The countries that usually turn up at the top of quality of living rankings are also marked by a great deal of political centralism. The U.S., for all of the supposed promise in its states' rights ideals, is pretty far down the list. They are also about the size (geographically and demographically) of an average state. Comparing Belgium to the US is similar to comparing Chicago to California. The US more accurately is comparable to the EU. So, you are saying that some states that aren't associated with a federation do a better job of quality of living than the federation that is the US. Has any of these quality of living ranking lists done one which compares individual states of the US to countries on the list?
This is completely dismissing the fact that every one of those "quality of life" lists I have seen has had a couple of items that they weigh pretty heavily that I consider to be questionable.
The Federal Communications Commission has made clear, Cohen writes, that cable service is not a common carrier and therefore is not subject to common carrier guidelines.
So that means they're responsible for what passes over their lines, right? Gonna be interesting. No, it doesn't. As has been discussed here on/. before there is a law that specifically exempts ISP's from being legally responsible for what passes over their lines. However, by choosing to block certain traffic, Comcast may be voluntarily giving up that exemption (the law in question exempts ISP's that do not regulate the content that they transmit, once they start regulating what content they transmit,at some point they stop qualifying for the exemption. Exactly what constitutes losing the exemption has yet to be ruled by a court).
Forget the problem of the fact that everything is moving, when we think about time as another dimension like length, width, and height, we forget that in addition to having length, width and height, each of us is so many units of time. So, if you are going to move back in time, you have to move your whole amount of time, not just the bit in the present. Just like you can't move just your knee across the room without inflicting major pain (and then, how do you put it back?), so you could not move just your present into the past without causing major pain. As for moving your whole stretch of time, I can think of a whole host of problems, the first being that you are attached to two other people at one end.
No, I actually still don't see the problem. The 5 dollar charge covers everything you might ever wish to download. It changes a murky legal situation into something akin to an all-you-can-eat buffet. It allows the artists to be compensated for making music. And it's a proposal, subject to negotiation. Overall, I think it's a workable idea that solves a significant problem in a reasonable way.
I could possibly have seen your point a little better if you didn't use a totally inapplicable lawn ornament analogy. Since it was completely unrelated, I ignored it. Even at the prices the Record, Movie and TV industries charge. I am not interested in downloading $5 worth of content a month. That is $60 a year. I am pretty sure that my CD and DVD collection cost me less than $60 a year to acquire, even if you include the CD's I bought directly from the artist(I don't think any of these were RIAA signed artists, so they wouldn't be covered under this anyway). I don't download music or movies.
So, how would this system be fair to me? I would be required to pay $60 a year for a service I neither want nor use.
I hope the Republicans in this state realize their mistakes with this race and throw Oberweis under a bus before the November election. He won the primary for that election, too, so we'll have a repeat of Oberweis vs. Foster in November unless they fix this. I wouldn't bet on it. The area I live in was overwhelmingly Republican. One election, the local County Commission Chair get the Republican nomination. He was a complete party hack, who has failed repeatedly to get elected to higher office. He was defeated handily by the Democrat, who promised to vote against any tax increases. She promptly cast the deciding vote on a tax increase. She was the last vote, if she had voted as she had promised it would not have passed. The Congressional District was outraged. The next election, the Republican Party ran the party hack again and despite the voter outrage, he still almost lost. After she lost a lot of stuff came out about her husband's involvement in some corrupt political deals (it probably would have come out then even if she had won, it was connected to an investigation of a different corrupt politician). In the following election, the Democrats ran a better candidate who beat the Republican hack and holds the office to this day, even though the overwhelming majority of local and state offices are held by Republicans.
I will never understand why open source enthusiasts get so angry when Microsoft starts giving things away for free. Has anyone ever stopped to think that this antitrust thing is the reason windows is such an underpowered POS? Maybe this is why they aren't able to give away decent developer tools, standardized antivirus, or a decent package management system.
