I remember that, too. The weapon of choice sounded exactly like a fluorescent light tube, and I half expected the tube to implode and spray shards of glass and white powder everywhere. (I had some experience with breaking fluorescent light tubes).
I also remember the talking weasel dog things, but I don't remember if they had faux Jamaican accents.
I read that book so long ago. I don't remember much, but one thing I really appreciated at the time was that after being tied up all day Halla really needed to use the bathroom. Never before (and maybe never since) had I read a book where a character had this basic human need.
> If you wish to blindly follow the claims without > questioning their validity, go right ahead.
Not sure what you mean by "blindly." I defer to science for many things I have not personally verified, including relativity, quantum mechanics, optics, magnetism, cosmology, evolution, and climatology.
Sometimes the scientific conclusions make some kind of sense to me, such as in cosmology, evolution, and climate.
Sometimes I can barely make sense of anything, like relativity and quantum mechanics.
But I don't think my ignorance of the science, or my vague intuition that it really makes no sense at all, is enough grounds for me to say Einstein had it wrong, nor is it enough I'd declare myself a quantum mechanics skeptic and attempt to nitpick a
And on climate change, I have no reason to believe self-identified skeptics, armed only with ad hominems and FUD, over every national and international scientific organization on planet Earth.
> makes me wonder if you connect the two (global > warming and thermodynamics).
Yes I do. I also connect falling down with gravity, and carpet burns with friction. Am I a geek or what?
In science there are not "both sides". There are only facts, and theories to explain those facts. Some theories are eventually disproven. Some become broadly accepted. Currently every credible scientific organization on Earth accepts the theory that human activity is significantly altering the climate
Maybe they're wrong. If you know better, correct them. You'll be a rock star.
But I think you'll find that among scientists, conversion stories and senate reports won't clarify the laws of thermodynamics any more than speculations regarding Al Gore's financial interests will.
> my child were then to jump past me to touch the flame anyway
Would you physically protect your child again if you could? Would you stop your child from burning herself just that once, or just twice, or would you have a different limit for each child?
Me, I'd forcibly remove either my child or the danger.
Lawyers say when the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. When neither the facts nor the law are on your side, launch an ad hominem attack.
Al Gore's motivations make no difference to the laws of thermodynamics. Disprove the theories, not the peanut gallery.
I don't understand why I keep seeing "politically-motivated."
Al Gore did not invent global warming any more than he invented the internet. This concept originated with scientists, has been vetted by scientists, and is accepted as something between the leading theory and established fact by every national and international science body on the planet.
Maybe it is a hoax. If it is, convince the scientists. They'd love to hear it, nothing helps their career more than disproving the status quo.
> -I would step between my child and the flame... > even if it caused fatal damage.
After you took the flame for your child, would you still lovingly let your recalcitrant child burn too?
I think Christianity claims the sacrifice only counts for some children, with the rules varying somewhat by sect, but generally involving asking nicely and obeying some subset of rules from ancient Hebrew traditions.
> You don't have the secret Coca Cola recipe, but that doesn't stop you from drinking coke
I have the ingredients, which opens up the product considerably. And actually does stop me from drinking it.
> Not getting source code is not the same as being lied to I didn't say it was - why misrepresent my words?. It is an example of unverifiability,. not dishonesty.
> You don't know the composition of the various alloys your car is built of, but you do drive I may not know that off the top of my head, but it's not an example of "unverifiable". I could analyze a sample if I felt the need.
In warping my claim into these non-apt analogies, what is the point you are trying to make? That I sometimes trust what I cannot verify? That I sometimes trust what I didn't bother to verify? And that makes me either a hypocrite or a sucker?
I'll admit I'm a sucker - I've lost in the marketplace more than once. But me being a sucker doesn't make my post invalid or unreasonable. A vendor who asks for your trust that something works, but gives you no way to verify it works, is a vendor to avoid.
> I don't know why you consider it more important than all the others.
