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I would rather mod you up for nailing the point that this is a bottom up vs. top down version of restricting speech and mod the parent down for the logical fallacy of "cities with the most gun crime have the strictest gun control, therefore gun control doesn't work". This news posting goes great with the NY Times article pointing out how greatly America's free speech legal tradition is so different than most of the rest of the world.

See as human may or may not be easy... but interpret as human could be a bit more complicated. Could recognize patterns, detect movements, and more things that we take as normal without thinking too much on them, ok, but things are a bit more complex than that. As the brain is not so fast processing visual info, somewhat we anticipate the future in our perceptions. That is the base of most optical illusions.
Could be useful to simulate such things, based on our limitations? Will that computer be fooled by "normal" optical illusions? In some sense, i think that yes, will be useful. If it dont perceive the world the same as us, high level communication with humans could be harder or have a lot of misunderstanding.

One more thing: I think it's especially interesting that this sentiment isn't just from supporters of Candidates like Paul (who is in fact starkly different from most candidates on several fronts). This portrayal of the general presidential election as one of small differences is actually apparently a mainstream media meme:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-obamacain8-2008jun08,0,543931.story
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aH8EMkkeMCtw&refer=politics

Not unanticipated, or without precedent:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/how-will-the-campaign-be-covered/

I think the question is: Why? Why, when there are easily locatable differences are there people who seem to like level them? I can understand why Paul looks different compared to Obama and McCain, but that's not even who we're talking about -- we're talking about a media that played up the heat of the contest between Obama and Clinton, but now appears to be playing down the much greater gulf.

Maybe it's because McCain appears to be a moderate if you average his positions:

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14577.html
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/15649.html

Or maybe it's some inner working of mainstream "journalism" that's just too mysterious for me.

Or maybe it's true what my acquaintances who've worked in the Senate have said: McCain's great in front of the cameras, assiduously cultivates one media image, but in private, he's at best a tyrant and quite possibly mentally instable (note: before you try to pass that off on partisan rancor, note that these acquaintances (plural) that I've received these opinions from were *Republican* Senate staff).

But that's a rumor, one you can't verify unless you also have the acquaintance of Senate staff, and I don't expect you to believe a random poster on the internet about this. Just whatever you do, don't fall for the line that McCain and Obama are somehow twins, that voting for either won't make a difference.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080528/pl_nm/usa_politics_issues_dc

Who you cast your vote for absolutely matters this fall. If you absolutely HAVE to -- vote for Ron Paul or your favorite third party candidate to send a message, sure. Everybody has that right and it's a legitimate use of a vote. But make sure you really understand who the candidates are before you cast your vote. If you genuinely think Obama and McCain are the same, you quite simply haven't done that yet, and your vote will be cast irresponsibly.

You, my lady, are bringing in some very Anglican and provincial ideas. Why, didn't you read yesterday's New York Times: it appears that we need to update our sense of freedom of speech to be more in line with the rest of the world.

Here are the actual "subsidies" that US oil companies get:

Domestic manufacturing tax deduction: business engaged in a qualifying
production activity are eligible to take a tax deduction of 6% of net
income in 2007. The "loophole" is that domestic oil and gas production
was made qualifying in 2004. Obviously plenty of other companies take
this mildly trade protectionist deduction as well.

Five-year amortization of geological and geophysical expenditures:
This amortization period was made available starting in 2006 only to
"major oil companies" that have daily worldwide production of over
500,000 barrels. Evidently there is talk of making this a seven-year
amortization period.

(source)

Royalties "not paid" for drilling on public land: It is a bit
unclear, but there is some evidence that the federal government is not
always properly collecting royalties for gas and oil production on
public land. (FYI, for offshore extraction, the royalty rate varies
between 12%-16%, and total government royalty revenue is ~$11
billion/yr.)

source 1
source 2
source 3

Of course, the Feds just made $3.7 billion on new offshore leases.

Haliburton/Cheney sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/25/world/middleeast/25reconstruct.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040607-644111,00.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/26/politics/main575356.shtml

Bush sources:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0207/S00104.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jul/10/qanda.usa

Obviously, you can also just use Google to find other sources.

These are not conspiracy theories. These are fact-supported TRUTHS. You could likely find some of the press conferences referenced in those sources on youtube, if you need video as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/business/11air.html?em&ex=1213329600&en=0415d8e4824882cc&ei=5087%0A

He's only against it when he's making a speech. When the time comes to put his money where his mouth is and actually vote for real anti-torture legislation, he quietly votes against it.