Mircosoft does a lot of bad things, but giving away software is not one of them. Microsoft gave away IE because by giving it away they could giver their web development software a competitive advantage. The market for software to write web pages was much more lucrative than the market for web browsers. Additionally, Netscape developed an operating system agnostic user interface. Microsoft recognized that if Netscape continued to expand eventually it would replace the UI provided by the Microsoft operating system and then people would be able to switch operating systems without the typical User noticing any difference.
How does the mental health system work in the USA?
I can't imagine a user-pays approach would work well for people with metal problems.
The user-pays approach has nothing to do with any problems with the mental health system in the USA. In the '70's the courts ruled that unless you can prove (by a somewhat looser definition of prove than the criminal code) that someone is a danger to himself or others, you cannot force them to receive treatment. I have never known of a case of someone who wanted treatment for a mental health problem being unable to receive it.
As for the poster who replied that the mental health professionals pushed pills on him, that's because he went to a medical practitioner. If you don't want pills, you need to go to someone who is in the field of psychology, not the field of psychiatry.
Forget international, what do they intend to do about Tennessee websites? This was a law proposed by a Kentucky state lawmaker, not a US Congressman from Kentucky. If this law passes, there won't be any websites that allow users' to post in Kentucky by the following week, they'll all move out of state. Of course it is still a bad law that should be opposed.
I think you would find it hard to come up with valid reasons for people to be trespassing, since trespassing is a crime. If you had rtfa you would know that he harasses people who are hanging out on private property. It even appears from the article that he might have standing to act to drive trespassers from the property. He is on the board of the day care center that owns the property. At least, the article leaves one with that impression, it wasn't clear from the article whether the daycare center owns the property or merely rents it. If it is the former he has decent legal standing for the actions he is taking, if it is the latter, his legal standing is much more problematical.
Obama will likely fare slightly better in the caucus in Texas, only because the core of the Democrat party--the baby boomers who constitute the majority of Hillary supporters--had families to get back to and jobs they had to get up for the next morning. Hillary supporters simply didn't have the ability to "two-step" all the way into the early morning hours, while it apparently is far easier for the young, first time voters who make up Obama's base to spend literally six hours of their time at their local middle school or fire station.
You do realize that baby boomers are starting to enter retirement? Not many baby boomers have children they have to get back to. Hilary is actually a fairly typical baby boomer in this regard. When was the last time she had to get home to take care of Chelsea? The first baby boomer in the US applied for social security benefits in October of last year. Now most of the baby boomers do have jobs to get up for in the morning, so that part still applies.
There are two major differences between Cuba and China. The first is that there is a large ex patriot community of Cubans living in the US who have become US citizens and are strongly opposed to the current regime in Cuba. This group of people mostly live in Florida and vote against anyone who is not sufficiently anti-Castro. There is no similar group of Chinese in the US.
Second, (and the reason the embargo was created in the first place) when Castro took over in Cuba, he appropriated a large amount of property formerly owned by Americans without giving them any compensation. This is the reason the embargo was created in the first place. The first is the reason the embargo has continued. There was no similar US investment in China before the Communists took power.
As to whether or not Cuba would allow American corporations back in, no one knows. It has been illegal for American companies to do business with Cuba since Castro took over with no evidence that that law will change.
First off, you say modern western civilization, do you include the US in that? All polls I have heard indicate that somewhere in excess of 78% of US citizens consider themselves Christian. So, the US at least does not qualify as a society that. I am guessing that you consider Canada to be part of Western Civilization, yet over 70% of Canadians consider themselves religious. So exactly what society are you using as an example of one that did away with religion and was improved, because the US and Canada are societies that are from doing away with religion.
The idea of separation of church and state entered modern thought in 1525 when the Swiss Brethren rejected the right of the Zürich City Council to tell them the correct way to worship. So, separation of church and state was an idea that was developed by people with religious convictions.
