Why is every article about driverless cars about Google's cars?
Car manufacturers, like Mercedes, Audi, VW, are also working on this topic, and are probably even ahead of Google.
Actually, Mercedes and VAG (Audi and VW are the same company) are way behind Google in the automation race.
Japanese companies like Nissan and Toyota are looking to Google to provide the technology for automated cars (but Japanese auto makers of recent years are extremely risk averse).
Dont kid yourself: You arent "forced" to pirate it, you choose to because you want the content they produced but dont want to play by their terms.
Dont kid yourself, when people find terms unreasonable, casual copying becomes justifiable.
Ultimately piracy is a delivery problem, not a legal one. Here in Australia if I want to watch Game of Thrones I need to pay Murdoch A$70+ a month and have to do it on Murdoch's time table. Both of these are unacceptable to me. So downloading it is the only acceptable option remaining.
The old system used by HBO and Murdoch's Foxtel is dying a slow death. People dont want to wait for shows to be on, they want to watch them at their own leisure nor do they want to have to pay for 30 channels of bullshit to get 1 show. Piracy isn't a scourge on humanity as Murdoch et al. would like to perpetuate, it's merely the market reacting to conditions they find unacceptable. If you want to see piracy of your show plummet, make it available through as many channels as possible for a reasonable price. The easiest way to do this is to allow anyone to resell it for a flat (per copy) license fee that people will accept.
However they want to continue to prop up outdated ideas like exclusivity. So they will have to accept that piracy is an acceptable alternative.
The real problem is the lack of integration of plot and gameplay. In most current games 'plot' exists as some cutscenes and scripting forced on gameplay that otherwise exists in different universe. Instead gameplay itself should drive the story, not scripting.
Half Life, Deus Ex, System Shock and System Shock 2.
Oh wait, you said most current games, PC games of yore had perfected mixing gameplay and storytelling by 2000. Even some modern games have managed it, Fallout 3/New Vegas had very short stories (main plot) but it was player driven and player influenced as well as having a crapload of non-essential tasks and info that can also effect the ending.
May as well add KOTOR and Mass Effect into that list.
The problem is with games that put a half arsed effort into making a story. Thinking of all your COD's here where they follow a generic story with overused cliche's and terrible scripting. A nameless, faceless musclebound meathead sent out to destroy an enemy that's perfectly designed to retard sympathy (Nazi's and Terr'ists). Few games manage to work moral ambiguity into their stories, not even the classics like Half Life (which is quite simple as stories go, but perfectly integrated into gameplay). Not all games need a complex story or even a story at all but a simple story (or a complete lack of one) is far better than a bad story.
Insofar as the dirt isn't harmful to my car (salty grime in the winter for instance), I keep my car dirty on purpose.
Not true,
Dirt tends to hide corrosives that will damage paint and cause rust over time. Especially if you live on the coast or they use salt on the roads during winter.
Nothing better than a really dirty car to prevent it from being broken into or stolen when I leave it parked downtown.
A dirty lambo is still a lambo. If you want a theft proof car, get something like a 2000 Hyundai Getz that isn't worth anything.
The problem with building really tall buildings is how to transport enough people up and down without using up the floor space on elevators rather than rentable area. Silly fast elevators may well be worth the money if it results in more silly expensive top-floor rent income.
The west may have stopped with the prestige over practicality thing decades ago, but not in China.
Having the fastest elevators in the country, let alone the world is something to brag and bignote yourself about.
Why do you think they keep building stupidly expensive and impractical shit in Dubai (skyscrapers, artificial island and so forth), it's so the Emir's can have a huge wank.
I'd like little windows so people can see into the next room. These are always missing in games.
ALSO, I want to shoot something through the doors and blow them up with things.
#FeatureCreep
Stop playing games on a console.
Both of these features have been available on PC games for over a decade.
Why the hell would you want to relocate to some 3rd-world shithole where you have to worry about K&R (no, not the Unix guys)?
Go look at the quality-of-living indices, and the countries which dominate them. They're not 3rd-world countries with low costs-of-living. If you want to live someplace where it's extremely safe, the government isn't corrupt, there's good public services (public transit, healthcare, etc.), it's going to cost you. If you have a medical emergency in a mountain town in Morocco, you're probably not going to survive.
Here's the thing, on half my Australian wage, I could live like a king in a place like Thailand or the Phillipines. Police corruption is cheap, so are taxis and health care (although I'd get an insurance policy for health from a western insurer). In a place like Phuket, I'll have most of the modern amenities I'm used to and if I have a tumble down the stairs, medical care is just as close as it is in the west (and a hell of a lot cheaper).
