Well thanks asshole. I can't even begin to express how comforting it was to not know there had been a remake. Why did you have to ruin my blissful ignorance?
Yes, if someone wants to annoy people, its going to cost them. This sounds to me like the old idea of fighting spam with "email postage", except.... there is only one provider, who gets all the money, in this scenario.
Likely, $1 per person is high enough to not be worth it. If you get 1 response in 100, then you need to take in $100 on average from each response just to break even on facebook fees. That alone is going to kill the vast majority of this crap. Likely more targeted campaigns, by people with much higher profit margins (like head hunters who can both be highly targeted and make obscene profits from placement)
What bothers me is the idea of having to pay $1 to find out if the person who sent me a friend request is someone that I actually know but don't recognize, or a totally random person/spammer etc.
If there is an exception for messaging people who have sent you a friend request (or sending a message with a friend request) I would have little issue with this. If not, then it bugs the hell out of me. In any case, its facebooks perogative if they want to convince me to go elsewhere.
Now is there? Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. I think it depends on other circumstances.
If you live in their house and basically live off them, then I tend to think that, unless you have a disability that prevents you from helping (and help could be paying rent), that your situation deserves every bit of the stigma that it has.
If you live with them because of a bad situation, trouble finding a job etc, hey family is family, we help eachother through tough times.
If you are productive, maybe paying rent or at least taking part in keeping the place running and making sure that they get as much benefit from you being there as you do from them being there... then I think that's a great situation.
Imagine you have kids... your kids get to grow up knowing your parents, your parents get to grow up knowing them, much more than even if they just lived a few streets away. On top of that you get instant baby sitters, extra eyes and helping hands with all of the chores around raising your kids. Quite literally, everybody wins.
Obviously this isn't a win for everybody...if you have abusive parents or a particularly toxic relationship with them, its not going to work, but on average, I do think its superior.
Define have to? To avoid tragedy yes. However, if you mean its a good idea to punish people who fuck this up, then I have to say, I am dubious of the real benefits in many situations. In fact, I would go as far as to say that its counterproductive.
Do you really think the state can punish a father who accidently shoots his child more than he has already suffered by his own hand? I don't drive around trying to avoid accidents for fear of my insurance rates or points on my license.... I just like having a car and don't want to get in an accident. I have had accidents, they are not fun....well usually.... going low side off a motorcycle int he rain with proper gear on did have some fun elements to it:) but.... the bike being a total loss, spraining my wrist, needing to replace some of my riding gear.... lets just say it wasn't cheap.
I am all for encouraging people to be more attentive and careful and safe. I am just dubious of holding people to such high a standard as to make their mistakes worst when they happen.
> We used to appreciate the need for a strong nuclear family. I don't > know when that changed... probably before I realized it... I grew up > rather old fashioned and still think like that most of the time.
For a rather short period of time. The "nuclear family" was probably never the best of ideas, and definitely a modern one. There is ample evidence that living in extended families has huge benefits, not the least of which is the resulting serious decrease in mental health issues (believed to be due to growing up with a larger support network).
In an extended family, there are just plain more people to watch the kids, more people to teach them. Its better for the kids, better for the parents, better for the older generations.
Is that the European ideal where the UK arrests people for offensive facebook posts (indeed now has guidelines on it) and actually has no freedom of speech at all? Or Germany where they are so embarassed by the past they they would jail their own people lest they express opinions that could cause uneducated people to say bad things about Germans?
Perhaps France and their recent forays into legislating what people can wear on their heads?
Never mind our allies though (particularly some of the "other" ones like South Korea where we fought for their freedom to be jailed for insulting the government, or saudi arabia where all it takes is international pressure to show them the error of their belief that a woman who reports being gang raped should be stoned to death for admiting she had sex.... such an easy mistake to make that.)... perhaps you were thinking of the US?
You know, where we are free to have a trial as long as the president doesn't decide he doesn't want us to have one. Or where we keep plans to massively extend law enforcement authority in drawers waiting for the next disaster to push them through? Or where we ignore our own laws to ship captives out to be tortured?
Were those the sensibilities that you were looking for?
> So the only option is to set an absolute standard and let the chips fall where they may.
