In the past six years, I bought a regular (smallish) TV to replace a 13inch TV my wife had before we got married, to make DVDs enjoyable for my wife. Replaced a DVD player after she broke it (she's the only one that uses it), and that's it. My stereo is inherited from a family member of my wife. As far as computers I've spent probably 4k in the last six years total. I build my own and replace components when they fail individually. I bought a used laptop for $300 bucks, even, through a local lug member. We get all our DVDs from the local library (we have 30 holds that come in regularly that my wife manages, better than netflix and free). We don't have cable (we get DVDs from the library of full seasons of shows that my wife's interested in). I don't own an "mp3 player" and I own ten CDs I bought about ten to twelve years ago. My wife has a collection of about a hundred CDs. They are all ripped (ogg) onto the box and they play via a queue-based web interface I wrote myself using mplayer as a back-end. I own a digital SLR camera, which is included in the $4000 total. My wife and I both have computers and I have two laptops, although the other laptop is free from work. My desktop is merely a server for email. Hers was the old server after her pre-marriage box from 1995 finally died. The server's flatscreen has a huge gouge in it from the most recent move, but I never use it (use the laptop remotely to it), so I haven't replaced it.
I work in the consumer electronics industry writing optimized compression software for server and embedded systems, particularly white-label navigation devices. So I have access to windows- and linux-based devices for testing and debugging purposes. For work, I operate an about fifty cpu cluster for parallel compression builds. So I have my fill of devices, if needed. I guess the nokia n800, for work, counts as an mp3 player, although I play FLACs and OGG vorbises on it, not mp3s. I'm considering buying a dedicated mp3 player that can handle oggs and flacs and the cowan a7 is the only one that seems to meet my requirements at the moment, but I haven't bought it yet. A Sony doesn't even meet my requirements.
So yeah, I was a little stymied that Sony lost $30k in purchases...
They don't make any decent tvs, laptops, or projectors anymore, so I assumed he meant games in general. Their crappy products are already disqualified by being crappy. Saying he would have bought them is just disingenuous.
Then again, computer games nowadays all suck, so I guess I'd say the same about that niche as well. *shrug* Maybe he would have bought something from Sony...
Sony pissed me off in 2001 and I have not bought another product from them since. So their short term gain resulted in probably $20,000 to $30,000 in lost sales. Er, what? You had tens of thousands of dollars to spend on wasted time that you would have spent if they didn't piss you off?
Either you have a lot of unearned income, or... no you simply must have unearned income.
Let me know when you start seeing a large amount of spam that doesn't refer to the websites by a domain name. Well over 99% of the spam, and likely a solid 100% of the phishing emails that I see rely on using a domain name in the link, likely for the reasons that I've outline before. The spammers just don't have as much to gain by using a numeric address over a domain name. If they change their game drastically, I'll then concede that point. All my spam currently is 419 spam. I don't get fished. Thus there's no domain name in the link, so concede your point.
Thats extremely condescending, but I guess it matches your tone from your first reply. You also seem to be overlooking the fact that many of these spamvertised sites are targeting extremely vulnerable people. Have you considered how many people are online now that are on medicare / medicaid? If you tell these people that they can buy their prescriptions for less than half the usual price, they'd love to listen. And then if your site looks legit, and authenticates legitimately, they may well fall for it. Do 80+ year old senior citizens really "deserve" to be taken advantage of by criminals? Yeah, the old people vote Republican, so I say fuck them. They're borrowing off my future taxes. FUCK THEM!
And did you ever take a look at the percentage of spams for male enhancement? I just opened up an old gmail account that's been spammed constantly despite never having been used. 95% of them are for male enhancement. That must mean 95% of the victims are assholes (republicans, too) who are inadequate about the size of their dicks. That is, if I'm allowed to extrapolate from such a thing, which you feel ok to do. The only cheaper prescriptions I've seen are for male enhancement drugs, not any other drugs. They aren't targeted because they don't have money.
If they don't like the nanny state, unless it helps them, then the nanny state shouldn't help them avoid getting taken by some words by some random untrusted individual.
They have a distributed botnet. They'll just distribute the http traffic over the botnet and deliver the payload via a decentralized onion-style network, again, on their botnet, like tor. Or they'll just use p2p technology and a pki that allows them to be the only ones able to decrypt the data stuffed into it.
Going after the registrars will only be a temporary solution.
You're right that as long as they make money, they'll keep doing it.
People just need to learn not to send money to a site without a browser-confirmed TLS certificate, let alone never buying anything off of a spam message or even doing simple basic research. All the people losing money due to spam, frankly, deserve it.
That still means it sucks for the rest of us, but it's not that much of an inconvenience. But that's the trade-off. In this case, a lot of freedom translates to speech you didn't want. Grow up.
2) Even if in the extremely long run, undeserving dynasties eventually fall, the damages done by the initial allocation often take millennia to reverse. I guess you really are thinking ahead to the seventh generation, even if the first through sixth generations are fucked and the fourth through sixth end up cleaning up the mess, if it can be reversed at all.
You can ignore the irreversible medium-term effects if you want, but the rest of the world will just consider you a naif.
Carbon credit schemes only reduce the "easy" uses of carbon to clean up. All the hard uses of carbon will have their carbon offsetted to buy the "easy" uses of carbon. Unless the carbon trade takes into account the differential difficulty in reducing the carbon in the trade, once all the easy carbon emissions have been reduced, carbon credits will be worth more and more until it's no longer feasable to do the trading. It then institutionalizes those who've "bought" the cheap credits as having something worth a whole lot more even though they are outputting "hard" carbon.
Anybody who's looked at the scheme in more detail than "created markets == good" sees an enormous amount of problems with it.
The real answer is to limit full-cost carbon emissions per individual to an amount that's sustainable. Any user that's using "hard" uses of carbon to clean up will then be forced to immediately pursue efficiencies. LA cleaned up itself dramatically not by using carbon credits, but by using extensive regulation.
Most uses of carbon when reduced, even "hard" uses, end up being cheaper in the long run. The market takes ages to self-correct, so without regulation that says you need to do this faster than a self-correcting market, we'll never be able to reduce our emissions in time to fix the problem. The problem with market-self-correction, too, is that this is an externalized cost -- pollution. Until we actually internalize it into the market, because each use of carbon is actually contributing equally to the greenhouse gas problem, the market will never work, even in theory.