That was nothing more than bullshit PR. It was just another "I will not condone torture, as I George W. Bush define torture" unenforceable vague statement. When the rubber hits the road, and it comes down to passing an actual law with real teeth in it, John McCain quietly votes against it.

No, he SAYS he's against torture. But when the rubber hits the road, he quietly backs down and votes against any restrictions on it. Remember the ban on waterboarding the Senate passed earlier this year? Well, guess who voted against it?

Well, no, obviously it is *not* the policy of the UK that they can be held for 42 days. It's passed one house, barely. The house entrusted with the duty of rejecting popular but bad laws has yet to rule on it. It's *entirely* within the remit of the house of Lords to reject this out of hand, and it's one of the checks-and-balances that the second house is there to provide...

Abu Ghraib may have been an isolated "incident" (though an awful lot of people would have needed to conveniently ignore what happened there...), but Guantanamo Bay is precisely current US policy.

If you are a citizen in the US, they'll simply fabricate evidence and send you to be tortured in one of the less squeamish regimes that the US has links with (eg: Syria)...

Given the amount of illegal wiretapping, the removal of habeus corpus for non-citizens, the policy of torturing suspected terrorists coupled with the ability of the president to arbitrarily designate someone a terrorist, (I could go on and on...), I find the implications disturbing in the extreme.

I don't agree with the 42 days thing, but I think the glass-houses line really does apply here...

Simon.

I know many native chinese and have even been to Beijing. I can say that you should take Mandarin if you want to learn more about Chinese culture or because you want to travel there, not because your afraid of China becoming a super-power. They're not super-powering anywhere yet.

The same cultural factors that cause them to ship lead paint based toys and glycol laced toothpaste affects them too. It's called corruption. For one thing, the whole place is an environmental disaster. For another, if you look at building quality there it's the same thing -- buildings in China that have been made 15 years ago look like they were made 50 years ago, with water stains and poor quality maintenance. A good example of this? Look at the school buildings that fell down in the earthquake, bricks that fell apart like sand, rotten supports, etc. etc. etc. Classic corruption at work. This also extends to their military.

Let's put it this way, in the U.S. we have occasional overt corruption of politicians and government officials (notably the current administration and their no-bid contracts to Halliburton in Iraq, etc.), and some institutionalized corruption such as lobbying, but it's nothing like China. Imagine politicians like Bush and Cheney, or the democratic congressman with the $90k in his refrigerator were the norm. from the state to local level. Nothing would work, everyone would be promoted due to loyalty rather than competence. In the U.S. there's been tremendous damage just from seven years of the current adminstration, but think about what the country would look like after 50 years of it: that's China. So yeah, if the Chinese were to suddenly change their culture and make it dishonorable to be corrupt rather than just get caught, we'd have problems but as it is China is going nowhere fast.

I know many native chinese and have even been to Beijing. I can say that you should take Mandarin if you want to learn more about Chinese culture or because you want to travel there, not because your afraid of China becoming a super-power. They're not super-powering anywhere yet.

The same cultural factors that cause them to ship lead paint based toys and glycol laced toothpaste affects them too. It's called corruption. For one thing, the whole place is an environmental disaster. For another, if you look at building quality there it's the same thing -- buildings in China that have been made 15 years ago look like they were made 50 years ago, with water stains and poor quality maintenance. A good example of this? Look at the school buildings that fell down in the earthquake, bricks that fell apart like sand, rotten supports, etc. etc. etc. Classic corruption at work. This also extends to their military.

Let's put it this way, in the U.S. we have occasional overt corruption of politicians and government officials (notably the current administration and their no-bid contracts to Halliburton in Iraq, etc.), and some institutionalized corruption such as lobbying, but it's nothing like China. Imagine politicians like Bush and Cheney, or the democratic congressman with the $90k in his refrigerator were the norm. from the state to local level. Nothing would work, everyone would be promoted due to loyalty rather than competence. In the U.S. there's been tremendous damage just from seven years of the current adminstration, but think about what the country would look like after 50 years of it: that's China. So yeah, if the Chinese were to suddenly change their culture and make it dishonorable to be corrupt rather than just get caught, we'd have problems but as it is China is going nowhere fast.

I see a whole LOT of people that claim they care about the soldiers, but then want to pull them out and abandon Iraq. You cannot claim to support the soldier and then disrespect their mission.

McCain's probably gone through some of the worst things a soldier can. You don't see him calling to abandon the war and he knows the tragedy first hand.

