John McCain, you've voted for a law to legalize torture for suspected enemy combatants. Do you regret that decision? Does your decision imply that the actions of your captors in North Vietnam were appropriate?
I wish I had mod points. The McCain Torture Ban, as written, is an absolute ban on torture. The "legalization" you refer to comes from a "signing statement" by President Bush. A signing statement is when the President signs a bill into law and says "Part X of the law is unclear, so I'm going to interpret it to mean Y." In this case, President Bush said "The part of the Torture Ban about whether torture is banned is unclear, so I'm going to interpret it to mean 'Torture is NOT banned.'" John McCain waved the bullshit flag. A day or so after the signing statement was made public, McCain was asked about it and said, "If Bush didn't like the bill, he should have vetoed it" and then promised that if he was elected, he wouldn't make any signing statements at all. John McCain is NOT in favor of torture.
John McCain, you were neck deep in what was up till now the biggest banking scandal and bailout in US history. Does this experience give you any special insight into the current credit crisis?
Yeah, he's got special insight into banking scandals. That's why he cosponsored a bill to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac far more strictly in 2005. If the Democrats hadn't blocked that bill, the companies wouldn't have melted down. Of course, if the Democrats hadn't blocked that bill, they wouldn't have been able to give so much to Democrats in campaign contributions.
So my question is whether they were still using a BSD derived stack at that time and if so whether anyone knows if the bug was fixed unknowingly or knowingly (eg, whether in refactoring the code they just happened to fix it OR whether they found a bug and kept quiet).
So you're saying that in 1998, before the whole anti-trust thing, MS had the opportunity to cast fear in the hearts of people who use other systems with BSD stacks, uncertainty in the hearts of people maintain them, and doubt in the hearts of people who are in charge of buying them? And that's EXACTLY how the Slashdot story would have gone down.
Also would the GPL have prevented BSD maintaining this bug for so long?
No. The thing that "gets bugs fixed faster," for lack of a better term, is that anyone can see the code. BSD lets anyone see the code too. (For example, MS saw the code and used it in their operating systems.) The difference between BSD and GPL is that the GPL license applies to any project something GPL'ed is included in. (If it was GPL'ed, and MS used it, they would have had to distribute the source code to all of Windows. And if MS's networking libraries depend on code from their network stack being compiled into them, it would be impossible to write a networked closed source program for Windows.) From a technical standpoint, a BSD licesns and a GPL license are exactly the same. The differences between the two are political.
Land IS managed, though. At one point, all the land belonged a government. The government sold some of it, and gave more of it away, and also kept some of it. It issued documents, called "deeds," to all the land it gave away or sold. And to this day, in order to receive land, you get the deed from its current owner. If you own land, your local government has a copy of that deed on file.
Land is a limited resource, and is managed like other things that are limited, including the radio spectrum. What exactly is the problem here?
Of course they can. But it's not illegal to sell someone milk, even if they are lactose intolerant. It's the person's responsibility to know they can't handle milk.
I can just hear you asking, "But wait! Kids don't realize that their allergens are bad for them. We currently handle selling video games EXACTLY how we handle selling milk: Making the kids PARENTS responsible for preventing them from getting their hands on things that their parents think are bad for them.
I'm not the original person who you were debating this with, but I don't understand where you're coming from. The guy who you're arguing with seems to work for a company as a programmer. Sure, HE gets paid a salary based on the service (programming) he provides. But the way the company he works for gets the money that pays his salary is by selling copies of the software he wrote. If the software is written well enough/not complex enough* that it doesn't need support once it's in the customer's hands, how is the company he works for supposed to make the money they need to pay him a salary?
*Most consumer software should fit this standard. Games, office software, and pretty much anything a non-buisness user would use that isn't an operating system or physical hardware shouldn't need tech support.
There are more atheists out there than you think, especially among the more educated and intelligent
Evidently they're not more intelligent, if they don't believe in God. Do you see how easy that is to do?