35 mpg average, not including all the except vehicles in their fleet, like the Hummer.
Seriously, why else do you think Bush is going to sign it -- it looks like a good thing when it isn't.
Legislation that's just good enough to keep pace with the status quo is exactly what the auto industry wanted. They know that if they completely succeeded in opposing the legislation, that they'd face consumer revolt. And as long as everybody else has to keep up with the status quo -- the most cost-effective manner for them -- then they don't have to worry too much about being undercut by companies in Korea and China that don't have emission controls. Instead, they only have to worry about Japanese and European cars, which they'll likely never be able to beat.
All in all, it's a good deal for the auto industry, and a bad deal for the customer, as we'll never get an incoming Democratic administration to support higher CAFE standards in the future. Last time they were raise significantly was during Reagan. His administration also introduced the catalytic converter as a requirement, too. *sigh*
Looking at your journal, it's clear you're a raving idiot. Spam is caused by bad registrars, you say!
Whatever. When we finally get registrars to pull spam sites, if we actually DID want them to do that, they'd just use IP addresses -- or should we make using an IP address illegal, too?
I don't know what your angle is, but it sounds like you just need to calm down and change email addresses to a subdomain. Nobody Rumpelstiltskins those, of course. It essentially ENDS spam. 99% solution. When I changed my address to a difficult to detect email address, my spam rate went to zero. I've been using it for two years, and I get a spam about once per week that I don't even notice as it's from somebody in Nigeria who is a real person who actually does go to my website (where it's encoded somewhat of a riddle). I love fishing them though, I've had a guy call me about twenty times back and forth once from Uganda until I finally told him he'd been had and that the address I gave him was for George Bush's White House.
Then again, I only give out my email address to people who use computers that don't get viruses that farm email addresses to spammers.
From her blog it looks like all she does is fashion design and arts and crafts. Is she a graphic designer?
As for Google, it's one of the last places I'd work, but I guess that's because I grew out of the college lifestyle some time ago;)
It's true, though, advertising companies do pay pretty well, though it's been my impression from people I know who work there that the pay isn't all that good, and that the "perks" kinda make up for it. So I haven't really been interested in working there for that reason as well. Plus the headquarters struck me as not very urban (I just moved back to Portland after some time in the bay area for work, and toured the Google campus). It wasn't all that convenient for truly biking around _outside_ of the main campus, and it's not very convenient to public transit. You really do have to rely on their private transit if you don't feel like driving a car.
I bike around 9 miles a day no problem -- done it both in Portland and all over the bay area. I've done the caltrain from SF to SJ commute, I've done the Amtrak commute on the east bay (Oakland to Fremont). I've done the BART commute from SF to Fremont. For a few months, I lived across the street from work, as well.
Let's just say I'm glad I'm back in Portland. Biking around is calmingly peaceful, even in winter. The air is always fresh. I'm a native of Seattle (around Redmond/Woodinville), so I don't mind the rain.
And, as you say, not dirty, and it doesn't smell.
SF'ers, though, are often quite funny. They call people around the city proper "bridge and tunnel people". If you cross a bridge on bike for work, you're cool in Portland, as there are like a dozen bridges to choose from, and they are all neat in their own little way. The bike path streets never have cars racing down them. People drive much more calmly. You don't get shoved when you go to Berzerkeley Bowl (New Seasons and Food Front people are much nicer). You can actually have a conversation with somebody that just happens to come by. It doesn't have a permanent underclass composed of minorities. The diversity actually _mixes_ here, and isn't quite so insular. The most troublesome gangs are the zoobombers who are risky only because they bomb down the west hills at speeds that don't allow them to stop for traffic. If you like brewpubs, Portland is it! The bay area SUCKS for brewpubs. if you like books, seriously, SF doesn't hold a candle to Powell's! Anybody who shits on Portland as lacking culture seriously has their head stuck in the ground.
So we're not so snobbish. We just spend our free time indulging in good beer and reading books.
Does SF have a mountain in its back yard? Does it have vegetation that does NOT get brown 9 months out of the year? Portland also has the largest city park in the country. You can literally go for a walk through the forest within city limits. Portland also has one of the best library systems in terms of circulation per person in the country. I used to live above one of the libraries in Portland.
Sure, if you want an accountant or a lawyer, find somebody who fights off the homeless on market. Do you want hard liquor instead of good beer? Use any of the random corner liquor stores in SF. People just take more time for quality here in Portland. In SF, it's just live to work, work to die, go to a street fair with the same old exhibitors, pot selling, and gay people. In Portland, pot just happens to be growing in a large percentage of garages -- you can grow your own here legally with a medical card. The SF culture is dying.
And I haven't even begun to talk about Portland's famous mass transit system and urban planning. Does SF have an aerial tram? I think not.
Portland is where all the people who used to go to SF now go for their real creative thinking.
San Francisco IS on the cultural edge -- the edge of tipping over. Nobody can live there anymore. Just rich snobs and lawyers.
I lived on Russian Hill for a while, and, damn, I'd walk down to North Beach and it was like everybody wanted to live in the past. It sure has nothin' goin' for it now.
And as far as technology. It's the peninsula and south bay that have all the big tech companies. Nobody pays for office space in SF anymore. Nobody could get funding.
And beautiful? If you mean piss and garbage everywhere. Seriously, I'd walk down to Chinatown to catch the bus and, even as late as 10am, people were pissing in corners. The amount of homeless wandering the streets, too. You can't go anywhere without getting panhandled. Thriving?
Right.
And you think Portland is for pseudoscience? How? Trampling on freedoms for a hippie ideal? You mean they added a bike lane? What are you talking about?
They would where I live! Just 0.4 miles from 42nd! I used to work as the sysadmin at the largest (I think) employer on 42nd. We also legalized gay marriage until the courts overturned it. You have to understand, here we have the second highest circulating library in the country, more bookstores per capita than anywhere in the world, the largest book store in the world (size of a city block) and a 14% vote for Bush rate county-wide in the last election. I'm sure now that number's even lower. Check out: http://www.unitedstatesatheists.com/ Based out of Portland.