Malaria was endemic in the midwest until the 1930s, therefore Anopheline mosquitos were alive and well in the midwest. (It only needs to be above 68 degrees on average for the parasite to survive.) Anopheline mosquitos are still quite common in the U.S., but malaria has been eradicated there. It takes more than just the vectors to have malaria. Malaria is not a problem if you have any access to quality medical care, and consistent public efforts can basically wipe malaria off the map, if done internationally, just like it has been in the U.S.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9C05E7D81E3EF934A15751C0A9619C8B63

Banks can't call in loans, so no matter how much they want you to pay off your loan, they can't make you

They can and they have before, thats how the great depression came into being... there can be wider economic effects: as the surviving banks try to raise cash by calling in loans, there can be a vicious circle in which bank runs cause a credit crunch, which leads to more business failures, which leads to more financial troubles at banks, and so on. And they are doing it again, as this process has already begun by CitiBank [1]

What does the value of your house have to do with your ability to pay your property taxes?

The value of your house is what is used to generate the amount of taxes you pay. While you may live in an area that shows no appreciable growth in the past decade, the rest of us have seen taxes go up by as much as 100% in some instances.

If you don't like the way your property is valued for taxation, complain to your local officials

Obviously, you have never done this. If an error is made, you PAY it first, no matter how insane the error is. Then you go through months, sometimes years, in the process of appeals before the board. Then and only then, do you get your 'adjustment' paid back to you as a credit of 'taxes due', with no interest for the difference.

But dont worry, Im sure you are so smart that you know for a fact that this could never happen to you, because things are 'different' because you are smart enough to avoid it.

Paul Krugman, economist himself, begs to differ.

First, to be "outed", Valerie Plame would have had to be a covert operative. She wasn't at that time.

Sorry, I was barely paying attention to this thread, but couldn't help noticing this bit of misinformation.

Plame was covert agent at time of name leak --MSNBC

Yes, Valerie Plame Was Covert --CBSNews

Leak Prosecutor says Plame was Covert --NYTimes

Video: Valerie Plame confirms her covert status --thinkprogress.org

etc.

You may be confused because of the following misinformation campaign:

Right-wing noise machine: Plame not covert --Salon

... clone it too? The NY Times had an article on this very topic 6 months ago, it fails to answer the specific question: What use is cloning the form without the Iphone OS. The experience, the applications, the je ne sais quoi is missing!

If Samsung, LG, Opera can't produce a fab browser how the fuck is some cloner going to do it! To wit, Google SMS is badazz useful, most times, as is goog411, Tellme networks, but even with my Garmin's insufficient database of restaurants, shops, etc. sometimes I just want to whip out a browser and search, visit these dolt web sites for the relevant tidbit of information I need then and there. By extension I have little faith in the rest of a clone iphone.

However, if the Chinese cloners were to extract a copy of the iphone OS and include it, that would be something I'd buy.

Unless one of our Hong Kong or China or Taiwan friends can enlighten how these clones are otherwise superbe I don't get why a China clone is a real option.

If you read the article you'll see you can buy at electronic stores unlocked genuine Iphone easily. That service I'd buy in the USA. Indeedy!

A story regarding Halabja from a senior CIA official at the time it happened: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902E7DD1638F932A05752C0A9659C8B63

Yes, Iraq possessed chemical weapons in the past. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of chemical weapons were turned over to UN inspectors for destruction. The above statement should really read, "There is no evidence Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction after turning over Iraqi stockpiles for destruction by the UN."

There's even more. The Bush administration put together a team of news analysts who were fed information from the White House, which they would then present on the news as their own opinion. They did interviews and wrote editorials with supposedly expert unbiased opinions, but which actually contained little but regurgitated government press statements. Some of these people were analysts on major news networks - a position they were all too ready to exploit for Bush's gain. Which network employed the most of these tainted analysts? Why, Fox News of course!

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand

It's too bad that Nancy Pelosi is one of those "republicans" - otherwise, this item might come to a vote.

Ahh yeah, I want me one of these. Thankfully other /. readers educated me about another shiny thing that I won't get to play with, even if my life depended on it.

It'd be even nicer if I could look at them in a billion colors

"We're going to stop offering our subscribers newsgroups," said Alex Dudley, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable. "Some of the early press on this indicated we were going to block certain Web sites. We're not going to do that."

That was a reference to a New York Times article with the headline: "Net Providers to Block Sites With Child Sex." It said "the providers will also cut off access to Web sites that traffic in child pornography."