You obviously haven't studied the abolitionist movement. The abolition of slavery was championed by people with very strong religious convictions and their objection to slavery grew out of their religious convictions. In the US, the overwhelming majority of those responsible for the abolition of slavery were evangelical protestants. I am unaware of any non-religious person who was active in the abolitionist movement.
The concepts of individualism, personal freedom and rights is based on the principle of the supreme and intrinsic value of the individual human being. This principle is clearly expressed in the New Testament.
I do not know anything about the abolition of religious schools for aboriginals, but question what evidence that shows the connection between that action and the improvement of their lives. What evidence do you ahve to support that assertion?
I am sorry, but you have failed to make your case about a society that was improved by eliminating religion for two reasons. First, you have failed to list a society that has eliminated religion. Second, most of the points that you credit to the absence of religion are actually the actions of religious people acting on the basis of their religious convictions.
I'd say both sides knew it would never work the way it was intended, but it doesn't really matter. They only have less than a year left anyways. This is another project like Reagan's favorite pet project the STAR WARS DEFENSE INITIATIVE. Good thing we spent shitpiles of money on that. I feel safe knowing that we can knock down all those pesky Soviet missiles. And yes, the Bush administration was responding to what the public wanted - not by coming up with an effective solution, but doing the "feel good" solution that sounds great on paper, but never quite works out in reality. I mean, what company is not going to take a billion dollar contract from the government, even if they think it isn't exactly feasible? They will just end up asking for more money in the end. You do know that SDI is where the technology they just used to shoot a broken satellite down came from? You do know that the deployment of SDI in Eastern Europe is what Putin has been complaining about for the last two years? In other words that STAR WARS DEFENSE INITIATIVE is becoming practical at about the time that Reagan predicted it would at significantly less cost than its critics predicted.
The idea of using the courts to fix the problem is interesting, since the courts created the problem in the first place. Software patents didn't exist in the '70's. In 1980 the Supreme Court ruled that a device that included software could be patented, forcing the Patent Office to change its policies. In 1998 the Federal Circuit Court ruled that not only software was patentable, but business methods were as well. This last ruling is the source of the problem. I am not sure if the best action is in the courts or in the legislature. The only way to get it to change through the courts is by a Federal Circuit or Supreme Court ruling.
In the latter case it's used as the wedge [wedge document that is] to try to confuse the layman into thinking that evolution is by definition atheistic in nature.
And this is exactly what confuses me about the creationist/intelligent design movement. The people behind it are obviously well educated. Why deliberately lie about evolution just to get people to believe in creationism? Maybe they aren't really interested in christianity, but only want to push their own theory? Maybe they use christians to make believers in creationism/ID, instead of appealing to creationism/ID-believers to make christians feel better. Is it that much money to be made from selling "educational" material?
Except that the idea that evolution is inherently atheistic didn't start with creationists. It started with evolutionists who were atheists. Look up Thomas Huxley (aka Darwin's Bulldog) http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/huxleyt.html (I am sorry that I can't find the quotes right now that more clearly show that Huxley, at least in part, promoted Darwinistic evolution because it supported his disbelief in God), a contemporary of Charles Darwin. The problem is that certain atheists continually use evolution as a method in discrediting religion. Considering that one of the foremost proponents of evolution today is Richard Dawkins, an evangelical atheist, this is still true. As long as atheists continue to use evolution as a wedge to attempt to discredit Christianity, there will be Christians who will use atheism as a wedge to discredit evolution.
No, it is not the divine command theory. Although that is close. If there is no absolute standard for "good", then "moral" is a meaningless word. If there is no God, where do you find an absolute standard for "good". I have taken philosophy classes and read philosophy. I have yet to hear of a "moral" code that is not based on the existence of divinity that calls for a man who has made good his escape from those who are pursuing him in order to torture him to death to turn back and save one of those pursuers from drowning at the expense of his escape.
