And what good does this do you when you buy online?
Buying online - at least when its physical goods - requires a shipping address. That's a big risk for a thief to take as even if they're using an address they don't live at, if the fraud is discovered while the item is in transit the address may be being monitored by authorities.
Not really, it's trivial to set up a store on the internet that does not require shipping (I.E. digital download).
Most people think people who steal CC numbers use them to buy big objects like TV's. this couldn't be further from the truth.
People who harvest CC numbers use tiny transactions, $10-15 max because big transactions are immediately flagged as suspicious where as small ones fly under the radar of both banks and the average moron, so big transactions are the easiest way to get caught. Small transactions work on volume, so 10,000 CC's making random transactions against fake stores averaging about $5 each nets about $50,000, now if you have a large rotation of stolen card numbers, say 80,000 numbers you can get away with this for a while by using each card once every 8 weeks (more if you randomise it). Also banks will write off losses that small rather than investigate them.
... RFID is orders of magnitude less secure than a regular magnetic strip.
Lucky that chip-and-pin cards don't have RFID on them then;). They must be inserted into the reader for the chip to be used, and even then, the chip is not (and can not be) read, instead, it's used to encrypt, and sign your PIN, so that the bank can verify that it's really you (or someone who knows your PIN, and has your card – whee, two fold security, something you know, and something you have) there.
Chip and Pin and contactless payment (RFID AKA Paywave and Paypass) are different systems that are interconnected.
Chip and Pin increases security, not perfectly but has a noticeable benefit on security.
Contactless payment is a system that reduces security by sending you CC number, expiry date and name (on the card) to any system that asks for it wirelessly, so it's easy to do without the cardholders knowledge. There's even an (Andoid) app for it for any phone with NFC (and a the non censored sources are on GitHub).
Now they are interconnected because the induction loop is physically connected to the chip. So if you want to disable it you need to figure out which where the induction loop is connected to the chip (usually at the top) and make an incision on that side of the chip (being careful not to cut through the card, usually harmless to the mag stripe but small cracks become big cracks over time). Test to see if it works using the Android app linked to above. The chip still works, but contactless stops.
You only need to sever one part of the induction loop to kill it, your problem is finding out where the induction loop runs. So if anyone knows an easy, non destructive way to find a metal filament in a plastic card that can be done at home, please let me know.
Doesnt that mean the security is "opt-in" by each vendor? That sounds strongly like security theatre.
Not really,
Old machines that don't read the PIN are phased out, new machines that do are entered into service. Eventually there are so few of the old machines left in service the bank can refuse connections to them.
Seeing as most merchants don't actually own their own hardware, they rent it from their bank this is pretty easy. Even big stores tend rent their terminals, for those few that don't will be up for the replacement costs themselves or risk losing the ability to accept cards.
Chip and Pin is by no means 100% secure, but it's a hell of a lot better than the old magstripe cards.
Coincidentally, the only bank still not issuing chipped cards in Australia, is American.
I was about to write this as well. We have been using pins for credit cards in Switzerland for the last 10 years...
Yeah, why hasn't the US got on board yet with implementing technology that allows banks and issuers to absolve themselves of responsibility and push the blame onto the consumers?
If fraud happens on these new cards, it becomes up to the consumers to prove that it was fraud and that they did not compromise their PIN.
As a bonus, the consumers get to be forced to memorize a new PIN!
It's Win WIn.
Well first off, they currently push the blame for fraud to the merchant, they wont change this model in a hurry because they need to keep the "customer" addicted to using credit cards so they can continue to rape the merchant with a 21" fee baton.
Secondly, in countries with somewhat working banking regulations, banks have to take the risk of fraud themselves. This simply means they push the cost onto the merchant in the form of higher merchant service fees which the merchant has to pass on to you in the form of higher prices.
So basically as far as your average credit addled moron goes, there wont be much of a change apart having to put in the year of their birth when buying things.
The B-52 completed fifty years of continuous service... it is expected to serve into the 2040s.