Science deals with what can conclusively be proven or disproven. The existence of God can't be proven one way or the other, so it isn't science. Therefore, a book on the topic isn't a science book. This applies as much to the Bible as it does to The God Delusion.
Most people don't know who Richard Dawkins is, but they know who Stephen Hawking is. Hawking's book sold better for a number of reasons. Hawking's book primarily concerns itself with science, but does delve into the question of where the universe came from. I don't have it in front of me, so I can't look up the direct quote, but he says something to the effect of "Science concerns itself with the observable universe, therefore it can't really model what existence was before the Big Bang." He mentions that God setting up the big bang makes as much sense from a scientific perspective as anything else.
Hawking is as famous as he is because he's not a dick.
The current rendition of the Scout Oath includes a line about morally straight. I don't remember what the official original definition of this was when it was first introduced to the Oath, but it had made no reference to homosexuality at all. In fact, of the 26 definitions of "straight," only one of them refers to heterosexuality. Most of them deal with things being in an unadulterated state. One definition even aligns its self precisely with what the Scouts should stand for: "honest, honorable, or upright, as conduct, dealings, methods, or persons."
The 11th (current) edition of the Boy Scout Handbook defines morally straight as "To be a person of strong character, your relationships with others should be honest and open. You should respect and defend the rights of all people. Be clean in your speech and actions, and remain faithful to your religious beliefs. The values you practice as a Scout will help you shape a life of virtue and self-reliance."
The BSA has no problem with gay Scouts. The problem it has with gay Scoutmasters is the same problem it has with female Scoutmasters: The possibility that you might be attracted to a Scout is enough to disqualify you from being a Scoutmaster. If you think that's too heavy-handed, that's another discussion, but "morally straight" is not meant to imply "sexually straight."
Eh. The older Scouts and adults often end up getting involved with Order of the Arrow, which is by any definition heathenism. You participate in Indian dances, often working with local tribes to learn them. The whole thing is drenched in Indian symbolism and liturgy. I'm not even sure you could consider it monotheism, though it is theistic to some degree.
Yeah, the OA does Indian dances. But you're told you're NEVER supposed to do one with religious significance. If I recall correctly, the explanation given in the handbook is "How would you feel if someone else performed your religious ceremonies without believing them?"
It's a fancy looking award, sure. But it isn't a requirement to advance in rank. It doesn't help to advance in rank. It falls into the category of "Hey, this is a cool thing to learn about, I guess." Plenty of Eagle Scouts don't earn their faith's religious emblem, even though they are devout members of their religion.
Guess what?
They don't need to either.
For the "iPhone" to have "Game Potential As a Threat to Java Phone Games," it will have to. The reason all those words are in quotation marks and most of them are capitalized are because they are the title of the article we are supposedly discussing.
Problem: The other side is already happily strapping bombs to themselves in addition to strapping the bombs to missiles so they can guide explosives to the targets manually. Under those conditions, Israel shooting at civilians isn't going to work.
I do not feel sorry for this guy and don't think anyone should, you can't be stupid and expect my sympathy.
You and those who agree with you are the reason we are all losing our rights to free speech. He did absolutely nothing wrong. He exercised his First Amendment rights and you somehow defend the employer who revokes his living as punishment.
CNN is not a person; it is part of a corporation. Corporations, too, have been ruled to have a right to free speech. (Unlike in most other cases, in this one corporate personhood makes sense. Bear with me.) If Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper or Chez Pazienza says something stupid on the air, it looks bad for CNN, not just that one person. It's like the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Sure, I have the RIGHT to run around telling everyone that a wolf is coming, but I do things to stop myself from doing so (like exercising judgment) so that people will trust me when it counts. If CNN employees say something stupid publicly, whether or not they're on the clock, people won't trust CNN, so CNN should do something to make sure it (through its employees) doesn't say stupid things. CNN is more valuable (from both a making money perspective and an informing the public of current events perspective) if its employees don't go off saying stupid things.
