Slashdot Mirror

It's a bit harsh to call it stupidity; water poisoning isn't that well known.

Maybe not known to you...

It's common knowledge amongst toxicologists that "The dose makes the poison". Everything is toxic at some level, even water.

http://learn.caim.yale.edu/chemsafe/references/dos e.html

Of course you're going to have problems with the video from the floor being copyrighted if laws themselves are copyrighted!
See this article from LawMeme. A nonprofit website in Texas attempted to include area building codes that had been written by a company called SBCCI. SBCCI sued, saying that their copyright had been violated by this publication of the laws, as they made $72 per copy sold by them. A judge ruled in their favor, allowing them to restrict the public laws, saying that $72 was "sufficiently free" for citizens' access.

(This isn't the only instance, but searching for "copyrighted law" returns more chaff than wheat, thanks to arguments over copyright law in general. Bonus points for more citations, as I'm interested in this.)

Although biomass fuels may not be able to completely replace fossil fuels as an energy source, they provide a viable, renewable, and cleaner alternative fuel to supplement the energy supply and reduce the use of fossil fuels. Growing crops to produce fuel reduces the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere via photosynthesis, creating a more balanced cycle of C02 emission and absorption.

Brazil's use of ethanol derived from sugar cane has already proven biomass energy to be a viable alternative energy source. Nations with climates favorable to the growth of sugar should apply this lesson to their own economies.

The US should utilize its vast agricultural resources to answer the alternative energy question. Unfortunately, the North American climate is not suitable to grow enough sugar, and the prevailing push towards corn-based ethanol production is not as efficient as sugar-based ethanol production.

However, there is an crop which: is suitable to almost any climate, does not require pesticides, can be harvested 1-3 times per year, and is much more efficient in biomass fuel production than corn. Unfortunately, this magic cash crop is illegal to grow in the US due to the social stigma associated with the psychoactive effects of the flower of the female plant. Yes, I'm talking about hemp for biomass fuel production.

Go ahead, laugh, snicker, make your "Dude, I've got the munchies!" jokes. Hemp is the alternative energy source for North America. Past, present, and future scientific research will prove this time and time again.

Federalist 29

"What plan for the regulation of the militia may be pursued by the national government is impossible to be foreseen...The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious if it were capable of being carried into execution... Little more can reasonably be aimed at with the respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped ; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year." - Alexander Hamilton

Federalist 46

"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments,to which the people are attached, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it."-James Madison

Federalist 29

"What plan for the regulation of the militia may be pursued by the national government is impossible to be foreseen...The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious if it were capable of being carried into execution... Little more can reasonably be aimed at with the respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped ; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year." - Alexander Hamilton

Federalist 46

"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments,to which the people are attached, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it."-James Madison

Here is a discussion of the issue - see 'abandonment'.

http://www.yale.edu/ocr/invent_guidelines/patent_a pp_deadlines_bars.html

While there isn't a statuatory time limit, if you sit on an invention and somebody else starts using the technology there is a good chance you will lose the right to patent.

Your fear and ingrained anti-semitism bubbles to the surface in a flood of name dropping and half-connected half-truths. You will never understand the complex reality of our world. You are lost in your own prejudices and small-mindedness. I post this for anybody else who might be misguided by your ignorance.

The US war against Iraq was executed for three primary reasons: cronyism, oil, and the preservation of Western civilization.

1. Cronyism: The machine that is the Bush administration successfully diverted billions of dollars of US taxpayer money to its corporate friends (e.g. Halliburton) for "rebuilding" a nation it destroyed with weapons purchased from yet other corporate friends. This is the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about in 1961 [1]. The Bush machine operates with tight ties to private industry and is arguably in power because of their nefarious arragnements with e-voting company Diebold and its predecessors [2] [3].