At least they must be doing something right.
It's because there's no need for a new heavy bomber airframe, there realistically hasn't been since the 50's because heavy bombers don't really have a role since the invention of surface to air missiles. They've gone the way of the battleship which is why most air forces have retired them. The US military is notoriously slow to change.
Celsius merely replaces one set of 'arbitrary' reference points (human warmest/typical =100 and coldest/typical = 0) with another (the freezing/boiling points of a hypothetically-pure water in a specific set of pressure circumstances = 0/100 respectively).
The Celsius point of reference is replicable, non subjective and does not change.
It may have been chosen, but it's not arbitrary. Two numbers weren't just plucked out of thin air, Celsius is based on a logical measurement.
SI is better, but ease of unit conversions is at best a minor advantage. You know when the last time I had to convert between centimeters and kilometers was? Probably when I was in school, learning about using metric. I don't convert between inches and miles either -- there's just no point in most people's lives.
All you've demonstrated is that you don't do anything remotely complex in your life.
Actually a lot of people use it. Figuring out how much cable you need to lay between buildings, so yep, someone with a basic high school education has to do this on a regular basis.
It's a lot easier to convert 2.53454 KM into 2534540 CM than it is to convert 1.5 miles into anything lower. You can change between CM and KM almost without thinking, it's just moving a decimal point.
Now all is good except I get spam on every damn news story going BETA OMG EWWW and I am tired of reading about it or having 1/2 of the comments talking about it. Jeesh
The problem you have is that if beta goes ahead, well over 1/2 the comments you come here for will disappear entirely.
Musk says AWD has never been put on a car with no loss of efficiency before.
2012 Lincoln MKS:
FWD version: 17/25 mpg.
AWD version: 17/25 mpg. And the AWD version is more powerful.
2013 Cadillac CTS:
RWD version: 18/27 mpg.
AWD version: 18/27 mpg. AWD version has same power (same engine) as RWD version.
So yes, AWD has been added without a loss of efficiency before.
Elon, it would be fantastic if you would bother to check to see if what you say is true before you say it.
Erm, these are not efficient cars. 18 MPG is 13L/100 KM which is shocking fuel economy.
There is more loss to an AWD drive train compared to a FWD or RWD drive train, it can be minimised but its impossible to eliminate it. So chances are the Lincoln and Cadilac simply fudged the figures (easy to do when you already have shocking fuel economy).
In China they can treat people like virtual slaves but in Indonesia they can get actual slaves (people who bought a job from a dealer and came over from say Thailand only to have their passports taken by their new bosses and all their salary taken as interest on the loan, cost of rent for their on factory dormatory etc).
I take it you don't know much about SE Asia.
Thailand is one of the better off nations, comparatively speaking. In fact, Thailand has a big problem with illegal workers hopping over the border from Myanmar (Burma) and Laos (which Thai businesses are more than happy to give the worst jobs to). The "guest workers" in Indonesia are more likely to be Burmese, Laotian, Cambodian or Filipino but the workers will be mostly Indonesian as Indonesia is a big place and some islands/provinces are worse off than others.
However Indonesia is small time in the importation of workers, the big abuser of SE Asian "guest workers" are the Arab states, most notably Dubai which pretty much wrote the book on abusing people from poor nations in the modern marketplace. Few Filipino's will end up in Indo because most of them go to places like Dubai.
Yet many I know are having a bit of a pro-anonymity backlash, and are preferring to pay for everything with cash now. As someone who buys almost all his food fresh from the local open-air market (yes, even when it's -15C, that's what hats and coats are for), anything apart from cash simply isn't even an option.
Only a fool discounts any method of payment. Only the most foolish of fools restricts themselves to one method.
Normally it's the credit card addicts that are the most guilty, but the all cash crowd are just as bad (but make up maybe 1% of the number of credit card addicts). I prefer paying cash as it makes keeping an eye on your cash flow easier on a day to day basis (in Australia we have different coloured bank notes, so I can tell how much is in my wallet at a glance) and put most of my online or big purchases on my debit card but if you've ever tried to get a hire car without a CC you'd know it's a nightmare.
