The only inevitability is that the term "begs the question" is now and will remain ambiguous.
Everything is ambiguous if you're ignorant. Why does that matter? Should I stop using words with more than three syllables just because someone might misunderstand them?
The phrase "begs the question" is never ambiguous to an educated individual who actually looks at the context in which it's employed. It's only ambiguous to those who either don't understand it's original meaning, or don't bother paying attention to the discussion.
Good point with liability, and I'd have to say liability for autonomous driving systems *should* be 100% on the manufacturer.
That could be workable, with a few stipulations:
1. The car costs significantly more to cover that liability. 2. The "driver" is no longer legally required to have insurance, since the risk is assumed by the computer/manufacturer.
I'd be willing to pay more for the car if I didn't have to pay for insurance, sine the balance should work out in my favour over time. But if you expect the car company to pay for the accidents, AND you want me to buy insurance... that's just a non-starter.
Um, no... it's just that you're responding to something you imagined, rather tan something I wrote.
Federal law prohibits... blah blah blah
I'm aware of what "federal law prohibits". Read my comment again, please. I didn't say "receiving kiddie porn isn't at all illegal anywhere in the world", I said "you're not going to jail just for receiving e-mail". There are all sorts of stupid laws on the books which never get enforced.
In any event, my comment wasn't about stupidly written American laws; it was about his mistaken belief that his level of risk is significantly elevated by receiving emails intended for other people.
Gmail allows for dot address matching. This is a *huge* problem that has never been addressed.
It hasn't been addressed because there is no such problem. All of the incidents described in the link you provided, as well as your own experience, seem to be explained by user stupidity. No need to invent some mysterious google-bug in order to explain it.
I had a similar experience; some idiot used my google email address, with a dot in the middle (no dot in mine), as his recovery e-mail for a bunch of his other accounts. So I kept getting periodic emails letting me know when he's signed in from a new location. Confused the shit out of me at first. After I contacted him to let him know about it, it turned out he was misspelling his own e-mail address.
When the choice is between user stupidity and a systemic problem, always pick user stupidity.
Stories like this scare the shit out of me because, at any time, if one of those people I happen to receive email for suddenly decides to go into full-creep mode, I could be put in prison for a very, very long time.
Nonsense. If this were true, any pissed off person who knows your e-mail address could get your arrested by spamming you with kiddie-porn from an anonymous e-mail provider. You're not going to go to jail just for receiving e-mail.
When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
When you're surrounded by nails, and standing around holding a hammer, people will wonder why you're not hammering. As long as you're not Jewish. In that case they'll try to convince you that you're surrounded by petunias and daffodils.
They aren't part of Israel (so the inhabitants don't get any rights as citizens) and they aren't allowed to become a separate state (if they try they get bombed and 'settled' some more).
The problem seems to be that every time Palestine gets some degree of freedom, it results in more rockets and shells falling on Israel. Not exactly an encouraging trend if you're considering giving them more freedom.
It might also help if the government of Palestine didn't have "destroy those Jews over there whom we won't even call Israel because we don't recognize the existence of such a state" as a major part of it's official policy.
It is quite similar to what the Nazis wanted to do. Not the Holocaust, but Lebensraum - they wanted to remove the 'inferior' Slavs from the land they wanted to occupy. Just like what Israel is trying to do now to the Palestinians
You really have to be a complete fucking idiot to say something that ignorant. Yeah, Israel wants the "inferiors" gone so badly that they let them immigrate, give them citizenship, and let them hold elected office. They provide them with more rights in Israel than they would enjoy in Muslim-run countries. Meanwhile they continue to endure constant attacks while providing electricity, fuel, food, and medical help for the population which is attacking them.
Seriously, you're either mentally handicapped or you're intentionally lying. There's no halfway point here.
Didn't your mother teach you that two wrongs don't make a right?
If you're basing foreign policy on things you learned from your mother, you're doing it wrong.
I disagree with Hamas methods and I do not in any way support them. But I disagree with Israel's methods as well. Hamas hiding weapons in a school does not justify shelling that school when it is full of children.