2. Oil: The US economy and American way of life is founded on cheap oil. Everything from big box stores to large urban areas to suburbs to roads to supermarkets to modern farming to plastics... Our whole way of life is powered by oil in one way or another. (Tying in to #1 (conyism), the Bush machine also has significant ties to the oil industry, but let's leave that in the cronyism bucket). Securing an unfriendly foreign source of oil is vital toward our future if we are to continue living how we live and not convert our wilderness into oil fields. These are complex topics. Read more. [4]

3. Preservation of Western civilization: You may not realize it, but we (the "west") have been in a war with Islam for centuries [5]. Our techniques have matured and advanced with the times, and we no longer go on honorable Muslim-killing crusades for Glory and God. Theirs have not, and there are large factions of Islam in the world that see a future with any infidels as totally unacceptable. At some point you have to recognize that the problem is not going away on its own. IT'S NOT BECAUSE OF OUR POLICIES and IT'S NOT BECAUSE OF OUR CULTURE. It's because of us. We're here. That's enough to royally piss them off. Israel is a gem of democracy in a desert of corrupt totalitarianism, religious extremism, and suffering. Iraq can be too. Without planting these seeds, the cancer of fanatical Islam will inevitably spread unchecked and take over the entire world by numbers and by force. Credit the Bush administration for recognizing these truths at some level, even if they are mostly just fallout from Cronyism and Oil reasons. Sit complacent watching Dancing With the Stars on TV with pacifist stars in our eyes, and you are just dying slowly one day at a time.

Ignorant people like you are quick to blame the Jews for the world's problems. The thing is, if the Jews weren't there, you'd find somebody else (Blacks, Atheists, Psychics, Witches, ...). Eventually you could eliminate everybody in the world except for the people just like you and the Islamic fanatics. You'd find you still have some pretty serious problems. So go eliminate the Islamic fanatics. You'd finally be all alone and happy with your own people. And yet still... You would destroy your world around you because rather than looking at yourself and the possibly disastrous consequences of your behavior, you would rather find more false gods to blame your suffering on until your entire civilization collapsed.

[1] http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/speeche s/eisenhower001.htm
[2] http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/hackingdemocracy/ index.html
[3] http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-723679120 7107726851&q=hacking+democracy
[4]

Are you on Crack? USA largest polluter in the world? Yeah when you look at numbers like per person polution. When you look at total polution out put china and India both top the US by a large margin May I suggest you at least google pollution. (or visit mexico city)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID =9509
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5058
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_of_China
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/20 06/jun/science/tw_chineseair.html

but maybe this one is the most recent.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,16051 46,00.html

What's to stop the company/person with the prior art filing their own patent when the copycat is denied?

Patent Law

Statutory Bars The law requires you to exercise your rights or loose them. The textbook case is Egbert v. Lippmann

The standard case for equal application of the law is actually quite old but is still the standard precident.

http://islandia.law.yale.edu/sela/mendoe.pdf

"1) The United States. As is well known, Paragraph 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the
American Constitution establishes the principle of equality: ANo State . . . shall . . . deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.@ This principle, known as the AEqual
Protection Clause,@ operates in a concerted fashion with the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Amendment.
According to the Supreme Court, the Equal Protection Clause requires reasonability in administrative
classifications. The case traditionally cited for the constitutional doctrine that the application of the
law can violate equality is the 1886 decision in Yick Wo v. Hopkins. In this case, the Supreme Court
argued that the municipal ordinances of San Francisco were applied against the Chinese petitioners
Awith an interpretation so unequal and oppressive that in practice it comes to constitute a denial of
the principle of the equal protection of the law on the part of the State.@10 This doctrine has never
been modified by the Supreme Court. The American model embodied the doctrinal and
jurisprudential interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause, eloquently shows that equality demands
equality in both the application and the content of the law."

In other words, the senator and the researcher must both be prosecuted or neither may be prosecuted unless the prosecutor can show that there is some material difference between the cases.

You fail to see the difference between a constitutional republic and a democracy. I doubt you even know what "tyranny of the majority" would mean or what kind of significance that would have. US is a constitutional republic not a democracy. Your quotes are quite the sentiment the founding fathers had about democracies.

"The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended"
-James Madison(Federalist 10, 1787).