It does not follow that because one believes that a matter should be under state jurisdiction, that it must be ignored in the meantime. Strawman, as that's not a proper characterization of the argument -- but it's not even "my" argument, it's Ron Paul's argument.
It does follow that it should be ignored _by the federal government_ of the United States under the Tenth Amendment if it should be under state jurisdiction.
But even if that weren't Ron Paul's personal underlying argument, I quoted Ron Paul saying that it specifically wasn't the role of the federal government! No need to do any syllogisms from state's rights, as his position is already clear that the syllogism holds true (or he came upon it some other way that is completely novel) and already stated the conclusion explicitly.
Do you want to attack the argument directly now, or are you trying to win side-arguments to save face?
If you want, I'll give you a freebie on this argument and we can get back to the main one. How much of a handicap do you need? Just let me know, I'll be happy to oblige. I can even wait for you to sober up from whatever you're inhaling or imbibing. Again, just let me know what assistance you need.
You must concede that on at least this issue, he's at least flip-flopped,
Nope. He's consistently said that he opposes abortion, and that it should be a matter for state jurisdiction. Your frantic attempts to twist his words do not make him a liar, they make you a liar. OK, baby steps here. We're half way there. Now, go look at his voting record (GP post, the one you were supposed to be replying to). Scroll down using that scrollbar you have, probably on the right side of your screen. Yeah, those half dozen FEDERAL bills he voted for. OK, now read them. I'll wait here for you to read them...
See those bills? How could he vote for those bills that are federal jurisdictional bans and believe it's a matter for state jurisdiction (as you admit!) and not federal jurisdiction?
You see, he can't! Bruce below even points out that he's admitting that it's a flaw. Read his post and my reply and continue the discussion there (that is, if we were having a discussion -- I'm not convinced you're at the mental age where you're capable of having one).
Thanks Bruce, for finding these quotes. The second one makes me feel better, but the first one, not.
I am primarily arguing that there's a contradiction, and even he knows it, but it seems I have to defend my statement that he's lying, which I'll talk about shortly. First, regarding his first quote, his vote to ban DI abortion isn't a vote to "leave it up to the states". So it's a poor way of trying to reverse it. About his lies, he lies when he says if the court had not already ruled and legalized it, he would not have voted that way. My links date from many years before the ruling as well, and he voted for them all!
So, again, either ignorant of his past actions, or a liar.
In the second quote, he just sells out, for it might save an innocent human life. There are plenty of things the feds could do to save innocent lives, but it simply should not have the power to do so.
He's flailing for a reason to not be opposed by the pro-lifers in his Texas back-yard. Now that he's going for a much broader base and he doesn't have to choose between yes and no (although he could have just abstained!), he's turned to lying.
It sounds like the best case for him is that he's just a sellout on the issue. His speech on June 4 even indicates that he sold out on it. But the quote in the Washington Post directly contradicts his past behavior, so I'm still inclined to say he's just a simple liar.
I live on 34th and NE Stanton, just 8 blocks (20 blocks per mile in Portland, so.4 miles away), and AS a resident, I HEAVILY support this measure. I used to work on 42nd and Broadway and am involved in the local business community there.
I'm also an atheist and an environmentalist, as are most of the people here. Well, there are a lot of lesbians, too, at least according to the Census Bureau factfinder website (I have no idea how they found that out, but it's true, for I bought my house from a couple).
It actually came up because the Hispanic community wanted to rename Interstate Ave after Cesar Chavez (since Union was renamed MLK), which the people on Interstate thought was dumb, so it met with heavy public protest. The Mayor and Council were all for it, and then the public found out.
Since 42nd is a kind of major street, it would be very cool to have it renamed after Douglas Adams! We could open a Don't Panic Coffee Shop (or electronic gadget store).
I think the only major complaint would come from "42nd Street Station", a little mini-mall just off Sandy Blvd that would probably have to change their name!
It just needs some money to pay for paperwork, so please, donate!
Journey: Arlington, Tx asks: "For all the politically pro-life candidates. In the event that abortion becomes illegal and a woman obtains an abortion anyway, what should she be charged with, and what should her punishment be? What about the doctor who performs the abortion?"
Moderator: Congressman Paul, 90 seconds.
Ron Paul: You know, it's not a federal function to determine the penalties for a crime of abortion if it is illegal in a state. It's up to the state, it's up to the juries. And, it should be up to discretion because it's not an easy issue to deal with. But the first thing we have to do is get the federal government out of it. We don't need a federal abortion police. That's the last thing that we need.
But...
Moderator: Should a woman be charged with a crime?
Ron Paul: I don't personally think so. I'm an O.B. Doctor, and I practiced medicine for 30 years, and I of course never saw one time when a medically necessary abortion had to be done. But, so I think it certainly is a crime, but I also understand the difficulties. I think when you're talking about third trimester deliberate abortion and partial-birth abortions, I mean there has to be a criminal penalty for the person that's committing that crime. But I really think it's the person who commits the crime, and I think that is the abortionist.
Moderator: So you're saying a doctor should be punished. What sort of punishment should they get?
Ron Paul: Well, I think it's up to the states. I'm not in the state... I'm not running for governor, and I think it's different, and I don't think it should be all fifty states the same way, so I don't think it should be up to the President to decide that.
Remember the key quotes from above:
Regarding abortion in general: "But the first thing we have to do is get the federal government out of it." Regarding punishment: "I don't think it should be all fifty states the same way" "Well, I think it's up to the states."
Now I'll paste what he voted for from the vote smart website. You'll note that all of these bills impose fines and up to two years in prison. Ron Paul thought, when he voted for these bills, that it was the role of the federal government to intervene in what he now says is a state matter and establish a penalty for doctors who were willing to perform D&I abortions.
S 3: A bill to prohibit the procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion.
Project Vote Smart Synopsis:
Vote to adopt a conference report that prohibits any individual from knowingly performing the procedure known as intact dilation and extraction, in which a fetus is partially delivered before it is aborted.