Yes, it absolutely does. Israel makes every reasonable effort to avoid hitting civilians, but when Hamas encourages people to sit on top of known targets it's completely fucking impossible to avoid killing them. The South Park Movie has a satirical bit where the US Military uses a tactic called "Operation Hide Behind The Darkies", which involves having their white soldiers hide behind all the black troops. They also tie black soldiers to their tanks and airplanes. Humorous at the time, but that's essentially what Hamas is now doing in Palestine, except with women and children.
"You can't blow up our rocket launcher, look at all the kids we duct-taped to it!"
So, you are claiming 3 Hydrogen explosions at Fukushima, one nearly avoided Hydrogen explosion at TMI and one steam explosion at Chernobyl are not "Boom".
Oh noes. Teh hydrogen blowded up. Quelle horreur. We better go back to using oil and natural gas.
Have you seen the videos from Fuckushima? Or read about what happened in Chernobyl? Or almost happened in TMI? Apparently not.
Yep! Which is why I know that you're full of shit.
Then again, the fact that you used the words "nuclear apologists" in the very first sentence of your very first comment was also a dead giveaway; after that, even someone who isn't intimately familiar with those incidents would still know you're full of shit. You realize you're on Slashdot, right? Not NaturalNews?
No, but the first one will turn out to be a cheap knockoff with out of date hardware that only gets a tenth of the advertised resolution and fails to work when it's cloudy outside.
Also the user manual will be so bad, they won't figure out how to use it until 2045.
Seriously if you have a giant beard, a chest like a bear and chop down trees on the weekend with your massive axe, haul them back home on your shoulders then break them over your head before lighting them on fire with a welding torch, I would say that's about the most manly thing one could do and no one is going to keep that in check.
Pretty much, yeah. Though I don't actually get to grow a beard unless I'm either on leave or deployed overseas, so I guess you got me there.
Of course, if you had a functional sense of humour you would have realized that my "manliness" comment was tongue-in-cheek. The fact that I do cut down trees with an axe and light them up with a blowtorch is just an amusing coincidence.
Firstly, no chick ever grabbed your ass at comic con
Sure, just go ahead and deny my experiences. Next you'll try to tell me that I deserved it because I was wearing a kilt. Victim blaming is always popular, especially when the victim is male.
So the evidence is now so overwhelming that you cannot continue to deny the evidence, so you now move on to claiming it's somehow "insignificant".
I've never denied the evidence. You may have me confused with a strawman you constructed. If you're going to argue with him, why address your response to me?
That said, I'd imagine that penetrative rape - the type commonly suffered by females - is a lot more traumatic.
Assuming a completely unwilling and unaroused victim, yes, I very much suspect it would be. However, feminists and victim-advocacy groups have spent the last couple decades telling us that "rape is rape" and that they're all equally bad, so it would be a bit hypocritical for them to now start screaming "BUT WE HAVE IT WORSE!".
No matter who you are, what your personality is, etc there will always be some people out there that don't like you, won't hire you, or otherwise throw negativity your way even if you've done absolutely nothing to earn their hate.
Very true. So when that happens to me, is that because of the matriarchy trying to keep my manliness in check?
Your reaction is what I've noticed most women get if they even gently bring something up. It's 100% complete denial and blame the messenger.
What I can't figure out is why?
Because that's what we do when people are wrong?
I've noticed when people bring up the idea that the holocaust never happened, they get 100% complete denial and blame the messenger. Hrm... I wonder why.
True, this behavior may be a small group of bad apples, but by denying the problem exists at all you're enabling those bad apples to continue doing what they do.
Nobody is denying that the problem exists. That's the kind of absurd strawman that always ends up derailing these discussions. What people are telling you is that:
1. Everyone gets harassed at some point. You don't see me going around talking about what an unsafe environment comicon is just because some chick grabbed my ass. 2. Problems caused by a small subset of individuals should be dealt with INDIVIDUALLY, rather than by writing long-winded articles about how the whole system is horrible. Only an idiot attacks an entire community over the actions of a few individuals. We usually call that "bigotry".
Seriously, why can't we just admit women catch a lot of shit just for being women in tech?