There is a basic assumption there that there is some benefit to doing something. I actually suspect this is generally not the case and letting even a fairly large percentage of bad actors slide by is actually not all that big of a problem, since there are likely less of them than generally good people who make mistakes.
All true.... but I don't know how much I care. I think I subscribe more to the Scott Adams theory of you can't be smart all the time. People are not machines, and frankly, I think holding them up to absolute standards doesn't do anybody any good, because no matter how much you threaten people, they will never be other than they are.
I have not seen a default setup for doing it, but there have been extruders developed for pushing pastes, and those have been used for ceramics, frosting, and, I believe, silicones.
So no, none of the bots work with them by default, but, there is plenty of info out there to retrofit them with the ability.
Now, I said its project management 101. I didn't say that managers listen to project managers, or that project managers always understand/are good at their jobs. I was just suggesting that, a SMART analysis would have to take these things into account.
I have however worked at rather unreal "companies" that ignored reality and pulled dates out of their asses. And.... their projects were never even close to on time. One of my own projects got delayed over 6 months because I raised the flag that production needed SSL certs on the authentication servers.
A year or so before that, I sat down in my managers office, looked at him and told him, flat out... my project was a year behind schedule when they hired me, its 6 months in, and I still can't get a single solid requirement out of anyone aside from vague statements about "people really want it".... he smiled, looked at me and said "I know, and we are all scared".
So basically, I worked for the people who pretended to be a real company, who picked deadlines out of their ass and then flogged people over them, but... who never actually let anyone go... so nobody really feared them....just disrespected them, were demoralized, and didn't want to work.... which didn't help the deadlines either.....
I have also worked with good project managers who pushed back on management, and really went to bat with management to make sure the plan and progress were understood and that we had real management buy-in.... smoothest and best projects I have EVER been on.... but she wasn't with me at that company.... that company had an entire group of dedicated project managers, all of whom would just roll their eyes if you suggested that a gantt chart was even worth making...well all except for the one who stayed for 6 months and left....
What id you and a number of people wish to mine an asteroid, use the materials to create a new space station, and live independantly and separately from the nations of earth?
You do realize that this, assuming we are not wiped out before it happens, is the natural progression. Those of us who are unhappy with existing arrangements and affairs are going to want to leave. In fact, this may be the first time in history where such migrations have been nearly entirely infeasible. That will not last forever....and once it begins anew, it will take a LONG TIME to fill up just the locally earth bound space
Eventually exiting empires will simply be in the situation of King George when the colonies declared independance.
In a real way the Golden Path is the future, though, i doubt it really will require a sand worm god emporer to bring about, its natural human instinct to become disgruntled with the current order and want to leave and form new colonies.
> Something else you seem to forget is that he is charged of multiple crimes. You don't get to lump > crimes together and claim "Well it was the same sort of crime, so it only counts as one." If you rob a > store, then go rob another store, then go rob another store, you'll be charged with 3 crimes and each > carries its own sentence.
while I totally get what you are saying, i also feel that there is a problem with this thinking. It kind of assumes that each incident was a totally distinct decision, separate from his decision to rob stores in the first place. It seems based entirely on the minutia of the harm caused, and not any measure of continued danger to society or the possibility of reform.
Lets say, for the sake of argument, we had a clear rule where each store got him 1 year. Do we really think that a person who robs 6 stores will not be adequetly punished with the same punishment as one who did 3? Can we really say that one who robbed 12 needs twice as long? Why? Is this just a matter of making it feel right? Or is this about deterance and reform?
I just seems like you end up with cases like this..... with people doing 10 years because of the linear addition of charges, rather than because of any real belief that keeping him away for 10 years will either be required for his reform, or required to protect the public.
Or to bring in another thought.... a while back I read an article by a local prosecutor about why we needed to expand hate crimes to include the homeless. His argument centered around a pair of young men who beat a homeless man within an inch of his life, totally gratuitously. No heated disagreement, no torrid personal motives, no theft....they just wanted to beat a homeless man.
The problem, as the prosecutor saw it, was that these men got all of a few months in prison, because there were not enough laws to stack on charges. It wasn't in someones home, there were no items to be stolen, he wasn't black, or gay..... so these guys got off very very light.