Highlights:
- Permit the procedure if the life of the woman were in danger
- Penalize anyone who illegally performed the procedure with fines and up to two years imprisonment
06/04/2003
Official Title of Legislation:
HR 760: To prohibit the procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion.
Project Vote Smart Synopsis:
Vote to pass a bill that would prohibit any individual from knowingly performing the procedure known as intact dilation and extraction, in which a fetus is partially delivered before it is aborted. The only exception is if the life of the woman is endangered by a physical disorder, illness, or injury.
Highlights:
- Allows for criminal prosecution of the individual that performs the act
- Prohibits prosecution of the woman on whom the abortion was performed
I'm taking you to task for calling an honest man a liar. If you can't handle that, try to work it out in therapy. Hah, you're quite taking me to task, all right. I'll let you know when I see that happen. At that point, I'll consider my therapy options.
Try responding to the meat of my line of argument. I'll look forward to this "taking to task" you speak of.
Or perhaps the Paulian Mechanical Turks aren't quite programmed with a proper response to it yet and I've been played by an automaton. *shrug*
Is that your excuse? I need no excuses. You're the one who's tried to tar Ron Paul as a liar, and failed to do so. Your claim, your burden of proof. I already met your burden of proof with his contradiction: that he's for non-intervention, specifically on the abortion matter, with what states should be doing ala a more strict interpretation of the tenth amendment than the Supreme Court holds (which is ok, I'm fine with that as it's not a violation in itself), which he stated in the CNN/Youtube debate, for example. All the while, he has a voting record of intervention in every instance Dilation and Extraction came up on whether or not to be banned. As far as I know, that's not a power of the federal government. The commerce clause doesn't provide that, for example. I would think the tenth amendment would take over. States can handle their own murders -- why not abortion policies?
This is the third time I've repeated myself, in a slightly different way, just so that it's in the same post and that perhaps it might sink in if presented slightly differently. At this point, you can choose to believe whatever you want. I know that most reasonable people will look at your responses to my posts and ponder at how efficiently you've selectively quoted me and not even addressed my arguments. At this point, probably the majority just think you're trolling.
Consider the burden of proof as still being on me all you want, but if you want to convince people that I haven't proven it, then you should actually try rebutting them directly. In another post, you did try once, but you just created a huge contradiction with the rest of his program. As that's a contradiction, I'm not left with anything to argue against from your angle.
That he voted against any facet of abortion is a violation of his position, which is to leave it to the states.
Nonsense. His intention to return jurisdiction over abortion to the states doesn't require him to ignore the fact that today, it's a matter over which the federal government claims power. What? Huh? Is that your excuse? I'm in awe. He votes on everything else that the feds claim power over pretty consistently against, completely ignoring your logic above. For that I'm pretty impressed by him. That I found a pretty bad hole in his program doesn't mean those other actions are wrong. The feds are WAY too powerful, and I consider myself pretty far left (though, a decentralizationist left). In fact, he's probably the closest of any of the mainstream candidates to my positions for what the federal government should be doing, Democrats included, though I'm registered Green. I may find it useful to vote for him for the federal government so long as he never touches what the state and local governments do, which I actually believe, other than on the abortion issue, he would do. That he has this flaw is what gives me pause.
Their decisions are final.
Oh really? I'm sure that many people in this country will be very distressed to learn that Plessy v. Ferguson is still the law of the land, then. So much for integration. (Oh, wait.. Plessey was overturned in Brown v. Topeka.)
Try again.
-jcr Plessy was the law of the land until Brown. What's your point? Anybody who violated Plessy (although the nature of Plessy is hard to violate, due to its construction and decision) while Plessy was in effect violated the Constitution. They should only have passed the laws after it had been tested by the Supreme Court. As a strict constructionists, you would have to defer to the Supreme Court on the matter before declaring anything Constitutional or not, since that's one of the things the Constitution strictly defines.
There's "shouldn't be unconstitutional/constitutional" and there's "what is unconstitutional/constitutional". The former is what you and I can hold opinions on. The latter is the purview of ONLY the Supreme Court once it has come to a decision on it, as it had done in Roe v Wade. If the Supreme Court hasn't heard it, then it's the lower court's temporary purview, but the question isn't definitely answered until the Supreme Court hears it and decides. And then it is only in effect until and if they overturn it. It's an interesting secular system that goes against what people typically think of if they are religious, but I happen to think it's pretty well thought out!
I'd like for people to step back a little from this thread and look at the parent and the grandparent posts put together.
The parent has taken my post out of context, removed the support for my statement, accused me of being a liar, and then he gets moderated "informative". His "informative" part may be that he does admit that Ron Paul has flip-flopped on the death penalty, but it doesn't seem right that he gets moderated informative thrice, and by that time, my post didn't get moderated informative. I actually linked to and pointed out the characteristics of Ron Paul's actual voting record that didn't mesh with the/. hive-mind regarding Ron Paul.
If jcr had left my context in, you would note clearly that his post is unjustly maligning my comment. He calls me a liar and NEVER addressed the fact that I pointed out that Ron Paul had voted FOR federal intervention in abortion policy. That CANNOT be denied by any sane person. A ban IS intervention. That was my point that he called me a liar about. Paul SAYS he will leave it up to the states, but he VOTED to not leave it up to the states, repeatedly and in all instances on this particular issue. jcr's comment then is merely a baseless assertion, removed from the damning context, constructed to make it look like the parent post is merely a quick jab. On the contrary, it was a well-considered jab, not to jcr, but to Paul, and one that was backed up, though if you just read his post, you'd think he had a point against me.
I know it's a small portion of the moderators that quickly mod up without understanding context (heck, it was only three of them, though it may be more by now), but in this case, I think the metamoderators will have to take note and mark jcr's comment as clearly an overrated, dishonest attack on my honesty: hypocrisy at its finest.
jcr, next time you try an ad hominem remark, take a step back and consider how it looks. This one doesn't look well-placed. Instead it looks not just false, but reactionary.
Wow, that's totally false. Their decisions are final. The buck stops there. It isn't JUST a precedent. They overturn laws with the stroke of a pen. They don't have to wait for the law to change. The law is overturned immediately. Just replying to myself.