So each method has it's pro's and cons which make them suited to different purchases. If I were to pop down the shop for a drink or a burger, I'll pay cash as it's quicker and easier. If I buy a fridge or laptop, I'll use my debit card. Hotels, depends. A lot of the places I stay in Asia give you a discount for cash (5-10%) because accepting credit cards costs too much.
Trouble is, stolen phones are being exported. Not a whole lot of use being able to forcibly track your phone when it now resides in China (literally, that's where they often go) especially considering that China doesn't extradite their own citizens or particularly even gives a shit when one of them breaks another country's laws.
In which case, kill switches are also quite useless.
We've already got a bunch of applications on Android that will phone home and can be used to disable the device. Thieves don't care as they'll just sell the device and the people buying them know how to send the device back to factory settings, completely bypassing the application. Put it in the firmware, they'll find another bit of firmware to get around it.
Also I doubt all stolen phones end up in China, you've always got the dumb thieves who try to sell it on EBay. In Australia we've got a free advertising publication called the Quokka (pronounced: Kwock-ah) where most stolen stuff ends up but is slowly being replaced by Gumtree which has a better online presence (and is owned by EBay). Kill switches wont do much good here either as people don't know if the device works or not before buying.
OTOH, I can see kill switches being misused by law enforcement (I dont like this guy, kill his phone), corporations (you haven't bought a new phone in 11 months... now you have to), ordinary people with a bit of tech knowledge along with plain old bugs/user error.
You are in a pretty good place if the only missiles that can successfully attack you are hypersonic, since they would be very expensive to build and take a lot of engineering prowess to work reliably.
Also how much of a payload can one missile really carry? Not much, good only for targeted strikes.
Considering where anti missile defences are usually located (warships, military bases) you don't really need that much of a payload. In fact an anti ship hypersonic missile wouldn't need to be explosive at all to cause significant damage a solid warhead would punch through both sides of a warship (although punching through amour and then detonating inside the ship is quite effective).
What about Europeans and people from other parts of the world where tobacco products can't be marketed, cigarettes and nicotine products have to be hidden from view? People still smoke, people still start smoking. No marketing happening to them though.
You've still got the old fashioned way, peer pressure. Even advertising depended on a large number of people applying gentle pressure to others to begin smoking.
All the current evidence suggests that hiding tobacco products and banning smoking in certain places is not stopping people smoke nor reducing the number of new smokers.
Citation needed, I'd put good money on your source being flawed (or outright lying).
Actually the number of new smokers are decreasing. Especially in Australia where there is a ban on cigarettes advertising but they don't need to be hidden from view (they are in lockable cabinets, not sure if this is law or just the fact that a pack of smokes is very attractive to shoplifters).
Besides, what ever happened to people doing what they enjoy? Some smokers do feel trapped sadly, but not all. Many do it because they enjoy it.
What about others who don't want be subject to the acrid smell of cigarettes? They don't just feel trapped, they are trapped. Which is why they had to fight back with harsher laws. Smokers are in the situation they're in because they're inconsiderate and irrational.
Personally, I've switched to vaping from e-cigs. The same stress relief my brain associates with the physical act of smoking, a much lower dose of nicotine* (similar to caffeine in its effects) without all the tar, benzene and the many other carcinogens from combustion. Better to quit outright of course, but this is a workable half-way house for now, and much cheaper to boot.
I quit over 10 years ago using the old fashioned method. It wasn't pleasant but I haven't had a smoke in over a decade so I wish you luck.
Switching from tobacco to e-cigs is a huge step forward for any smoker, even if you never kick the habit you will have a lot of positive health benefits from not breathing in all the other chemicals that are contained in commercial cigarettes (benzine, acetate and about 5000 others).