The NASA Freedom / Alpha space station program in the late 1980s and early 1990s was well on its way to complete cancellation due to horrendous cost overruns and total program mismanagement and in-fighting between NASA HQ in Washington, the side "Level II" bueracracy that had been set up in Virginia, and Johnson Space Center in Houston. This may sound like an exaggeration, but ask anybody that was there. One thing and one thing only saved it - the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Next thing you know, all of these American carpetbaggers were headed for Moscow to try and broker cooperative deals with the newly-open-for-business Russian space organizations. I know becasue I was one of them, in Moscow in October 1993 when Yelsin literally sicced a tank on the die-hard Communists holed up in THEIR White House - what they call their national parliment building. I was there with a group to get a protein crystal experiment launched to Mir, and next thing I know the head of the factory for SS-20 production is asking us if we would be interested in a tour of his factory and possible Western sales deals as a small satellite launcher. Just a couple of years before I had blurry classified intelligence reports on his SS-20 locked in my work safe, figuring out how to simulate its trajectory capabilities for a star wars interceptor program in Denver I worked at - now this guy wanted to give me a tour the CIA might literally have killed for, and and wanted to sell me a rocket to boot. Them was crazy days.

The biggest carpetbagger of all ws Al Gore. Maybe he didn't invent the internet, but Al Gore sure invented the ISS, traveling to Moscow to sign a deal with the Russians where we would fly experiments and astronauts to their then-orbiting MIR station in exchange for turning the US-only Alpha into a joint American-Russian ISS. In one fell swoop the NASA station came a LOT more about politics and national prestiege than about science - the alternative to nuclear war and the crown jewel of Clinton foreign policy. And actually, this really WAS good for America, for Russia, and for the world.

But it was TERRIBLE for the ISS. The Russians with their spunky but primative Soyuz modules were totally unable to reach the original orbit planned for the US Space Station. So we obliged and changed the planned station cruise orbit to THEIR optimal Soyuz launch orbit, which OUR Space Shuttle could reach ONLY if WE took a 30,000 pound payload reduction on every flight. Thus began a totally insane, I-can't-detail-it-all technical death march of cutting the module sizes from 42 to 27 feet to trim weight (wonder why there's no US potty up there?), lauching the modules empty without equipment or experiment racks to save weight, risking crews on launches that ran the Shuttle main engines at a heart-stopping 109% of thrust presented to the public like that was a routine maneuver, and launching far fewer modules and missions than planned because we can't afford to get everything up from Florida to the 57 degree inclined Russian orbit. And once its up there and needs to be resupplied, we can get only 10,000 pounds of resupply payload to ISS instead of the 40,000 pounds a Suttle used to carrry to a normal 28 degree Florida-style, and most of that 10,000 pounds goes to the airlock and docking adapter in the payload bay. Read the newspaper articles carefully. "The shuttle delivered a ton (2000 pounds) of frozen pizzas and clean underwear to the astronauts". To those who know what was originally planned, and what has been tossed overboard to get this all to work, such a statement is a true tragedy. You cannot run this stati

If they came out with an SUV with an efficiency mode that let you run it on 4 cylinders when driving around town and 8 when you're hauling the boat out of the lake then I'd go buy one right now.

spoken like a religious devotee, not a scientist

this is science's way of dealing with those who take something as literal truth that is not totally proven:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/science/10auct.html?ex=1370750400&en=c9d19e51a82df186&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

and i can see in the grammar nazi like way your brittle mind sputters over the definition of the word "centrism" that you can't think very well abstractly, evwrything must be literal and cut and dry

there are unknowns and specious interpretations. the "truth" of the big bang is full of them. i await the dismantling of the big bang, it is too anthropocentric, too old testament in its creation mystique

This is going to cost me karma, but goddammit it has to be said.

"If SUVs are too expensive to own, people will stop buying them and trade to more fuel-efficient vehicles."

What your short sighted mind doesn't seem to comprehend is the regulatory function of the government. It can define the rules and
levels out the playing field when the free market fails to regulate itself.
SUV's are the epitome of consumer irresponsibility with these behemoths causing problems related to pollution as well as road safety and Political Instability

With the "free market" continuously failing to address these "externalities" it is a surprise to me that no action has been taken before in the past. These asshole vehicles should have been taxed the fuck out of ages ago to make them as expensive and unattractive as possible

Umm... no. If people could evade, the gov't would have to spend less on that little war of yours.

Sorry.