Note that during these votes, the Roe v. Wade decision was in effect as the supreme law of the land due to the Supreme Court, rendering all of these yes votes a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Very interesting spin you have there, but you haven't succeeded in showing that Ron Paul's votes are inconsistent with his words. Well, I guess you missed it then. That he voted against any facet of abortion is a violation of his position, which is to leave it to the states. If he's not going to leave it to the states, as his record shows, which I pasted into my comment, he's lying.
I thought that part was obvious, but there, I spelled it out for you.
A supreme court decision isn't a "supreme law of the land", (as you put it) it's a determination of a particular case, which can set a precedent which may or may not be upheld in subsequent decisions. Wow, that's totally false. Their decisions are final. The buck stops there. It isn't JUST a precedent. They overturn laws with the stroke of a pen. They don't have to wait for the law to change. The law is overturned immediately.
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In the past six years, I bought a regular (smallish) TV to replace a 13inch TV my wife had before we got married, to make DVDs enjoyable for my wife. Replaced a DVD player after she broke it (she's the only one that uses it), and that's it. My stereo is inherited from a family member of my wife. As far as computers I've spent probably 4k in the last six years total. I build my own and replace components when they fail individually. I bought a used laptop for $300 bucks, even, through a local lug member. We get all our DVDs from the local library (we have 30 holds that come in regularly that my wife manages, better than netflix and free). We don't have cable (we get DVDs from the library of full seasons of shows that my wife's interested in). I don't own an "mp3 player" and I own ten CDs I bought about ten to twelve years ago. My wife has a collection of about a hundred CDs. They are all ripped (ogg) onto the box and they play via a queue-based web interface I wrote myself using mplayer as a back-end. I own a digital SLR camera, which is included in the $4000 total. My wife and I both have computers and I have two laptops, although the other laptop is free from work. My desktop is merely a server for email. Hers was the old server after her pre-marriage box from 1995 finally died. The server's flatscreen has a huge gouge in it from the most recent move, but I never use it (use the laptop remotely to it), so I haven't replaced it.
I work in the consumer electronics industry writing optimized compression software for server and embedded systems, particularly white-label navigation devices. So I have access to windows- and linux-based devices for testing and debugging purposes. For work, I operate an about fifty cpu cluster for parallel compression builds. So I have my fill of devices, if needed. I guess the nokia n800, for work, counts as an mp3 player, although I play FLACs and OGG vorbises on it, not mp3s. I'm considering buying a dedicated mp3 player that can handle oggs and flacs and the cowan a7 is the only one that seems to meet my requirements at the moment, but I haven't bought it yet. A Sony doesn't even meet my requirements.
So yeah, I was a little stymied that Sony lost $30k in purchases...
They don't make any decent tvs, laptops, or projectors anymore, so I assumed he meant games in general. Their crappy products are already disqualified by being crappy. Saying he would have bought them is just disingenuous.
Then again, computer games nowadays all suck, so I guess I'd say the same about that niche as well. *shrug* Maybe he would have bought something from Sony...
Either you have a lot of unearned income, or... no you simply must have unearned income.
And did you ever take a look at the percentage of spams for male enhancement? I just opened up an old gmail account that's been spammed constantly despite never having been used. 95% of them are for male enhancement. That must mean 95% of the victims are assholes (republicans, too) who are inadequate about the size of their dicks. That is, if I'm allowed to extrapolate from such a thing, which you feel ok to do. The only cheaper prescriptions I've seen are for male enhancement drugs, not any other drugs. They aren't targeted because they don't have money.
If they don't like the nanny state, unless it helps them, then the nanny state shouldn't help them avoid getting taken by some words by some random untrusted individual.
They have a distributed botnet. They'll just distribute the http traffic over the botnet and deliver the payload via a decentralized onion-style network, again, on their botnet, like tor. Or they'll just use p2p technology and a pki that allows them to be the only ones able to decrypt the data stuffed into it.
Going after the registrars will only be a temporary solution.
You're right that as long as they make money, they'll keep doing it.
People just need to learn not to send money to a site without a browser-confirmed TLS certificate, let alone never buying anything off of a spam message or even doing simple basic research. All the people losing money due to spam, frankly, deserve it.
That still means it sucks for the rest of us, but it's not that much of an inconvenience. But that's the trade-off. In this case, a lot of freedom translates to speech you didn't want. Grow up.
No it is not. By Coases Theorem, the long-run market equilibrium does not rely on initial allocation.
Don't be a naif.
1) ESS theory proves that yes, in fact, initial conditions can endure for an indefinite time. c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy
2) Even if in the extremely long run, undeserving dynasties eventually fall, the damages done by the initial allocation often take millennia to reverse. I guess you really are thinking ahead to the seventh generation, even if the first through sixth generations are fucked and the fourth through sixth end up cleaning up the mess, if it can be reversed at all.
You can ignore the irreversible medium-term effects if you want, but the rest of the world will just consider you a naif.
Carbon credit schemes only reduce the "easy" uses of carbon to clean up. All the hard uses of carbon will have their carbon offsetted to buy the "easy" uses of carbon. Unless the carbon trade takes into account the differential difficulty in reducing the carbon in the trade, once all the easy carbon emissions have been reduced, carbon credits will be worth more and more until it's no longer feasable to do the trading. It then institutionalizes those who've "bought" the cheap credits as having something worth a whole lot more even though they are outputting "hard" carbon.
Anybody who's looked at the scheme in more detail than "created markets == good" sees an enormous amount of problems with it.
The real answer is to limit full-cost carbon emissions per individual to an amount that's sustainable. Any user that's using "hard" uses of carbon to clean up will then be forced to immediately pursue efficiencies. LA cleaned up itself dramatically not by using carbon credits, but by using extensive regulation.
Most uses of carbon when reduced, even "hard" uses, end up being cheaper in the long run. The market takes ages to self-correct, so without regulation that says you need to do this faster than a self-correcting market, we'll never be able to reduce our emissions in time to fix the problem. The problem with market-self-correction, too, is that this is an externalized cost -- pollution. Until we actually internalize it into the market, because each use of carbon is actually contributing equally to the greenhouse gas problem, the market will never work, even in theory.
35 mpg average, not including all the except vehicles in their fleet, like the Hummer.
