Was even Soviet-ear Russia as bad as this? Is Iran even as bad as this? Was Saddam-controlled Iraq as bad as this? I'm not sure which angers me more: the act itself, or the utter stupidity that underlies it!
My great grandfather spent 10 years in a 'labor' camp in Siberia. It just so happened that he was also a political critic. My great grandmother buried her mother on the side of the road while fleeing from Poland.
It's not surprising that it happened. My great grandfather was part of a purge, he had been a major player in rebellion in Poland and was probably seen as a potential opponent to some on the Russian side of things.
Amazingly he survived and made it to the United States. I've tried to piece fact from fiction as told by my father and grandfather (who may not be the most impartial storytellers) but some of the physical evidence I have, photos, travel documents, and a few historical records (journals from his time escaping from the USSR after Siberia) make it an interesting story. I'm going to have to see what a historian familiar with Polish history could tell me. But, needless to say, some relatives of mine did NOT make it to the States.
Our governments have no need to resort to jailing our dissidents anymore. They can rely on our own populace deciding that their views fall into the 'opposing group' and then will launch a self-powered smear machine which is VERY hard to avoid.
Need examples? Watch as people with even the slightest belief outside the two parties in the United States gets immediately attacked as being kooks, Nazi's, communists, nutcases, idiots, or just plain character assassinated by tying them together with actual nutcases.
How do you do it?
Well, if anyone supports a position, first, take that position and move it as far to the extreme as you can. Then, find someone who holds the same position, but additional extreme beliefs and then whenever the first person or group is mentioned be sure to include the actual nutcase in your 'critique'.
So anyone expressing any sort of libertarian suggestion should be suggested to be presenting the views of an Anarchist, associated with Christine O'Donnell and her extreme viewpoints (because she also mentioned lower taxes, therefore lower taxes = push for creationism in schools)
If you express any sort of desire to suggest changes to our insurance system, well now you are a nutcase who wants the government to also ban fatty food, and allow a shrill voice to tell you that you aren't doing your exercises vigorously enough as monitored in your telescreen. Associate them with Barbara Boxer (I honestly don't know who to label as the kook here, because I'm not in the practice of it, but you get the idea).
In the end, the people who actually try to advance our country are tarred and feathered by the populace and the government rarely needs to lift a finger to silence them.
I've heard that it's actually quite hard to just shoot something into the sun, even though it sounds simple--big target, lots of gravity. Can someone explain why, or point to a link that does?
It wouldn't be hard if that was your initial goal, but making something that isn't currently on that trajectory or very near to it would be tough.
Don't we use quantities of rare materials to create the sensitive instrumentation onboard?
Yes, we do use quantities. Very small quantities relative to the amount here on earth. Let's put it this way:
The energy cost to keep these satellites 'stored' and then reactivate/repair them from storage would be MUCH more than the energy cost to mine whatever rare mineral you might need that is currently available here on Earth.
Or look at it another way: If it was so valuable as to put these into a non-useful, but accessable orbit and then build another device to go out there, dock, collect, repair, and refuel them... You could just send that collection robot to an asteroid and mine all the rare materials you could want.
And with respect to minerals being rare: They are only rare based on the cost it takes to extract them from the Earth. If their 'value' increased due to demand and decreasing availability, then people would mine the harder to reach deposits.
Now, I haven't done the calculations, but I would be VERY surprised if we had the capability to deplete our planet of ANY resource that doesn't deplete itself on its own (like helium in the atmosphere or radioactive elements)
Sorry if your failure to get the point offended you.
Ease up there with the backhanded apologies.
It was just a slight misinterpretation.
You intended it to be a descriptive element to one insult. He interpreted it to be TWO separate potential insults. Likely due to the fact that they are often tied together. "You must be from West Virginia." is used as an insult, so him getting it confused is not unlikely.
That you both got bent out of shape over mundane issues is really what you two should be examining.
This situation is becoming increasingly dire as we see prosecutors and AGs abuse their position by using the weight of their office against their political opponents. As most are elected positions, it is expected to see their personal motivations in which cases they pursue more vigoursly. However the 'fair' amount you would expect would be measured in slight percentage shifts in caseloads (10% more of this type of case prosecuted under so and so vs the previous AG).
However, this is a serious problem as we now have people with the weight of the state at their disposal (and therefore effectively unlimited time and money). I've long had issue with the fact that the state can weild disproportionate power in our legal system. My issue stems from the fact that our system is an adversarial system. It works well when both opponents are equally matched in capability and means, but when you allow the state side to fund their case in volumes orders of magnitude greater than what their opponent could expect to literally earn in their lifetime, it breaks and it doesn't fail gracefully like a pair of shoes wearing out, it fails like shattering a plate glass window with your bare hand.