Ask a heroin user whether he likes heroin -- he loves it. So it's not illogical to take heroin, but it's a choice that can have a negative long-term effect.
Actually, you'll find that most heroin users will answer with "I need it".
Same with a smoker when you take away their smokes, they only "need" one.
Hardcore alcoholics are the same. The difference is that a lot of people who drink have no problem quitting. Heroin and tobacco on the other hand have noticeable withdrawal effects on all users. The average drinker has no withdraw symptoms, the average smoker, not so. Knowing this in advance, as well as the negative impact on your health, it's extremely illogical to start smoking, let alone to continue it but much like Heroin addicts, smokers rarely think logically about their habit.
Accepting death at any age is what is illogical, not the reverse. My mom's 85 and bowls every week, she should just lay down and wait to die like her dad did when he was forced to retire? That's not just illogical, it's stupid.
Not really, your mum is lucky to be 85 and still in good health, most people, even in western countries are suffering a variety of ailments by that age.
The question is not as black and white as you and the GPP make out. Is is illogical to accept death if you're 85 and still in good health (I.E. are able to function without daily assistance), is it illogical not to accept death if you have a debilitating illness (such as chronic arthritis, where every movement is painful and your spend your life on a cocktail of pain relievers which are fighting a losing battle with the arthritis)? Even these are very black and white examples but it does demonstrate that the there is a lot more to the argument than you think.
Personally I think that we should be able to choose when we want to go. To accept death is not illogical at all if you feel that the time is right. A lot of people who've lived very fulfilling lives accept that their time has come to an end with grace, OTOH you get people who regret their entire lives and cling to whatever shred they have left.
Smoking does heavily increase your chance of getting lung cancer but it's not the sole cause of it. Smoking does make you far more likely to suffer from one or more of a very large array of nasty illnesses during your lifetime. It also reduces your life span significantly.
This, a lot of people dont get the difference between the cause (should really be called the trigger) and the main contributing factor.
To fall back on the good old/. car analogy, the cause of the crash was the driver lost control, the main contributing factor was that the driver was drunk.
UX is the HCI equivalent of homoeopathy. A horrible pseudo-science that kills.
Not really. It's like astronomy and astrology, or chemistry and alchemy. There's a real science and a pseudoscience. It's just that there's no convenient way to distinguish them; both call themselves UX.
Nope, UX is exactly like Astrology or Alchemy and nothing like chemistry or astronomy. HCI (Human Computer Interaction) is the real science, UX is a pseudo-science.
It's something made up to give credence to something that doesn't fit with an existing, well proven science. UX is a bollocks pseudo-science made up by people who make interfaces that ignore HCI rules that have been established over decades of trial, testing and retesting. The number 1 goal of any pseudo-science is to get people confused enough that they cant tell the difference between an actual science with rigorous testing and the pseudo-science that doesn't test it's own theories and is largely bad conjecture.
UX came out of nowhere about 5 years ago, HCI has been going since humans have been interacting with computers. UX tries to confuse you with a logical sounding name and even rips a few things off HCI to try to give it legitimacy but it's still based largely on bollocks.
We want them in reverse gear. And we want an apology, and an admission of total incompetence amongst those who were in decision-making positions.
Erm, what kind of crappy car do you drive?
Every car I've ever driven has been able to engage reverse with the brakes on. In fact stopping is a prerequisite for engaging reverse as automatic gearboxes wont go into reverse if you're moving forward and manual gearboxes will grind if you try.
Please tell me what car wont go into reverse with the brakes on, we need to warn others to avoid such deathtraps.
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And what good does this do you when you buy online?
Buying online - at least when its physical goods - requires a shipping address. That's a big risk for a thief to take as even if they're using an address they don't live at, if the fraud is discovered while the item is in transit the address may be being monitored by authorities.
Not really, it's trivial to set up a store on the internet that does not require shipping (I.E. digital download).
Most people think people who steal CC numbers use them to buy big objects like TV's. this couldn't be further from the truth.