Seriously, why else do you think Bush is going to sign it -- it looks like a good thing when it isn't.
Legislation that's just good enough to keep pace with the status quo is exactly what the auto industry wanted. They know that if they completely succeeded in opposing the legislation, that they'd face consumer revolt. And as long as everybody else has to keep up with the status quo -- the most cost-effective manner for them -- then they don't have to worry too much about being undercut by companies in Korea and China that don't have emission controls. Instead, they only have to worry about Japanese and European cars, which they'll likely never be able to beat.
All in all, it's a good deal for the auto industry, and a bad deal for the customer, as we'll never get an incoming Democratic administration to support higher CAFE standards in the future. Last time they were raise significantly was during Reagan. His administration also introduced the catalytic converter as a requirement, too. *sigh*
Looking at your journal, it's clear you're a raving idiot. Spam is caused by bad registrars, you say!
Whatever. When we finally get registrars to pull spam sites, if we actually DID want them to do that, they'd just use IP addresses -- or should we make using an IP address illegal, too?
I don't know what your angle is, but it sounds like you just need to calm down and change email addresses to a subdomain. Nobody Rumpelstiltskins those, of course. It essentially ENDS spam. 99% solution. When I changed my address to a difficult to detect email address, my spam rate went to zero. I've been using it for two years, and I get a spam about once per week that I don't even notice as it's from somebody in Nigeria who is a real person who actually does go to my website (where it's encoded somewhat of a riddle). I love fishing them though, I've had a guy call me about twenty times back and forth once from Uganda until I finally told him he'd been had and that the address I gave him was for George Bush's White House.
Then again, I only give out my email address to people who use computers that don't get viruses that farm email addresses to spammers.
Seth
From her blog it looks like all she does is fashion design and arts and crafts. Is she a graphic designer?
;)
As for Google, it's one of the last places I'd work, but I guess that's because I grew out of the college lifestyle some time ago
It's true, though, advertising companies do pay pretty well, though it's been my impression from people I know who work there that the pay isn't all that good, and that the "perks" kinda make up for it. So I haven't really been interested in working there for that reason as well. Plus the headquarters struck me as not very urban (I just moved back to Portland after some time in the bay area for work, and toured the Google campus). It wasn't all that convenient for truly biking around _outside_ of the main campus, and it's not very convenient to public transit. You really do have to rely on their private transit if you don't feel like driving a car.
I bike around 9 miles a day no problem -- done it both in Portland and all over the bay area. I've done the caltrain from SF to SJ commute, I've done the Amtrak commute on the east bay (Oakland to Fremont). I've done the BART commute from SF to Fremont. For a few months, I lived across the street from work, as well.
Let's just say I'm glad I'm back in Portland. Biking around is calmingly peaceful, even in winter. The air is always fresh. I'm a native of Seattle (around Redmond/Woodinville), so I don't mind the rain.
And, as you say, not dirty, and it doesn't smell.
SF'ers, though, are often quite funny. They call people around the city proper "bridge and tunnel people". If you cross a bridge on bike for work, you're cool in Portland, as there are like a dozen bridges to choose from, and they are all neat in their own little way. The bike path streets never have cars racing down them. People drive much more calmly. You don't get shoved when you go to Berzerkeley Bowl (New Seasons and Food Front people are much nicer). You can actually have a conversation with somebody that just happens to come by. It doesn't have a permanent underclass composed of minorities. The diversity actually _mixes_ here, and isn't quite so insular. The most troublesome gangs are the zoobombers who are risky only because they bomb down the west hills at speeds that don't allow them to stop for traffic. If you like brewpubs, Portland is it! The bay area SUCKS for brewpubs. if you like books, seriously, SF doesn't hold a candle to Powell's! Anybody who shits on Portland as lacking culture seriously has their head stuck in the ground.
So we're not so snobbish. We just spend our free time indulging in good beer and reading books.
Does SF have a mountain in its back yard? Does it have vegetation that does NOT get brown 9 months out of the year? Portland also has the largest city park in the country. You can literally go for a walk through the forest within city limits. Portland also has one of the best library systems in terms of circulation per person in the country. I used to live above one of the libraries in Portland.
Sure, if you want an accountant or a lawyer, find somebody who fights off the homeless on market. Do you want hard liquor instead of good beer? Use any of the random corner liquor stores in SF. People just take more time for quality here in Portland. In SF, it's just live to work, work to die, go to a street fair with the same old exhibitors, pot selling, and gay people. In Portland, pot just happens to be growing in a large percentage of garages -- you can grow your own here legally with a medical card. The SF culture is dying.
And I haven't even begun to talk about Portland's famous mass transit system and urban planning. Does SF have an aerial tram? I think not.
Portland is where all the people who used to go to SF now go for their real creative thinking.
Sounds like you just need your wife to find a good job here and you're good to go :)
San Francisco IS on the cultural edge -- the edge of tipping over. Nobody can live there anymore. Just rich snobs and lawyers.
I lived on Russian Hill for a while, and, damn, I'd walk down to North Beach and it was like everybody wanted to live in the past. It sure has nothin' goin' for it now.
And as far as technology. It's the peninsula and south bay that have all the big tech companies. Nobody pays for office space in SF anymore. Nobody could get funding.
And beautiful? If you mean piss and garbage everywhere. Seriously, I'd walk down to Chinatown to catch the bus and, even as late as 10am, people were pissing in corners. The amount of homeless wandering the streets, too. You can't go anywhere without getting panhandled. Thriving?
Right.
And you think Portland is for pseudoscience? How? Trampling on freedoms for a hippie ideal? You mean they added a bike lane? What are you talking about?
San Francisco is on one large downhill slide.
You're free to move away whenever you want to. Do you live in my hood? Probably not.
They would where I live! Just 0.4 miles from 42nd! I used to work as the sysadmin at the largest (I think) employer on 42nd. We also legalized gay marriage until the courts overturned it. You have to understand, here we have the second highest circulating library in the country, more bookstores per capita than anywhere in the world, the largest book store in the world (size of a city block) and a 14% vote for Bush rate county-wide in the last election. I'm sure now that number's even lower. Check out: http://www.unitedstatesatheists.com/ Based out of Portland.