Because it's insignificant. I've caught more flack for having a slow connection than most women catch for being women. I've seen far more men bending over backwards to help "women in tech" than I've seen trying to tear them down. Men tend to be far more cruel and destructive towards each other than they do with women. If harassment in the tech community is a problem then it's a problem for everyone, and it's absolutely ridiculous to single out women as being some special class of victim.
I tend to agree with you, in general. However, I do think it is disingenuous to name a company "Girlfight" in a clear attempt to cash in on their sexuality, then contribute to an article complaining about it.
That's feminism for you in a nutshell. The "skepchick" website rose to fame in no small part thanks to putting out a (artistic-ish) nude calendar of their members, and encouraging male adoration. Then once they had enough of a following, they decided it was now misogynistic for men to comment on their appearance or think of them in a sexual way. Lots of women have gained prominence by using their sexuality to their advantage, only to later go on long-winded rants about how nobody should be "objectifying" them.
You realize that there's more difference between your average man and your average woman than between your average NFL linebacker and your average man, right?
Oh, geeze, don't let a feminist hear you say that! Every time someone suggests women maybe aren't suitable to being firefighters or combat soldiers, the wymins go apeshit.
You do realize how commonly women are raped and abused by men, and how they might happen to be more sensitive to the implicit or explicit threats of violence from someone that they're highly unlikely to be able to fight off?
According to the newest stats, not really that much more often than men are abused or raped by women. Domestic violence cases split almost 50/50. Sexual violence victims are still mostly women, but men come in very close behind now that we've stopped defining "rape" in a way that makes it impossible for women to be rapists.
And men being abused by men... holy shit. If we took your approach, every man in the world should be "more sensitive to the imiplicit or explicit threats of violence", to the point where we'd pee our pants as soon as another man looked at us funny.
Difference is, men don't try to justify freaking out and overreacting by pointing to statistics. And neither do most women, for that matter; the ones who do are just a very loud minority.
Really ? You don't think there's any possibilities between no minimum wage and a $50k/hr minimum wage ?
I never gave my opinion on the matter. Your ignorant political stereotypes led you to make assumptions about what things I never even commented on. This is common amongst political ideologues and other loudmouths and pundits.
Like I said, mindless tripe. Unthinking regurgitation of conservative articles of faith.
If it were mindless tripe you'd swallow it without a second thought. The fact is you've completely failed to grasp the points which were being made. Calling it "mindless tripe" because you don't understand it is... pretty childish. Reminds of the hick I met down in the bible belt who called evolution "mindless tripe". You two would get along great.
I don't think you know what that fallacy actually means. Nothing I wrote is even close to an excluded middle fallacy. The particular bit you quoted might be considered a sweeping generalization, if it weren't so blatantly evident that I was mocking your kindergarten-level understanding of economics.
Yes it is sad how people always have to die before lessons are learned
Not always, but you know how it is with bureaucracies... nothing gets them motivated quite as well as a good disaster.
I always figured the Flight 007 was a similar case, after seeing documentaries about both incidents I see them in a similar light.
Naw, man. I mean, sure, there are some superficial similarities, but the things which actually caused the incidents are COMPLETELY different.
The Soviet shootdown is a simple case of browbeaten lackeys under a tyrannical regime making what they figured was the best choice to cover their asses. There was no threat to them. The aircraft was nowhere near the people who made the call, and was on it's way out of Soviet airspace. The pilot involved even told them he believed it was a civilian airliner. Yet they decided to shoot it down anyway.
The Vincennes incident was the exact opposite. It involved personnel under serious threat from Iranian forces, in hostile territory, faced with an aircraft they couldn't identify which seemed to be on an attack vector. They were scared for their lives, and under an immense amount of stress. I'm not sure how to explain that to someone who works a 9-5 job in an office. Lots of people talk about "stress" in their day-to-day jobs, and I'm sure there's some truth to their complaints, but unless you're a first responder, an air traffic controller, or a soldier in a combat zone, you really don't know what stress is, or how badly it can skew your normal behaviour. We train our people to recognize it, avoid it, or deal with it... and we put measures in place to try and minimize it... but when you're engaged in combat and feel that your life is on the line, even the best preparations can only do so much. It only gets worse when you're the one responsible for a multi-million dollar vessel, and several hundred lives on board it.