It's not my fault the schools don't teach you that. You're supposed to learn that on your own.

>The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale has just launched the public
>beta of The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online.

Dude, I was literally just coming in to post this! (OK, with just a bit of unrighteous desire to tweak Darwin fans ;) )

This is excellent, especially as most publications of his work of any size are *extremely* pricey. Thanks!

The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale has just launched the public beta of The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online. It has about 25,000 pages worth of material now, much of it never previously published, and another 35,000 coming soon. The content may not be as appealing to the /. crowd, but having been a part of putting this together over the past couple years, I must say both the technology and the design are impressive. Instead of images of manuscripts, we have diplomatic transcriptions (i.e. text laid out in a fashion reflecting the layout of the manuscript, including strikeouts, spaces, and sometimes even drawings), rendered from XML. Where no edited version of the manuscript is available, we tranform the XML differently to produce a more readable version, and you can switch back and forth between the two. I could go on and on about it, but you'd be better of seeing for yourself.

The way you describe it, military cloaks of invisibility would seem to be plainly illegal under the Hague Conventions, supposing that killing an enemy while you are invisible translates as a "treacherous act," by Article 23. Also if you engaged in combat under a Cloak you would be necessarily trading in your protections under GC1 and 3.

It was Sherwood v. Walker

http://lawschool.mikeshecket.com/contracts/sherwoo dvwalker.htm
http://www.law.pitt.edu/madison/contracts/suppleme nt/sherwood_v_walker.htm

There is some more discussion of the topic in general at:

http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayres/mutual.htm

Biodiesel from fast-growing algae might be a goer. Biodiesel from conventional crops is a stunt.

"and in hindsight, we should've let them go."

Federalist #5.

The (Mis)Behavior of Markets, by Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard L. Hudson.

Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street, by Burton G. Malkiel.

All of these are fascinating reading, and highly recommended. Certainly anyone who pays attention to CNNfn and the rest should read Taleb; anyone who's trading options (and relying on an option pricing model) should read Taleb and Mandelbrot; and anyone who still thinks that investing in mutual funds is a good idea should read all three. The parent's remark about survivorship bias is right on target, and that's by no means the only pitfall out there.

Sure, but the problem is, if you can't make the distinction between Jews and Israelis, any serious hatred towards Israelis promptly carries over towards Jews. This is part of the problem with the whole "anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic" paradigm - one seems to lead directly to the other in many cases. I refer you to The Journal of Conflict Resolution for more information about this phenomenon.

I never, ever intended to say that Finns were all Jew-haters, and I definitely don't believe that. I am saying that anti-Israeli sentiment in Europe often carries over into anti-Jewish sentiment.

I also don't get your whole "holocaust guilt trip" thing. Who's using the holocaust to rationalize stopping Hezbollah from kidnapping Israeli soldiers and launching artillery strikes against Haifa?

-Erwos

... the fact that 17 men were recently arrested in possession of a large amount of high explosives they planned to use in Canada on Canadian targets. Many of them "homegrown" Canadians.

This isn't simply a matter of foreign policy we're talking about here. If more people actually listen to what the Jihadis have to say rather than attempt to understand them through traditional Western frames we might come to understand this.

This isn't simply about Israel. For Jihads - a very small portion of the Muslim population - this is a fight to the death along religious lines, regardless of where your foreign aid goes. Canada is not Islamic and is, therefore, the enemy to many. Perhaps not too high up on the priority list, but an enemy all the same.

I'd highly recommend picking up a copy of "Knowing the Enemy" by Mary Habeck. Published by Yale Press, it's hardly a neo-Con tract of any sort - it's an excellent look into the eyes of the enemy and - more importantly - helps identify friends in the Muslim world as well. Obviously, as with any serious study, this should just be a starting point.

Actually, an 8cm tungsten sphere would exert the same gravitational pull on any object 10cm away, regardless of the other object's mass. It would have an escape velocity of 0.013 cm/s or 1.3 microns per second -- which, while very slow, is certainly within the realm of feasability. Your hard drive heads move accurately with tolerances significantly smaller than that.

