in companies that use child labor, starvation wage labor or conscripted labor over seas. Yes, the idea is to put bad people out of business and into jails and lives of poverty. Show the rich that the fast lane to poverty is the bad treatment of people, anywhere.
The right wing in America are terrorists. They have caused pain. death and loss the majority of American people. If we were to ban terrorist sites the current House of Representatives would have to be called terrorists. Look at Rush Limbaugh asking the people in Congress to cripple the American economy so that the right wing could gather more power. Or how about Cain and his 999 nonsense? Is he more of a terrorist when he spouts that nonsense or when he is molesting women? Treason is where you find it.
I can accept easily the idea that poverty can make people dangerous. But dark skin has nothing to do with it. Cops arrest people who are easy to catch. Certain types of crime tend to stand out and make for easy arrests. The poor often suffer educational issues and poor diet and habitus of life style also tend to make criminals foolish in the types and methods of crimes that they commit. Very few cops set out to arrest more black people than white people. And getting convictions on black folks can be difficult as well as there are usually black folks on juries. There is another factor in that it is not unusual for black youth to be somewhat in rebellion as history indicates to them that the system is somewhat in debt to them. If people want to get away with their crimes they need a lot more education and intelligence and had best understand that successful criminals are lonely and isolated as they must never admit to any elements of their crimes to anyone at all. They can't even put their money in a bank or anything that might draw questions about how they made their money. There really are crooks who walk about with a suit case with a life's earnings in it. There are even motels that specialise in keeping them safe and happy as they can spend cash with ease.
I have difficulty in allowing the EU to remark about censorship when their member nations often have far greater censorship than the US. The fanatical laws about selling relics from WWII leap to mind. Or having news freezes until a suspect is arrested and the completion of his trial, or the harsh notions of what constitutes slander don't indicate free speech doing well in Europe at all.
I guess kids who attend this school have no intentions of joining the NFL, the NBA and I suppose pro boxing is off the list as well. Really, physical development is important. Getting hurt is part of life.
Back in the bad old days businesses just kept two sets of books.One was a fantasy either for tax purposes or to make the business look good to a potential buyer. Now some small and slightly larger businesses just create their books from whole cloth. Customer lists or other vital items might be kept elsewhere. But a lost computer means little as the entire financial history of the business is fabricated every year. I doubt that even ten percent of beauty salons have books that report the truth. Methods include not reporting cash purchasers at all. Usually they are smart enough to know how to get around paying taxes and feel justified in doing so. After all waitresses don't declare all of their tips and the rich have artful constructs to avoid taxation. Other people feel the same privilege should be theirs as well. So who cares if the computer crashes a lot?
College is not a trade school. The desire for knowledge should be the driving force for scholars. The ability to earn money is not a normal part of college training although we now are in a declining nation where lines are being blurred. These days one can go to college to be a mortician or a cop. It is not a legitimate use of college resources. We are seeing the same thing in the high schools. Training people to be fast food cooks or professional sewers is not a good path for either the student or the high school. Sewing is a dead trade in the US and always offered miserable wages. Fast food cooks are everywhere and it is usually a low paying job in a hot, nasty and often filthy environment. It's like training people to live in hell. And we have more fast food cooks than openings.
What would count Dracula think of these mild punishments. Perhaps a scarlet letter branded on the cheek or forehead or maybe death by perpetual incarceration would satisfy the lust of the law. What kind of wimp nation are we if we can't kill our young for copying music?
Look at what has been done to individual hackers in the US over trivial hacking or piracy. Copy a few pieces of music online and an individual can easily lose an entire life of earnings. Hack into a site and you can actually receive a life sentence. So here we have a major power company getting caught and no suggestion is made of long prison sentences or total financial destruction of the business. That is the very type of thing that is fuelling the 99% , occupy, movement. Equal justice for all is taking a beating when a power company gets less punishment than some lowly nerd banging away trying to get info about About Area 57.
Often success involves attracting either investors or partners into a business. If one is only looking at the money angle then one will tend to invest or partner with individuals most likely to succeed. When there is clearly a majority race it is usual that members of that majority race can make it much more easily than minority members so investors and potential partners jump on board with a "model" of what the business community eagerly accepts. That locks minorities into a negative loop that is very hard to over come. I suspect that the issue is universal and not related to individual nations. If I lived in Egypt I suspect that if I was what the public saw as an ideal Egyptian business person then I would have an edge over others. Surely the same is true around the world. If we associate hatred with prejudice it becomes a very difficult proposition to deal with. Obviously preference and prejudice are identical in many cases if no hatred attaches. I like Coca Cola better than Pepsi. I like women with a tiny waist line. Yes that keeps fat women from getting certain jobs. But what kind of person would I be if I denied what I like?
I have been free of Microsoft products for several years now and find little to miss at all. But I will say that when it comes to expecting gimmicks like cameras, those all in one printers and numerous third party devices it is easier to run Windows as long as you don't mind the inevitable infestations, crashes and loss of data. Linux works better in ways that really count. But as far as pretty, polished programs, one can either go broke buying from Apple at outrageous prices or one can buy for some flavor of Windows. Powerful programs exist for Linux and many are free but there is a learning curve attached to most of them or they have a high degree of function without the bells and whistles of commercial software. Given a choice I run Mint or Ultimate Edition or in some cases Puppy.