So CNN has the right to prevent its employees* from saying things that make people not trust CNN. How the news business is supposed to work is that people can trust an organization that will report things unbiasedly, and then, with a full set of facts, people will draw the conclusions they will. One news story from today is that Michelle Obama, Barrack Obama's wife, said on the campaign trail that "For the first time in [her] adult life, [she is] proud of her country." Some people are going to draw the conclusion that she is unpatriotic, others that Obama is too inexperienced for letting his wife make a rookie mistake like that. Still others will think that this whole "controversy" is stupid and move on. CNN's job is to give you the quote and it's your job to make the decision. If CNN is leading you in any of those directions, it is doing something wrong.
There's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes at news organizations; misdirection might come from someone other than the guy in front of the camera. Chez Pazienza was a behind the camera guy, so his work wasn't always visible. He could have been pulling strings, trying to slant news in a certain way, and we probably would have been none the wiser. It's important to note here that CNN would have probably found out eventually if he was doing that. Had they caught him slanting the news, that's probably grounds for dismissal.**
Chez Pazienza evidently cares deeply about lefty causes. We know this because he runs a left-wing blog. CNN, like all credible news organizations, doesn't want people to slant its news to either the left or the right. The problem is that the public at large can't tell if someone is ACTUALLY slanting the news behind the camera, because they're not in the room watching the editorial decisions getting made. CNN, like all credible news organizations, tries not to employ devout liberals or conservatives except in very specific roles*. After all, die-hards are more tempted to slant the news. They caught a die-hard who slipped through the cracks, so they fired him.***
By the way, this is the kind of journalism ethics I learned in high school. I realize that it's not necessarily common sense to most people, but a producer for CNN should know how journalism works.
*Newspapers have the concept of an editorial "page" where the newspaper writes its own opinions on topics. (On Sundays this may expand to a section.) There, because it is supposed to be opinion and not fact, it's OK to display a bias. On cable news, it's harder to distinguish because there isn't the physical separation that comes from putting it on a different page. The equivalent is the talking heads show
Let's do a little experiment here. In fact, because it's so rare for this to happen in cases involving religion, let's scientifically disprove something using verifiable and repeatable experimentation. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD Background: The Church of Scientology successfully threatened Slashdot into removing a post containing the text of a copyrighted "holy" text, and further links to the text. Hypothesis: The Catholic Church wants to suppress its own holy text, the New American Bible. The NAB is the officially authorized translation of the Bible for use by Catholics in the United States. Conjecture: If a Slashdot poster posts an excerpt from the NAB, along with a link to the full text, the Catholic Church will threaten Slashdot, and Slashdot will remove the post. Experiment: I am posting the first 10 verses from the book of Genesis, Chapter One.
1
1 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,
2
2 the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.
3
Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
4
God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness.
5
3 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." Thus evening came, and morning followed--the first day.
6
Then God said, "Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters, to separate one body of water from the other." And so it happened:
7
God made the dome, and it separated the water above the dome from the water below it.
8
God called the dome "the sky." Evening came, and morning followed--the second day.
9
Then God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin, so that the dry land may appear." And so it happened: the water under the sky was gathered into its basin, and the dry land appeared.
10
God called the dry land "the earth," and the basin of the water he called "the sea." God saw how good it was.
The full text of the NAB is available at http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/ Wait for priests to show up with their three chief weapons, fear, suspense, a fanatical devotion to the Pope... Can we come in again? *crosses fingers*
I dare anyone to reproduce this experiment and get a different result than I did.
What if 100 people ran around shouting "Anthrax" thus causing a panic? Maybe they should issue free speech permits to make sure only competent professionals will be heard.
Except that that's not quite right. It is already illegal to cause a panic by any means, including shouting "Anthrax!" That law doesn't apply when the thing causing a panic (anthrax, Godzilla, the Pistons winning the championship) actually happened. Speech that doesn't incite a panic is still generally allowed.