People who harvest CC numbers use tiny transactions, $10-15 max because big transactions are immediately flagged as suspicious where as small ones fly under the radar of both banks and the average moron, so big transactions are the easiest way to get caught. Small transactions work on volume, so 10,000 CC's making random transactions against fake stores averaging about $5 each nets about $50,000, now if you have a large rotation of stolen card numbers, say 80,000 numbers you can get away with this for a while by using each card once every 8 weeks (more if you randomise it). Also banks will write off losses that small rather than investigate them.
... RFID is orders of magnitude less secure than a regular magnetic strip.
Lucky that chip-and-pin cards don't have RFID on them then ;). They must be inserted into the reader for the chip to be used, and even then, the chip is not (and can not be) read, instead, it's used to encrypt, and sign your PIN, so that the bank can verify that it's really you (or someone who knows your PIN, and has your card – whee, two fold security, something you know, and something you have) there.
Chip and Pin and contactless payment (RFID AKA Paywave and Paypass) are different systems that are interconnected.
Chip and Pin increases security, not perfectly but has a noticeable benefit on security.
Contactless payment is a system that reduces security by sending you CC number, expiry date and name (on the card) to any system that asks for it wirelessly, so it's easy to do without the cardholders knowledge. There's even an (Andoid) app for it for any phone with NFC (and a the non censored sources are on GitHub).
Now they are interconnected because the induction loop is physically connected to the chip. So if you want to disable it you need to figure out which where the induction loop is connected to the chip (usually at the top) and make an incision on that side of the chip (being careful not to cut through the card, usually harmless to the mag stripe but small cracks become big cracks over time). Test to see if it works using the Android app linked to above. The chip still works, but contactless stops.
You only need to sever one part of the induction loop to kill it, your problem is finding out where the induction loop runs. So if anyone knows an easy, non destructive way to find a metal filament in a plastic card that can be done at home, please let me know.
Doesnt that mean the security is "opt-in" by each vendor? That sounds strongly like security theatre.
Not really,
Old machines that don't read the PIN are phased out, new machines that do are entered into service. Eventually there are so few of the old machines left in service the bank can refuse connections to them.
Seeing as most merchants don't actually own their own hardware, they rent it from their bank this is pretty easy. Even big stores tend rent their terminals, for those few that don't will be up for the replacement costs themselves or risk losing the ability to accept cards.
Chip and Pin is by no means 100% secure, but it's a hell of a lot better than the old magstripe cards.
Coincidentally, the only bank still not issuing chipped cards in Australia, is American.
I was about to write this as well. We have been using pins for credit cards in Switzerland for the last 10 years...
Yeah, why hasn't the US got on board yet with implementing technology that allows banks and issuers to absolve themselves of responsibility and push the blame onto the consumers?
If fraud happens on these new cards, it becomes up to the consumers to prove that it was fraud and that they did not compromise their PIN.
As a bonus, the consumers get to be forced to memorize a new PIN!
It's Win WIn.
Well first off, they currently push the blame for fraud to the merchant, they wont change this model in a hurry because they need to keep the "customer" addicted to using credit cards so they can continue to rape the merchant with a 21" fee baton.
Secondly, in countries with somewhat working banking regulations, banks have to take the risk of fraud themselves. This simply means they push the cost onto the merchant in the form of higher merchant service fees which the merchant has to pass on to you in the form of higher prices.
So basically as far as your average credit addled moron goes, there wont be much of a change apart having to put in the year of their birth when buying things.
I feel like I need to get off someone's lawn.
The B-52 completed fifty years of continuous service ... it is expected to serve into the 2040s.
At least they must be doing something right.
It's because there's no need for a new heavy bomber airframe, there realistically hasn't been since the 50's because heavy bombers don't really have a role since the invention of surface to air missiles. They've gone the way of the battleship which is why most air forces have retired them. The US military is notoriously slow to change.
But did they have an onion tied to their belts, which was the style at the time
But 43.5 degrees C is!