Because we were talking about the economy.
But I agree completely with the milestones you picked for the general erosion of liberty. I hope one day we'll be able to point to events that put us back on track.
> Why middle class folks idolize someone who sold out > the middle class I do not understand.
It's easy. We all have our own private reality.
Here's mine. Whatever any POTUS may have done is inconsequential compared to what our Gov't did in 1913. They set in motion everything that's happened since when they handed over our economy to a semi-accountable, quasi-governmental, 100% privately owned for-profit banking cartel.
> trust is also required to have a functioning society. Maybe, to a degree.
>"Trust but verify" is the best. Indeed it is. Trust works when claims can be supported.
Problems happen when information is just not verifiable, such as in closed source products, secret negotiations, undisclosed business interests, or whenever information is withheld or misrepresented.
When "trust me" is all the verification a vendor offers, trust is for suckers.
the Supreme Court... ruled that "the creation and dissemination of information are speech for First Amendment purposes."
If that's all they've got to say about it, then what limits this to doctors and pharmacies? If this is allowed in the medical industry, what industry would it not effect?
Regardless, GP is right. This is not public information, it's private.
And SCOTUS is delusional. The pharmacies didn't create the content, they aggregated and sold it against the wishes of doctors who did create it and expected the information to stay private, and the State of Vermont which explicitly forbade this practice.
This has absolutely nothing to do with expressing ideas. It's just about selling raw data they were given in confidence.
I can't give you sources, but anecdotally I can tell you that there are kickbacks between pharmacies, doctors, and pharmaceuticals. Selling the pharmaceuticals data on whether a doctor is prescribing their drugs will have a further corrupting effect, not unlike what could come from selling data on who a voter voted for in an election.
> Trillions for defense, not a penny in tribute is the only > long term strategy for dealing with aggression. Sounds great, but there are always details.
In the case of the US, we wanted to get rid of a Bear, so we spent billions raising bees. The Bear grudgingly backed off, so we started trying to drive the bees away, and they attacked us. So now we spend trillions on cruise missiles to get the bees, we strip-search each other for signs of honey, and we look over our shoulder for aggressive Pandas.
> One thing MS could do with Skype is to take on Telcos head on
Skype already was. Better product, lower price. As people realized that, they were inevitably jumping on board.
Now MSFT could just leave things alone and coast to victory. But it seems far more likely they'll spend millions to turn Skype into a crappy product at a crappy price. They'll turn Skype into just another telco.
> The solution would be to make it illegal for the police to do that
1) Whoever wrote that law would commit political suicide. 2) Enforcing a law against the enforcers of the law can be difficult. 3) At a time when SCOTUS shreds the Constitution into hamster bedding by repealing Miranda rights, allowing police to enter without a warrant and without knocking, allowing the feds wholesale warrantless surveillance of the entire citizenry, of what use is any law?
But 5 million others will, and if something of public interest is going on, say police brutality, and they try to record it with their camera phone, but it's been disabled, say, by police IR equipment, that kind of affects us all, doesn't it?
No, the US Constitution was meant to regulate the government, not the citizenry. Criminal Law was intended to be under the jurisdiction of the several States.
The economy doesn't care if anybody's "Hoarding" or not. "Hoarding" just alters the supply a bit, triggering some rise in price for the hoarded good. You might say higher prices are bad. But you might just as well say lower prices are bad. Which you like depends only on whether you're buying or selling.
What is bad for the economy is having government and bankers screwing around with it - dictating interest rates, inflating the money supply, creating quasi-governmental mortgage banks. Privatized profits and socialized losses. Selective enforcement of regulations. That kind of crap is what sinks economies.
Slashdot Mirror
Well put. Now all we need is lawyer...
I would have told the Judge my prized possession was the Sta-Puf Marshmallow man.
I remember that, too. The weapon of choice sounded exactly like a fluorescent light tube, and I half expected the tube to implode and spray shards of glass and white powder everywhere. (I had some experience with breaking fluorescent light tubes).