What struck me was that.... violent crimes can so easily get off with light sentances, but, the solution is somehow to...create new classes of protected people to use for increasing charges? Huh? How does that follow? Shouldn't it just....be a worst crime to violently beat someone?
I mean, I am all for going easy on people in some situations, younger people, people who got in bar fights etc.... but...the idea that you can't differenciate between that and two guys mercilessly beating a defenseless man for sport just seems shortsighted and disingenuine. It seems like there has to be a better calculous to use here.
Yes but.... if he broke into her home, stole physical photos, and released them.... most people would easily consider it as much, if not more, of a violation.... but would he ever face nearly the jail time for that as he did for this? I doubt it strongly.
Now, that isn't condoning what he did, clearly he was wrong, hell, I even called into question whether that FBI dad who tracked down the pedophile principal had overstepped ethical bounds by reading the reports in the first place. However, the punishment, if there is to be one, should not be out of proportion with the crime....
This puts him away not just longer than someone who commited a nearly identical crime by different means, it puts him away longer than many violent criminals who actually physically harmed people.
> This is actually a good system, because the headlines show the > initial (phoney) sentence, which has a deterrent value by scaring > other potential perps, but we don't actually incur the expense of > imprisoning them for anywhere near that long.
Hmmm in theory anyway. In practice, there is evidence that harsh sentances do not actually translate into significant deterrance.
A much stronger effect is seen by increasing the percieved likelyhood of gettin caught.
An excellent book that talked of this was "More Sex is Safer Sex", that has a whole chapter on this effect, using LoJack as their example... claiming a 20% drop in car thefts for every 1% increase in cars with LoJack....with no increase in penalties (threatened or otherwise).
People are FAR more afraid of getting caught than the penalty.
That is so not true, these people are our best and brightest! Hello.... you think congressmen don't have indoor plumbing? They know how tubes work, they know what happens when you put them in a series. They arn't stupid.
Yes, of course. However they are being asked to do it with a highly accelerated time table, far beyond what anyone else does, and it is, pretty much singly, what put them in the red. Prior to these new and specific requirements, they had surpluses in their budget.
That is not an article that I have read before, actually, I am going to read it now, previous ones I have seen have either come down on the post office side, as I took, or the "but the other agencies are the ones screwing people and this is exactly correct" side... this one, so far, looks a bit more middle of the road, it should be interesting.
However, the point is, this single change is what brought them from surpluses to deficits, not them losing in the market, or being replaced. They are still the largest carrier, moving the most packages of anyone around (unless somebody knows different? They were a few years back).
> maybe some old officer taught his spotters the old WW1 codes so they won't have to bother with those > newfangled encryption machines
Or maybe thats why they were selected for the particular mission. Perhaps they figured the encryption machine was going to be too much of a burden.
Mr Young says Sgt Stott would have sent both these birds - with identical messages - at the same time, to make sure the information got through.
That sounds pretty specific. Hmmm Normandy eh? Spotter sent in with the ability to send back a single message? I could see not wanting to send the encryption machines with him, especially for a single message.
Actually no, he hit it spot on. No matter what else you say about them, they really did get screwed by congress.
The USPS actually did balance their checkbook to the point that they had surpluses. They didn't end up in trouble until congress added an unreasonable requirement that they fully fund vetrans benefits...decades ahead of time. Something no other agency must do.
This was pretty clearly done to put them in this situation.
> dave doesn't understand he owes everything to being a part of society, despite whatever delusions > make him believe he is an island
So you start right off making assumptions about what else dave might think? Seems like you are accusing him of being dishonest with his intentions. He is an imaginary guy so theres no reason he can't be a dishonest one, but, if you want to bring that dimension in we should consider dishonest carols too....but I don't see how that informs the point at hand.
Are you honestly saying that there is no room for differing opinion on the matter? My point is, two people can honestly want whats best, but have diametrically opposite ideas as to what is best. You say dave needs to contribute, but you are not willing to take into account that what you want him to contribute too...he might see as actually harmfull and not helpful, even harming the very people you want to help?
Is there really no room for people to have genuiinely disagreeing opinions?
Frankly, I think you just proved my point... there is no We, because people aren't even willing to consider that disagreement is genuine, just that anyone who disagrees has some sort of selfish/ignorant motive.