The difference may be easier to visualize if you relate it to something you're more familiar with. The Soviet shootdown of 007 was the equivalent of a couple police supervisors sitting at headquarters, ordering a patrolman to shoot an unarmed man running away from a property he trespassed on. The American shootdown of the Iranian flight was the equivalent of a couple SWAT guys under heavy fire panicking and shooting a civilian who was running towards them. Both are horrible incidents which should never have happened. But other than that, they have absolutely nothing in common.
Actually I feel pretty confident stating that if more people have more money, economic activity will increase.
Sure. So lets pass a law that says every person should be paid $50,000 per hour. Economic activity ought to be AMAZING then!
No, minimum wage is setting a floor on living standards.
Very true. If you meet the minimum skill required for the minimum-wage job, you get a crappy job that pays your basic expenses, but won't pay off that credit card you keep racking up because now you can afford more useless crap. If you don't meet the minimum skill requirements, then fuck you - you're stuck on the government dole because we won't let you sell your services for less. Our minimum living standard says you have to be a parasite rather than contributing to society.
If a business can't employ someone for minimum wage, then their business model is broken.
Totally right. Especially when we implement our $50,000 minimum wage idea. If those fatcat small business guys can't afford it, fuck 'em; someone else will come along to start a business once the economy settles down.
The more people you add to a database, the less relevant it becomes for anything.
Totally. Just like mass-surveys become more and more useless the more people you add to them. And scientific research becomes more and more useless the more data points you gather.
Slashdot Mirror
The only inevitability is that the term "begs the question" is now and will remain ambiguous.
Everything is ambiguous if you're ignorant. Why does that matter? Should I stop using words with more than three syllables just because someone might misunderstand them?
The phrase "begs the question" is never ambiguous to an educated individual who actually looks at the context in which it's employed. It's only ambiguous to those who either don't understand it's original meaning, or don't bother paying attention to the discussion.
Good point with liability, and I'd have to say liability for autonomous driving systems *should* be 100% on the manufacturer.
That could be workable, with a few stipulations:
1. The car costs significantly more to cover that liability.
2. The "driver" is no longer legally required to have insurance, since the risk is assumed by the computer/manufacturer.
I'd be willing to pay more for the car if I didn't have to pay for insurance, sine the balance should work out in my favour over time. But if you expect the car company to pay for the accidents, AND you want me to buy insurance ... that's just a non-starter.
You just made that up.
Um, no ... it's just that you're responding to something you imagined, rather tan something I wrote.
Federal law prohibits ... blah blah blah
I'm aware of what "federal law prohibits". Read my comment again, please. I didn't say "receiving kiddie porn isn't at all illegal anywhere in the world", I said "you're not going to jail just for receiving e-mail". There are all sorts of stupid laws on the books which never get enforced.
In any event, my comment wasn't about stupidly written American laws; it was about his mistaken belief that his level of risk is significantly elevated by receiving emails intended for other people.
Gmail allows for dot address matching. This is a *huge* problem that has never been addressed.
It hasn't been addressed because there is no such problem. All of the incidents described in the link you provided, as well as your own experience, seem to be explained by user stupidity. No need to invent some mysterious google-bug in order to explain it.
I had a similar experience; some idiot used my google email address, with a dot in the middle (no dot in mine), as his recovery e-mail for a bunch of his other accounts. So I kept getting periodic emails letting me know when he's signed in from a new location. Confused the shit out of me at first. After I contacted him to let him know about it, it turned out he was misspelling his own e-mail address.
When the choice is between user stupidity and a systemic problem, always pick user stupidity.
Stories like this scare the shit out of me because, at any time, if one of those people I happen to receive email for suddenly decides to go into full-creep mode, I could be put in prison for a very, very long time.
Nonsense. If this were true, any pissed off person who knows your e-mail address could get your arrested by spamming you with kiddie-porn from an anonymous e-mail provider. You're not going to go to jail just for receiving e-mail.
You may have done the right thing for the wrong reason, but apology accepted.