Back on the main topic of prosecutors using the state as their personal weapons, these sorts of actions need to be stopped NOW and with sufficient force because this is only going to undermine our legal system and eventually put innocent people's lives in danger.
Lockheed Martin generally does/did their raises in February. I've always assumed it was pretty much industry standard. Or at least at the end of the FY.
I too did not receive a raise in the last 6 months, I'm not worried at all, our raises come in December.
Your famous example shows your lack of understanding of Germany's laws. You can be fined for reckless driving whenever the ring has an open to the public day.
And when it isn't public?
Sorry, bad example for that narrow exception you pointed out, how about the THOUSANDS of other private roads where the owner can enforce what they want?
The government, and only the government, provides roads. So if, either by you refusing to take the exams or by flunking them, you do not have its permission to drive on them, you simply cannot use your car. Surely you can drive around in your garage, but when restricted like that, a car is reduced to something very useless.
First, this is not correct. I personally own property with several miles of roads which I built on my own. I can drive whatever I want to on those roads, however I want. A famous example similar to what I have is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/nurburgring
As for your second paragraph. You are way off the mark. You are trying to force an analogy that simply doesn't work. A driver's license is NOT a software license. You might as well try to suggest that you need a fishing license to have a stroke of luck because both are flukes.
I'll bite: Why did the office members use their mice with their left hands?
3-4 person branch office. The VP of that branch was left handed, and computers were shared. The secretary found it was easier to just learn how to use her left hand than to move the mouse to the right side, swap the buttons in software, and then set it back to normal when she was done with the computer.
ie: The right handed people adapted to the left handed mice. It's why I pointed out that it isn't THAT big of a deal, only a minor annoyance which went away after they got used to it.
Interestingly enough, the secretary (who also served as the accountant, preferred using the mouse in her left hand since she could use the numpad and arrow keys with her right when working in excel or other similar software.
This mouse is so configurable, yet can't be used naturally by left handers. This is fail for 10% of the population.
This mouse IS very configurable, but it isn't THAT configurable. It sucks being a minority. Trust me, I know. I'm colorblind. At least you can still use your right hand.
I get to wonder if an option is greyed out, or green and nothing can fix that short of altering my genetic code. My only advantage is that you can usually compensate for that via software. Hardware is going to be designed for 90-95% of the population, and it shouldn't be a surprise if in the announcement of a new product, it doesn't cover that last 5-10%.
I've worked in an office where we used the mice with our left hands, it took a few days to get used to, but after a while you didn't notice it at all. So the people who CAN'T adapt are probably only 2% of the population.
This really makes me want to get and return such devices. That way I cause these vendors the most economic harm I can.
I returned equipment after reading the license agreement when I turned it on. I think it had to do with Windows Live and had two agreements One which said I must accept if I wanted to use this software (fair by me) The second said I must accept if I wanted to use this equipment (Hell no).
It's a drop in the ocean I know, but it bugged the hell out of me.
The broken window principal states that people are more likely to vandalize and/or burglarize a property if it has a broken front window than without it.
No. Not in this case. It has a few meanings and you picked the wrong one for this discussion.
In this case, it is a reference to the economic boost that occurs due to the window being broken.
1. Window is broken. 2. Homeowner pays a worker to replace the window. 3. The worker buys lumber and glass to replace the window 4. The worker now has additional money to spend 5. The lumber yard and glass maker now have money to spend
It refers to the stimulating effect that a 'bad' thing can have on a local economy. It is regarded as a poor justification because the homeowner was likely to spend the money on other productive things had the window not been broken, and opportunity was lost.
You aren't incorrect with what you are referring to, it just doesn't apply to this situation.
That's how taxes work. If they didn't, no one would ever pay them.
No, that's not true at all. Only in certain circumstances. In my locality, unpaid taxes can become a lein against the property they were assessed against. Failure to pay certain taxes can prevent me from transferring the title to the property, but they do not carry any penalty of jailtime.
You can easily have penalties which do not include jailtime. Jailtime for something like a $75 is way over the top considering the harm which you would do to the person considering the harm caused by them not paying their fine.
Garnishing wages is a very common technique to extract a penalty from someone who is unwilling to pay that doesn't result in jailtime.
It'd be just like owning a car but having no driver's license.
Not really. A drivers license (and the requirements for one) vary state to state and are simply government stating that they grant you the permission to drive on their roads.
Contrast that to this phone.