The problem is...its clear to you that Dave and Carol's policies will have those outcomes. Its not clear to everyone, and not even clear that all possible real implementations of those policies are all going to lead to positive outcomes.
Your argument seems to be that you see what outcome you believe certain generic policies will have is clear, so anyone who claims otherwise is a liar. Ive argued with too many "conservatives" to believe that.
I am not worried so much about current authorities. I am worried about the precedent they set and the dangers of what they are building. We have already seen massive exploitation of data that has been the result of the screwups of central authorities.
it was not long ago that drivers licence numbers were regularly SSNs, and the public record thus included your SSN, Address, Name, and DOB. You can purchase CDs, from the states, with the entire database of ALL drivers licence records in that state...why? Because its public record. Oops...why did you think tthere has been so much Identity theft?
Take it a step further....Athens, just a few years ago. It was found, accidentally by maintenance, that a teclo switches wiretap functions had been used by an unknown party to tap the phones of people all over the city, including government officials and human rights groups. Why is there wiretap functionality in the first place? Because the government enforcers mandate it.
They always do it for the best reasons. Yes it will help them investigate, as will storing data forever. Why they want it is never the issue. They always want it for the best reasons, to go after the corrupt, the violent, etc. The issue is all the other uses that these mechanisms can be, and frequently are, turned to serve....whether it be by organized crime, or future corrupt government.
Not just a time but a place too. One has to imagine that something so easy and cheap (even the police could hardly be paying more than $100k each for the $100 worth of equipment it would take to log this) that it will catch on everywhere.... so perhaps you can even change the detected location of a video
Other interesting activities....
Generate a random hum into a device at capture time. Generate a pre-recorded hum into a device at capture time.
So since the slashdot article the other day about this, how many private individuals have started data logging their power signal?
Slashdot Mirror
No. I don't believe you. Its all lies.... and firefly wont be remade...it will... well... a second season is still possible right?
Well thanks asshole. I can't even begin to express how comforting it was to not know there had been a remake. Why did you have to ruin my blissful ignorance?
Yes, if someone wants to annoy people, its going to cost them. This sounds to me like the old idea of fighting spam with "email postage", except.... there is only one provider, who gets all the money, in this scenario.
Likely, $1 per person is high enough to not be worth it. If you get 1 response in 100, then you need to take in $100 on average from each response just to break even on facebook fees. That alone is going to kill the vast majority of this crap. Likely more targeted campaigns, by people with much higher profit margins (like head hunters who can both be highly targeted and make obscene profits from placement)
What bothers me is the idea of having to pay $1 to find out if the person who sent me a friend request is someone that I actually know but don't recognize, or a totally random person/spammer etc.
If there is an exception for messaging people who have sent you a friend request (or sending a message with a friend request) I would have little issue with this. If not, then it bugs the hell out of me. In any case, its facebooks perogative if they want to convince me to go elsewhere.
I never said there was anything wrong with it.
Now is there? Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. I think it depends on other circumstances.
If you live in their house and basically live off them, then I tend to think that, unless you have a disability that prevents you from helping (and help could be paying rent), that your situation deserves every bit of the stigma that it has.
If you live with them because of a bad situation, trouble finding a job etc, hey family is family, we help eachother through tough times.
If you are productive, maybe paying rent or at least taking part in keeping the place running and making sure that they get as much benefit from you being there as you do from them being there... then I think that's a great situation.
Imagine you have kids... your kids get to grow up knowing your parents, your parents get to grow up knowing them, much more than even if they just lived a few streets away. On top of that you get instant baby sitters, extra eyes and helping hands with all of the chores around raising your kids. Quite literally, everybody wins.
Obviously this isn't a win for everybody...if you have abusive parents or a particularly toxic relationship with them, its not going to work, but on average, I do think its superior.
Define have to? To avoid tragedy yes. However, if you mean its a good idea to punish people who fuck this up, then I have to say, I am dubious of the real benefits in many situations. In fact, I would go as far as to say that its counterproductive.
