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a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them

2.
a. A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them.
b. A nation that has such a political order.

The word violence has many definitions, "an act of agression" is one of them, but "an act of aggression" is not the most relevant one in this case. The reason I included the wiki linkwas for the context of Gandhi's quote. From the article:

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. There are many causes I am prepared to die for but no causes I am prepared to kill for.

Under the context of his quote, the "eye for an eye" sentence makes much more sense when we're talking about violence as a "physical force exerted for the purpose of violating, damaging, or abusing"(like killing) not as an "act of an agression".

Patents(something MPAA isn't concerned with BTW) and copyrights are not violence; they are laws. Laws can be used violently but they are not violence. If we used your reasoning we could say laws against murder are violent because they are an "act of agression" against murders.

• The president can unilaterally order surveillance on American citizens.
• The president can order the arrest of an American citizen, and hold that citizen for an inderterminate amount of time in a secret location without charge.
• The president can declare that American citizen an "enemy combatant" and try him in an extra-judicial proceeding that where the executive branch serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury. This proceeding can order the death penalty.
• The president can order "extraordinary interogations" (i.e. torture) or individuals.
• The president has the power to violate the law in manners related to national security.
• The president is the sole determiner of when this may occur.
• The president's power in these matters are above oversight.

This is distrurbing. This is too much power for one man. That's why the founding fathers created a system of checks and balances on the executive. What does the adminstration say to a lay my fears? "Trust us." No. No I don't, and more importantly, I live in a country with a form a government where I don't have to.

Just though a few facts might counter the hysteria. The sky isnt falling - at least in this instance - the laws are working as they are written to do. And those of you who cite "Secret Prison Camps" - go back and re-research that. They apparently never existed and were a

I think it's something corporate types say when they mean, "Well, that's kind of icky but it's really ok. No problem as long as it doesn't generate bad press or depress the stock price."

It's true, there are degrees of evil. Evil is not a superlative though.

It's one of these words that people have become scared of using, like "lied." "He mislead the American people," no, he lied to the American people. "Jack Abramoff was unethical," no Jack Abramoff is evil. Sure, he wouldn't win any evil contests with Hitler, but then neither would Saddam Hussein.

I could say that Sony was double-plus ungood if you like, Big Brother.

Oh, and by the way, for the record to people who seem to think I was calling Microsoft evil in my post. In that particular post, I was calling Sony evil.

Sony is evil.

[*]

I still keep thinking of the growth of phone useage over that last ten years though and how much I saw our storage needs growing around the same time as the ATT data dump (~10 years ago). I would like to see the size of the past ten years of ATT data as everything has grown. I also keep thinking of the extra storage you need to process that data (even in small-ish chunks).

Let's just leave it at "It still boggles _my_ mind", how about that? :-)

Damn, someone who checks my post history...

I've read those four over and over again and none of them make much sense. Neither does the original. The more I look at it the more absurd it becomes. Plus, it's late and I've been up for about 44 hours. It does things to the brain.

Of course, I've just realised what's jarring - it's the "us/they" thing, i.e. switching the person mid-sentence. I suppose it's not strictly incorrect, but it's bugging me.
Anyway, I can't help but wonder if he just meant "effete" as "effete", i.e. the typical Mac-using arty type, who is not necessarily gay (but, er, probably is, haha). I Googled and found this; I find the second sense - "an effete group of self-professed intellectuals" - to be particularly appropriate.

It's a grey area, and I know what you are getting at. But if we're moaning about media portrayals, I suggest we start with the more pressing matter of, say, Will & Grace, before moving on to disabuse poorly educated editors-in-chief* of the notion that all Mac users are gay.

iqu :)

(* Incidentally, what a fucking cunt he is. Every time I go to refer to the article, I have to see his big cunting grin in that userpic. Elsewhere I think I said I thought he looked like Darl McBride. Oh yes, and I have been drinking this evening. :P)

whiney

perhaps you're not a native english speaker?

that is the intent of sketchup... ...say it with me, SKETCH. it isnt made for slick renderings, the point is to get a decent representation to a client for a low cost. another benefit is its sketchiness. when a client sees hard lines, they are less apt to approve something - or add input - for fear it is a final, you must do exactly this version. if you want to develop a design collaboratively, a sketch is the best thing for you.

What about Bob?