When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
When you're surrounded by nails, and standing around holding a hammer, people will wonder why you're not hammering. As long as you're not Jewish. In that case they'll try to convince you that you're surrounded by petunias and daffodils.
They aren't part of Israel (so the inhabitants don't get any rights as citizens) and they aren't allowed to become a separate state (if they try they get bombed and 'settled' some more).
The problem seems to be that every time Palestine gets some degree of freedom, it results in more rockets and shells falling on Israel. Not exactly an encouraging trend if you're considering giving them more freedom.
It might also help if the government of Palestine didn't have "destroy those Jews over there whom we won't even call Israel because we don't recognize the existence of such a state" as a major part of it's official policy.
It is quite similar to what the Nazis wanted to do. Not the Holocaust, but Lebensraum - they wanted to remove the 'inferior' Slavs from the land they wanted to occupy. Just like what Israel is trying to do now to the Palestinians
You really have to be a complete fucking idiot to say something that ignorant. Yeah, Israel wants the "inferiors" gone so badly that they let them immigrate, give them citizenship, and let them hold elected office. They provide them with more rights in Israel than they would enjoy in Muslim-run countries. Meanwhile they continue to endure constant attacks while providing electricity, fuel, food, and medical help for the population which is attacking them.
Seriously, you're either mentally handicapped or you're intentionally lying. There's no halfway point here.
Didn't your mother teach you that two wrongs don't make a right?
If you're basing foreign policy on things you learned from your mother, you're doing it wrong.
I disagree with Hamas methods and I do not in any way support them. But I disagree with Israel's methods as well. Hamas hiding weapons in a school does not justify shelling that school when it is full of children.
Yes, it absolutely does. Israel makes every reasonable effort to avoid hitting civilians, but when Hamas encourages people to sit on top of known targets it's completely fucking impossible to avoid killing them. The South Park Movie has a satirical bit where the US Military uses a tactic called "Operation Hide Behind The Darkies", which involves having their white soldiers hide behind all the black troops. They also tie black soldiers to their tanks and airplanes. Humorous at the time, but that's essentially what Hamas is now doing in Palestine, except with women and children.
"You can't blow up our rocket launcher, look at all the kids we duct-taped to it!"
And people like you just lap it up.
So, you are claiming 3 Hydrogen explosions at Fukushima, one nearly avoided Hydrogen explosion at TMI and one steam explosion at Chernobyl are not "Boom".
Oh noes. Teh hydrogen blowded up. Quelle horreur. We better go back to using oil and natural gas.
Oh ... wait ...
There is a disparity here that we need to take into account.
You haven't demonstrated a disparity. Assault is assault regardless of whether some guy thinks it should be taken seriously or not.
It's also easier to sexually assault a woman with a grab, as grabbing her boobs counts and grabbing my chest doesn't.
Why?
Have you seen the videos from Fuckushima? Or read about what happened in Chernobyl? Or almost happened in TMI? Apparently not.
Yep! Which is why I know that you're full of shit.
Then again, the fact that you used the words "nuclear apologists" in the very first sentence of your very first comment was also a dead giveaway; after that, even someone who isn't intimately familiar with those incidents would still know you're full of shit. You realize you're on Slashdot, right? Not NaturalNews?
Something tells me that you have no clue what "works" means. Hint: "Booom!" is usually not a part of "works" for power installations.
Something tells me you have no clue what "nuclear reactor" means. Hint: There is no "Boom!" in a reactor failure.
Will they have to buy a new one every year?
No, but the first one will turn out to be a cheap knockoff with out of date hardware that only gets a tenth of the advertised resolution and fails to work when it's cloudy outside.
Also the user manual will be so bad, they won't figure out how to use it until 2045.
Seriously if you have a giant beard, a chest like a bear and chop down trees on the weekend with your massive axe, haul them back home on your shoulders then break them over your head before lighting them on fire with a welding torch, I would say that's about the most manly thing one could do and no one is going to keep that in check.
Pretty much, yeah. Though I don't actually get to grow a beard unless I'm either on leave or deployed overseas, so I guess you got me there.