The software license being pushed as a contract between two independant entities, in this case, the owner of the software, and the prospective user of the software. The hardware is owned by you. If the license is refused by you, it is implicit that you are NOT granting the software permission to operate on your equipment.
This would be like someone coming up to you and saying, "I want to sell you this upgrade to your car's emission control software." However, when you decline, the person sneaks into your garage and installs the software against your will, and then declares that you are NOT allowed to use your car because you said you didn't want the software.
It raises an interesting concept because you are prevented from rejecting the contract.
I wonder what legal limbo you would get into if you declined the software agreement (which they like to call a contract) and yet force the software on you anyway.
This is Tennessee we're talking about. Any attempt to do that would be met by a rally of tea-partiers calling you a socialist. Got to keep the government off our backs, you know.
I'd be pretty upset if a $75 fee was being enforced via a threat of jailtime.
Charge them the cost of putting out the fire plus 10%
This means that it is still better to pay the 75$, the fire company doesn't lose any money, the local government earns property taxes from the still existant house, the people still live there and don't go on welfare since they wouldn't be homeless.
Or we could just say 'RULES ARE RULES' and put on the blinders.
As it is, you get to have heavy, ineffective crap guns, and heavy, ineffective crap armour because "some suit" has decided that it would cost more than a soldier's life is worth to equip them properly.
Yes, because that's how it works. It couldn't possibly be an engineer like me faced with this decision: If I can shave off 2 lbs, that's 2 lbs more fuel it can carry, extending its range. Everyone wants more armor, except for the guy who just ran out of fuel.
And even though we may not like it, money IS a factor. What good is something if you can't afford to deploy it?
I once worked on a program that would VASTLY increase the safety for people using my system. Not even 1x or 2x but ORDERS of MAGNITUDE. It was cancelled. Why? It cost too much money. It was politically unpopular since all that money was going to 'evil defense contractors' and we weren't smart enough to spread the wealth across a multitude of congressional districts during our manufacture.
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Was even Soviet-ear Russia as bad as this? Is Iran even as bad as this? Was Saddam-controlled Iraq as bad as this? I'm not sure which angers me more: the act itself, or the utter stupidity that underlies it!
My great grandfather spent 10 years in a 'labor' camp in Siberia. It just so happened that he was also a political critic.
My great grandmother buried her mother on the side of the road while fleeing from Poland.
It's not surprising that it happened. My great grandfather was part of a purge, he had been a major player in rebellion in Poland and was probably seen as a potential opponent to some on the Russian side of things.
Amazingly he survived and made it to the United States. I've tried to piece fact from fiction as told by my father and grandfather (who may not be the most impartial storytellers) but some of the physical evidence I have, photos, travel documents, and a few historical records (journals from his time escaping from the USSR after Siberia) make it an interesting story. I'm going to have to see what a historian familiar with Polish history could tell me. But, needless to say, some relatives of mine did NOT make it to the States.
Our governments have no need to resort to jailing our dissidents anymore. They can rely on our own populace deciding that their views fall into the 'opposing group' and then will launch a self-powered smear machine which is VERY hard to avoid.
Need examples? Watch as people with even the slightest belief outside the two parties in the United States gets immediately attacked as being kooks, Nazi's, communists, nutcases, idiots, or just plain character assassinated by tying them together with actual nutcases.
How do you do it?
Well, if anyone supports a position, first, take that position and move it as far to the extreme as you can. Then, find someone who holds the same position, but additional extreme beliefs and then whenever the first person or group is mentioned be sure to include the actual nutcase in your 'critique'.
So anyone expressing any sort of libertarian suggestion should be suggested to be presenting the views of an Anarchist, associated with Christine O'Donnell and her extreme viewpoints (because she also mentioned lower taxes, therefore lower taxes = push for creationism in schools)
If you express any sort of desire to suggest changes to our insurance system, well now you are a nutcase who wants the government to also ban fatty food, and allow a shrill voice to tell you that you aren't doing your exercises vigorously enough as monitored in your telescreen. Associate them with Barbara Boxer (I honestly don't know who to label as the kook here, because I'm not in the practice of it, but you get the idea).
In the end, the people who actually try to advance our country are tarred and feathered by the populace and the government rarely needs to lift a finger to silence them.
The U.S. is much more similar to China than it cares to admit. Then there's the little matter of China owning enormous chunks of the U.S....
I know, why here in the U.S. saying such a thing like that will get you and your wife tossed into jail.
I've heard that it's actually quite hard to just shoot something into the sun, even though it sounds simple--big target, lots of gravity. Can someone explain why, or point to a link that does?
It wouldn't be hard if that was your initial goal, but making something that isn't currently on that trajectory or very near to it would be tough.