Now on a Thai wage, not so.
If you can manage US$40K a year from investments, that's enough to retire there and live an extremely good life. Hell, you could probably do it for US$25K if you didn't want too much extravagance.
I can afford a private room in the top hospitals in Bangkok which are almost as good as the top hospitals in western nations and way better than the average western hospital. there's no way I'd be able to afford to go to a top hospital in Australia or the US.
There's a big difference between someone who doubts the big bang because they evidence isn't conclusive and it's just the best hypothesis we have right now and someone who doubts the big bang because an 1700 year old book says a sky man created the earth in 7 days.
The former has doubts because their mind open to other possibilities, the latter because their mind is closed to other possibilities. Doubt is really the wrong word for the latter, but they like it because it allows them to get a word in to rational conversations and once that happens, well you know the old saying about arguing with an idiot.
This is a lousy idea for a smartphone, but it has potential as an industrial automation and robotics controller. Those are built up from lots of little modules, but the mechanical and electrical standards are decades old, and systems are too bulky. Think of this as a replacement for Arduino "shields", too.
Actually its the right application.
Just not in the way most people are thinking.
Modular design leads to modular construction. Modular construction leads to lower prices via economies of scale. Many./er's aren't old enough to remember when computers were monolithic pieces of silicon like phones are today, a single assembly with everything soldered in and not replaceable. If something broke, fixing it was expensive, If you needed anything bespoke it cost an absolute fortune. Now everyone and their dog (well, except Apple) offers many options for any run of the mill laptop, ordering a custom machine from Dell is easy, every corner computer shop can offer you a bespoke desktop at competitive prices because components fit together on standardised connectors like DIMM, PCI-e, SATA and USB.
As will it be with phones, Samsung, LG, et al. will simply assemble them out of component parts that simply slot together. Designing new phones will become simpler and easier. Having to produce custom radio's will be as simple as swapping a module. This is where the average person will benefit from lower prices.
Beyond that, there will still be people who upgrade. Computer component stores have not disappeared because Acer and Toshiba sell laptops that dont need extra bits. People still upgrade their hard drives, video cards or even buy entire bespoke machines. The same it will eventually be with phones, need more storage, get a storage module. New radio technology, get the new radio module. Want a mini HDMI port... you get the idea. Not everyone will upgrade their phones... in fact the majority wont, but there will be enough people who will to justify these modules selling to the general public.
Phone repairs, goes without saying this is definitely the way to go.
Modular phone designs will happen, not overnight, maybe not even in the next few years but it will eventually happen.
I love how Apple has shown time and time again what the majority of customers want... except of course that the iPhone market share is a fraction what Android's is. And the mac market share is less than that of the much reviled Windows 8, not to mention about a fourth that of the no longer supported, 13 year old Windows XP. Apple doesn't know what the masses want, they know what a relatively small, though highly visible, affluent, influential group want.
Apple doesn't know what they want.
Apple knows how to market and make people without the ability to decide things for themselves think they want their products. This is Apple's core audience, the people who cant pick what they want.
If the food service industry followed Apple's example, every restaurant would be a tarted up McDonalds and every restaurant would only serve one menu item at an inflated price. "Oh, you wanted Chicken, tough, you want beef and you're getting beef because we know what you want better than you do, that'll be $36.95 (plus taxes if you live in the US, Malaysia or Singapore)".
Yes, Fascism allows for a measure of capitalism, but strongly controlled by the government, which is very far from Laissez-faire capitalism
Fascism is the ultimate expression of capitalism. It is essentially a corporate state run by oligarchs or plutarchs. The regimes of Mussolini and the Nazi's would never have gotten off the ground without the help of the titans of industry in their countries.
You're right that it's different from laissez-faire capitalism, but laissez-faire is an unworkable economic system because it assumes monopolistic behaviour does not exist and people are rational, so all attempts at laissez-faire capitalism end up in a form of fascism as the most powerful capitalist entities take control. Laissez-faire is extreme, anarchistic capitalism and has the same fundamental problem as communism (extreme, anarchistic socialism), it assumes people aren't greedy and wont try to grab more (power/money) for themselves. Of course this is wrong, so attempts at communism end up as despotic socialist states and attempts at Laissez-faire end up as despotic fascist states.
This is one of the key reasons why most western nations operate mixed economies, neither purely capitalist nor socialist and changing as circumstances require. Ultimately, inflexible economic systems are doomed to failure.
Then support single payer. Or, support the move to divest health insurance from employment completely.