Big online retailers have to tax people in several states as they often have physical spaces in several states. But small online retailers do not tend to have multi state addresses and have a tiny pricing advantage. That enables the small to compete on a slightly more level playing field with the large sellers. It would be a shame for that to be taken away from small sellers. Then we have the problem of product needing to be shipped too individual addresses which offsets the savings available by not having a brick and mortar sales outlet. Taxing online sales might tilt the table so badly that most internet sales are dead meat. Maybe we would all be better served if no internet sales are taxed. Keep in mind that international sales bring money into the US. Obstruction of sales by taxation costs us money and jobs as well.
Ain't it just awful when people are forced to be responsible for their own words?
The tracking device in question might be an attempt to check on someone that he visits or transports from time to time. Suppose a bad guy interacts a lot with eight people. Maybe only four of them know or have anything to do with the bad guys crimes. By tracking people that he interacts with they can usually figure out who is a go between with other criminal elements or somehow benefits from the bad guys crimes. The purpose of investigation can be to eliminate people as suspects and need not be seen as an effort to get somebody for no reason.
My feeling now is that any military combat aircraft is obsolete if it carries a human pilot. Whether it is s trike force fighter bomber or a plane designed to attack other fighters or bombers human life support slows down and restricts the ability of the craft. Whether it is excessive fuel or less range caused by human life support systems or simply the ability to take very high G forces in a dog fight humans simply are not needed for combat. And if a plane is shot down we don't have a highly trained pilot lost nor his family to support for the next 80 years. Drones are working out just fine.
Now the Japanese will miniaturise the monster, make it the size of a cell phone that uses very little power, market to people in the US and Microsoft will sue just because Microsoft always sues people.
There are concepts within the law that sometimes allow information to be hidden. An ongoing investigation denotes special needs for secrets as anyone who inquires and obtains information can pass it on to the criminals being investigated. It may be quite difficult to get transparency in government as laws will conflict with each other and they will tend to use those laws to the government's advantage. Other examples will be considered as national security issues. For example how much money did the US spend last year for funding war by proxy to other entities? How much hostile action did we pay for against Libya? We will not get good answers.
I have seen drunken or reckless drivers that were such an immediate threat that another citizen using a gun to stop them would be justified. And it is not a thought based upon morality but upon mercy. I have no clue as to why a car might be speeding and out of control. The driver might be having a heart attack or loaded with heroin or any number of things. But if it is obvious that a crash will most likely take place and that third parties will be severely injured or killed I think it is reasonable to act and would never find such a person guilty that stops that car either by ramming it or by shooting the driver.
Flight is a felony in itself. There is an assumption that a person fleeing from police, even on foot, is a danger to the public and in the past Florida cops would stop any fleeing suspect with gunfire. If you do not deal in such things that seems like a blood thirsty action. But since being shot simply for flight is no longer standard practice the number of people fleeing has risen from rare to common place. So now we have some very dangerous people escaping who often kill, rape and commit every horror known to man we also have car crashes from suspects in flight that kill the innocent and even the squad car that looses control while trying to catch suspects. We also suffer the loss of cops when a suspect wheels about and shoots a cop in foot pursuit right in the face. So we need an accounting type of approach to see what the kind act is and what the violent act is. Sadly I believe that failure to gun down subjects in flight is probably costing us a lot of deaths, destruction and expense as well. These are common issues and cops are caught smack in the middle. One cop told me that if he ran into a 15 year old waving a pistol while running from a convenience store with a paper bag full of money in the other hand and he shot the kid whether he would have trouble or not depending not on law but depending on which watch commander was on duty at the time. From a tax payer view point the problem is more whether the bad guy lives or dies. If he is well shot but not killed then the exhaustive medical care, the trial, the cost on incarceration all fall upon the city. Whereas if the suspect is dead no trial, no medical care, no prison expenses, follow the event. A live but injured suspect can cause huge loss to the tax payers. Keep in mind that innocent children go hungry in America every day. Where does justice apply?
I think that you would be surprised at the difficulties in breaking up corruption in any governmental agency. You have to be able to offer proofs that those above you can not wiggle out of. And they are very good at wiggling. You also very quickly discover that people are in terror of job loss when they have years invested and their pensions and health care could easily be lost. When it comes to fighting corruption any tiny victory comes at a huge price to a whistle blower.
Burning fossil fuels does great harm. There is no doubt of that. But covering the land with asphalt and concrete and removal of trees fro large areas as will as destruction of the oceans all are causes of warming. We are rather like a race car at full speed headed for a concrete wall. But that is not what our eyes tell us. It seems to be an issue with very slow consequences. Yet in fact the consequences are severe and a lot faster than they seem to be. In order to have much of a chance of surviving this emergency we need to stress population reduction, the end of urban sprawl, the restoration of natural areas, control of chemical pollution and a host of other things that are painful. For example a total ban on all salt water fishing would have an astounding effect on restoring fish in our seas. We also need to make use of invasive plant species in absorbing CO2. Plants such as kudzo can go a long way in helping restore our planet. Bamboo is fast growing and could eliminate a lot of softwood harvesting for paper and fabric fiber and bamboo grows almost everywhere.
Actually before we had a science called chemistry the alchemists had created a pretty good atomic chart. Sometimes those on the outside of what we define as science accomplish quite a bit even if some of their beliefs are off track.