"I know, at least at my university, that's not true, and I haven't heard it elsewhere either."
It didn't happen to me, and I haven't heard anything. Brilliant.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=cen sorship

Look, the fact is a private website is removing/blocking content that its members find objectionable.
That is by the book censorship. Your argument ("Censorship refers to when the government prevents publication of materials, not a private website.") does not hold water.

Even if it did, what would be so exciting about a personal website where the owner can delete anything they do not agree with?
"the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
This suggests an openness that apparently is not there.

It seems the articles in questions were removed for legal reasons.
Perhaps a legal disclaimer might help keep the truth in the advertising:
"the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. (subject to administrative approval)"

[yelling]

That's so fierce(*),
Take it to them honey!

[/yelling]

(*) commonly known gay word

In Oklahoma, it's a rhetorical question.

So should you: blatantly ... He just spelled it wrong. The first time I saw patently , I was convinced it was wrong. I was smart enough back then to check a dictionary and don't make a fool of myself. The reason I thought it was wrong: in my own mother tongue (Dutch), it actually is "blatant" and thus you see where the confusion comes from.

So should you: blatantly ... He just spelled it wrong. The first time I saw patently , I was convinced it was wrong. I was smart enough back then to check a dictionary and don't make a fool of myself. The reason I thought it was wrong: in my own mother tongue (Dutch), it actually is "blatant" and thus you see where the confusion comes from.

That argument is poof.

I bet it was really cool and trendy, and worked way better than what Bill Gates had for breakfast.

(laugh, it's funny)

IOKIYAR. Of course their plan is A Permanent Republican Majority. Why should Mexico have all the Permanent Revolutionary Party fun?

You won't read the wikipedia article, so I shall provide you with something shorter:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=free%20ma rket
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/freemarket?vi ew=uk
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/free+market
http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/free%2520market .html

"trading without government control: an economic system in which businesses operate without government control in matters such as pricing and wage levels"

Any questions?

I would just assume there not be any laws about any of this

Red Herring

It's also billionth:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/billionth

Tssk. What, do you know nothing?

"A delicate bar of cartilage connecting the dorsal and ventral extremities of the first pair of bronchial cartilages in the syrinx of birds."
From The Free Dictionary

Surely everyone knows that!

Hey genius, apparently you have neither encountered "leverage" as a verb nor taken the trouble to make sure you're right, because leverage can indeed be used as a verb.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=lev erage

I mean, aren't the problems with so-called "bluespamming" and "bluesnarfing" bad enough without allowing the punk kid in his bedroom across the street access to all your stuff?

I mean, aren't the problems with so-called "bluespamming" and "bluesnarfing" bad enough without allowing the punk kid in his bedroom across the street access to all your stuff?

Hydrogen power pretty much is a waste of time and money because you lose net energy making it...

**yawn**

idiots

Well, there's something about "Mach's Principle" that I don't believe has ever been untangled. But I think that only applies to rotational velocity. (I.e., what makes you think you're rotating rather than still?) I think he asserted, approx., the entire rest of the universe dragged your frame. Mach's Principle

Intelligent Design, theory that some complex biological structures and other aspects of nature show evidence of having been designed by an intelligence. Such biological structures are said to have intricate components that are so highly interdependent and so essential to a particular function or process that the structures could not have developed through Darwinian evolution evolution... ... and therefore must have been created or somehow guided in their development. Although intelligent design is distinguished from creationism creationism or creation science, belief in the biblical account of the creation of the world as described in Genesis , a characteristic especially of fundamentalist Protestantism, by not relying on the biblical account of creation, it is compatible with a belief in God and is often explicitly linked with such a belief. Also, unlike creationists, its proponents do not challenge the idea that the earth is billions of years old and that life on earth has evolved to some degree. The theory does, however, necessarily reject standard science's reliance on explaining the natural world only through undirected natural causes, believing that any theory that relies on such causes alone is incapable of explaining how all biological structures and processes arose.

"Charles Thaxton referred to a theory that the presence of DNA in a living cell is evidence of a designing intelligence. We weren't political; we were thinking about molecular biology and information theory. This wasn't stealth creationism. The phrase became the banner that we rallied around throughout the early '90s. We wanted to separate ourselves from the strict Darwinists and the creationists."

Guys, it's the USPTO, not the USPO. The USPO is the United States Post Office. The USPTO is the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=out lawed

See the definition here: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=ill egal if you are going to be a pedantic jerk, at least be right! if it is against the rules it is illegal!

btw disingenuous seems to mean "insincere". I can assure you that I am sincere and quite concerned at the lack of effective self correction.