43.5 Degrees is pushing into arid territory. Your tropical zones are around 15-35. 43 is Australia or Dubai weather.
Then again, you could go to the UK and get baffled by stones.
Or pints, which aren't even consistent across all Australian states, let alone the European continent. Or gallons, are we talking US or Imperial.
But my favourite ambigous measurement comes from Jamie Oliver... Just how much is a Wine Glass?
Celsius merely replaces one set of 'arbitrary' reference points (human warmest/typical =100 and coldest/typical = 0) with another (the freezing/boiling points of a hypothetically-pure water in a specific set of pressure circumstances = 0/100 respectively).
The Celsius point of reference is replicable, non subjective and does not change.
It may have been chosen, but it's not arbitrary. Two numbers weren't just plucked out of thin air, Celsius is based on a logical measurement.
SI is better, but ease of unit conversions is at best a minor advantage. You know when the last time I had to convert between centimeters and kilometers was? Probably when I was in school, learning about using metric. I don't convert between inches and miles either -- there's just no point in most people's lives.
All you've demonstrated is that you don't do anything remotely complex in your life.
Actually a lot of people use it. Figuring out how much cable you need to lay between buildings, so yep, someone with a basic high school education has to do this on a regular basis.
It's a lot easier to convert 2.53454 KM into 2534540 CM than it is to convert 1.5 miles into anything lower. You can change between CM and KM almost without thinking, it's just moving a decimal point.
Now all is good except I get spam on every damn news story going BETA OMG EWWW and I am tired of reading about it or having 1/2 of the comments talking about it. Jeesh
The problem you have is that if beta goes ahead, well over 1/2 the comments you come here for will disappear entirely.
Musk says AWD has never been put on a car with no loss of efficiency before.
2012 Lincoln MKS:
FWD version: 17/25 mpg.
AWD version: 17/25 mpg. And the AWD version is more powerful.
2013 Cadillac CTS:
RWD version: 18/27 mpg.
AWD version: 18/27 mpg. AWD version has same power (same engine) as RWD version.
So yes, AWD has been added without a loss of efficiency before.
Elon, it would be fantastic if you would bother to check to see if what you say is true before you say it.
Erm, these are not efficient cars. 18 MPG is 13L/100 KM which is shocking fuel economy.
There is more loss to an AWD drive train compared to a FWD or RWD drive train, it can be minimised but its impossible to eliminate it. So chances are the Lincoln and Cadilac simply fudged the figures (easy to do when you already have shocking fuel economy).
In China they can treat people like virtual slaves but in Indonesia they can get actual slaves (people who bought a job from a dealer and came over from say Thailand only to have their passports taken by their new bosses and all their salary taken as interest on the loan, cost of rent for their on factory dormatory etc).
I take it you don't know much about SE Asia.
Thailand is one of the better off nations, comparatively speaking. In fact, Thailand has a big problem with illegal workers hopping over the border from Myanmar (Burma) and Laos (which Thai businesses are more than happy to give the worst jobs to). The "guest workers" in Indonesia are more likely to be Burmese, Laotian, Cambodian or Filipino but the workers will be mostly Indonesian as Indonesia is a big place and some islands/provinces are worse off than others.
However Indonesia is small time in the importation of workers, the big abuser of SE Asian "guest workers" are the Arab states, most notably Dubai which pretty much wrote the book on abusing people from poor nations in the modern marketplace. Few Filipino's will end up in Indo because most of them go to places like Dubai.
You do know that the official name of Taiwan is 'The Republic of China' and that it's mostly comprised of ethnic Chinese, right? Apparently not...
And (_)is/(_)isn't considered a province of China, depending on who you ask.
Yet many I know are having a bit of a pro-anonymity backlash, and are preferring to pay for everything with cash now. As someone who buys almost all his food fresh from the local open-air market (yes, even when it's -15C, that's what hats and coats are for), anything apart from cash simply isn't even an option.
Only a fool discounts any method of payment. Only the most foolish of fools restricts themselves to one method.
