Wish I had mod points for you.

I generally agree with you. Having said that, is it any more ridiculous a proposition that a chimp has personhood than a corporation?

The logical argument would be that the coporation makes more sense because it is comprised of people. The logical response to that is "Then don't they already have personhood?"

Sorry for running the thread off the rails that way.

I had parents, am white, have a college degree and make a similar income. I don't see the cops as pigs and I think it's silly to believe that the police force changes quickly enough to be the enforcement side of any particular regime. I think it's much more basic and understandable than that.

The police do a dangerous job and over time the losses and realized risks add up until they feel threatened. They respond to the threat in a perfectly human manner; they get aggressive. Control the situation. Drive the situation. So they're more likely now than ever to use the tazer/mace/gun, etc.

The effect of this over time is that we citizens feel threatened. So how do we respond? The same way! With aggression. If you yell at me and don't give me a chance to explain anything, ask what's going on, even process what you're telling me before you arm bar me into the ground and drive your knee into my neck, I'm going to respond in a manner that likely doesn't match what the police want me to do.

This is normal human behavior and escalates as the situation escalates. In the middle of the night, even if you knock and announce loudly that you're the police, if you don't give me time to realize that I just heard a voice saying they were the cops, to get up, put on a robe, tell my wife and daughter to relax it'll be okay, shut the dog in a room, look out the peephole to verify that you actually are the cops, etc., before you knock the door in, throw a flashbang, storm the house with M4s and bright lights, etc. I'm likely to respond angrily and without thought. I'm simply reacting at that point, and it's your (cops) fault, not mine for creating that situation. The only person who would act in a measured and thoughtful manner at that point is the criminal who expected such an encounter.

If there is a societal conflict between the populous and the police, one side must surrender to win, and our traditional view of society in this nation suggests that it should be the cops who back down.

That's not what anybody is saying, and it's disingenuous to say that it is.

This study shouldn't be any great shock to anybody; that life is more complicated than a single cause for something. Some people are fat because they live a fat lifestyle. Some are fat because of their genetic makeup. Some are fat for a combination of them. Some people will have to put more effort into staying thin than others. This study suggests that these microbes are one factor.

The OP is making a statement that you completely confirmed: people are easily willing to bash and shame others. The second sentence of your post is the perfect example of using the worst possible scenario to describe everybody who exhibits a particular "fault". So tell me, what is the line of demarcation? Where is the fat line? What weight is 1lb more than the normal reasonable person and defines the lazy slovenly glutton you describe?

What about smokers? Do they suck as people too? Drinkers? What about people who curse? Are religious fanatics ok (that could go either way with you, I'd guess)? Sex addicts? How about people who are thin but can't run very fast? Are they lazy, too? Tell us, how are all of these people failures, too? And what about people with more or less intelligence: are the more intellectual people simply harder workers and the less intelligent just lazy?

Hmm, how about beautiful people vs the rest of us?

Are you perfect? And if not, is it because you're lazy?

Of course, there are lots of salacious possibilities, but also a lot of quite ordinary.

It would be cool to have something like this of my wife and I or my family every few years.

Yes.

Dogfighting hasn't been important for a while because none of the top tier militaries have squared off against each other. U.S. vs Iraq was never going to produce a serious air war. Neither would U.S. vs Iran, or North Korea, etc.

But, if the U.S. and Russia ever squared off, you would see dogfighting. Our fighters would try to eliminate their close support and ground attack aircraft. They would send fighters to attack ours. Both would send fighters after each other to suppress them.

The asymmetrical nature of modern wars has kept it from happening, but we would be foolish to ignore that component of air superiority just because we haven't needed it in 40 years. After all, who were we fighting back then? Oh yeah, Russia by proxy.

Thank you. I was about to post a "fuck you" like yours when I saw that you had beat me to it.

I'm 45 yrs old, run 15-30 miles per week, eat as diabetics should, etc. I'm 6'0" and just over 175lbs now. I've been diabetic for 10 years. I'm not currently on any medication, but probably will be in the next year or so. My numbers keep creeping up.

There is a subset of people who just think that anything wrong with somebody is their own fault. Small people with limited understandings. And it's amazing the damage they can do to somebody who feels vulnerable. It's bad enough that the doctors are never happy; but now they have some random internet puke telling them it's all their fault for being a stupid fatty.

It burns me sometimes, these idiots.

In your 20s you're fascinated by all the things you can do, and all of the tools that help you. The staggering possibilities are endless. You hate yard work. F that.

In your 30s, you're aware and thankful that you're passion allows you to provide for your family. It takes long hours and lots of work, but gives your loved ones a lifestyle that you're proud of. The neighbor kid mows your lawn for $20 per week.

In your 40s you start to relive these things vicariously through the new crowd, eager and energetic. Long nights, desperate deadlines and high pressure projects are tiring. You've racked up a lot of these at the expense of your personal life. Your kids are old enough now to mow the lawn for you.