This,
It's not rocket science, as long as employers have power over their employees health insurance, they'll find ways to avoid their commitments. Especially when the employees are poor (cant afford lawyers) and unionism is demonised.
Other countries have managed to create working health care systems which involve both public and private sources but don't depend on an employer. Giving your employer power over something as important as health care is tantamount to indentured servitude.
I remember choosing between eating, living in bad neighborhoods, putting gas in the car, etc.
A starving student with a car?! I think we've isolated the problem.
And how many of those cars are bombs that aren't even worth US$500?
I work at a university and most students drive 15-20 yr old cars with a value of between A$1000 and 4000. A 15 yr old Toyota Corolla costs a few 1000 to buy and runs off the smell of an oily rag (seriously, a 15yr old corolla has the efficiency of a modern diesel hatch, I averaged 6L/100 KM in an EK Civic). Owning a car is not a symbol of opulence.
However I also live in a city where you can get by on public transport, but you're paying A$110 for a shoebox sized room in a sharehouse (A$150 for anything that can accommodate a single bed and a desk). Rents will be by far, the most expensive cost for a student unless they're living at home, the cost of running an old bomb will pale in comparison to rent and food.
Cars are not as expensive to run as people think, I drive an extremely thirsty 2L Honda Integra, it gets 9-10L/100KM doing mostly highway K's. A weeks worth of RON 100 (the most expensive fuel you can get) is between A$50-70 (@A$1.60 a litre) depending on how much suburban driving I do. Groceries easily cost $80 p/w. However I'm a full time worker so I can easily afford my car, if running costs were an issue, I'd have kept my EK Civic as that costs A$30 a week to keep running (petrol and maint). The problem a lot of students face is that the car isn't really optional due to the distances between a home, work and uni and living in places where public transport is practically non-existent.
An old 4 banger whitegoods car like a Corolla or Civic is not a luxury, for many it's a necessity due to a lack of public transport options.
Assassinating North Korean leadership would be fairly easy for US today if it wanted to do it.
The reason it's not been done is the fact that sudden power vacuum would cause a collapse of North Korean state, and North Koreans have proven to be extremely difficult to acclimate to South Korean society, where they would massively flood to.
The CIA is notoriously bad at regime change... However the KGB (or what ever they're called these days) isn't.
The key to assassinating the NK is to have a puppet dictator lined up to replace him. Given that the NK military is a nepotist plutocracy (kleptocracy may be more appropriate) finding a volunteer to be a toady would not be hard. As long as you've got the transition of power mapped out, there'll be no power vacuum and no impetus to reunite the Korea's.
The carriers already can (and do) block stolen phones. Each phone has a unique IMEI number, in addition to the SIM card number.
The carriers are already required to do this in some countries, and do it voluntarily in other countries. They just don't do it in the US.
IMEI blacklists are common in many countries, including the UK. When a device is stolen the IMEI number is put on the list and carriers reject the device and (potentially) notify investigators.
Blacklists are useless.
Steal phone in the UK, sell it in Poland or Hungary where the carrier doesn't have a blacklist.
Or better yet, change the IMEI.
A remote wipe will be equally as useless as the criminals will just learn to immediately turn the phone off and then give it to someone who can disable the remote wipe. There's always someone willing to sell their knowledge/skills with no morals. Why would you think this doesn't extend to people who hack phones.
To this day I'll never understand why teachers were so blind to the fact that the bigger stronger "athletic" kids constantly harassed the weaker kids.
You're lucky, since in your case the bullies were actually considered to be part of the party at fault.
And the teachers actions are easy to understand when you realize that they're not interested in justice - they want peace in the classroom.
In modern times, the teachers hands are tied. If a teacher stands up to a bully, that bully's father is in the administrators office threatening lawyers.
I got bullied a bit in High School, one of the teachers was good with it. He'd let the bully get away with a little bit, but after he thought enough was enough he'd start using inventive forms of punishment (I.E. he'd put a dot on the blackboard and the student had to stand with their nose touching it).
Ultimately I defeated the bullies by becoming part of the clique. I developed a sense of humour, started cracking jokes and that ended up making friends. Once that happened the bullies (who are really, inherently cowards) realised that if they continued to pick on me, they'd be the ones outside the clique.
I really do feel for teachers these days, it's not that they want to tolerate the bullying, quite the contrary they'd love to toss the bully's out by the scruff of their necks with a swift boot to the pants for good measure but the shitstorm that would create would make WWII look like a school yard scuffle. Its getting to the point where helicopter parents and tiger mums are so aggressive with the layers that they cant even give them a negative report. The worst thing a teacher can write is "Little Johnny needs to pay more attention in class" which has become teacher code for "Little Johnny is a right little shit".