I calculated the escape velocity using the formula sqrt(2Gm/r):

sqrt((2)(6.6742x10^-11)(5.16)/0.4) = 0.00013m/s or 0.013cm/s

Looky at the flood of negative comments. In software design don't get prematurely caught up in implementation. Look at the big picture and you can see the future from here on most days.
Security is just part of the design.

Will they have a place to tie up my donkey when I get to the spaceport?

Let's do the splash screen first!

Besides, this idea has been around for decade.

http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/lifestreams.h tml

Grace Murray Hopper Born 1906. Instructor, Vassar. 1928. PhD in Mathematics. Yale 1934. Midshipman USNR. 1943. Admiral USNR. 1946. UNIVAC. 1949. The Compiler, 1952. COBOL. 1959....

I could go on, but you should get the general idea.

I'm really fucking tired of this canard being spouted by people with no understanding of the issue. So let's get it straight, shall we: the issue is that YES we are causing global warming. The evidence is on the table. If you are qualified as a climate scientist and NOT in the pay of a major oil company, you may rebut. Otherwise, shut your pie-hole. You know nothing.

The other part of your statement, regarding killing the economy, is utter horse malarkey. The only reason it is uttered is to cause confusion and fear. The stance of 95% of the people who are worried about global warming is that we should be improving our energy efficiency as a matter of national policy. I have yet to see anyone credibly address how using fuel more efficiently can cause harm to our economy. I have yet to see anyone credibly address how using cleaner fuels could cause harm to our economy. I have yet to see anyone credibly address how it would cost our economy to invest in renewables. There are a number of easily-demonstrated examples where energy efficiency and CO2 reduction is easily attained, but of course that's at the expense of the retirement packages of charming individuals like this so of course we can't be doing THAT here!

The only people who are benefiting from our inefficient energy economy are a handful of undeservedly wealthy robber barons whose sum total contribution to our society isn't worth a fart in the wind. The rest of us won't miss them if they're cut loose and forced back into actually working for a living. They benefit because of the unique circumstances of having gotten into the business on the ground floor, and believe for some unknown reason that it's their right and privledge to always control the spigots of our energy flow. They are wrong.

This might seem a highly unusual source to make the most of the first hour on a Java course, but I've seen this appendix to a book that is actually on Operating System Concepts provide a better introduction (e.g. for several students on a university "101" course) to anyone who has ever programmed anything than tons of "heavy" and expensive books. They'll have to read them, too, but afterwards (i.e. having been fed this little link to a free PDF gem in a footnote to the course description already)...

This might seem a highly unusual source to make the most of the first hour on a Java course, but I've seen this appendix to a book that is actually on Operating System Concepts provide a better introduction (e.g. for several students on a university "101" course) to anyone who has ever programmed anything than tons of "heavy" and expensive books. They'll have to read them, too, but afterwards (i.e. having been fed this little link to a free PDF gem in a footnote to the course description already)...

The GP was being a bit glib, but what's he says is essentially correct.

Idia has world class facilities & top notch doctors, including
physical therapy & private suites for your extended recovery.

Many articles have been written about it
example: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=2016

It's cheaper, less hassle and you get a higher quality experience.
India just has to overcome their rep for garbage strewn streets, etc.

It's interesting that Shimp says Oracle's main competition is the file cabinet. I wonder if he's just being figurative, or if he sees Oracle as steering us away from the desktop metaphor and its information management problems, and moving toward something instantly contextual like David Gelernter's Lifestreams where information is queried as a contextual, time-ordered stream using filters. Hopefully, it'll be more than just simply indexing labels and keywords.

You obviously want to work for these guys, some other productless organization, or these morally bankrupt fellows?. Maybe if you have good enough connections, you can get access to the diploma mill/SCOTUS anointment service for the well-heeled.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=4920
Richard McGregor
The Financial Times, 23 November 2004

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, said on Tuesday it would agree to establish officially-sanctioned unions in its 40-odd Chinese stores, but only if its workers requested that it form one.