The original poster suggested that society would be better off without religion. I gave evidence of societies that were clearly worse after religion was removed, please feel free to give an example of a society that was improved.
, and I am completely tolerant of what others choose to believe. As long as it is kept to themselves. sorry to respond to this so rapidly, but I missed something in your comment to right after I hit submit.
Based on the above statement, you are tolerant of others beliefs as long as they don't believe that you would be better off if you shared their belief. Talk about trying to force your beliefs on others. "It doesn't matter what you believe, so go ahead and believe whatever you want....except that it matters what you believe."
, and I am completely tolerant of what others choose to believe. As long as it is kept to themselves. and yet, you think it is offensive that some people make money by catering to beliefs that you disagree with.
But the sooner we ditch these archaic concepts ingrained in the major monotheistic religions the better off we will be.
Yeah, look how much better off people were in Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia. We will all be so much better off when we get rid of those archaic ideas of human dignity and the worth of individuals ingrained in Judaism and Christianity./s
Learn a little something from history. Every political movement that has attempted to build a society without religion has resulted in horrific mistreatment of human beings.
I wonder if anyone else notices how intolerant you are of people who have different beliefs from yourself?
Slashdot Mirror
This is completely dismissing the fact that every one of those "quality of life" lists I have seen has had a couple of items that they weigh pretty heavily that I consider to be questionable.
If McCain had associated with a minister who was a white supremacist and KKK supporter, he would have been kicked out, just like that.
Exactly -- that's why Strom Thurmond had such a short political career.
Why use a dead man to make your point? There is a much better example living and serving in the US Senate today: Senator Robert "KKK" Byrd, D-WVASo that means they're responsible for what passes over their lines, right? Gonna be interesting. No, it doesn't. As has been discussed here on
Forget the problem of the fact that everything is moving, when we think about time as another dimension like length, width, and height, we forget that in addition to having length, width and height, each of us is so many units of time. So, if you are going to move back in time, you have to move your whole amount of time, not just the bit in the present. Just like you can't move just your knee across the room without inflicting major pain (and then, how do you put it back?), so you could not move just your present into the past without causing major pain. As for moving your whole stretch of time, I can think of a whole host of problems, the first being that you are attached to two other people at one end.
I could possibly have seen your point a little better if you didn't use a totally inapplicable lawn ornament analogy. Since it was completely unrelated, I ignored it. Even at the prices the Record, Movie and TV industries charge. I am not interested in downloading $5 worth of content a month. That is $60 a year. I am pretty sure that my CD and DVD collection cost me less than $60 a year to acquire, even if you include the CD's I bought directly from the artist(I don't think any of these were RIAA signed artists, so they wouldn't be covered under this anyway). I don't download music or movies.
So, how would this system be fair to me? I would be required to pay $60 a year for a service I neither want nor use.
I hope the Republicans in this state realize their mistakes with this race and throw Oberweis under a bus before the November election. He won the primary for that election, too, so we'll have a repeat of Oberweis vs. Foster in November unless they fix this.
I wouldn't bet on it. The area I live in was overwhelmingly Republican. One election, the local County Commission Chair get the Republican nomination. He was a complete party hack, who has failed repeatedly to get elected to higher office. He was defeated handily by the Democrat, who promised to vote against any tax increases. She promptly cast the deciding vote on a tax increase. She was the last vote, if she had voted as she had promised it would not have passed. The Congressional District was outraged. The next election, the Republican Party ran the party hack again and despite the voter outrage, he still almost lost. After she lost a lot of stuff came out about her husband's involvement in some corrupt political deals (it probably would have come out then even if she had won, it was connected to an investigation of a different corrupt politician). In the following election, the Democrats ran a better candidate who beat the Republican hack and holds the office to this day, even though the overwhelming majority of local and state offices are held by Republicans.