Do you really think the state can punish a father who accidently shoots his child more than he has already suffered by his own hand? I don't drive around trying to avoid accidents for fear of my insurance rates or points on my license.... I just like having a car and don't want to get in an accident. I have had accidents, they are not fun....well usually.... going low side off a motorcycle int he rain with proper gear on did have some fun elements to it :) but.... the bike being a total loss, spraining my wrist, needing to replace some of my riding gear.... lets just say it wasn't cheap.
I am all for encouraging people to be more attentive and careful and safe. I am just dubious of holding people to such high a standard as to make their mistakes worst when they happen.
> We used to appreciate the need for a strong nuclear family. I don't
> know when that changed... probably before I realized it... I grew up
> rather old fashioned and still think like that most of the time.
For a rather short period of time. The "nuclear family" was probably never the best of ideas, and definitely a modern one. There is ample evidence that living in extended families has huge benefits, not the least of which is the resulting serious decrease in mental health issues (believed to be due to growing up with a larger support network).
In an extended family, there are just plain more people to watch the kids, more people to teach them. Its better for the kids, better for the parents, better for the older generations.
Is that the European ideal where the UK arrests people for offensive facebook posts (indeed now has guidelines on it) and actually has no freedom of speech at all? Or Germany where they are so embarassed by the past they they would jail their own people lest they express opinions that could cause uneducated people to say bad things about Germans?
Perhaps France and their recent forays into legislating what people can wear on their heads?
Never mind our allies though (particularly some of the "other" ones like South Korea where we fought for their freedom to be jailed for insulting the government, or saudi arabia where all it takes is international pressure to show them the error of their belief that a woman who reports being gang raped should be stoned to death for admiting she had sex.... such an easy mistake to make that.)... perhaps you were thinking of the US?
You know, where we are free to have a trial as long as the president doesn't decide he doesn't want us to have one. Or where we keep plans to massively extend law enforcement authority in drawers waiting for the next disaster to push them through? Or where we ignore our own laws to ship captives out to be tortured?
Were those the sensibilities that you were looking for?
> So the only option is to set an absolute standard and let the chips fall where they may.
There is a basic assumption there that there is some benefit to doing something. I actually suspect this is generally not the case and letting even a fairly large percentage of bad actors slide by is actually not all that big of a problem, since there are likely less of them than generally good people who make mistakes.
All true.... but I don't know how much I care. I think I subscribe more to the Scott Adams theory of you can't be smart all the time. People are not machines, and frankly, I think holding them up to absolute standards doesn't do anybody any good, because no matter how much you threaten people, they will never be other than they are.
I have not seen a default setup for doing it, but there have been extruders developed for pushing pastes, and those have been used for ceramics, frosting, and, I believe, silicones.
So no, none of the bots work with them by default, but, there is plenty of info out there to retrofit them with the ability.
Now, I said its project management 101. I didn't say that managers listen to project managers, or that project managers always understand/are good at their jobs. I was just suggesting that, a SMART analysis would have to take these things into account.
I have however worked at rather unreal "companies" that ignored reality and pulled dates out of their asses. And.... their projects were never even close to on time. One of my own projects got delayed over 6 months because I raised the flag that production needed SSL certs on the authentication servers.
A year or so before that, I sat down in my managers office, looked at him and told him, flat out... my project was a year behind schedule when they hired me, its 6 months in, and I still can't get a single solid requirement out of anyone aside from vague statements about "people really want it".... he smiled, looked at me and said "I know, and we are all scared".
So basically, I worked for the people who pretended to be a real company, who picked deadlines out of their ass and then flogged people over them, but... who never actually let anyone go... so nobody really feared them....just disrespected them, were demoralized, and didn't want to work.... which didn't help the deadlines either.....
I have also worked with good project managers who pushed back on management, and really went to bat with management to make sure the plan and progress were understood and that we had real management buy-in.... smoothest and best projects I have EVER been on.... but she wasn't with me at that company.... that company had an entire group of dedicated project managers, all of whom would just roll their eyes if you suggested that a gantt chart was even worth making...well all except for the one who stayed for 6 months and left....
Not just miss deadlines, but miss their initial deadline.
Deadlines are fine.... but when scope and resources change, the deadline slips. That is simple project management 101.
One of the things I think it goes back to is the word "Inexperienced". Projects always seem easier in the planning phases than execution.
as the old saying goes.... Fast, Good, Cheap... pick 2.
