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Comment Re:Less humane to keep them alive. (Score 1) 591

This may be true under the legal codes of some countries

Sorry, but after that statement I really cannot see you as anything but a monster.

You think only of yourself and what makes you feel good, not what is good for humanity or even the prisoner himself...

Under the constitution treason is punishable by death, so it's obvious the crutch you re falling back on cannot stand.

Comment Re:Less humane to keep them alive. (Score 1) 591

What you overlook is that some people have truly lost the right to be considered human any more, through causing enough pain and suffering in others. Again, you overlook that keeping someone alive for many years may bring about a lot more pain and suffering to others, including guards and other prisoners.

You wouldn't advocate to keep a live landmine hidden randomly inside a prison, yet you are arguing for exactly the same effect. How is that more humane? Even to the guy to be killed it's not more humane to keep them locked up forever.

Comment Less humane to keep them alive. (Score 1) 591

I'm not sure why it's considering more humane to keep someone locked up forever than simply to kill them and end what is essentially torture...

The more you allow contact with other prisoners, the more you are punishing others by allowing contact with someone who has no reason or incentive to avoid harm to others.

The more you keep someone locked away the more it is essentially torture.

The death penalty should not be about expense, but exists because some people simply cannot live without harming others, and have no place in the world.

Comment That is OK when... (Score 0) 254

They were under constant watch of the Stasi

The difference is that the Stazi was not under constant watch from the people, as is the case now with citizens filming police.

Omnipresent monitoring is OK if there is enough monitoring to ensure captured video is not taken out of context, and can reveal abuse from the state.

Comment The EU does not get a pass (Score 1) 48

True I would say places in the U.S. like NYC, SF, and Miami have especially bad cab drivers.

But I did not have good experiences in Rome, Belgum (also Brussels), and in fact in Germany also (Berlin).

I will agree the black cabs in London are very good, and actually I did have a great cab driver also in Turkey now that I think about it so I do feel a bit sorry for maligning them all in a blanket statement.

But I still stand by the statement that on average the Uber drivers have been much nicer, the cars in much better repair (even the taxi drivers that were friendly in Turkey still had pretty beat up cars).

Comment What's bad about Uber drivers? (Score 3, Informative) 48

The Uber drivers I have used have all been great. Complaints I've seen have all been about Uber the company, not the drivers... the drivers are just normal people trying to earn a living by making use of what they have.

Most taxi drivers I have encountered on the other hand, have ranged from standoffish to incredibly rude and sometimes hostile, frequently lying about fares to get more money. Taxi drivers can be that way in most places because they have no competition, no reason to provide anything like good service at all - and it doesn't hurt that in a number of areas they are tied to organized crime.

Comment Actually (Score 2) 138

uhm, actually plist files are xml

ACTUALLY plist files can be either textual or binary, which is very much not XML

I should have said not necessarily though, instead of just "not"... but it was kind of irrelevant to the main point.

They certainly aren't very compact as far as formats go, even on the watch.

Sigh, didn't read much of that original message, did you?

They don't NEED TO BE EXTREMELY COMPACT because they are sent over only once, when the app is loaded on the watch - that said, it is in the binary format which is much more compact than the textual format.

In use the watch pulls files from that bundle at runtime. And if you were any kind of programmer you'd know there is a tradeoff between compression and computation (which the watch has little of) in terms of file formats, so a fairly but not maximally compact file format is better for performance than whatever you are thinking of.

Comment Yes you are wrong (Score 2) 138

The UI definition is held in a Plist format (like, but not, XML) but that's not what the device gets. It gets a very compact binary form of your UI, that is loaded onto the watch before the user even opens your application.

The Apple Watch API is actually EXTREMELY conservative with what gets sent over to the watch, to the extent that even attempting to set the same label value twice in a row is rejected with a warning. and UI elements on the screen are wits-only (you cannot query the watch see what currently displayed values are).

Comment Re:Well that's rather the point (Score 1) 327

Would have been much easier and less obvious for the pilot to drive 30lbs of C4 into position in a vehicle or a backpack or bag

You aren't going to be able to get close enough for the explosion to do anything on foot or in a vehicle. All of the major government structures now have very imposing anti-vehicular barricades there is no way around. On foot you are going to be challenged long before you reach your target, you are limited to what you can carry, AND you are only at ground level even if you do get close.

Someone in an auto-gyro could for example take out the dome above the chambers where everyone sits when Congress is in session, instead of not getting anywhere near that chamber on foot or in a car. Or they could fly right up to the window that the Oval Office looks out on...

Comment Well that's rather the point (Score 1) 327

So instead of there being a helicopter in the air with a human at controls

What about an auto-gyro with 30 lbs or so of C4? Do you still want the "human at the controls"? You don't know what the intentions are, you just know it's very illegal to be there yet there he is.

At this point you'd have to be an idiot to be a terrorist and not try to pilot a small explosive laden gyro into some major target, since it's obviously so easy.

I can't believe the "no fly zone" over Washington is such a total sham with not even a monitoring aircraft on top of him. Just like the Pirate Code, the No Fly Zone appears to be more of what you would call guidelines than an actual rule...

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