Not when a Corsair is a type of pirate ship... sails on water and all that.

No:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/payed

And yes, not that I have to side scroll much on my 1920 horizontal pixel widescreen.

or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here.

or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here.

You're not serious? Roosevelt consulted with anthologists? That takes him right out of my book!

not mentioned in the article, at http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/Sirius

Selected excerpt:

"Sirius A is about twice the size of the sun and about 20 times as luminous. It is also one of the nearest stars, lying at a distance of 8.7 light-years, so that it has been studied extensively. From an analysis of its motions, F. W. Bessel concluded (1844) that it had an unseen companion, which was later (1862) confirmed by observation. The companion, Sirius B, is a white-dwarf star and has also been the object of considerable study because it is the first white dwarf whose spectrum was found to exhibit a gravitational red shift, as predicted by the General Theory of Relativity."

FICUS FOR CONGRESS!

I thought that was just a joke by Michael Moore, but you have confirmed it true after looking up the meaning of peepul.

Funnily? I can not remember going over this word in English class.
So the only words that you think exist are the ones you were taught in class? Do you realise that there are a lot more words in English than can be taught in any class?
It's one thing to complain when people mangle existing words, and use them in contexts where they don't apply, or make up sentences with weird grammar or punctuation, because then it gets (slightly) confusing. It makes no sense to object to a perfectly constructed word that is consistent with the way English words are usually formed, and has no chance of misinterpretation whatsoever.
Oh, and FWIW, funnily is a word.

This is a complex technical issue. I can easily imagine that users of the Google software will say to themselves:

Google Toolbar allows badguy to get data -> Google software bad

But on the other hand, perhaps the users will say to themselves:

Oh -- MicroSoft made yet another security mistake. Rats!

But normally I've seen people blame the additional software -- but as software folks, we know that if you have to add a feature (in this case, the IE plugin) on a crappy foundation, normally you see the faults in the addition, and not necessarily in the main software.

It will be neat to see how this plays out.

Ellison won't get a tax break. Although the payment is being made to a charity, it is not a charitable contribution. He is receiving legal consideration for the payment -- i.e., he is settling and discharing a debt. It would similar to the situation where you bought a used car from the charity, and paid them money in exchange. Your payment would not be a charitable contribution

More precisely, the charity is a third party beneficiary of a contract between the plaintiff(s) and Ellison to settle the case. It would be more like a case where "Seller" sells a car to you but, feeling charitable, writes the contract so you pay the money to the charity. In that case, if anyone got a deduction it would be "Seller" and not you.

Ellison won't get a tax break. Although the payment is being made to a charity, it is not a charitable contribution. He is receiving legal consideration for the payment -- i.e., he is settling and discharing a debt. It would similar to the situation where you bought a used car from the charity, and paid them money in exchange. Your payment would not be a charitable contribution

More precisely, the charity is a third party beneficiary of a contract between the plaintiff(s) and Ellison to settle the case. It would be more like a case where "Seller" sells a car to you but, feeling charitable, writes the contract so you pay the money to the charity. In that case, if anyone got a deduction it would be "Seller" and not you.

Fill that box with balls. First, you have to HAVE balls (they don't just magically appear!). Second, you have to have a box. Third, you need someone to cut the hole in it, and something to cut it with. These are all non-random processes. Finally, you need someone to shake the box. Yep, that was real 'random' wasn't it?

You're taking Bible verses out of context. That's like finding the following phrase in the encyclopedia related to cows: "A young male is called a bull-calf; a young female before she has calved is called a heifer (pronounced "heffer")." and applying it to people. (article. You simply didn't read the entire passage, and within its context.

If you would read the context of Bible passages, you would find that some things apply/applied directly to the Israelites.

This is what makes people so confused about the Bible: teachers take one phrase/sentence/word here and there and try to make a point when they're taking the whole thing in a way that it was not meant to be taken. Yes, the FOOL has said in his heart that there is no God.

Practical quantum computers
David DiVincenzo, of IBM, listed the following requirements for a practical quantum computer:
scalable physically to increase the number of qubits
qubits can be initialized to arbitrary values
quantum gates faster than decoherence time
Turing-complete gate set
qubits can be read easily

Also, that looks like the Media Center Edition stuff that is being integrated into Vista. I doubt that by default WMP takes over full screen (at least I hope not). Those screenshots seem to be of the ten foot interface of MCE-derived stuff.

Original line: Such a device if patented, tested and mass produced could end up doing allot of good.