Mircosoft does a lot of bad things, but giving away software is not one of them. Microsoft gave away IE because by giving it away they could giver their web development software a competitive advantage. The market for software to write web pages was much more lucrative than the market for web browsers. Additionally, Netscape developed an operating system agnostic user interface. Microsoft recognized that if Netscape continued to expand eventually it would replace the UI provided by the Microsoft operating system and then people would be able to switch operating systems without the typical User noticing any difference.
I can't imagine a user-pays approach would work well for people with metal problems.
The user-pays approach has nothing to do with any problems with the mental health system in the USA. In the '70's the courts ruled that unless you can prove (by a somewhat looser definition of prove than the criminal code) that someone is a danger to himself or others, you cannot force them to receive treatment. I have never known of a case of someone who wanted treatment for a mental health problem being unable to receive it.As for the poster who replied that the mental health professionals pushed pills on him, that's because he went to a medical practitioner. If you don't want pills, you need to go to someone who is in the field of psychology, not the field of psychiatry.
Forget international, what do they intend to do about Tennessee websites? This was a law proposed by a Kentucky state lawmaker, not a US Congressman from Kentucky. If this law passes, there won't be any websites that allow users' to post in Kentucky by the following week, they'll all move out of state. Of course it is still a bad law that should be opposed.
I think you would find it hard to come up with valid reasons for people to be trespassing, since trespassing is a crime. If you had rtfa you would know that he harasses people who are hanging out on private property. It even appears from the article that he might have standing to act to drive trespassers from the property. He is on the board of the day care center that owns the property. At least, the article leaves one with that impression, it wasn't clear from the article whether the daycare center owns the property or merely rents it. If it is the former he has decent legal standing for the actions he is taking, if it is the latter, his legal standing is much more problematical.
The reason that the USPTO grants software and business method patents is because the courts told them they had to.
Obama will likely fare slightly better in the caucus in Texas, only because the core of the Democrat party--the baby boomers who constitute the majority of Hillary supporters--had families to get back to and jobs they had to get up for the next morning. Hillary supporters simply didn't have the ability to "two-step" all the way into the early morning hours, while it apparently is far easier for the young, first time voters who make up Obama's base to spend literally six hours of their time at their local middle school or fire station.
You do realize that baby boomers are starting to enter retirement? Not many baby boomers have children they have to get back to. Hilary is actually a fairly typical baby boomer in this regard. When was the last time she had to get home to take care of Chelsea? The first baby boomer in the US applied for social security benefits in October of last year. Now most of the baby boomers do have jobs to get up for in the morning, so that part still applies.
There are two major differences between Cuba and China. The first is that there is a large ex patriot community of Cubans living in the US who have become US citizens and are strongly opposed to the current regime in Cuba. This group of people mostly live in Florida and vote against anyone who is not sufficiently anti-Castro. There is no similar group of Chinese in the US.
Second, (and the reason the embargo was created in the first place) when Castro took over in Cuba, he appropriated a large amount of property formerly owned by Americans without giving them any compensation. This is the reason the embargo was created in the first place. The first is the reason the embargo has continued. There was no similar US investment in China before the Communists took power.
As to whether or not Cuba would allow American corporations back in, no one knows. It has been illegal for American companies to do business with Cuba since Castro took over with no evidence that that law will change.
First off, you say modern western civilization, do you include the US in that? All polls I have heard indicate that somewhere in excess of 78% of US citizens consider themselves Christian. So, the US at least does not qualify as a society that. I am guessing that you consider Canada to be part of Western Civilization, yet over 70% of Canadians consider themselves religious. So exactly what society are you using as an example of one that did away with religion and was improved, because the US and Canada are societies that are from doing away with religion.
The idea of separation of church and state entered modern thought in 1525 when the Swiss Brethren rejected the right of the Zürich City Council to tell them the correct way to worship. So, separation of church and state was an idea that was developed by people with religious convictions.