I used to share a house with two teachers, top blokes, always had good pot but their work was shit. If any parent made trouble with the principal, they'd get it dumped down on them two fold.
Because your targets are guaranteed to be unable to shoot back?
Same with theatres, shopping centres, cafe's and MickyD's.
I know many Americans have this fantasy about everyone being John Wayne packing a six shooter and picking off a gunman at 1000 yards but the reality is, very few people carry and most of them wont be able to shoot straight at the best of times, let alone in the heat of an attack and they have no idea which person is the shooter.
You need to go back and re-read the GP's post, people who shoot up schools pick schools for very specific reasons.
1. Kids shoot up schools. Why schools? Why not shopping malls before Christmas or movie theaters during blockbuster premiers? If it's body count and fame you're after, that's where you'd have to do your killing spree. Schools are rather meh for either. Not very cramped, lots of exits, before you can rack up a sensible body count most of the people already hit the exit. Now try a movie theater with 2 exits for 200+ people. Shot 10 or so and a body count of at least 50 is certain due to the stampede! So why schools?
This.
Terrorists in Israel target theatres, buses and other places where they can kill a lot of people without having many escape. Blowing up a school doesn't make sense because campuses are large and open (ergo requires a lot of explosives).
It's not a killing spree. It's revenge. Plain and simple.
This, and why are kids feeling the need to get revenge?
Like you said, politicians, parents, news media are all very quick to blame video games, comic books, movies, rock and/or roll music but never look at the real cause. The society that created them.
The kids who go off the edge are reacting. You have to remember that the Columbine killers had lists of people to kill and they even let some people go because they were nice to them. Until the US abandons the Lord of the Flies culture in schools, until the US stops encouraging popularity contests by elevating mediocrity and finally admits that allowing those elevated by this system to ostracise people they don't like the US will continue to suffer from extreme violence in schools.
But this means the parents, politicans and news media need to admit the society they created is horribly wrong... and that's harder than blaming the people who got shot.
School shootings are not prevalent in other countries that have a higher rate of violence (violent crime, specifically shootings) because the same culture does not exist.
I'm not forced to pay the $30 fee. I could do my taxes by hand, if I wanted, and avoid it. TurboTax also has a free option which I could *probably* use, but for the $30 you get more hand-holding and sanity checks to make sure you didn't screw something up. To me, $30/year is worth it if it reduces my chance of being audited even slightly. Plus its way cheaper than what I'd pay an accountant or tax preparer.
Sure you could do it by hand, but then you risk all kinds of mistakes and increases the chance of being audited, so in effect, people are being forced to pay to submit their tax returns.
I find this to be criminal, keep your assault rifles, I'm happier with a sane tax code and working tax office.
In Australia, via the e-tax program you have to be retarded to stuff it up. Most companies submit your group certificates (the record that details how much you paid and the tax withheld) to the ATO (Australian Taxation Office) so most of your tax return fills itself out. Even filling one out as a small business isn't difficult (quarterly Business Activity Statements). People hate the ATO, but they do go out of their way to make doing your taxes easier and in effect I guess this makes their job easier too.
While I love my Nexus 4 and especially the, now discontinued, Nexus 10, the 7 is a piece of junk, IMO. I run the same software on all of them (actually, less on the 7), and I have to charge it as often as the 4, which I use far more and is also receiving a cell signal.
The 10 is pretty sweet though. I can get almost two weeks, as compared to one/two days from the 7, with similar usage. I've wanted to throw the thing away myself. I don't blame Ubisoft.
Sounds like theirs something wrong with your Nexus 7.
I've never heard of battery problems with any Nexus 7 and I did a metric crapload of research before plonking down A$440 for the LTE variant of the Nexus 7. I realistically have to charge it once a week with normal usage or once every 5 days with heavy usage.
You've probably got a rouge app that keeps draining your battery life.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is every article about driverless cars about Google's cars?
Car manufacturers, like Mercedes, Audi, VW, are also working on this topic, and are probably even ahead of Google.
Actually, Mercedes and VAG (Audi and VW are the same company) are way behind Google in the automation race.
Japanese companies like Nissan and Toyota are looking to Google to provide the technology for automated cars (but Japanese auto makers of recent years are extremely risk averse).
Dont kid yourself: You arent "forced" to pirate it, you choose to because you want the content they produced but dont want to play by their terms.