It does follow that it should be ignored _by the federal government_ of the United States under the Tenth Amendment if it should be under state jurisdiction.
But even if that weren't Ron Paul's personal underlying argument, I quoted Ron Paul saying that it specifically wasn't the role of the federal government! No need to do any syllogisms from state's rights, as his position is already clear that the syllogism holds true (or he came upon it some other way that is completely novel) and already stated the conclusion explicitly.
Do you want to attack the argument directly now, or are you trying to win side-arguments to save face?
If you want, I'll give you a freebie on this argument and we can get back to the main one. How much of a handicap do you need? Just let me know, I'll be happy to oblige. I can even wait for you to sober up from whatever you're inhaling or imbibing. Again, just let me know what assistance you need.
Nope. He's consistently said that he opposes abortion, and that it should be a matter for state jurisdiction. Your frantic attempts to twist his words do not make him a liar, they make you a liar. OK, baby steps here. We're half way there. Now, go look at his voting record (GP post, the one you were supposed to be replying to). Scroll down using that scrollbar you have, probably on the right side of your screen. Yeah, those half dozen FEDERAL bills he voted for. OK, now read them. I'll wait here for you to read them...
See those bills? How could he vote for those bills that are federal jurisdictional bans and believe it's a matter for state jurisdiction (as you admit!) and not federal jurisdiction?
You see, he can't! Bruce below even points out that he's admitting that it's a flaw. Read his post and my reply and continue the discussion there (that is, if we were having a discussion -- I'm not convinced you're at the mental age where you're capable of having one).
Thanks Bruce, for finding these quotes. The second one makes me feel better, but the first one, not.
I am primarily arguing that there's a contradiction, and even he knows it, but it seems I have to defend my statement that he's lying, which I'll talk about shortly. First, regarding his first quote, his vote to ban DI abortion isn't a vote to "leave it up to the states". So it's a poor way of trying to reverse it. About his lies, he lies when he says if the court had not already ruled and legalized it, he would not have voted that way. My links date from many years before the ruling as well, and he voted for them all!
So, again, either ignorant of his past actions, or a liar.
In the second quote, he just sells out, for it might save an innocent human life. There are plenty of things the feds could do to save innocent lives, but it simply should not have the power to do so.
He's flailing for a reason to not be opposed by the pro-lifers in his Texas back-yard. Now that he's going for a much broader base and he doesn't have to choose between yes and no (although he could have just abstained!), he's turned to lying.
It sounds like the best case for him is that he's just a sellout on the issue. His speech on June 4 even indicates that he sold out on it. But the quote in the Washington Post directly contradicts his past behavior, so I'm still inclined to say he's just a simple liar.
I live on 34th and NE Stanton, just 8 blocks (20 blocks per mile in Portland, so .4 miles away), and AS a resident, I HEAVILY support this measure. I used to work on 42nd and Broadway and am involved in the local business community there.
I'm also an atheist and an environmentalist, as are most of the people here. Well, there are a lot of lesbians, too, at least according to the Census Bureau factfinder website (I have no idea how they found that out, but it's true, for I bought my house from a couple).
It actually came up because the Hispanic community wanted to rename Interstate Ave after Cesar Chavez (since Union was renamed MLK), which the people on Interstate thought was dumb, so it met with heavy public protest. The Mayor and Council were all for it, and then the public found out.
Since 42nd is a kind of major street, it would be very cool to have it renamed after Douglas Adams! We could open a Don't Panic Coffee Shop (or electronic gadget store).
I think the only major complaint would come from "42nd Street Station", a little mini-mall just off Sandy Blvd that would probably have to change their name!
It just needs some money to pay for paperwork, so please, donate!
I'll transcribe this for you:
Journey: Arlington, Tx asks: "For all the politically pro-life candidates. In the event that abortion becomes illegal and a woman obtains an abortion anyway, what should she be charged with, and what should her punishment be? What about the doctor who performs the abortion?"
...
Moderator: Congressman Paul, 90 seconds.
Ron Paul: You know, it's not a federal function to determine the penalties for a crime of abortion if it is illegal in a state. It's up to the state, it's up to the juries. And, it should be up to discretion because it's not an easy issue to deal with. But the first thing we have to do is get the federal government out of it. We don't need a federal abortion police. That's the last thing that we need.
But
Moderator: Should a woman be charged with a crime?
Ron Paul: I don't personally think so. I'm an O.B. Doctor, and I practiced medicine for 30 years, and I of course never saw one time when a medically necessary abortion had to be done. But, so I think it certainly is a crime, but I also understand the difficulties. I think when you're talking about third trimester deliberate abortion and partial-birth abortions, I mean there has to be a criminal penalty for the person that's committing that crime. But I really think it's the person who commits the crime, and I think that is the abortionist.
Moderator: So you're saying a doctor should be punished. What sort of punishment should they get?
Ron Paul: Well, I think it's up to the states. I'm not in the state... I'm not running for governor, and I think it's different, and I don't think it should be all fifty states the same way, so I don't think it should be up to the President to decide that.
Remember the key quotes from above:
Regarding abortion in general:
"But the first thing we have to do is get the federal government out of it."
Regarding punishment:
"I don't think it should be all fifty states the same way"
"Well, I think it's up to the states."
Now I'll paste what he voted for from the vote smart website. You'll note that all of these bills impose fines and up to two years in prison. Ron Paul thought, when he voted for these bills, that it was the role of the federal government to intervene in what he now says is a state matter and establish a penalty for doctors who were willing to perform D&I abortions.
All are from the abortion section here: http://www.vote-smart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=296
10/02/2003
Official Title of Legislation:
S 3: A bill to prohibit the procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion.
Project Vote Smart Synopsis:
Vote to adopt a conference report that prohibits any individual from knowingly performing the procedure known as intact dilation and extraction, in which a fetus is partially delivered before it is aborted.
Highlights:
- Permit the procedure if the life of the woman were in danger
- Penalize anyone who illegally performed the procedure with fines and up to two years imprisonment
06/04/2003
Official Title of Legislation:
HR 760: To prohibit the procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion.