Wal-Mart, which has long battled to keep unions out of its stores in the US and around the world, has been under pressure from the All China Federation of Trade Unions, an official organisation, to allow it to establish branches in its stores.

In one adjudicated case, one EULA was found to be enforcable against one party (prohibition of reverse engineering). See for yourself.
 
One case is not many...

The US economy is already in deep trouble; it's living on borrowed money, provided by China and other nations, while China, India, and other nations are already booming.

This provides an interesting counterpoint to your fanciful assertion. Eat my CO2!

This is my impression of the U.S. government at this time: Any amount of money for war, little for making relationships.

However, violence does not create security. Relationships do.

Over a period of decades, the U.S. government paid to kill Arabs and interfere with their politics. The U.S. government also paid to train Arabs in terrorism to fight in Afghanistan. When the U.S. left, many of those turned to other violence, such as attacking Americans.

Is it surprising that a small percentage of Arabs eventually decided to react to violence with more violence? Is it surprising that Arabs don't like being killed?

Now, those in the U.S. who wanted violence have what they want. They can claim that there is a threat, and can make billions in largely hidden contracts for weapons and contracts for war.

The U.S. government is more corrupt now than ever before. Here are some short reviews of books about the corruption. The article is old and needs revision and additions, but gives a small view of a very extensive subject: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in World War Two and former U.S. President General Dwight D. Eisenhower said in a famous speech that we should beware of the "military-industrial complex". Here's a quote:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."

Another quote:

"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present - and is gravely to be regarded."

--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?

I've never seen such blatant imitation as KDE's Control Center is of OS X's System Preferences. I actually laughed out loud the first time I saw it.

Just curious.. what are you talking about?

KDE control center screen shot

Apple System Preferences

As far as linux "catching up" .. all depends on what you want to do with the system. It is a tool like any other system.

AAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!

We do not have "loose gun laws with no equivalent in the rest of the civilized world." We actually have quite strict gun laws, but enforcing them isn't as sexy or newsworthy as the "war on drugs|porn|terror|bad-thinking", so busts rarely happen. The laws aren't the cause, and the guns aren't the cause. The media culture that shows blood and gore everywhere while refusing even to show breast feeding, well, make up your own mind.

Oh, and racial discrimination has been met with armed resistance, often effectively.

Meyer's a pompous ass. His shit is so over-engineered that it lectures the plumbers about the pipes it gets stuck in. Blech.

Did some Googling and found one company and one organsization offering "copyright infringment insurance". Also found two interesting articles about this type of insurance.

TrustyFiles "The music subscription service includes copyright infringement insurance. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) may continue to target non-subscribing P2P users with lawsuits, and inadvertently sue RazorPop's paying customers. The insurance will be capped at $5,000 per subscriber, which is above typical RIAA settlement amounts to date."

P2Pfund

Individual Copyright Infringement Insurance Prompts a Lawyerly Debate

RIAA Litigation Insurance: A (Very) Speculative Solution

The incubation period for the Flu is from 24 to 72 hours.

Source: http://www.yale.edu/yhp/departments/health_ed/Cold Overview.htm

The incubation period for the Common Cold is from 2 to 3 days.

Source: http://medplant.nmsu.edu/Diseases/cold/cold.htm

Mod parent down as Wrong.

Maybe you don't realize that Blizzard is "owned" by Vivindi. Blizzard is a "division" of Vivendi Universal Games. By that logic, the legal department is not acting worse than the RIAA, it *is* in fact part of the RIAA.

Just when do you think "Blizzard" started suing folks? Even if "Blizzard" employee's may in some way not be considered a standing memeber themselves of the RIAA, you can bet Vivendi's large legal department is their right hand in RIAA matters. It's unlikely that they are seperate entities.