What should be done is regulate them these devices like smoke detectors. You are encouraged to have them, but you pay a fine if the authorities are summoned on a false alarm.
I don't know the patent number, but what they patented was the method by which the bricks interlock. Real Legos have studs on the top and circular tubes on the bottom/inside. Their competitors use studs on the top and something else on the bottom. (Usually a single bar running parallel to the longer sides.) The stud and tube design allows for more secure models because the bricks can't slide past the tube on the bottom.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft uses the same zoom gesture in the Zune HD.
I wish I had mod points. The McCain Torture Ban, as written, is an absolute ban on torture. The "legalization" you refer to comes from a "signing statement" by President Bush. A signing statement is when the President signs a bill into law and says "Part X of the law is unclear, so I'm going to interpret it to mean Y." In this case, President Bush said "The part of the Torture Ban about whether torture is banned is unclear, so I'm going to interpret it to mean 'Torture is NOT banned.'" John McCain waved the bullshit flag. A day or so after the signing statement was made public, McCain was asked about it and said, "If Bush didn't like the bill, he should have vetoed it" and then promised that if he was elected, he wouldn't make any signing statements at all. John McCain is NOT in favor of torture.
John McCain, you were neck deep in what was up till now the biggest banking scandal and bailout in US history. Does this experience give you any special insight into the current credit crisis?
Yeah, he's got special insight into banking scandals. That's why he cosponsored a bill to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac far more strictly in 2005. If the Democrats hadn't blocked that bill, the companies wouldn't have melted down. Of course, if the Democrats hadn't blocked that bill, they wouldn't have been able to give so much to Democrats in campaign contributions.
So you're saying that in 1998, before the whole anti-trust thing, MS had the opportunity to cast fear in the hearts of people who use other systems with BSD stacks, uncertainty in the hearts of people maintain them, and doubt in the hearts of people who are in charge of buying them? And that's EXACTLY how the Slashdot story would have gone down.
Also would the GPL have prevented BSD maintaining this bug for so long?
No. The thing that "gets bugs fixed faster," for lack of a better term, is that anyone can see the code. BSD lets anyone see the code too. (For example, MS saw the code and used it in their operating systems.) The difference between BSD and GPL is that the GPL license applies to any project something GPL'ed is included in. (If it was GPL'ed, and MS used it, they would have had to distribute the source code to all of Windows. And if MS's networking libraries depend on code from their network stack being compiled into them, it would be impossible to write a networked closed source program for Windows.) From a technical standpoint, a BSD licesns and a GPL license are exactly the same. The differences between the two are political.
This is true. One time I saw a binary with just TWO CHARACTERS!
Land IS managed, though. At one point, all the land belonged a government. The government sold some of it, and gave more of it away, and also kept some of it. It issued documents, called "deeds," to all the land it gave away or sold. And to this day, in order to receive land, you get the deed from its current owner. If you own land, your local government has a copy of that deed on file.
Land is a limited resource, and is managed like other things that are limited, including the radio spectrum. What exactly is the problem here?
Of course they can. But it's not illegal to sell someone milk, even if they are lactose intolerant. It's the person's responsibility to know they can't handle milk.
I can just hear you asking, "But wait! Kids don't realize that their allergens are bad for them. We currently handle selling video games EXACTLY how we handle selling milk: Making the kids PARENTS responsible for preventing them from getting their hands on things that their parents think are bad for them.
*Most consumer software should fit this standard. Games, office software, and pretty much anything a non-buisness user would use that isn't an operating system or physical hardware shouldn't need tech support.
I want http://www.com.dyslexia/
There are more atheists out there than you think, especially among the more educated and intelligent
Evidently they're not more intelligent, if they don't believe in God. Do you see how easy that is to do?