Of course, if you had a functional sense of humour you would have realized that my "manliness" comment was tongue-in-cheek. The fact that I do cut down trees with an axe and light them up with a blowtorch is just an amusing coincidence.
Firstly, no chick ever grabbed your ass at comic con
Sure, just go ahead and deny my experiences. Next you'll try to tell me that I deserved it because I was wearing a kilt. Victim blaming is always popular, especially when the victim is male.
So the evidence is now so overwhelming that you cannot continue to deny the evidence, so you now move on to claiming it's somehow "insignificant".
I've never denied the evidence. You may have me confused with a strawman you constructed. If you're going to argue with him, why address your response to me?
That said, I'd imagine that penetrative rape - the type commonly suffered by females - is a lot more traumatic.
Assuming a completely unwilling and unaroused victim, yes, I very much suspect it would be. However, feminists and victim-advocacy groups have spent the last couple decades telling us that "rape is rape" and that they're all equally bad, so it would be a bit hypocritical for them to now start screaming "BUT WE HAVE IT WORSE!".
No matter who you are, what your personality is, etc there will always be some people out there that don't like you, won't hire you, or otherwise throw negativity your way even if you've done absolutely nothing to earn their hate.
Very true. So when that happens to me, is that because of the matriarchy trying to keep my manliness in check?
Your reaction is what I've noticed most women get if they even gently bring something up. It's 100% complete denial and blame the messenger.
What I can't figure out is why?
Because that's what we do when people are wrong?
I've noticed when people bring up the idea that the holocaust never happened, they get 100% complete denial and blame the messenger. Hrm ... I wonder why.
True, this behavior may be a small group of bad apples, but by denying the problem exists at all you're enabling those bad apples to continue doing what they do.
Nobody is denying that the problem exists. That's the kind of absurd strawman that always ends up derailing these discussions. What people are telling you is that:
1. Everyone gets harassed at some point. You don't see me going around talking about what an unsafe environment comicon is just because some chick grabbed my ass.
2. Problems caused by a small subset of individuals should be dealt with INDIVIDUALLY, rather than by writing long-winded articles about how the whole system is horrible. Only an idiot attacks an entire community over the actions of a few individuals. We usually call that "bigotry".
Seriously, why can't we just admit women catch a lot of shit just for being women in tech?
Because it's insignificant. I've caught more flack for having a slow connection than most women catch for being women. I've seen far more men bending over backwards to help "women in tech" than I've seen trying to tear them down. Men tend to be far more cruel and destructive towards each other than they do with women. If harassment in the tech community is a problem then it's a problem for everyone, and it's absolutely ridiculous to single out women as being some special class of victim.
I tend to agree with you, in general. However, I do think it is disingenuous to name a company "Girlfight" in a clear attempt to cash in on their sexuality, then contribute to an article complaining about it.
That's feminism for you in a nutshell. The "skepchick" website rose to fame in no small part thanks to putting out a (artistic-ish) nude calendar of their members, and encouraging male adoration. Then once they had enough of a following, they decided it was now misogynistic for men to comment on their appearance or think of them in a sexual way. Lots of women have gained prominence by using their sexuality to their advantage, only to later go on long-winded rants about how nobody should be "objectifying" them.
You realize that there's more difference between your average man and your average woman than between your average NFL linebacker and your average man, right?
Oh, geeze, don't let a feminist hear you say that! Every time someone suggests women maybe aren't suitable to being firefighters or combat soldiers, the wymins go apeshit.
You do realize how commonly women are raped and abused by men, and how they might happen to be more sensitive to the implicit or explicit threats of violence from someone that they're highly unlikely to be able to fight off?
According to the newest stats, not really that much more often than men are abused or raped by women. Domestic violence cases split almost 50/50. Sexual violence victims are still mostly women, but men come in very close behind now that we've stopped defining "rape" in a way that makes it impossible for women to be rapists.
And men being abused by men ... holy shit. If we took your approach, every man in the world should be "more sensitive to the imiplicit or explicit threats of violence", to the point where we'd pee our pants as soon as another man looked at us funny.
Difference is, men don't try to justify freaking out and overreacting by pointing to statistics. And neither do most women, for that matter; the ones who do are just a very loud minority.
