But you haven't given a link to these "government-supplied statistics".
Because, as I clearly stated, I was too busy to bother with it.
You just said that Lott mentioned them.
He did. But he was not the originator of them.
Surely you can see how a skeptic might want an actual link rather than relying on the word of a man who's so dishonest he even lies about his own gender?
(A) You about as much a "skeptic" as I am actually female. Nothing dishonest about that.
(B) This is completely irrelevant and completely removed from the context of your original comment.
I repeat: learn how to argue. You fail at it. Until you do, stop harassing me.
Umm... Blatantly wrong. Cops never HAVE TO read you your rights. If the arrest was legal, they can question you all they want without Miranda. They can't use your answers at trial, that's it. No violation of your rights.
It was a bad example, but the principle is not wrong. According to Miranda v Arizona, the USE IN COURT of statements made during questioning without a Miranda warning is unconstitutional.
So yes, I was wrong in a sense. It would not be the police action that is unconstitutional. It would be the use in court of those statements that was unconstitutional.
That still means my basic point was correct: an act can be unconstitutional.
And it's made much easier by the new FCC regulations, which protect only "lawful" content.
Ideally this would make no difference, as there should no more be a way for an ISP to tell "lawful" from "unlawful" content, than there was for old phone companies to tell "lawful" from "unlawful" phone calls. They're carriers, nothing else. They should have no access to the content of your communications at all, without a warrant.
Quite true, of course. But that's not going to stop this train from moving down this track.
Yes, it will. It's stupid, and people know it's stupid. That's why we're having this conversation today. That's why this idea has gone nowhere since the early '90s, when it was first tried (Clipper Chip + Skipjack). It was stupid then, it is stupid now. Nothing has changed in that regard. Right down to the fact that they're still putting stupid people in charge.
Isn't Lott the guy who was so dishonest that he created a female sock puppet named "Mary Rosh" to defend his work and call Lott "the best professor I ever had"?
Why are you asking me?
And what does it have to do with government-supplied statistics?
Well, here's a statistic that many aren't aware of, but Lott does mention it. And it's a particularly compelling point when speaking to people who cite "other countries, like the UK".
Immediately after the last big gun ban in the UK, in 1998, FIREARMS violence DOUBLED... and stayed way up for 8 years. This is according to UK's own government statistics.
After that, it did start to decline... but at the same rate it was declining in other countries like the US, where gun ownership was going steadily up. So there is no valid argument that lack of guns caused the later decline.
I've argued before about this with people from the UK, who didn't seem to know about these statistics... and who suddenly shut up when they were pointed out. (I'd find a link but I'm too busy right now.)
We don't know if Congress can authorize such an activity.
I think you and GP are basically saying the same thing there: the court did not rule on the Constitutionality. It did not have to.
I look at it this way an activity isn't constitutional or unconstitutional, its legal or illegal; a law, order, process, or procedure could be unconstitutional
An activity can very definitely be unconstitutional. For example: if you're arrested and not read your rights before questioning, your Constitutional rights have been violated. It's not a procedure or policy to do so, nevertheless the officers involved engaged in an unconstitutional act.
The whole thing is silly because it's re-directing the focus to a tiny subset of some archaic historical communication system (phone call metadata).
What's silly about it? Much of the law is all about precedent. In this case, precedent says phone calls (and their metadata) are private, barring a judicial warrant. That's not silly at all... it's quite reasonable.
It's like saying that they shouldn't get to make maps of smoke signal fire pit locations.
It would only be like saying that if the smoke signals were invisible to everybody but the parties at either end plus the "smoke signal carrier", and the smoke signal conversations were therefore intended to be private.
This is all just to distract people from their bulk collection of internet communications; and giving politicians an opportunity to say "see, I'm tough on privacy" without actually accomplishing anything significant.
I disagree, since it's all part of the same conversation.
I heard where pharmacies are sharing prescription data with each other and with doctors to stop people from going from doctor to doctor to get more meds. More prescriptions than any one doctor would let one patient have. It might be required by law in my state.
We have a state pharmacy database which does that. However, the data is not supposed to be commercially available, AND it most definitely is not supposed to be hooked up to any kind of Federal system.
I have been using Firefox on the desktop since it was Netscape. About the only time I fire up Chrome is to check CSS compatibility in a web page. I dislike Chrome very much. Last time I recall checking, the Chrome executable was about 10x (!!!) the size of my Firefox, and slow, slow, slow in comparison.
One of the first things I did when I got an Android phone was disable Chrome and install Firefox.
How long will it be before all our medical histories become public knowledge?