Science deals with what can conclusively be proven or disproven. The existence of God can't be proven one way or the other, so it isn't science. Therefore, a book on the topic isn't a science book. This applies as much to the Bible as it does to The God Delusion.
Most people don't know who Richard Dawkins is, but they know who Stephen Hawking is. Hawking's book sold better for a number of reasons. Hawking's book primarily concerns itself with science, but does delve into the question of where the universe came from. I don't have it in front of me, so I can't look up the direct quote, but he says something to the effect of "Science concerns itself with the observable universe, therefore it can't really model what existence was before the Big Bang." He mentions that God setting up the big bang makes as much sense from a scientific perspective as anything else.
Hawking is as famous as he is because he's not a dick.
The 11th (current) edition of the Boy Scout Handbook defines morally straight as "To be a person of strong character, your relationships with others should be honest and open. You should respect and defend the rights of all people. Be clean in your speech and actions, and remain faithful to your religious beliefs. The values you practice as a Scout will help you shape a life of virtue and self-reliance."
The BSA has no problem with gay Scouts. The problem it has with gay Scoutmasters is the same problem it has with female Scoutmasters: The possibility that you might be attracted to a Scout is enough to disqualify you from being a Scoutmaster. If you think that's too heavy-handed, that's another discussion, but "morally straight" is not meant to imply "sexually straight."
Eh. The older Scouts and adults often end up getting involved with Order of the Arrow, which is by any definition heathenism. You participate in Indian dances, often working with local tribes to learn them. The whole thing is drenched in Indian symbolism and liturgy. I'm not even sure you could consider it monotheism, though it is theistic to some degree. Yeah, the OA does Indian dances. But you're told you're NEVER supposed to do one with religious significance. If I recall correctly, the explanation given in the handbook is "How would you feel if someone else performed your religious ceremonies without believing them?"
It's a fancy looking award, sure. But it isn't a requirement to advance in rank. It doesn't help to advance in rank. It falls into the category of "Hey, this is a cool thing to learn about, I guess." Plenty of Eagle Scouts don't earn their faith's religious emblem, even though they are devout members of their religion.
That policy only applies to adult leaders, not Scouts themselves. Thanks for trying though.
Guess what? They don't need to either. For the "iPhone" to have "Game Potential As a Threat to Java Phone Games," it will have to. The reason all those words are in quotation marks and most of them are capitalized are because they are the title of the article we are supposedly discussing.
Actually, more like once in 12 hours and again in 24 hours. And then again a few weeks later.
I heard that hundred mile an hour tape refers to how fast you can drive a jeep with the roof patched shut before the tape tears off.
Stallman doesn't own a car for that reason.
Sadly, that's the biggest problem with the plan.
You and those who agree with you are the reason we are all losing our rights to free speech. He did absolutely nothing wrong. He exercised his First Amendment rights and you somehow defend the employer who revokes his living as punishment.
CNN is not a person; it is part of a corporation. Corporations, too, have been ruled to have a right to free speech. (Unlike in most other cases, in this one corporate personhood makes sense. Bear with me.) If Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper or Chez Pazienza says something stupid on the air, it looks bad for CNN, not just that one person. It's like the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Sure, I have the RIGHT to run around telling everyone that a wolf is coming, but I do things to stop myself from doing so (like exercising judgment) so that people will trust me when it counts. If CNN employees say something stupid publicly, whether or not they're on the clock, people won't trust CNN, so CNN should do something to make sure it (through its employees) doesn't say stupid things. CNN is more valuable (from both a making money perspective and an informing the public of current events perspective) if its employees don't go off saying stupid things.