Project Vote Smart Synopsis:
Vote to pass a bill that would prohibit any individual from knowingly performing the procedure known as intact dilation and extraction, in which a fetus is partially delivered before it is aborted. The only exception is if the life of the woman is endangered by a physical disorder, illness, or injury.
Highlights:
- Allows for criminal prosecution of the individual that performs the act
- Prohibits prosecution of the woman on whom the abortion was performed
04/05/2000
Official Tit
Try responding to the meat of my line of argument. I'll look forward to this "taking to task" you speak of.
Or perhaps the Paulian Mechanical Turks aren't quite programmed with a proper response to it yet and I've been played by an automaton. *shrug*
I need no excuses. You're the one who's tried to tar Ron Paul as a liar, and failed to do so. Your claim, your burden of proof. I already met your burden of proof with his contradiction: that he's for non-intervention, specifically on the abortion matter, with what states should be doing ala a more strict interpretation of the tenth amendment than the Supreme Court holds (which is ok, I'm fine with that as it's not a violation in itself), which he stated in the CNN/Youtube debate, for example. All the while, he has a voting record of intervention in every instance Dilation and Extraction came up on whether or not to be banned. As far as I know, that's not a power of the federal government. The commerce clause doesn't provide that, for example. I would think the tenth amendment would take over. States can handle their own murders -- why not abortion policies?
This is the third time I've repeated myself, in a slightly different way, just so that it's in the same post and that perhaps it might sink in if presented slightly differently. At this point, you can choose to believe whatever you want. I know that most reasonable people will look at your responses to my posts and ponder at how efficiently you've selectively quoted me and not even addressed my arguments. At this point, probably the majority just think you're trolling.
Consider the burden of proof as still being on me all you want, but if you want to convince people that I haven't proven it, then you should actually try rebutting them directly. In another post, you did try once, but you just created a huge contradiction with the rest of his program. As that's a contradiction, I'm not left with anything to argue against from your angle.
Nonsense. His intention to return jurisdiction over abortion to the states doesn't require him to ignore the fact that today, it's a matter over which the federal government claims power. What? Huh? Is that your excuse? I'm in awe. He votes on everything else that the feds claim power over pretty consistently against, completely ignoring your logic above. For that I'm pretty impressed by him. That I found a pretty bad hole in his program doesn't mean those other actions are wrong. The feds are WAY too powerful, and I consider myself pretty far left (though, a decentralizationist left). In fact, he's probably the closest of any of the mainstream candidates to my positions for what the federal government should be doing, Democrats included, though I'm registered Green. I may find it useful to vote for him for the federal government so long as he never touches what the state and local governments do, which I actually believe, other than on the abortion issue, he would do. That he has this flaw is what gives me pause. Their decisions are final.
Oh really? I'm sure that many people in this country will be very distressed to learn that Plessy v. Ferguson is still the law of the land, then. So much for integration. (Oh, wait.. Plessey was overturned in Brown v. Topeka.)
Try again.
-jcr Plessy was the law of the land until Brown. What's your point? Anybody who violated Plessy (although the nature of Plessy is hard to violate, due to its construction and decision) while Plessy was in effect violated the Constitution. They should only have passed the laws after it had been tested by the Supreme Court. As a strict constructionists, you would have to defer to the Supreme Court on the matter before declaring anything Constitutional or not, since that's one of the things the Constitution strictly defines.
There's "shouldn't be unconstitutional/constitutional" and there's "what is unconstitutional/constitutional". The former is what you and I can hold opinions on. The latter is the purview of ONLY the Supreme Court once it has come to a decision on it, as it had done in Roe v Wade. If the Supreme Court hasn't heard it, then it's the lower court's temporary purview, but the question isn't definitely answered until the Supreme Court hears it and decides. And then it is only in effect until and if they overturn it. It's an interesting secular system that goes against what people typically think of if they are religious, but I happen to think it's pretty well thought out!
I'd like for people to step back a little from this thread and look at the parent and the grandparent posts put together.
/. hive-mind regarding Ron Paul.
The parent has taken my post out of context, removed the support for my statement, accused me of being a liar, and then he gets moderated "informative". His "informative" part may be that he does admit that Ron Paul has flip-flopped on the death penalty, but it doesn't seem right that he gets moderated informative thrice, and by that time, my post didn't get moderated informative. I actually linked to and pointed out the characteristics of Ron Paul's actual voting record that didn't mesh with the
If jcr had left my context in, you would note clearly that his post is unjustly maligning my comment. He calls me a liar and NEVER addressed the fact that I pointed out that Ron Paul had voted FOR federal intervention in abortion policy. That CANNOT be denied by any sane person. A ban IS intervention. That was my point that he called me a liar about. Paul SAYS he will leave it up to the states, but he VOTED to not leave it up to the states, repeatedly and in all instances on this particular issue. jcr's comment then is merely a baseless assertion, removed from the damning context, constructed to make it look like the parent post is merely a quick jab. On the contrary, it was a well-considered jab, not to jcr, but to Paul, and one that was backed up, though if you just read his post, you'd think he had a point against me.
I know it's a small portion of the moderators that quickly mod up without understanding context (heck, it was only three of them, though it may be more by now), but in this case, I think the metamoderators will have to take note and mark jcr's comment as clearly an overrated, dishonest attack on my honesty: hypocrisy at its finest.
jcr, next time you try an ad hominem remark, take a step back and consider how it looks. This one doesn't look well-placed. Instead it looks not just false, but reactionary.
I'm going to add a citation here for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison
Very interesting spin you have there, but you haven't succeeded in showing that Ron Paul's votes are inconsistent with his words. Well, I guess you missed it then. That he voted against any facet of abortion is a violation of his position, which is to leave it to the states. If he's not going to leave it to the states, as his record shows, which I pasted into my comment, he's lying.
I thought that part was obvious, but there, I spelled it out for you. A supreme court decision isn't a "supreme law of the land", (as you put it) it's a determination of a particular case, which can set a precedent which may or may not be upheld in subsequent decisions. Wow, that's totally false. Their decisions are final. The buck stops there. It isn't JUST a precedent. They overturn laws with the stroke of a pen. They don't have to wait for the law to change. The law is overturned immediately.