Don't we use quantities of rare materials to create the sensitive instrumentation onboard?
Yes, we do use quantities. Very small quantities relative to the amount here on earth. Let's put it this way:
The energy cost to keep these satellites 'stored' and then reactivate/repair them from storage would be MUCH more than the energy cost to mine whatever rare mineral you might need that is currently available here on Earth.
Or look at it another way: If it was so valuable as to put these into a non-useful, but accessable orbit and then build another device to go out there, dock, collect, repair, and refuel them... You could just send that collection robot to an asteroid and mine all the rare materials you could want.
And with respect to minerals being rare: They are only rare based on the cost it takes to extract them from the Earth. If their 'value' increased due to demand and decreasing availability, then people would mine the harder to reach deposits.
Now, I haven't done the calculations, but I would be VERY surprised if we had the capability to deplete our planet of ANY resource that doesn't deplete itself on its own (like helium in the atmosphere or radioactive elements)
Sorry if your failure to get the point offended you.
Ease up there with the backhanded apologies.
It was just a slight misinterpretation.
You intended it to be a descriptive element to one insult. He interpreted it to be TWO separate potential insults. Likely due to the fact that they are often tied together. "You must be from West Virginia." is used as an insult, so him getting it confused is not unlikely.
That you both got bent out of shape over mundane issues is really what you two should be examining.
This situation is becoming increasingly dire as we see prosecutors and AGs abuse their position by using the weight of their office against their political opponents. As most are elected positions, it is expected to see their personal motivations in which cases they pursue more vigoursly. However the 'fair' amount you would expect would be measured in slight percentage shifts in caseloads (10% more of this type of case prosecuted under so and so vs the previous AG).
However, this is a serious problem as we now have people with the weight of the state at their disposal (and therefore effectively unlimited time and money). I've long had issue with the fact that the state can weild disproportionate power in our legal system. My issue stems from the fact that our system is an adversarial system. It works well when both opponents are equally matched in capability and means, but when you allow the state side to fund their case in volumes orders of magnitude greater than what their opponent could expect to literally earn in their lifetime, it breaks and it doesn't fail gracefully like a pair of shoes wearing out, it fails like shattering a plate glass window with your bare hand.
Back on the main topic of prosecutors using the state as their personal weapons, these sorts of actions need to be stopped NOW and with sufficient force because this is only going to undermine our legal system and eventually put innocent people's lives in danger.
Lockheed Martin generally does/did their raises in February. I've always assumed it was pretty much industry standard. Or at least at the end of the FY.
I too did not receive a raise in the last 6 months, I'm not worried at all, our raises come in December.
Your famous example shows your lack of understanding of Germany's laws. You can be fined for reckless driving whenever the ring has an open to the public day.
And when it isn't public?
Sorry, bad example for that narrow exception you pointed out, how about the THOUSANDS of other private roads where the owner can enforce what they want?
This pedantry is annoying. I'm done.
It's not like that. It's different for everyone really, and it isn't so much as an all or nothing thing. it's a bit hard to describe.
The government, and only the government, provides roads. So if, either by you refusing to take the exams or by flunking them, you do not have its permission to drive on them, you simply cannot use your car. Surely you can drive around in your garage, but when restricted like that, a car is reduced to something very useless.
First, this is not correct. I personally own property with several miles of roads which I built on my own. I can drive whatever I want to on those roads, however I want. A famous example similar to what I have is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/nurburgring
As for your second paragraph. You are way off the mark. You are trying to force an analogy that simply doesn't work. A driver's license is NOT a software license. You might as well try to suggest that you need a fishing license to have a stroke of luck because both are flukes.
I'll bite: Why did the office members use their mice with their left hands?
3-4 person branch office. The VP of that branch was left handed, and computers were shared. The secretary found it was easier to just learn how to use her left hand than to move the mouse to the right side, swap the buttons in software, and then set it back to normal when she was done with the computer.
ie: The right handed people adapted to the left handed mice. It's why I pointed out that it isn't THAT big of a deal, only a minor annoyance which went away after they got used to it.
Interestingly enough, the secretary (who also served as the accountant, preferred using the mouse in her left hand since she could use the numpad and arrow keys with her right when working in excel or other similar software.
This mouse is so configurable, yet can't be used naturally by left handers. This is fail for 10% of the population.
This mouse IS very configurable, but it isn't THAT configurable. It sucks being a minority. Trust me, I know. I'm colorblind. At least you can still use your right hand.