You obviously haven't studied the abolitionist movement. The abolition of slavery was championed by people with very strong religious convictions and their objection to slavery grew out of their religious convictions. In the US, the overwhelming majority of those responsible for the abolition of slavery were evangelical protestants. I am unaware of any non-religious person who was active in the abolitionist movement.
The concepts of individualism, personal freedom and rights is based on the principle of the supreme and intrinsic value of the individual human being. This principle is clearly expressed in the New Testament.
I do not know anything about the abolition of religious schools for aboriginals, but question what evidence that shows the connection between that action and the improvement of their lives. What evidence do you ahve to support that assertion?
I am sorry, but you have failed to make your case about a society that was improved by eliminating religion for two reasons. First, you have failed to list a society that has eliminated religion. Second, most of the points that you credit to the absence of religion are actually the actions of religious people acting on the basis of their religious convictions.
Considering that hand grenades were invented in the 15th century, your great grandfather lived a long time ago.
The idea of using the courts to fix the problem is interesting, since the courts created the problem in the first place. Software patents didn't exist in the '70's. In 1980 the Supreme Court ruled that a device that included software could be patented, forcing the Patent Office to change its policies. In 1998 the Federal Circuit Court ruled that not only software was patentable, but business methods were as well. This last ruling is the source of the problem. I am not sure if the best action is in the courts or in the legislature. The only way to get it to change through the courts is by a Federal Circuit or Supreme Court ruling.
And this is exactly what confuses me about the creationist/intelligent design movement. The people behind it are obviously well educated. Why deliberately lie about evolution just to get people to believe in creationism? Maybe they aren't really interested in christianity, but only want to push their own theory? Maybe they use christians to make believers in creationism/ID, instead of appealing to creationism/ID-believers to make christians feel better. Is it that much money to be made from selling "educational" material?
Except that the idea that evolution is inherently atheistic didn't start with creationists. It started with evolutionists who were atheists. Look up Thomas Huxley (aka Darwin's Bulldog) http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/huxleyt.html (I am sorry that I can't find the quotes right now that more clearly show that Huxley, at least in part, promoted Darwinistic evolution because it supported his disbelief in God), a contemporary of Charles Darwin. The problem is that certain atheists continually use evolution as a method in discrediting religion. Considering that one of the foremost proponents of evolution today is Richard Dawkins, an evangelical atheist, this is still true. As long as atheists continue to use evolution as a wedge to attempt to discredit Christianity, there will be Christians who will use atheism as a wedge to discredit evolution.No, it is not the divine command theory. Although that is close. If there is no absolute standard for "good", then "moral" is a meaningless word. If there is no God, where do you find an absolute standard for "good". I have taken philosophy classes and read philosophy. I have yet to hear of a "moral" code that is not based on the existence of divinity that calls for a man who has made good his escape from those who are pursuing him in order to torture him to death to turn back and save one of those pursuers from drowning at the expense of his escape.
What is morality? What does it mean to be moral? If there is no deity the word moral has no meaning.
The original poster suggested that society would be better off without religion. I gave evidence of societies that were clearly worse after religion was removed, please feel free to give an example of a society that was improved.
Yeah, please give me an example of a theocratic ruler who killed more than 5 million of his citizens.
Based on the above statement, you are tolerant of others beliefs as long as they don't believe that you would be better off if you shared their belief. Talk about trying to force your beliefs on others. "It doesn't matter what you believe, so go ahead and believe whatever you want....except that it matters what you believe."
But the sooner we ditch these archaic concepts ingrained in the major monotheistic religions the better off we will be.
Yeah, look how much better off people were in Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia. We will all be so much better off when we get rid of those archaic ideas of human dignity and the worth of individuals ingrained in Judaism and Christianity.
Learn a little something from history. Every political movement that has attempted to build a society without religion has resulted in horrific mistreatment of human beings.
I wonder if anyone else notices how intolerant you are of people who have different beliefs from yourself?