I honestly doubt Blizzard employee's have any input or power in this matter. Given who owns them, your not going to hear them say anything that the master doesn't want them too.

http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name= News&file=article&sid=149

I'd actually say that this is correct, in this case. We're talking about a search of a (more or less) unregulated pseudo-software-like medium (the Web). If the algorithm to improve your PageRank were common knowledge, then we could reasonably assume that the highest-ranked pages would because of targeted SEO, and not because the pages were actually useful.

What the "many-eyes" approach would theoretically do is allow all purveyors of websites to optimize their pages equally. Then, perfectly-optimized pages could do battle for the top spots in terms of relevance. But do you really think that would be the result?

Besides, this issue has already been approached in the injunction refusal in the SearchKing lawsuit. Specifically, "Because the PageRanks at issue are protected speech, the Court concludes that under Jefferson County, SearchKing's tort claim is likely barred by the First Amendment." Google has standards for defining relevant search results. They can change these standards at any time, in any way, because it's more akin to criticism (a protected action, even for a corporate entity) than censorship.

If you search for the "Dalai Lama" on google china, you pretty much get redirected to a page saying what a criminal the Dalai Lama is. http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=6984 Though you probably already knew that. Doesn't seem to work from a western IP though.

Specifically, you should save your anger for these people (just going from the past 40 years of American history):

Henry Kissenger
Robert McNamara
Donald Rumsfeld
Richard Cheney


Perhaps you might add the names of their bosses, the guys who sign the orders:

JFK
LBJ
and GWB

And as far as Viet Nam is concerned, let's start that one with the real genesis, the folks who signedf up to the Potsdam Agreement (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/decade/decade17 .htm) who handed Viet Nam over to the British and Chinese after WW2 (http://history.acusd.edu/gen/20th/vietnam-policie s.html). Too bad the Brits promptly rearmed the Vichy French who'd been captured with the Japanese occupation forces and handed So. VietNam back to the French- I suppose so they could feel better about having the Germans and Japanese hand them their collective asses. The French were stomping on Indochina before WW2 and we put them back in place to continue where they left off.

We had advisors in Japanese occupied Viet Nam during WW2 and helped them beat the Japanese and win thier own freedom. Christ, at his presidential inauguration, Ho read the our Declaration of Independence. What a blown opportunity - Ho loved us because we helped and didn't try to dominate them. Too bad we didn't stand by our own ideals and keep europe out.

Try going up to someone and saying that you're going to kill them.

I have personally told over 100 people I was going to kill them. In fact, I actually beat the stew out of a few of those people. Other times it was a joke. The point being, I HAVE done it - and I WILL do it again.

Try sending an email to the white house with a death threat.

You can do it, but then you pay the consequences. Show me any country where you can send a deaththreat to its leader and not be investigated. I am also willing to bet that there are plenty of letters going to the president wishing he was dead. Is that a death threat? Or are we up to your interpretation of free speech?

Try putting a notice in the local paper saying you are looking for people to help you plant bombs and overthrow the government.

Shit, the newspaper is private, and what you are saying is equivalent to purchasing advertising. No paper has to sell you advertising. Your example is broken.

Try posting kiddie pr0n on the net under the guise of "free speech".

I see you are not familiar with this case, more on it here. Or with the organization NAMBLA, which I believe is a little more than posting.

As for addressing the substance - concrete examples are much better than a bunch of hand-waving over the ususal hypothetical "what-if" that usually passes as "informed discussion" on the net.

Heres a what if for you. What if a Black, a Jew, an Asian, an Arab, or a Latino attacks or speaks poorly about white people? Not covered by the "Hate Speech" laws. In fact, not covered by "Hate Crime" laws either. It is common in America for Minority leaders to use speech that would be considered "Hate Speech" if it was a white speaking it.

You have no fucking idea what free speech is you asshole. You understand it as anything that might upset your delicate sensibilities shouldn't be protected. You're a fucking douche bag The only reason you can say what you're saying is because it hasn't upset anybody yet, trust me - your turn is coming. Yet, seeing as you are a blind follower, you will probably agree with the powers when they take it away.