See? If it's patented then it can be alloted out as the patent holder sees fit. From the dictionary definition:

Allot: To parcel out; distribute or apportion

Codes of ethics, standards, practices, minimum competency, etc. specify the limits to what a Client may expect from one of these professionals. Tort, in this case, is not simply a matter of a user complaining "The equipment/software/system failed and that Engineer was the last person to look at it." (Yes, this really happens. A lot.). If the Engineer screwed up, he's liable (or his supervisor, or his company, depending on other things). But the practice of hiring a professional and then abdicating all responsibility for the entire situation does NOT work. Neither should it. A doctor/lawyer/engineer/realtor/... has a specific task that they were hired to perform, and it's typically not "make me healthy/get me out of jail/make my plant run how I want it to/get me the price I want for my house/..."

For professional responsibility to work, everybody involved needs to know WHO is responsible for WHAT. And the assignment of responsibility needs to be done by people who are competent to do so.

This is why professional organizations function as (often legally empowered) regulatory bodies. They maintain standards and practices, codes of ethics, and minimum qualifications for licensure. These bodies are self-policing, and often write the text of statutes that deal with the professions they regulate.

The types of penalties that the article talks about fall under the general concept of "Malpractice". This concept has been applied in our legal system to the activities of experts, and this is how we balance the interests of experts performing a service with the interests of people affected. Everybody knows what to expect.

In this context, "Malpractice" is understood to be: An act or continuing conduct of a professional which does not meet the standard of professional competence and results in provable damages to his/her client or patient.

This is not a new concept: Even if a man builds a house badly, and it falls and kills the owner, the builder is to be slain. If the owner's son was killed, then the builder's son is slain. . Violation of professional standards must occur (...builds a house badly...), qualifying injuries are defined (kills the owner or the owner's son) and retribution is specified for each qualifying injury. The law does not say "If the house falls down, kill the builder." Why did the house fall down? Was it maintained? How old was the house? Did an earthquake occur? Did the owner build a second and third story on top of the original house? Was the owner using the house to train soldiers in urban infiltration? The law holds the builder accountable for "building a house badly". And liability is only assigned when the builder's malpractice causes an injury. Not when "something bad happend in the house".

There is a legal system in place (you may or may not think it sucks, but it IS the social context in which these things take place), to support and balance the interests of all parties concerned in such situations.

There are other questions that should be addressed in this context as well:

  * Is licensure required to approve the work?

  * To perform the work?

  * To sell the work?

  * To present the worker as a professional

  * How is the licensing authority regulated? Who gets to be on the board? What authority do they have?

Professional licensure, professional liability, and malpractice laws are certainly not a perfect system. However, the system is predictable and manageable by the parties invovled. It is possible for the Client to know what to expect and for the licensed professional to know what standards and practices he must meet.

A knee-jerk "shoot the developer" reaction is never helpful and rarely appropriate.

"Who cares if it's easy to deface, it's got great moderation!"

Swift (and not so swift) moderation doesn't do very much good. A friend added me to a list of famous erotic authors. It was removed.. a few weeks later. Get what? I (Aaron Gyes) am still, months later, all over the damn internet.

http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-authors-of-er otic-works
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/l/li /list_of_authors_of_erotic_works.htm
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/List%20o f%20authors%20of%20erotic%20works
http://www.biologydaily.com/biology/List_of_erotic _authors
http://psychcentral.com/psypsych/List_of_erotic_au thors
http://web.linix.ca/pedia/index.php/List_of_erotic _authors
http://www.europe.com/index.php/List_of_authors_of _erotic_works
http://www.medicalrace.com/dictionary/List_of_erot ic_authors
http://www.dictionaryofeverything.com/explore/112/ List_of_authors_of_erotic_works.html
http://list-of-authors-of-erotic-works.iqnaut.net/
http://www.omnipelagos.com/entry?n=list_of_authors _of_erotic_works
http://www.gardeningdaily.com/flowers-and-plants/L ist_of_erotic_authors
http://www.braindex.com/encyclopedia/index.php/Lis t_of_erotic_authors
http://en.efactory.pl/List_of_erotic_authors
http://www.art-fresh.net/DisplayArticleFull314102. html
http://www.thefreeencyclopedia.com/definition/word .aspx?w=List_of_erotic_authors
http://bigpedia.com/encyclopedia/List_of_authors_o f_erotic_works
http://www.dogluvers.com/dog_breeds/List_of_erotic _authors