Really? Because I have an Intel processor, an nVidia chipset, and an nVidia graphics card. The reason for this anti-trust case isn't entirely because of a monopoly. It's because of a monopoly + noncompetitive practices made to artificially keep AMD's market share low. Intel fan boy, AMD fanboy, it doesn't matter. There is 0 debate in the fact that AMD's Athlon core was a much superior product to Intel's Netburst. However, their market share has not reflected that. AMD alleges that that's because Intel has been offering $37 million worth of discounts to OEMs, but only if they keep AMD at or below 20% of their products sold. Intel says that these are not unfair or anticompetitive at all. That's where the anti-trust stuff comes in. Abusing dominant position in the market place to keep others off your turf.

Check out his article, which I found to be pretty intelligent.

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/readers-have-their-say-in-the-e-publishing-debate/#more-475

I have to say that his argument is fairly well reasoned.

Pogue was quoting Steven Poole. Those nasty words weren't his own. See Pogue's weblog post and the dimwitted douchebag's weblog post.

I'll see your allegations of Chinese influence and raise you facts about Republicans who whore themselves out to special interests. McCain didn't go clean after Keating Five, he just made sure to keep it within the letter if not the spirit of the law.

To become senator, he had all the signatures of his democratic opponents reviewed and rejected which left him the uncontested democratic candidate.

From Crowded Field, Democrats Choose State Legislator to Seek Senate Seat
[...]
In the primary, a wide and wealthy field of candidates -- seven Democrats and eight Republicans, nearly half of them millionaires -- made for an expensive and messy race.

he has taken advantage of the proportional delegate rewards by concentrating on the smaller states

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/washington/08tax.html The point is not that you payed less, it's that your bosses who make SOOOO much more payed SOOOO much less. That money could have been used to pay off the debts we are getting in to that I as a 23 year old have to worry about or it could have been used to keep watch over the banks so they would have not broken the broken laws and fucked over the economy with the housing market. Tax cuts and small govt are a good thing, but what Bush did was irresponsible and stupid. I expect that Obama will cut your taxes even more but raise the PERSONAL taxes of your bosses far higher then what they were.

Right after I posted this I found a highly relevant link. Seed piracy, "It doesn't look right for them to have a patent on something that you can grow yourself"

german tax shelter

that's how he does it: you can't lose money backing a money losing film made by uwe boll. he basically has exploited a financial loop hole that the german goverment instituted in a well-meaning way to get german movies made, but instead their law got raped by a troll called boll making bad non-german movies based on video games

the good news: the germans repealed the law awhile back

so how and why is he still making movies?

because of comments like yours. no, really: the first rule of public relations is that there is no such thing as bad public relations. he gets his name out there. he is now riding on his notoreity. hated and vilified, but his name still gets out there. that gets him interest. really

want to never hear of another uwe boll movie again? stop mentioning him. i'm serious

and that online petition? guaranteed to wind up creating this, from two weeks ago:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/movies/18schw.html

which feeds the monste rof loathing him more, which gets more ocmments on slashdot, which means the undead troll boll lives forever

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/nyregion/10cnd-spitzer.html?ref=nyregion

Some unions are the problem. For example, the New York teachers union makes it very hard to fire teachers, to the extent that More than 700 school employees, mostly teachers, are now assigned to centers known as "rubber rooms," after having been removed from the classroom"
As for how you rate a teacher, you do it for demonstrated improvement. If your students come in at a grade 3 level and at the end of the year you've moved them up to grade 4, then you've done your job. If they're moved more than 1 years worth in the year, then the teacher should get a bonus. It shouldn't matter from the teacher's performance perspective if they were supposed to be in grade 3 or grade 10 to start, they moved up a year.
Now, measuring and quantifying that is a non-trivial task that I don't know the solution for.

Unbelieveable bull.

BluRay disc sales have multiplied in the past 6 first months of this year

Does anyone else find it odd that Microsoft touted support for ODF then pushed back supporting OOXML to the next version of Office just before all these complaints landed on ISO's doormat?

This, to my mind, shows two things:

1. Microsoft believes these appeals/complaints are likely to succeed;
2. they certainly have paid shills in a number of ISO committees, otherwise they wouldn't have seen this coming;

Apparently representatives from Microsoft were stalling for time in Brazil. So the support for ODF In Office seems like firefighting more than anything. The dropping of the Microsoft project, encoding books to OOXML, would also seem to be a sign that Microsoft is giving up.

*joke* If these appeals are successful, I for one will be on Alex Brown's blog, posting this video of Kryten in 'smug mode'. Muahaha. */joke*