Well, I think there are two important things to note here: first, IANAL but sharing this data between pharmacies without any patient input would appear to be a blatant violation of HIPAA regulations. Second, my state's prescription database is very definitely NOT supposed to be connected to any Federal database. That would be a violation of State law.
I followed the "thread 2" forum for a while. It appears that the effect they are seeing is approximately 2 micronewtons. That's a pretty small effect. This comment was interesting:
I can attest that it is not thermal. It works in a vacuum. It works in a Faraday cage and it works when you reverse the device (the thrust reverses).
from what i recall , it does not defy the laws of physics , it uses a traveling em wave to crate "grip" to the static universal em background field
, this method provides thrust from input power by creating a traveling wave that is out of phase to the external one causing motion , like swimming through the background field using the background field to displace it like a phase drive motor , just that its too easy to miss in the maths
The problem is that theoretically, there is no "background field" to "grip". You appear to be proposing a "universal aether" or maybe "phlogiston". Those aren't exactly groundbreaking ideas.
According to theory the quantum vacuum has virtual particles in it, but that doesn't make it a "fabric" to grip or push against.
I am interested to see what kind of thrust they DO claim to have gotten this time. And I am also curious why they chose to use a lower-power source, rather than trying to replicate the original experiments.
Also remember that the context here was that I pointed out why the people Jane's disagreeing with might claim to have studied something for years, even though their absurd conclusions might suggest otherwise to students of the Constitution like Jane Q. Public.
I doubt the average reasonable person would, on reading the original comment this is about, conclude that it referred to "other people".
Do you believe the EPA should not be able to restrict the high-pressure injection of toxic chemicals into the aquifer because the information isn't "public"?
We agree on many things, but this isn't one of them.
The EPA clearly (at least at present) has jurisdiction over polluted groundwater. That's the kind of thing it was created for.
Industry is not "allowed" to pollute groundwater just because its use of the pollutant is a "trade secret". That's not how it works. This is about the basis of regulations. If the public and "reasonably reproducible" science says (thin air example) isofurans above 20ppb are harmful to health, they can be regulated.
That means they could not be released into groundwater, "trade secret" or not. (Not that I am any fan of EPA... I have had far too much experience with it to think it is our friend.)
Look, I'm a big fan of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning too, but when you have corporations with vested interests in keeping information away from the public, forcing the government to only be able to act on information that's public will only let them run further amok.
That's really not how it is written. I suggest you read the actual bill.
Ad-hominem? Where? Do you even know what that term means?
Yes, indeed. Apparently better than you do. It still applies even when the argument is implied rather than stated explicitly.
I know who you are, and I understood the context of your comment just fine, even if other readers here don't. Hey, there's a word for you: context. Do you even know what the term means?
What they'd fail to realize, of course, is that compulsively stuffing their brains full of conspiracy theory nonsense isn't the same as "studying".
Of course, there will also always be those who claim any skepticism or examination of facts outside the mainstream "official" story is "conspiracy theory". Despite the fact that skeptics have in fact routed out skullduggery and real conspiracy a rather alarming number of times throughout history, and despite the fact that they have not studied those issues themselves.
Or those who don't realize that many individuals acting to the same purpose, in all good will and without coordination, can have the effect of conspiracy even where there is none.
I know you haven't been a student of the Constitution or its history. I have been. You can call that "conspiracy theory" all you like but that doesn't make it so.
Unless you are confusing the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence (which would surprise me not at all). The latter was, indeed, a grand conspiracy.
Take your ad-hominem and shove it right up there where the sun doesn't shine. Because that's where it came from, and that's where it properly belongs.
This article in Discover magazine about Jack Bitterly's* desire to use new flywheel technologies to power automobiles, is what got me excited about choosing engineering as a college major.
It's more practical than a large weight and can be built anywhere unlike pumped hydro (which needs hilly terrain and space for a reservoir).
Not necessarily. It's possible to do pumped hydro in the ocean, pretty much anywhere on a continental shelf: pour a (BIG) cylinder of reinforced concrete, and pump water out of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Since I am a skeptic, you're claiming to be female once again.
Logic fail. No surprise.
My statement allowed for at least two logical possibilities. That very definitely was not the one I meant.
Goodbye.
But you haven't given a link to these "government-supplied statistics".
Because, as I clearly stated, I was too busy to bother with it.
You just said that Lott mentioned them.
He did. But he was not the originator of them.
Surely you can see how a skeptic might want an actual link rather than relying on the word of a man who's so dishonest he even lies about his own gender?
(A) You about as much a "skeptic" as I am actually female. Nothing dishonest about that.
(B) This is completely irrelevant and completely removed from the context of your original comment.