Dont kid yourself, when people find terms unreasonable, casual copying becomes justifiable.
Ultimately piracy is a delivery problem, not a legal one. Here in Australia if I want to watch Game of Thrones I need to pay Murdoch A$70+ a month and have to do it on Murdoch's time table. Both of these are unacceptable to me. So downloading it is the only acceptable option remaining.
The old system used by HBO and Murdoch's Foxtel is dying a slow death. People dont want to wait for shows to be on, they want to watch them at their own leisure nor do they want to have to pay for 30 channels of bullshit to get 1 show. Piracy isn't a scourge on humanity as Murdoch et al. would like to perpetuate, it's merely the market reacting to conditions they find unacceptable. If you want to see piracy of your show plummet, make it available through as many channels as possible for a reasonable price. The easiest way to do this is to allow anyone to resell it for a flat (per copy) license fee that people will accept.
However they want to continue to prop up outdated ideas like exclusivity. So they will have to accept that piracy is an acceptable alternative.
The real problem is the lack of integration of plot and gameplay. In most current games 'plot' exists as some cutscenes and scripting forced on gameplay that otherwise exists in different universe. Instead gameplay itself should drive the story, not scripting.
Half Life, Deus Ex, System Shock and System Shock 2.
Oh wait, you said most current games, PC games of yore had perfected mixing gameplay and storytelling by 2000. Even some modern games have managed it, Fallout 3/New Vegas had very short stories (main plot) but it was player driven and player influenced as well as having a crapload of non-essential tasks and info that can also effect the ending.
May as well add KOTOR and Mass Effect into that list.
The problem is with games that put a half arsed effort into making a story. Thinking of all your COD's here where they follow a generic story with overused cliche's and terrible scripting. A nameless, faceless musclebound meathead sent out to destroy an enemy that's perfectly designed to retard sympathy (Nazi's and Terr'ists). Few games manage to work moral ambiguity into their stories, not even the classics like Half Life (which is quite simple as stories go, but perfectly integrated into gameplay). Not all games need a complex story or even a story at all but a simple story (or a complete lack of one) is far better than a bad story.
Insofar as the dirt isn't harmful to my car (salty grime in the winter for instance), I keep my car dirty on purpose.
Not true,
Dirt tends to hide corrosives that will damage paint and cause rust over time. Especially if you live on the coast or they use salt on the roads during winter.
Nothing better than a really dirty car to prevent it from being broken into or stolen when I leave it parked downtown.
A dirty lambo is still a lambo. If you want a theft proof car, get something like a 2000 Hyundai Getz that isn't worth anything.
The problem with building really tall buildings is how to transport enough people up and down without using up the floor space on elevators rather than rentable area. Silly fast elevators may well be worth the money if it results in more silly expensive top-floor rent income.
The west may have stopped with the prestige over practicality thing decades ago, but not in China.
Having the fastest elevators in the country, let alone the world is something to brag and bignote yourself about.
Why do you think they keep building stupidly expensive and impractical shit in Dubai (skyscrapers, artificial island and so forth), it's so the Emir's can have a huge wank.
Well Duh! Why do you think Apple for instance doesn't allow SD cards in their phones?
I assumed it was because they didn't want to compromise on their museum quality designs.
Nope, it's because it would give the user too much choice and as we all know choice is baaaad.
If an Iphone user had to pick between 4 memory sizes, their heads would explode.
I'd like little windows so people can see into the next room. These are always missing in games.
ALSO, I want to shoot something through the doors and blow them up with things.
#FeatureCreep
Stop playing games on a console. Both of these features have been available on PC games for over a decade.
Why the hell would you want to relocate to some 3rd-world shithole where you have to worry about K&R (no, not the Unix guys)?
Go look at the quality-of-living indices, and the countries which dominate them. They're not 3rd-world countries with low costs-of-living. If you want to live someplace where it's extremely safe, the government isn't corrupt, there's good public services (public transit, healthcare, etc.), it's going to cost you. If you have a medical emergency in a mountain town in Morocco, you're probably not going to survive.
Here's the thing, on half my Australian wage, I could live like a king in a place like Thailand or the Phillipines. Police corruption is cheap, so are taxis and health care (although I'd get an insurance policy for health from a western insurer). In a place like Phuket, I'll have most of the modern amenities I'm used to and if I have a tumble down the stairs, medical care is just as close as it is in the west (and a hell of a lot cheaper).
Now on a Thai wage, not so.
If you can manage US$40K a year from investments, that's enough to retire there and live an extremely good life. Hell, you could probably do it for US$25K if you didn't want too much extravagance.