I also remember the talking weasel dog things, but I don't remember if they had faux Jamaican accents.
Mozilla may be on some kind of moral high ground, but in the end, what-we-would-like is trumped by reality. It's a bitch.
"Because they're looking for the best of the best, Sir!"
I read that book so long ago. I don't remember much, but one thing I really appreciated at the time was that after being tied up all day Halla really needed to use the bathroom. Never before (and maybe never since) had I read a book where a character had this basic human need.
> If you wish to blindly follow the claims without
> questioning their validity, go right ahead.
Not sure what you mean by "blindly." I defer to science for many things I have not personally verified, including relativity, quantum mechanics, optics, magnetism, cosmology, evolution, and climatology.
Sometimes the scientific conclusions make some kind of sense to me, such as in cosmology, evolution, and climate.
Sometimes I can barely make sense of anything, like relativity and quantum mechanics.
But I don't think my ignorance of the science, or my vague intuition that it really makes no sense at all, is enough grounds for me to say Einstein had it wrong, nor is it enough I'd declare myself a quantum mechanics skeptic and attempt to nitpick a
And on climate change, I have no reason to believe self-identified skeptics, armed only with ad hominems and FUD, over every national and international scientific organization on planet Earth.
> makes me wonder if you connect the two (global
> warming and thermodynamics).
Yes I do. I also connect falling down with gravity, and carpet burns with friction. Am I a geek or what?
In science there are not "both sides". There are only facts, and theories to explain those facts. Some theories are eventually disproven. Some become broadly accepted. Currently every credible scientific organization on Earth accepts the theory that human activity is significantly altering the climate
Maybe they're wrong. If you know better, correct them. You'll be a rock star.
But I think you'll find that among scientists, conversion stories and senate reports won't clarify the laws of thermodynamics any more than speculations regarding Al Gore's financial interests will.
> my child were then to jump past me to touch the flame anyway
Would you physically protect your child again if you could? Would you stop your child from burning herself just that once, or just twice, or would you have a different limit for each child?
Me, I'd forcibly remove either my child or the danger.
Lawyers say when the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. When neither the facts nor the law are on your side, launch an ad hominem attack.
Al Gore's motivations make no difference to the laws of thermodynamics. Disprove the theories, not the peanut gallery.
I don't understand why I keep seeing "politically-motivated."
Al Gore did not invent global warming any more than he invented the internet. This concept originated with scientists, has been vetted by scientists, and is accepted as something between the leading theory and established fact by every national and international science body on the planet.
Maybe it is a hoax. If it is, convince the scientists. They'd love to hear it, nothing helps their career more than disproving the status quo.
> -I would step between my child and the flame...
> even if it caused fatal damage.
After you took the flame for your child, would you still lovingly let your recalcitrant child burn too?
I think Christianity claims the sacrifice only counts for some children, with the rules varying somewhat by sect, but generally involving asking nicely and obeying some subset of rules from ancient Hebrew traditions.
> You don't have the secret Coca Cola recipe, but that doesn't stop you from drinking coke
I have the ingredients, which opens up the product considerably. And actually does stop me from drinking it.
> Not getting source code is not the same as being lied to
I didn't say it was - why misrepresent my words?. It is an example of unverifiability,. not dishonesty.
> You don't know the composition of the various alloys your car is built of, but you do drive
I may not know that off the top of my head, but it's not an example of "unverifiable". I could analyze a sample if I felt the need.
In warping my claim into these non-apt analogies, what is the point you are trying to make? That I sometimes trust what I cannot verify? That I sometimes trust what I didn't bother to verify? And that makes me either a hypocrite or a sucker?
I'll admit I'm a sucker - I've lost in the marketplace more than once. But me being a sucker doesn't make my post invalid or unreasonable. A vendor who asks for your trust that something works, but gives you no way to verify it works, is a vendor to avoid.
> I don't know why you consider it more important than all the others.