I repeat: learn how to argue. You fail at it. Until you do, stop harassing me.
Umm... Blatantly wrong. Cops never HAVE TO read you your rights. If the arrest was legal, they can question you all they want without Miranda. They can't use your answers at trial, that's it. No violation of your rights.
It was a bad example, but the principle is not wrong. According to Miranda v Arizona, the USE IN COURT of statements made during questioning without a Miranda warning is unconstitutional.
So yes, I was wrong in a sense. It would not be the police action that is unconstitutional. It would be the use in court of those statements that was unconstitutional.
That still means my basic point was correct: an act can be unconstitutional.
And it's made much easier by the new FCC regulations, which protect only "lawful" content.
Ideally this would make no difference, as there should no more be a way for an ISP to tell "lawful" from "unlawful" content, than there was for old phone companies to tell "lawful" from "unlawful" phone calls. They're carriers, nothing else. They should have no access to the content of your communications at all, without a warrant.
Quite true, of course. But that's not going to stop this train from moving down this track.
Yes, it will. It's stupid, and people know it's stupid. That's why we're having this conversation today. That's why this idea has gone nowhere since the early '90s, when it was first tried (Clipper Chip + Skipjack). It was stupid then, it is stupid now. Nothing has changed in that regard. Right down to the fact that they're still putting stupid people in charge.
Isn't Lott the guy who was so dishonest that he created a female sock puppet named "Mary Rosh" to defend his work and call Lott "the best professor I ever had"?
Why are you asking me?
And what does it have to do with government-supplied statistics?
Well, here's a statistic that many aren't aware of, but Lott does mention it. And it's a particularly compelling point when speaking to people who cite "other countries, like the UK".
Immediately after the last big gun ban in the UK, in 1998, FIREARMS violence DOUBLED... and stayed way up for 8 years. This is according to UK's own government statistics.
After that, it did start to decline... but at the same rate it was declining in other countries like the US, where gun ownership was going steadily up. So there is no valid argument that lack of guns caused the later decline.
I've argued before about this with people from the UK, who didn't seem to know about these statistics... and who suddenly shut up when they were pointed out. (I'd find a link but I'm too busy right now.)
TLA: the Terrible Liars Agency.
It can supplant the NSA, TSA, DHS, DOJ... hell, we might just make it the whole of the Obama administration.
We don't know if Congress can authorize such an activity.
I think you and GP are basically saying the same thing there: the court did not rule on the Constitutionality. It did not have to.
I look at it this way an activity isn't constitutional or unconstitutional, its legal or illegal; a law, order, process, or procedure could be unconstitutional
An activity can very definitely be unconstitutional. For example: if you're arrested and not read your rights before questioning, your Constitutional rights have been violated. It's not a procedure or policy to do so, nevertheless the officers involved engaged in an unconstitutional act.
The whole thing is silly because it's re-directing the focus to a tiny subset of some archaic historical communication system (phone call metadata).
What's silly about it? Much of the law is all about precedent. In this case, precedent says phone calls (and their metadata) are private, barring a judicial warrant. That's not silly at all... it's quite reasonable.
It's like saying that they shouldn't get to make maps of smoke signal fire pit locations.
It would only be like saying that if the smoke signals were invisible to everybody but the parties at either end plus the "smoke signal carrier", and the smoke signal conversations were therefore intended to be private.
This is all just to distract people from their bulk collection of internet communications; and giving politicians an opportunity to say "see, I'm tough on privacy" without actually accomplishing anything significant.
I disagree, since it's all part of the same conversation.
Quantum effects really start dominating when insulator or in some cases semiconductor (which acts as insulator) layers get to about 6 atoms thick.
Still a way to go.
Trek is Space Opera. You won't find SciFi there.
Space Opera is a form of Science Fiction. Therefore, even if you were correct that it is Space Opera, it is still Sci-Fi.
I heard where pharmacies are sharing prescription data with each other and with doctors to stop people from going from doctor to doctor to get more meds. More prescriptions than any one doctor would let one patient have. It might be required by law in my state.
We have a state pharmacy database which does that. However, the data is not supposed to be commercially available, AND it most definitely is not supposed to be hooked up to any kind of Federal system.
I have been using Firefox on the desktop since it was Netscape. About the only time I fire up Chrome is to check CSS compatibility in a web page. I dislike Chrome very much. Last time I recall checking, the Chrome executable was about 10x (!!!) the size of my Firefox, and slow, slow, slow in comparison.
One of the first things I did when I got an Android phone was disable Chrome and install Firefox.
How long will it be before all our medical histories become public knowledge?