I get to wonder if an option is greyed out, or green and nothing can fix that short of altering my genetic code. My only advantage is that you can usually compensate for that via software. Hardware is going to be designed for 90-95% of the population, and it shouldn't be a surprise if in the announcement of a new product, it doesn't cover that last 5-10%.
I've worked in an office where we used the mice with our left hands, it took a few days to get used to, but after a while you didn't notice it at all. So the people who CAN'T adapt are probably only 2% of the population.
This really makes me want to get and return such devices. That way I cause these vendors the most economic harm I can.
I returned equipment after reading the license agreement when I turned it on. I think it had to do with Windows Live and had two agreements One which said I must accept if I wanted to use this software (fair by me) The second said I must accept if I wanted to use this equipment (Hell no).
It's a drop in the ocean I know, but it bugged the hell out of me.
The broken window principal states that people are more likely to vandalize and/or burglarize a property if it has a broken front window than without it.
No. Not in this case. It has a few meanings and you picked the wrong one for this discussion.
In this case, it is a reference to the economic boost that occurs due to the window being broken.
1. Window is broken.
2. Homeowner pays a worker to replace the window.
3. The worker buys lumber and glass to replace the window
4. The worker now has additional money to spend
5. The lumber yard and glass maker now have money to spend
It refers to the stimulating effect that a 'bad' thing can have on a local economy. It is regarded as a poor justification because the homeowner was likely to spend the money on other productive things had the window not been broken, and opportunity was lost.
You aren't incorrect with what you are referring to, it just doesn't apply to this situation.
That's how taxes work. If they didn't, no one would ever pay them.
No, that's not true at all. Only in certain circumstances. In my locality, unpaid taxes can become a lein against the property they were assessed against. Failure to pay certain taxes can prevent me from transferring the title to the property, but they do not carry any penalty of jailtime.
You can easily have penalties which do not include jailtime. Jailtime for something like a $75 is way over the top considering the harm which you would do to the person considering the harm caused by them not paying their fine.
Garnishing wages is a very common technique to extract a penalty from someone who is unwilling to pay that doesn't result in jailtime.
It'd be just like owning a car but having no driver's license.
Not really. A drivers license (and the requirements for one) vary state to state and are simply government stating that they grant you the permission to drive on their roads.
Contrast that to this phone.
The software license being pushed as a contract between two independant entities, in this case, the owner of the software, and the prospective user of the software. The hardware is owned by you. If the license is refused by you, it is implicit that you are NOT granting the software permission to operate on your equipment.
This would be like someone coming up to you and saying, "I want to sell you this upgrade to your car's emission control software." However, when you decline, the person sneaks into your garage and installs the software against your will, and then declares that you are NOT allowed to use your car because you said you didn't want the software.
It raises an interesting concept because you are prevented from rejecting the contract.
I wonder what legal limbo you would get into if you declined the software agreement (which they like to call a contract) and yet force the software on you anyway.
This is Tennessee we're talking about. Any attempt to do that would be met by a rally of tea-partiers calling you a socialist. Got to keep the government off our backs, you know.
I'd be pretty upset if a $75 fee was being enforced via a threat of jailtime.
You need to believe more than you just read on the internet about what some guy told you these other guys believe.
Charge them the cost of putting out the fire plus 10%
This means that it is still better to pay the 75$, the fire company doesn't lose any money, the local government earns property taxes from the still existant house, the people still live there and don't go on welfare since they wouldn't be homeless.
Or we could just say 'RULES ARE RULES' and put on the blinders.
The US has never, ever been known for making good tanks, just for making lots and lots and lots of them.
We do however, have a fairly robust tank killing capability.
As it is, you get to have heavy, ineffective crap guns, and heavy, ineffective crap armour because "some suit" has decided that it would cost more than a soldier's life is worth to equip them properly.
Yes, because that's how it works. It couldn't possibly be an engineer like me faced with this decision: If I can shave off 2 lbs, that's 2 lbs more fuel it can carry, extending its range. Everyone wants more armor, except for the guy who just ran out of fuel.
And even though we may not like it, money IS a factor. What good is something if you can't afford to deploy it?
I once worked on a program that would VASTLY increase the safety for people using my system. Not even 1x or 2x but ORDERS of MAGNITUDE. It was cancelled. Why? It cost too much money. It was politically unpopular since all that money was going to 'evil defense contractors' and we weren't smart enough to spread the wealth across a multitude of congressional districts during our manufacture.
You can't win.
Wait I forget, is it worse to prove a paradox wrong, or to prove it right? ;)
Probably the best bet is to copy it from visiting aliens, if any ever bother to visit.
Meanwhile in a neighboring star system,
"Probably the best bet is to copy it from visiting aliens, if any ever bother to visit."