That's the proposition behind Mandlebrot's recent book, as well as others before that. It has been demonstrated that they're sometimes better indicators than simple (and not so simple) random analysis, but it has not been shown generally, though I personally think this is a rich avenue of exploration and know of several hedge funds persuing this effort.

My main point somewhat oversimply expressed was that over the long term stock markets have trended upwards, which is different from daily observations, in which they may not on average, depending on factors over which the variations were taken (for example in a trending market, a neutral market, or an exponential market - somewhat similar to what Mandlebrot talked about in his book in reference to power laws scaling with different exponents (0.5). But that depends on other factors to be understood fully, namely volume if sticking with the stock market.

I all, the stock market can ex-post be shown to be random and can be shown to be non-random, and much of this depends on the period chosen. As to the 'music' in the story, we're all ignorant to their sampling methodology and cannot make a judgement either way.

Abraham Lincoln is generally regarded as one of the greatest Presidents of the US. Here's an excerpt from his General Order No. 100 pertaining to treatment of people captured on the battlefield:

Art. 81.

Partisans are soldiers armed and wearing the uniform of their army, but belonging to a corps which acts detached from the main body for the purpose of making inroads into the territory occupied by the enemy. If captured, they are entitled to all the privileges of the prisoner of war.

Art. 82.

Men, or squads of men, who commit hostilities, whether by fighting, or inroads for destruction or plunder, or by raids of any kind, without commission, without being part and portion of the organized hostile army, and without sharing continuously in the war, but who do so with intermitting returns to their homes and avocations, or with the occasional assumption of the semblance of peaceful pursuits, divesting themselves of the character or appearance of soldiers - such men, or squads of men, are not public enemies, and, therefore, if captured, are not entitled to the privileges of prisoners of war, but shall be treated summarily as highway robbers or pirates.

Art. 83.

Scouts, or single soldiers, if disguised in the dress of the country or in the uniform of the army hostile to their own, employed in obtaining information, if found within or lurking about the lines of the captor, are treated as spies, and suffer death.

Art. 84.

Armed prowlers, by whatever names they may be called, or persons of the enemy's territory, who steal within the lines of the hostile army for the purpose of robbing, killing, or of destroying bridges, roads or canals, or of robbing or destroying the mail, or of cutting the telegraph wires, are not entitled to the privileges of the prisoner of war.

Art. 85.

War-rebels are persons within an occupied territory who rise in arms against the occupying or conquering army, or against the authorities established by the same. If captured, they may suffer death, whether they rise singly, in small or large bands, and whether called upon to do so by their own, but expelled, government or not. They are not prisoners of war; nor are they if discovered and secured before their conspiracy has matured to an actual rising or armed violence.

Nature DRM? How does Monsanto suing farmers for sowing their land with second generation seeds of its products sound?

http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/bigbeans0 22602.cfm
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives /0311/msg00010.html
http://www.chattoogariver.org/index.php?req=monsan to&quart=Su2005

Excellent reply. Birth rate in Japan after WWII was astronomical and dropped like a stone as soon as Japan got some economic traction. However, the low birth rate in Japan is also due to cultural changes (source) :

In Japan, the cultural transition is even more marked. In 1955 two-thirds of couples met through arranged marriages. Now fewer than 10 per cent do, according to Naohiro Ogawa, demographer and economist at Tokyo's Nihon University: "Dating is fairly new to the culture." Observers wonder, only half in jest, whether the Japanese race will be the first to die out because it is too shy to reproduce.

Over a period of decades, the U.S. government paid to kill Arabs and interfere with their politics. The U.S. government also paid to train Arabs in terrorism to fight in Afghanistan.

Is it surprising that a small percentage of Arabs eventually decided to react to violence with more violence? Is it surprising that Arabs don't like being killed?

Now, those who wanted violence have what they want. They can claim that there is a threat, and can make billions in largely hidden contracts for weapons and contracts for war.

The U.S. government is more corrupt now than ever before. Here are some short reviews of books about the corruption. The article is old and needs revision and additions, but gives a small view of a very extensive subject: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in World War Two and former U.S. President General Dwight D. Eisenhower said in a famous speech that we should beware of the "military-industrial complex". Here's a quote:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."