I can afford a private room in the top hospitals in Bangkok which are almost as good as the top hospitals in western nations and way better than the average western hospital. there's no way I'd be able to afford to go to a top hospital in Australia or the US.
Doubt "Big Bang"?
Well you should.
I agree with you post but...
And there's always a but.
There's a big difference between someone who doubts the big bang because they evidence isn't conclusive and it's just the best hypothesis we have right now and someone who doubts the big bang because an 1700 year old book says a sky man created the earth in 7 days.
The former has doubts because their mind open to other possibilities, the latter because their mind is closed to other possibilities. Doubt is really the wrong word for the latter, but they like it because it allows them to get a word in to rational conversations and once that happens, well you know the old saying about arguing with an idiot.
This is a lousy idea for a smartphone, but it has potential as an industrial automation and robotics controller. Those are built up from lots of little modules, but the mechanical and electrical standards are decades old, and systems are too bulky. Think of this as a replacement for Arduino "shields", too.
Actually its the right application.
./er's aren't old enough to remember when computers were monolithic pieces of silicon like phones are today, a single assembly with everything soldered in and not replaceable. If something broke, fixing it was expensive, If you needed anything bespoke it cost an absolute fortune. Now everyone and their dog (well, except Apple) offers many options for any run of the mill laptop, ordering a custom machine from Dell is easy, every corner computer shop can offer you a bespoke desktop at competitive prices because components fit together on standardised connectors like DIMM, PCI-e, SATA and USB.
Just not in the way most people are thinking.
Modular design leads to modular construction. Modular construction leads to lower prices via economies of scale. Many
As will it be with phones, Samsung, LG, et al. will simply assemble them out of component parts that simply slot together. Designing new phones will become simpler and easier. Having to produce custom radio's will be as simple as swapping a module. This is where the average person will benefit from lower prices.
Beyond that, there will still be people who upgrade. Computer component stores have not disappeared because Acer and Toshiba sell laptops that dont need extra bits. People still upgrade their hard drives, video cards or even buy entire bespoke machines. The same it will eventually be with phones, need more storage, get a storage module. New radio technology, get the new radio module. Want a mini HDMI port... you get the idea. Not everyone will upgrade their phones... in fact the majority wont, but there will be enough people who will to justify these modules selling to the general public.
Phone repairs, goes without saying this is definitely the way to go.
Modular phone designs will happen, not overnight, maybe not even in the next few years but it will eventually happen.
I love how Apple has shown time and time again what the majority of customers want... except of course that the iPhone market share is a fraction what Android's is. And the mac market share is less than that of the much reviled Windows 8, not to mention about a fourth that of the no longer supported, 13 year old Windows XP. Apple doesn't know what the masses want, they know what a relatively small, though highly visible, affluent, influential group want.
Apple doesn't know what they want.
Apple knows how to market and make people without the ability to decide things for themselves think they want their products. This is Apple's core audience, the people who cant pick what they want.
If the food service industry followed Apple's example, every restaurant would be a tarted up McDonalds and every restaurant would only serve one menu item at an inflated price. "Oh, you wanted Chicken, tough, you want beef and you're getting beef because we know what you want better than you do, that'll be $36.95 (plus taxes if you live in the US, Malaysia or Singapore)".
Yes, Fascism allows for a measure of capitalism, but strongly controlled by the government, which is very far from Laissez-faire capitalism
Fascism is the ultimate expression of capitalism. It is essentially a corporate state run by oligarchs or plutarchs. The regimes of Mussolini and the Nazi's would never have gotten off the ground without the help of the titans of industry in their countries.
You're right that it's different from laissez-faire capitalism, but laissez-faire is an unworkable economic system because it assumes monopolistic behaviour does not exist and people are rational, so all attempts at laissez-faire capitalism end up in a form of fascism as the most powerful capitalist entities take control. Laissez-faire is extreme, anarchistic capitalism and has the same fundamental problem as communism (extreme, anarchistic socialism), it assumes people aren't greedy and wont try to grab more (power/money) for themselves. Of course this is wrong, so attempts at communism end up as despotic socialist states and attempts at Laissez-faire end up as despotic fascist states.
This is one of the key reasons why most western nations operate mixed economies, neither purely capitalist nor socialist and changing as circumstances require. Ultimately, inflexible economic systems are doomed to failure.
Then support single payer. Or, support the move to divest health insurance from employment completely.
This,
It's not rocket science, as long as employers have power over their employees health insurance, they'll find ways to avoid their commitments. Especially when the employees are poor (cant afford lawyers) and unionism is demonised.