In your 50s you wonder how much of you this company and these people deserve. The 20 somethings look at you like you've checked out. In reality, you're just trying to do better at balancing your effort against what really matters to you. This puts you in the slow lane on the running track. The endless possibilities are staggering, and no longer fun. You'd rather spend your time in the yard or doing something else relaxing.

Different things will be important to you 10 years from now. That doesn't mean you're wrong today, or then. It's just the way it works... for most.

I think we have an unhealthy culture of dominance in this country. I'll stand up for my rights. I'll be number 1. I'll win.

Everything is a competition. Financial, political, physical, workplace, school, etc. We've turned everything into a ranking model where somebody is always above or below somebody else. It pervades every single thing we do. It's this sort of thing that leads to deaths at WalMart on Black Friday, road rage beatings and shootings, backstabbing in the office, and anxiety in the classroom. If you're not winning, you're losing, and don't think for a second that it's happening without notice.

We're constantly anxious about our standing in some fashion. Will I be let go? Am I better looking than that person? Am I better off than that person? Am I smarter? Am I more aggressive?

We're overtly competitive in many ways, but the subtle pervasiveness of the competitive mindset is really troubling.

Electric utility companies do have some interesting dynamics. Staff tend to have long tenures, so many of the plant operations folks remember days before they had to deal with IT folks to do their business. But, everybody (and I mean everybody) at this point understand the necessity and value of a strong IT staff. They may resent it, but they get it.

And, you can bet that the IT departments at electric utilities are as professional as any. Your assumption that they don't want to be good at it is utterly and shamefully false. Even if it were true, they have no choice. There's a lot going on at utility companies that these types of scare-mongering authors never talk about. She very briefly mentions the NERC-CIP regulations (glossed them over, really) without also mentioning the IT components of reliability audits, internal audits, internal exercises, external pen tests, coordinated exercises with regional entities, law enforcement, FERC, etc. Industry peer groups play a big role as well. Protecting the power grid is vitally important to us. Why on earth would it not be? We run a metered business. We can't bill if we aren't creating, transmitting and distributing power.

Is it vulnerable? Of course, as is the highway system, water, food distribution, agriculture, shipping, etc.

Now, I totally agree that NERC-CIP should be more assistive and less about pure compliance with standards; but "continuous improvement" is a concept that is constantly harped on by both staff and regulators. It's already there.

I can teach almost anybody Unix or Windows, etc. But I can't teach somebody to show up, work hard, be a part of the team, etc. I try to interview for those sorts of soft skills. I also try to find somebody who can deconstruct problems. These are your troubleshooters and they can apply those talents to almost any skillset.

Basic troubleshooting methodology is unfortunately not something that seems to be taught in schools.

Yes. We see this in aviation.

The law likely references "compensation" rather than money. Compensation may take many forms.

The laws regarding commercial flight operations plumb the depths of this type of situation. There was even a case where a pilot gave a potential business partner a ride from one of the Hawaiian islands to another without charging him (so he could catch an airline flight out). But, because it was assumed that the potential partner might factor that into his process and remunerate with a contract, it was considered to be for compensation.

That's an extreme example, but others abound of inadvertent compensation.

Regardless of the hypocrisy of Feinstein, this turn of events needed to be made public.

The CIA did something wrong. The Senate opened an investigation. The CIA accidentally sent them incriminating information, then deleted some after it had already been reviewed. The CIA agreed not to delete any more, then did it again. The Senate put some of this incriminating information into their official report and moved evidence to a secure location. The CIA didn't much care for that and started an investigation into how they got it, trumped up accusations of criminal conduct and have refused to accept the legitimate oversight role of the Senate. Hate Feinstein all you want, but don't dismiss this illegitimate action by the CIA because she's no angel herself.

We've seen where even helicopters can be abused, using thermal imagery, etc. to see into places where they really have no business seeing. Drones are quickly evolving and will exacerbate such problems. We've seen how the warrant process is bypassed or ignored, now imagine drones small enough to see every space you occupy, and autonomous enough that nobody is even providing oversight into what they're recording or observing until after the fact.

Helicopters require effort and cost, and so there is some incentive for their operators to dispatch them only when there is a good cause. Small cheap drones won't have even that barrier.

My experience in pricing these things out is that it's cheaper in-house. I can spin up a virtual machine on our VMWare/UCS infrastructure for about 1/5th the cost of a higher tier provider. I hear a lot about scalability, but so far I've never been in a position of telling somebody "I don't have room to create another VM for you." Flexibility is a semi-valid argument. It depends on what flexibility you want. If you don't need your test servers backed up, you're either paying for separate tiers in the cloud, or you're just paying for something you don't need or use. If I don't need to back up a VM in my own data center, I get direct savings from not doing so. The backups are just one example.

Cloud makes sense as an offering from 3rd party ISVs. If they have a product, they should offer a cloud option for it, where you pay them and they contract to whatever cloud provider they wish and include it as part of your cost. It's just another one of those tools that we will all use the wrong way because we have to satisfy some kind of managerial mandate. And we won't use it the right way because it jacks up the apparent cost of the products that could truly be a good fit.