Normally it's the credit card addicts that are the most guilty, but the all cash crowd are just as bad (but make up maybe 1% of the number of credit card addicts). I prefer paying cash as it makes keeping an eye on your cash flow easier on a day to day basis (in Australia we have different coloured bank notes, so I can tell how much is in my wallet at a glance) and put most of my online or big purchases on my debit card but if you've ever tried to get a hire car without a CC you'd know it's a nightmare.
So each method has it's pro's and cons which make them suited to different purchases. If I were to pop down the shop for a drink or a burger, I'll pay cash as it's quicker and easier. If I buy a fridge or laptop, I'll use my debit card. Hotels, depends. A lot of the places I stay in Asia give you a discount for cash (5-10%) because accepting credit cards costs too much.
Trouble is, stolen phones are being exported. Not a whole lot of use being able to forcibly track your phone when it now resides in China (literally, that's where they often go) especially considering that China doesn't extradite their own citizens or particularly even gives a shit when one of them breaks another country's laws.
In which case, kill switches are also quite useless.
We've already got a bunch of applications on Android that will phone home and can be used to disable the device. Thieves don't care as they'll just sell the device and the people buying them know how to send the device back to factory settings, completely bypassing the application. Put it in the firmware, they'll find another bit of firmware to get around it.
Also I doubt all stolen phones end up in China, you've always got the dumb thieves who try to sell it on EBay. In Australia we've got a free advertising publication called the Quokka (pronounced: Kwock-ah) where most stolen stuff ends up but is slowly being replaced by Gumtree which has a better online presence (and is owned by EBay). Kill switches wont do much good here either as people don't know if the device works or not before buying.
OTOH, I can see kill switches being misused by law enforcement (I dont like this guy, kill his phone), corporations (you haven't bought a new phone in 11 months... now you have to), ordinary people with a bit of tech knowledge along with plain old bugs/user error.
You are in a pretty good place if the only missiles that can successfully attack you are hypersonic, since they would be very expensive to build and take a lot of engineering prowess to work reliably.
Also how much of a payload can one missile really carry? Not much, good only for targeted strikes.
Considering where anti missile defences are usually located (warships, military bases) you don't really need that much of a payload. In fact an anti ship hypersonic missile wouldn't need to be explosive at all to cause significant damage a solid warhead would punch through both sides of a warship (although punching through amour and then detonating inside the ship is quite effective).
What about Europeans and people from other parts of the world where tobacco products can't be marketed, cigarettes and nicotine products have to be hidden from view? People still smoke, people still start smoking. No marketing happening to them though.
You've still got the old fashioned way, peer pressure. Even advertising depended on a large number of people applying gentle pressure to others to begin smoking.
All the current evidence suggests that hiding tobacco products and banning smoking in certain places is not stopping people smoke nor reducing the number of new smokers.
Citation needed, I'd put good money on your source being flawed (or outright lying).
Actually the number of new smokers are decreasing. Especially in Australia where there is a ban on cigarettes advertising but they don't need to be hidden from view (they are in lockable cabinets, not sure if this is law or just the fact that a pack of smokes is very attractive to shoplifters).
4125.0 - General Indicators, Australia, Jan 2013 - Smoking
Besides, what ever happened to people doing what they enjoy? Some smokers do feel trapped sadly, but not all. Many do it because they enjoy it.
What about others who don't want be subject to the acrid smell of cigarettes? They don't just feel trapped, they are trapped. Which is why they had to fight back with harsher laws. Smokers are in the situation they're in because they're inconsiderate and irrational.
Personally, I've switched to vaping from e-cigs. The same stress relief my brain associates with the physical act of smoking, a much lower dose of nicotine* (similar to caffeine in its effects) without all the tar, benzene and the many other carcinogens from combustion. Better to quit outright of course, but this is a workable half-way house for now, and much cheaper to boot.
I quit over 10 years ago using the old fashioned method. It wasn't pleasant but I haven't had a smoke in over a decade so I wish you luck.