Other countries have managed to create working health care systems which involve both public and private sources but don't depend on an employer. Giving your employer power over something as important as health care is tantamount to indentured servitude.
Apparently you've never watched AK Marc sunbathe in the nude.
-LAPD
There was no ticket, he was merely sent the therapy bills for the officers involved.
either use to turn water into a presumably not-that-delicious marg
Don't tell me to Google "marg", because if it is a word, it's a stupid word. I really doubt that it's a word, though.
Marg is a contraction of the name Margaret in Australia.
To be honest, all of the Marg's I've met have been over 50 and definitely not what I'd call delicious.
I can get 1.75L of decent vodka for about $13/US. That gives me approximately 39 drinks at $0.33 per drink
It can also be used to strip paint.
A starving student with a car?! I think we've isolated the problem.
And how many of those cars are bombs that aren't even worth US$500?
I work at a university and most students drive 15-20 yr old cars with a value of between A$1000 and 4000. A 15 yr old Toyota Corolla costs a few 1000 to buy and runs off the smell of an oily rag (seriously, a 15yr old corolla has the efficiency of a modern diesel hatch, I averaged 6L/100 KM in an EK Civic). Owning a car is not a symbol of opulence.
However I also live in a city where you can get by on public transport, but you're paying A$110 for a shoebox sized room in a sharehouse (A$150 for anything that can accommodate a single bed and a desk). Rents will be by far, the most expensive cost for a student unless they're living at home, the cost of running an old bomb will pale in comparison to rent and food.
Cars are not as expensive to run as people think, I drive an extremely thirsty 2L Honda Integra, it gets 9-10L/100KM doing mostly highway K's. A weeks worth of RON 100 (the most expensive fuel you can get) is between A$50-70 (@A$1.60 a litre) depending on how much suburban driving I do. Groceries easily cost $80 p/w. However I'm a full time worker so I can easily afford my car, if running costs were an issue, I'd have kept my EK Civic as that costs A$30 a week to keep running (petrol and maint). The problem a lot of students face is that the car isn't really optional due to the distances between a home, work and uni and living in places where public transport is practically non-existent.
An old 4 banger whitegoods car like a Corolla or Civic is not a luxury, for many it's a necessity due to a lack of public transport options.
Assassinating North Korean leadership would be fairly easy for US today if it wanted to do it.
The reason it's not been done is the fact that sudden power vacuum would cause a collapse of North Korean state, and North Koreans have proven to be extremely difficult to acclimate to South Korean society, where they would massively flood to.
The CIA is notoriously bad at regime change... However the KGB (or what ever they're called these days) isn't.
The key to assassinating the NK is to have a puppet dictator lined up to replace him. Given that the NK military is a nepotist plutocracy (kleptocracy may be more appropriate) finding a volunteer to be a toady would not be hard. As long as you've got the transition of power mapped out, there'll be no power vacuum and no impetus to reunite the Korea's.
Coming to your office in the near future:
Frank: Steve, did you fart?
Steve: uh... no, must of been RB24-VQ11
Frank: Jesus VQ, that's rancid.
The carriers already can (and do) block stolen phones. Each phone has a unique IMEI number, in addition to the SIM card number.
The carriers are already required to do this in some countries, and do it voluntarily in other countries. They just don't do it in the US.
IMEI blacklists are common in many countries, including the UK. When a device is stolen the IMEI number is put on the list and carriers reject the device and (potentially) notify investigators.
Blacklists are useless.
Steal phone in the UK, sell it in Poland or Hungary where the carrier doesn't have a blacklist.
Or better yet, change the IMEI.
A remote wipe will be equally as useless as the criminals will just learn to immediately turn the phone off and then give it to someone who can disable the remote wipe. There's always someone willing to sell their knowledge/skills with no morals. Why would you think this doesn't extend to people who hack phones.
To this day I'll never understand why teachers were so blind to the fact that the bigger stronger "athletic" kids constantly harassed the weaker kids.
You're lucky, since in your case the bullies were actually considered to be part of the party at fault.
And the teachers actions are easy to understand when you realize that they're not interested in justice - they want peace in the classroom.
In modern times, the teachers hands are tied. If a teacher stands up to a bully, that bully's father is in the administrators office threatening lawyers.
I got bullied a bit in High School, one of the teachers was good with it. He'd let the bully get away with a little bit, but after he thought enough was enough he'd start using inventive forms of punishment (I.E. he'd put a dot on the blackboard and the student had to stand with their nose touching it).