Another quote:

"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present - and is gravely to be regarded."

--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?

"That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

As long as Al-Quaeda exists, as long as former members of Al-Qaeda exist, and then that doesn't take into account countries that would harbor those members, and how "harbor" is defined, to the extent that at its greatest Australia refusing to turn over a high ranking member thinking it would get the death penalty, possibly without a fair trial, constitutes "harboring." Replace "Australia" with the name of a Middle Eastern country with an already tarnished reputation, like "Iran," and it sounds more plausible.

This would be taking the interpretation to its greatest heights, but when Congress passed the resolution, in its full here, they trusted the chief executive would interpret it fairly and use its vague wording responsibly to go after whichever organization or nation or people planned the attacks, which was uncertain at the time, or at least according to Bush supporters. (See Wikipedia for a list of initial suspects.)

That was the line of thinking Alberto Gonzales said he was a part of during the Senate judiciary meetings, that Congress had given the Chief Executive the power to wiretap when they said "all appropriate and neccessary force" in the resolution. This is relevant because they see a military authorization of force as being synonymous with a declaration of war, after which FISA says electronic surveillance may be allowed for 15 day periods after presidential authorization and repetitive reauthorization.

Thoughtful dissidents would say that they are not synonymous because past administrations and American congressional bodies have acted as if they are not. First, not declaring war provides a way to circumvent constitutional safeguards against the executive declaring war, and also, in some cases, to avoid feeling bound by the established laws of war. Not using the word "war" is also seen as being more public relations-friendly. For these reasons, they have generally ceased to issue declarations of war, instead describing their actions by euphemisms such as "police action" or "authorized use of force."

More importantly, typically a full declaration must be ratified by various legislative bodies, but 'authorized use of force' may allow an elected head of state to directly initiate forceful action without further consultation. In addition, with declarations of war being increasingly regulated by international bodies, 'authorized use of force' can often be used to avoid some of the negative consequences of a declaration.

Why pass such a vaguely worded bill? It was a way for them to allow the administration to go after al-Quaeda without ruling out the possibility of them going after the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or other organizations, had they been found to have been involved. It was a way for them to act quickly, voting against the bill would make them look soft on the people that destroyed the World Trade Center, and it was a way to prevent Congress from looking foolish if it turned out they were going after or overlooking the wrong people.

I was just meta-modding and saw that you accused someone of smoking crack for claiming the NFL is a not-for-profit coporation. Have some knowledge, gratis.

I'm in my freshman year of college and I've already learned OOP... some places must really be backwards.

Depends. If you learned OOP according to the gospel of C++, Java, or C#, then you're school is backwards. My personal opinion is: OOP should not be taught in a freshman class. According to Matthias Felleisen:

...a functional semester ideally prepares students for the true essence of object-oriented programming according to Alan Kay: the systematic construction of small modules of code and the construction of programs without assignment statements. Experience shows that these courses prepare students better for upper-level courses than a year of plain object-oriented programming. Initial reports from our students' co-op employers appear to confirm the experiences of our upper-level instructors.

In my experience, students who learn OOP, believe that private member variables (private mutable state) is okay, when in fact, private member variables should be used only when necessary. If it is possible assignments should be avoided, data should be passed to a method via the parameters, and results returned from the method because:

1. It makes the method easier to reason about. The methods behavior can be determined by looking the method call. This is not so when there is private data, or global variables influencing the behavior of a method.
2. It makes the method easier to test. Unit testing a method is hard (and sometimes impossible) when the behavior of a method depend on more than just the parameters.

If you have a procedure with ten parameters, you probably missed some.---Alan J. Perlis

I had written a nice piece of code here, but since Slashdot considers code lame (the lameness filter), and thus discourages intelligent conversation involving code examples and the like, I'll have to point you to these threads discussing some of the problems with OOP as it's taught in many schools (and why I believe a pure OOP or OOP biased computer science curriculum is bad).