Really ? You don't think there's any possibilities between no minimum wage and a $50k/hr minimum wage ?
I never gave my opinion on the matter. Your ignorant political stereotypes led you to make assumptions about what things I never even commented on. This is common amongst political ideologues and other loudmouths and pundits.
Like I said, mindless tripe. Unthinking regurgitation of conservative articles of faith.
If it were mindless tripe you'd swallow it without a second thought. The fact is you've completely failed to grasp the points which were being made. Calling it "mindless tripe" because you don't understand it is ... pretty childish. Reminds of the hick I met down in the bible belt who called evolution "mindless tripe". You two would get along great.
Excluded middle fallacy.
I don't think you know what that fallacy actually means. Nothing I wrote is even close to an excluded middle fallacy. The particular bit you quoted might be considered a sweeping generalization, if it weren't so blatantly evident that I was mocking your kindergarten-level understanding of economics.
The rest of your mindless tripe is no better.
Hurr, durr, ad-hominem fallacy!
Yes it is sad how people always have to die before lessons are learned
Not always, but you know how it is with bureaucracies ... nothing gets them motivated quite as well as a good disaster.
I always figured the Flight 007 was a similar case, after seeing documentaries about both incidents I see them in a similar light.
Naw, man. I mean, sure, there are some superficial similarities, but the things which actually caused the incidents are COMPLETELY different.
The Soviet shootdown is a simple case of browbeaten lackeys under a tyrannical regime making what they figured was the best choice to cover their asses. There was no threat to them. The aircraft was nowhere near the people who made the call, and was on it's way out of Soviet airspace. The pilot involved even told them he believed it was a civilian airliner. Yet they decided to shoot it down anyway.
The Vincennes incident was the exact opposite. It involved personnel under serious threat from Iranian forces, in hostile territory, faced with an aircraft they couldn't identify which seemed to be on an attack vector. They were scared for their lives, and under an immense amount of stress. I'm not sure how to explain that to someone who works a 9-5 job in an office. Lots of people talk about "stress" in their day-to-day jobs, and I'm sure there's some truth to their complaints, but unless you're a first responder, an air traffic controller, or a soldier in a combat zone, you really don't know what stress is, or how badly it can skew your normal behaviour. We train our people to recognize it, avoid it, or deal with it ... and we put measures in place to try and minimize it ... but when you're engaged in combat and feel that your life is on the line, even the best preparations can only do so much. It only gets worse when you're the one responsible for a multi-million dollar vessel, and several hundred lives on board it.
The difference may be easier to visualize if you relate it to something you're more familiar with. The Soviet shootdown of 007 was the equivalent of a couple police supervisors sitting at headquarters, ordering a patrolman to shoot an unarmed man running away from a property he trespassed on. The American shootdown of the Iranian flight was the equivalent of a couple SWAT guys under heavy fire panicking and shooting a civilian who was running towards them. Both are horrible incidents which should never have happened. But other than that, they have absolutely nothing in common.
Actually I feel pretty confident stating that if more people have more money, economic activity will increase.
Sure. So lets pass a law that says every person should be paid $50,000 per hour. Economic activity ought to be AMAZING then!
No, minimum wage is setting a floor on living standards.
Very true. If you meet the minimum skill required for the minimum-wage job, you get a crappy job that pays your basic expenses, but won't pay off that credit card you keep racking up because now you can afford more useless crap. If you don't meet the minimum skill requirements, then fuck you - you're stuck on the government dole because we won't let you sell your services for less. Our minimum living standard says you have to be a parasite rather than contributing to society.
If a business can't employ someone for minimum wage, then their business model is broken.
Totally right. Especially when we implement our $50,000 minimum wage idea. If those fatcat small business guys can't afford it, fuck 'em; someone else will come along to start a business once the economy settles down.
The more people you add to a database, the less relevant it becomes for anything.
Totally. Just like mass-surveys become more and more useless the more people you add to them. And scientific research becomes more and more useless the more data points you gather.
The funny thing is, fulfilling his FOIA request is probably the first time anyone in government actually looked at his data.