Ultimately I defeated the bullies by becoming part of the clique. I developed a sense of humour, started cracking jokes and that ended up making friends. Once that happened the bullies (who are really, inherently cowards) realised that if they continued to pick on me, they'd be the ones outside the clique.
I really do feel for teachers these days, it's not that they want to tolerate the bullying, quite the contrary they'd love to toss the bully's out by the scruff of their necks with a swift boot to the pants for good measure but the shitstorm that would create would make WWII look like a school yard scuffle. Its getting to the point where helicopter parents and tiger mums are so aggressive with the layers that they cant even give them a negative report. The worst thing a teacher can write is "Little Johnny needs to pay more attention in class" which has become teacher code for "Little Johnny is a right little shit".
I used to share a house with two teachers, top blokes, always had good pot but their work was shit. If any parent made trouble with the principal, they'd get it dumped down on them two fold.
Because your targets are guaranteed to be unable to shoot back?
Same with theatres, shopping centres, cafe's and MickyD's.
I know many Americans have this fantasy about everyone being John Wayne packing a six shooter and picking off a gunman at 1000 yards but the reality is, very few people carry and most of them wont be able to shoot straight at the best of times, let alone in the heat of an attack and they have no idea which person is the shooter.
You need to go back and re-read the GP's post, people who shoot up schools pick schools for very specific reasons.
1. Kids shoot up schools. Why schools? Why not shopping malls before Christmas or movie theaters during blockbuster premiers? If it's body count and fame you're after, that's where you'd have to do your killing spree. Schools are rather meh for either. Not very cramped, lots of exits, before you can rack up a sensible body count most of the people already hit the exit. Now try a movie theater with 2 exits for 200+ people. Shot 10 or so and a body count of at least 50 is certain due to the stampede! So why schools?
This.
Terrorists in Israel target theatres, buses and other places where they can kill a lot of people without having many escape. Blowing up a school doesn't make sense because campuses are large and open (ergo requires a lot of explosives).
It's not a killing spree. It's revenge. Plain and simple.
This, and why are kids feeling the need to get revenge?
Like you said, politicians, parents, news media are all very quick to blame video games, comic books, movies, rock and/or roll music but never look at the real cause. The society that created them.
The kids who go off the edge are reacting. You have to remember that the Columbine killers had lists of people to kill and they even let some people go because they were nice to them. Until the US abandons the Lord of the Flies culture in schools, until the US stops encouraging popularity contests by elevating mediocrity and finally admits that allowing those elevated by this system to ostracise people they don't like the US will continue to suffer from extreme violence in schools.
But this means the parents, politicans and news media need to admit the society they created is horribly wrong... and that's harder than blaming the people who got shot.
School shootings are not prevalent in other countries that have a higher rate of violence (violent crime, specifically shootings) because the same culture does not exist.
I'm not forced to pay the $30 fee. I could do my taxes by hand, if I wanted, and avoid it. TurboTax also has a free option which I could *probably* use, but for the $30 you get more hand-holding and sanity checks to make sure you didn't screw something up. To me, $30/year is worth it if it reduces my chance of being audited even slightly. Plus its way cheaper than what I'd pay an accountant or tax preparer.
Sure you could do it by hand, but then you risk all kinds of mistakes and increases the chance of being audited, so in effect, people are being forced to pay to submit their tax returns.
I find this to be criminal, keep your assault rifles, I'm happier with a sane tax code and working tax office.
In Australia, via the e-tax program you have to be retarded to stuff it up. Most companies submit your group certificates (the record that details how much you paid and the tax withheld) to the ATO (Australian Taxation Office) so most of your tax return fills itself out. Even filling one out as a small business isn't difficult (quarterly Business Activity Statements). People hate the ATO, but they do go out of their way to make doing your taxes easier and in effect I guess this makes their job easier too.
While I love my Nexus 4 and especially the, now discontinued, Nexus 10, the 7 is a piece of junk, IMO. I run the same software on all of them (actually, less on the 7), and I have to charge it as often as the 4, which I use far more and is also receiving a cell signal.
The 10 is pretty sweet though. I can get almost two weeks, as compared to one/two days from the 7, with similar usage. I've wanted to throw the thing away myself. I don't blame Ubisoft.
Sounds like theirs something wrong with your Nexus 7.
I've never heard of battery problems with any Nexus 7 and I did a metric crapload of research before plonking down A$440 for the LTE variant of the Nexus 7. I realistically have to charge it once a week with normal usage or once every 5 days with heavy usage.
You've probably got a rouge app that keeps draining your battery life.