What id you and a number of people wish to mine an asteroid, use the materials to create a new space station, and live independantly and separately from the nations of earth?
You do realize that this, assuming we are not wiped out before it happens, is the natural progression. Those of us who are unhappy with existing arrangements and affairs are going to want to leave. In fact, this may be the first time in history where such migrations have been nearly entirely infeasible. That will not last forever....and once it begins anew, it will take a LONG TIME to fill up just the locally earth bound space
Eventually exiting empires will simply be in the situation of King George when the colonies declared independance.
In a real way the Golden Path is the future, though, i doubt it really will require a sand worm god emporer to bring about, its natural human instinct to become disgruntled with the current order and want to leave and form new colonies.
> Something else you seem to forget is that he is charged of multiple crimes. You don't get to lump
> crimes together and claim "Well it was the same sort of crime, so it only counts as one." If you rob a
> store, then go rob another store, then go rob another store, you'll be charged with 3 crimes and each
> carries its own sentence.
while I totally get what you are saying, i also feel that there is a problem with this thinking. It kind of assumes that each incident was a totally distinct decision, separate from his decision to rob stores in the first place. It seems based entirely on the minutia of the harm caused, and not any measure of continued danger to society or the possibility of reform.
Lets say, for the sake of argument, we had a clear rule where each store got him 1 year. Do we really think that a person who robs 6 stores will not be adequetly punished with the same punishment as one who did 3? Can we really say that one who robbed 12 needs twice as long? Why? Is this just a matter of making it feel right? Or is this about deterance and reform?
I just seems like you end up with cases like this..... with people doing 10 years because of the linear addition of charges, rather than because of any real belief that keeping him away for 10 years will either be required for his reform, or required to protect the public.
Or to bring in another thought.... a while back I read an article by a local prosecutor about why we needed to expand hate crimes to include the homeless. His argument centered around a pair of young men who beat a homeless man within an inch of his life, totally gratuitously. No heated disagreement, no torrid personal motives, no theft....they just wanted to beat a homeless man.
The problem, as the prosecutor saw it, was that these men got all of a few months in prison, because there were not enough laws to stack on charges. It wasn't in someones home, there were no items to be stolen, he wasn't black, or gay..... so these guys got off very very light.
What struck me was that.... violent crimes can so easily get off with light sentances, but, the solution is somehow to...create new classes of protected people to use for increasing charges? Huh? How does that follow? Shouldn't it just....be a worst crime to violently beat someone?
I mean, I am all for going easy on people in some situations, younger people, people who got in bar fights etc.... but...the idea that you can't differenciate between that and two guys mercilessly beating a defenseless man for sport just seems shortsighted and disingenuine. It seems like there has to be a better calculous to use here.
Yes but.... if he broke into her home, stole physical photos, and released them.... most people would easily consider it as much, if not more, of a violation.... but would he ever face nearly the jail time for that as he did for this? I doubt it strongly.
Now, that isn't condoning what he did, clearly he was wrong, hell, I even called into question whether that FBI dad who tracked down the pedophile principal had overstepped ethical bounds by reading the reports in the first place. However, the punishment, if there is to be one, should not be out of proportion with the crime....
This puts him away not just longer than someone who commited a nearly identical crime by different means, it puts him away longer than many violent criminals who actually physically harmed people.
Hell, he will likely do more time than Whitey.
> This is actually a good system, because the headlines show the
> initial (phoney) sentence, which has a deterrent value by scaring
> other potential perps, but we don't actually incur the expense of
> imprisoning them for anywhere near that long.
Hmmm in theory anyway. In practice, there is evidence that harsh sentances do not actually translate into significant deterrance.
A much stronger effect is seen by increasing the percieved likelyhood of gettin caught.
An excellent book that talked of this was "More Sex is Safer Sex", that has a whole chapter on this effect, using LoJack as their example... claiming a 20% drop in car thefts for every 1% increase in cars with LoJack....with no increase in penalties (threatened or otherwise).
People are FAR more afraid of getting caught than the penalty.
That is so not true, these people are our best and brightest! Hello.... you think congressmen don't have indoor plumbing? They know how tubes work, they know what happens when you put them in a series. They arn't stupid.