Because we were talking about the economy.
But I agree completely with the milestones you picked for the general erosion of liberty. I hope one day we'll be able to point to events that put us back on track.
I'd like to rebut your rebuttal, but I'm having trouble figuring out what you think you rebutted.
So long, and thanks for the red herring.
> Why middle class folks idolize someone who sold out
> the middle class I do not understand.
It's easy. We all have our own private reality.
Here's mine. Whatever any POTUS may have done is inconsequential compared to what our Gov't did in 1913. They set in motion everything that's happened since when they handed over our economy to a semi-accountable, quasi-governmental, 100% privately owned for-profit banking cartel.
> trust is also required to have a functioning society.
Maybe, to a degree.
>"Trust but verify" is the best.
Indeed it is. Trust works when claims can be supported.
Problems happen when information is just not verifiable, such as in closed source products, secret negotiations, undisclosed business interests, or whenever information is withheld or misrepresented.
When "trust me" is all the verification a vendor offers, trust is for suckers.
> this is about doctors not patients.
Are you sure?
the Supreme Court ... ruled that "the creation and dissemination of information are speech for First Amendment purposes."
If that's all they've got to say about it, then what limits this to doctors and pharmacies? If this is allowed in the medical industry, what industry would it not effect?
Regardless, GP is right. This is not public information, it's private.
And SCOTUS is delusional. The pharmacies didn't create the content, they aggregated and sold it against the wishes of doctors who did create it and expected the information to stay private, and the State of Vermont which explicitly forbade this practice.
This has absolutely nothing to do with expressing ideas. It's just about selling raw data they were given in confidence.
I can't give you sources, but anecdotally I can tell you that there are kickbacks between pharmacies, doctors, and pharmaceuticals. Selling the pharmaceuticals data on whether a doctor is prescribing their drugs will have a further corrupting effect, not unlike what could come from selling data on who a voter voted for in an election.
> Trillions for defense, not a penny in tribute is the only
> long term strategy for dealing with aggression.
Sounds great, but there are always details.
In the case of the US, we wanted to get rid of a Bear, so we spent billions raising bees. The Bear grudgingly backed off, so we started trying to drive the bees away, and they attacked us. So now we spend trillions on cruise missiles to get the bees, we strip-search each other for signs of honey, and we look over our shoulder for aggressive Pandas.
Maybe there's another way.
Self righteous, yet profane. Nice.
> One thing MS could do with Skype is to take on Telcos head on
Skype already was. Better product, lower price. As people realized that, they were inevitably jumping on board.
Now MSFT could just leave things alone and coast to victory. But it seems far more likely they'll spend millions to turn Skype into a crappy product at a crappy price. They'll turn Skype into just another telco.
> The solution would be to make it illegal for the police to do that
1) Whoever wrote that law would commit political suicide.
2) Enforcing a law against the enforcers of the law can be difficult.
3) At a time when SCOTUS shreds the Constitution into hamster bedding by repealing Miranda rights, allowing police to enter without a warrant and without knocking, allowing the feds wholesale warrantless surveillance of the entire citizenry, of what use is any law?
Ok, I won't buy one.
But 5 million others will, and if something of public interest is going on, say police brutality, and they try to record it with their camera phone, but it's been disabled, say, by police IR equipment, that kind of affects us all, doesn't it?
No, the US Constitution was meant to regulate the government, not the citizenry. Criminal Law was intended to be under the jurisdiction of the several States.
The economy doesn't care if anybody's "Hoarding" or not. "Hoarding" just alters the supply a bit, triggering some rise in price for the hoarded good. You might say higher prices are bad. But you might just as well say lower prices are bad. Which you like depends only on whether you're buying or selling.
What is bad for the economy is having government and bankers screwing around with it - dictating interest rates, inflating the money supply, creating quasi-governmental mortgage banks. Privatized profits and socialized losses. Selective enforcement of regulations. That kind of crap is what sinks economies.