Well, I think there are two important things to note here: first, IANAL but sharing this data between pharmacies without any patient input would appear to be a blatant violation of HIPAA regulations. Second, my state's prescription database is very definitely NOT supposed to be connected to any Federal database. That would be a violation of State law.
I can attest that it is not thermal. It works in a vacuum. It works in a Faraday cage and it works when you reverse the device (the thrust reverses).
from what i recall , it does not defy the laws of physics , it uses a traveling em wave to crate "grip" to the static universal em background field , this method provides thrust from input power by creating a traveling wave that is out of phase to the external one causing motion , like swimming through the background field using the background field to displace it like a phase drive motor , just that its too easy to miss in the maths
The problem is that theoretically, there is no "background field" to "grip". You appear to be proposing a "universal aether" or maybe "phlogiston". Those aren't exactly groundbreaking ideas.
According to theory the quantum vacuum has virtual particles in it, but that doesn't make it a "fabric" to grip or push against.
I am interested to see what kind of thrust they DO claim to have gotten this time. And I am also curious why they chose to use a lower-power source, rather than trying to replicate the original experiments.
Also remember that the context here was that I pointed out why the people Jane's disagreeing with might claim to have studied something for years, even though their absurd conclusions might suggest otherwise to students of the Constitution like Jane Q. Public.
I doubt the average reasonable person would, on reading the original comment this is about, conclude that it referred to "other people".
And make no mistake, this bill is written by corporate lobbyists, which to me is enough to disqualify it entirely.
I've read the bill, and it looks completely reasonable to me. I don't much care who wrote it; I only care about what's in it.
(Certainly who wrote it might cause enough alarm to justify actually reading it, but it isn't excuse to damn it without reading it.)
Remember, an earlier draft of this bill forbade government agencies from using scientific "models".
No, it didn't. It merely required whatever models are used to be made public.
Do you believe the EPA should not be able to restrict the high-pressure injection of toxic chemicals into the aquifer because the information isn't "public"?
We agree on many things, but this isn't one of them.
The EPA clearly (at least at present) has jurisdiction over polluted groundwater. That's the kind of thing it was created for.
Industry is not "allowed" to pollute groundwater just because its use of the pollutant is a "trade secret". That's not how it works. This is about the basis of regulations. If the public and "reasonably reproducible" science says (thin air example) isofurans above 20ppb are harmful to health, they can be regulated.
That means they could not be released into groundwater, "trade secret" or not. (Not that I am any fan of EPA... I have had far too much experience with it to think it is our friend.)
Look, I'm a big fan of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning too, but when you have corporations with vested interests in keeping information away from the public, forcing the government to only be able to act on information that's public will only let them run further amok.
That's really not how it is written. I suggest you read the actual bill.
This.
Mod up.
Ad-hominem? Where? Do you even know what that term means?
Yes, indeed. Apparently better than you do. It still applies even when the argument is implied rather than stated explicitly.
I know who you are, and I understood the context of your comment just fine, even if other readers here don't. Hey, there's a word for you: context. Do you even know what the term means?
What they'd fail to realize, of course, is that compulsively stuffing their brains full of conspiracy theory nonsense isn't the same as "studying".
Of course, there will also always be those who claim any skepticism or examination of facts outside the mainstream "official" story is "conspiracy theory". Despite the fact that skeptics have in fact routed out skullduggery and real conspiracy a rather alarming number of times throughout history, and despite the fact that they have not studied those issues themselves.
Or those who don't realize that many individuals acting to the same purpose, in all good will and without coordination, can have the effect of conspiracy even where there is none.
I know you haven't been a student of the Constitution or its history. I have been. You can call that "conspiracy theory" all you like but that doesn't make it so.
Unless you are confusing the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence (which would surprise me not at all). The latter was, indeed, a grand conspiracy.
Take your ad-hominem and shove it right up there where the sun doesn't shine. Because that's where it came from, and that's where it properly belongs.
This article in Discover magazine about Jack Bitterly's* desire to use new flywheel technologies to power automobiles, is what got me excited about choosing engineering as a college major.
They've actually been around for a long time.
Have you even imagined what permitting such a thing is like? You could only do it in the country, and only where the lay of the land permits it.
I wasn't exactly proposing to use it in an apartment. It was just some thoughts about what is possible, not what is practical everywhere.
It's more practical than a large weight and can be built anywhere unlike pumped hydro (which needs hilly terrain and space for a reservoir).
Not necessarily. It's possible to do pumped hydro in the ocean, pretty much anywhere on a continental shelf: pour a (BIG) cylinder of reinforced concrete, and pump water out of it.
It's hardly compact, though.