Yes, of course. However they are being asked to do it with a highly accelerated time table, far beyond what anyone else does, and it is, pretty much singly, what put them in the red. Prior to these new and specific requirements, they had surpluses in their budget.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-02/understanding-the-post-office-s-benefits-mess.html
That is not an article that I have read before, actually, I am going to read it now, previous ones I have seen have either come down on the post office side, as I took, or the "but the other agencies are the ones screwing people and this is exactly correct" side... this one, so far, looks a bit more middle of the road, it should be interesting.
However, the point is, this single change is what brought them from surpluses to deficits, not them losing in the market, or being replaced. They are still the largest carrier, moving the most packages of anyone around (unless somebody knows different? They were a few years back).
> maybe some old officer taught his spotters the old WW1 codes so they won't have to bother with those
> newfangled encryption machines
Or maybe thats why they were selected for the particular mission. Perhaps they figured the encryption machine was going to be too much of a burden.
Actually no, he hit it spot on. No matter what else you say about them, they really did get screwed by congress.
The USPS actually did balance their checkbook to the point that they had surpluses. They didn't end up in trouble until congress added an unreasonable requirement that they fully fund vetrans benefits...decades ahead of time. Something no other agency must do.
This was pretty clearly done to put them in this situation.
> This has been common knowledge among UFOlogists for years now.
"there are plenty of websites on Geocities devoted to exposing this conspiracy."
> dave doesn't understand he owes everything to being a part of society, despite whatever delusions
> make him believe he is an island
So you start right off making assumptions about what else dave might think? Seems like you are accusing him of being dishonest with his intentions. He is an imaginary guy so theres no reason he can't be a dishonest one, but, if you want to bring that dimension in we should consider dishonest carols too....but I don't see how that informs the point at hand.
Are you honestly saying that there is no room for differing opinion on the matter? My point is, two people can honestly want whats best, but have diametrically opposite ideas as to what is best. You say dave needs to contribute, but you are not willing to take into account that what you want him to contribute too...he might see as actually harmfull and not helpful, even harming the very people you want to help?
Is there really no room for people to have genuiinely disagreeing opinions?
Frankly, I think you just proved my point... there is no We, because people aren't even willing to consider that disagreement is genuine, just that anyone who disagrees has some sort of selfish/ignorant motive.
The problem is...its clear to you that Dave and Carol's policies will have those outcomes. Its not clear to everyone, and not even clear that all possible real implementations of those policies are all going to lead to positive outcomes.
Your argument seems to be that you see what outcome you believe certain generic policies will have is clear, so anyone who claims otherwise is a liar. Ive argued with too many "conservatives" to believe that.
The artist is not the paint brush. People use what tools are familiar to them.
This is actually an excellent point.
I am not worried so much about current authorities. I am worried about the precedent they set and the dangers of what they are building. We have already seen massive exploitation of data that has been the result of the screwups of central authorities.
it was not long ago that drivers licence numbers were regularly SSNs, and the public record thus included your SSN, Address, Name, and DOB. You can purchase CDs, from the states, with the entire database of ALL drivers licence records in that state...why? Because its public record. Oops...why did you think tthere has been so much Identity theft?
Take it a step further....Athens, just a few years ago. It was found, accidentally by maintenance, that a teclo switches wiretap functions had been used by an unknown party to tap the phones of people all over the city, including government officials and human rights groups. Why is there wiretap functionality in the first place? Because the government enforcers mandate it.
They always do it for the best reasons. Yes it will help them investigate, as will storing data forever. Why they want it is never the issue. They always want it for the best reasons, to go after the corrupt, the violent, etc. The issue is all the other uses that these mechanisms can be, and frequently are, turned to serve....whether it be by organized crime, or future corrupt government.
Not just a time but a place too. One has to imagine that something so easy and cheap (even the police could hardly be paying more than $100k each for the $100 worth of equipment it would take to log this) that it will catch on everywhere.... so perhaps you can even change the detected location of a video
Other interesting activities....
Generate a random hum into a device at capture time.
Generate a pre-recorded hum into a device at capture time.
So since the slashdot article the other day about this, how many private individuals have started data logging their power signal?