Switching from tobacco to e-cigs is a huge step forward for any smoker, even if you never kick the habit you will have a lot of positive health benefits from not breathing in all the other chemicals that are contained in commercial cigarettes (benzine, acetate and about 5000 others).
Ask a heroin user whether he likes heroin -- he loves it. So it's not illogical to take heroin, but it's a choice that can have a negative long-term effect.
Actually, you'll find that most heroin users will answer with "I need it".
Same with a smoker when you take away their smokes, they only "need" one.
Hardcore alcoholics are the same. The difference is that a lot of people who drink have no problem quitting. Heroin and tobacco on the other hand have noticeable withdrawal effects on all users. The average drinker has no withdraw symptoms, the average smoker, not so. Knowing this in advance, as well as the negative impact on your health, it's extremely illogical to start smoking, let alone to continue it but much like Heroin addicts, smokers rarely think logically about their habit.
Refusing to accept death at 82 is illogical.
Accepting death at any age is what is illogical, not the reverse. My mom's 85 and bowls every week, she should just lay down and wait to die like her dad did when he was forced to retire? That's not just illogical, it's stupid.
Not really, your mum is lucky to be 85 and still in good health, most people, even in western countries are suffering a variety of ailments by that age.
The question is not as black and white as you and the GPP make out. Is is illogical to accept death if you're 85 and still in good health (I.E. are able to function without daily assistance), is it illogical not to accept death if you have a debilitating illness (such as chronic arthritis, where every movement is painful and your spend your life on a cocktail of pain relievers which are fighting a losing battle with the arthritis)? Even these are very black and white examples but it does demonstrate that the there is a lot more to the argument than you think.
Personally I think that we should be able to choose when we want to go. To accept death is not illogical at all if you feel that the time is right. A lot of people who've lived very fulfilling lives accept that their time has come to an end with grace, OTOH you get people who regret their entire lives and cling to whatever shred they have left.
Nimoy didn't get lung cancer, he got COPD.
Smoking does heavily increase your chance of getting lung cancer but it's not the sole cause of it. Smoking does make you far more likely to suffer from one or more of a very large array of nasty illnesses during your lifetime. It also reduces your life span significantly.
This, a lot of people dont get the difference between the cause (should really be called the trigger) and the main contributing factor.
/. car analogy, the cause of the crash was the driver lost control, the main contributing factor was that the driver was drunk.
To fall back on the good old
Not really. It's like astronomy and astrology, or chemistry and alchemy. There's a real science and a pseudoscience. It's just that there's no convenient way to distinguish them; both call themselves UX.
Nope, UX is exactly like Astrology or Alchemy and nothing like chemistry or astronomy. HCI (Human Computer Interaction) is the real science, UX is a pseudo-science.
It's something made up to give credence to something that doesn't fit with an existing, well proven science. UX is a bollocks pseudo-science made up by people who make interfaces that ignore HCI rules that have been established over decades of trial, testing and retesting. The number 1 goal of any pseudo-science is to get people confused enough that they cant tell the difference between an actual science with rigorous testing and the pseudo-science that doesn't test it's own theories and is largely bad conjecture.
UX came out of nowhere about 5 years ago, HCI has been going since humans have been interacting with computers. UX tries to confuse you with a logical sounding name and even rips a few things off HCI to try to give it legitimacy but it's still based largely on bollocks.
HCI == Chemistry.
UX == Alchemy.
They can't go in reverse gear with the brakes on.
We want them in reverse gear. And we want an apology, and an admission of total incompetence amongst those who were in decision-making positions.
Erm, what kind of crappy car do you drive?
Every car I've ever driven has been able to engage reverse with the brakes on. In fact stopping is a prerequisite for engaging reverse as automatic gearboxes wont go into reverse if you're moving forward and manual gearboxes will grind if you try.
Please tell me what car wont go into reverse with the brakes on, we need to warn others to avoid such deathtraps.