So CNN has the right to prevent its employees* from saying things that make people not trust CNN. How the news business is supposed to work is that people can trust an organization that will report things unbiasedly, and then, with a full set of facts, people will draw the conclusions they will. One news story from today is that Michelle Obama, Barrack Obama's wife, said on the campaign trail that "For the first time in [her] adult life, [she is] proud of her country." Some people are going to draw the conclusion that she is unpatriotic, others that Obama is too inexperienced for letting his wife make a rookie mistake like that. Still others will think that this whole "controversy" is stupid and move on. CNN's job is to give you the quote and it's your job to make the decision. If CNN is leading you in any of those directions, it is doing something wrong.
There's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes at news organizations; misdirection might come from someone other than the guy in front of the camera. Chez Pazienza was a behind the camera guy, so his work wasn't always visible. He could have been pulling strings, trying to slant news in a certain way, and we probably would have been none the wiser. It's important to note here that CNN would have probably found out eventually if he was doing that. Had they caught him slanting the news, that's probably grounds for dismissal.**
Chez Pazienza evidently cares deeply about lefty causes. We know this because he runs a left-wing blog. CNN, like all credible news organizations, doesn't want people to slant its news to either the left or the right. The problem is that the public at large can't tell if someone is ACTUALLY slanting the news behind the camera, because they're not in the room watching the editorial decisions getting made. CNN, like all credible news organizations, tries not to employ devout liberals or conservatives except in very specific roles*. After all, die-hards are more tempted to slant the news. They caught a die-hard who slipped through the cracks, so they fired him.***
By the way, this is the kind of journalism ethics I learned in high school. I realize that it's not necessarily common sense to most people, but a producer for CNN should know how journalism works.
*Newspapers have the concept of an editorial "page" where the newspaper writes its own opinions on topics. (On Sundays this may expand to a section.) There, because it is supposed to be opinion and not fact, it's OK to display a bias. On cable news, it's harder to distinguish because there isn't the physical separation that comes from putting it on a different page. The equivalent is the talking heads show
The DCMA is the US version of the law. The Canadian version is the DCM-EH
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
Background: The Church of Scientology successfully threatened Slashdot into removing a post containing the text of a copyrighted "holy" text, and further links to the text.
Hypothesis: The Catholic Church wants to suppress its own holy text, the New American Bible. The NAB is the officially authorized translation of the Bible for use by Catholics in the United States.
Conjecture: If a Slashdot poster posts an excerpt from the NAB, along with a link to the full text, the Catholic Church will threaten Slashdot, and Slashdot will remove the post.
Experiment: I am posting the first 10 verses from the book of Genesis, Chapter One.
1 1 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 2 the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters. 3 Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness. 5 3 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." Thus evening came, and morning followed--the first day. 6 Then God said, "Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters, to separate one body of water from the other." And so it happened: 7 God made the dome, and it separated the water above the dome from the water below it. 8 God called the dome "the sky." Evening came, and morning followed--the second day. 9 Then God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin, so that the dry land may appear." And so it happened: the water under the sky was gathered into its basin, and the dry land appeared. 10 God called the dry land "the earth," and the basin of the water he called "the sea." God saw how good it was.
The full text of the NAB is available at http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/
Wait for priests to show up with their three chief weapons, fear, suspense, a fanatical devotion to the Pope... Can we come in again?
*crosses fingers*
I dare anyone to reproduce this experiment and get a different result than I did.
Why were they taking nude pictures of Hans Reiser in the first place?
Except that that's not quite right. It is already illegal to cause a panic by any means, including shouting "Anthrax!" That law doesn't apply when the thing causing a panic (anthrax, Godzilla, the Pistons winning the championship) actually happened. Speech that doesn't incite a panic is still generally allowed.
What should be done is regulate them these devices like smoke detectors. You are encouraged to have them, but you pay a fine if the authorities are summoned on a false alarm.
I don't know the patent number, but what they patented was the method by which the bricks interlock. Real Legos have studs on the top and circular tubes on the bottom/inside. Their competitors use studs on the top and something else on the bottom. (Usually a single bar running parallel to the longer sides.) The stud and tube design allows for more secure models because the bricks can't slide past the tube on the bottom.