Ah, the believable, sane version of the "truthers": "or they consciously hijacked the tragedy for their own ends." Politicians are explicitly good at that sort of thing -- hijacking events which impress upon the public for their own advantage.
Mental state effects body's normal healing processes -- perfectly reasonable and potentially testable hypothesis.
Water sampled from water that at one point was mixed with substance X = powerful cure for Y in and of itself when there is no detectable trace of X remaining and in fact it can't be discerned from simple distilled water in any way -- insane.
You mean like "visible from publicly accessible locations to the naked eye, with no attempt made to shield said location from the public view"? That seems like a perfectly fair mark to me -- if you don't want someone to look at or photograph something in your yard in clear view, then put up a fence (or draw your blinds/curtains, or what have you) so it's no longer in clear view?
So, we need to cut off all payment to the New York Times et al, as they are equally connected to the documents in question, yes? Oh, wait, that was tried against the times wrt the Pentagon Papers. Here's the real question -- other than being a smaller and potentially squelchable organization who is almost certainly not in bed with any of the organizations that would be made to look bad, how does Wikileaks differ from the Times? Remember, you are about to set a clear line about what point something is or is not considered journalism, and it will come back to bite you in the most horrible manner possible.
Wikileaks isn't the first case of VISA/MC refusing to process transactions without a court order to such effect. Particularly "unusual" parts of the porn industry have had to deal with that at one point or another. I'd be willing to bet there are at least a few instances of that going on right now, if you get weird/disturbing enough with your porn. Enough for "gross factor" (whether their own or that of another, larger customer) to outpace "income from this customer", to be specific.
This. I think the common "slashthink" on this one is that the internet shouldn't be regulated, but ISP should be regulated in such a way as to keep connectionc content and destination neutral, and no more.
It's not a matter of "reasoning" it's a matter of knowledge and perspective. The "common man" isn't versed whatsoever in every possible scientific discipline, and doesn't have a "whole nation" perspective, or even a "my state" perspective in mind. It would be better to allocate $X to the NSF and leave it entirely up to a bunch of scientists of myriad disciplines to determine who should get grants. The "common man" has a better understanding of "to advance the sciences and technology" than the details of why theoretical comp sci/chemistry/physics/whatever project X is useful simply because no one is an expert in every field, and the vast majority is not an expert in any given single field.
Yes, a lot of small cuts can add up, but if your total bills for the months are a hundred million dollars, that $600 in total isn't even a drop in the bucket.
Cutting a dozen grants is less of a reduction to the total budget than buying one single fewer plane or tank for the military. The difference being that the purpose of that plane or tank is far more apparent to an onlooker, and something like "to develop computer models to analyze the on-field contributions of soccer players" isn't so obvious to someone who's far detached from the field. Even without hearing any details about it, I know I can see the applications, and I'd bet a significant percentage of this particular website's community can too, but I'd also bet that if you went to your closest industrial site and asked the workers, they'd have no idea. I'd also bet that a lot of people who "get" that example would not see the applications of many chemistry or physics related project proposals.
Frankly, I think it should work as such -- the NSF should get a budget of $X to give out as grants, and it should be entirely up to the NSF what projects they feel should be funded with that money. Of course, having said that makes me obviously specifically in favor of the most depraved sounding interpretation of the most extreme proposal submitted to the NSF, so I probably want to hook electrodes to the genitals of 5 year olds while they watch porn or something. =p
Honestly, I think this case is one of the better cases of a judge doing what's right, and from my home state nonetheless. You want to sue several thousand people for committing different individual offenses that are completely unrelated except for being all the same general type of offense? Sue them individually -- it's not one offense perpetrated by thousands, it's not thousands working together and committing smaller offenses.
No, it's an almost completely different pack, because the pack that thinks the Democrats represent regular people simply won't listen to anything the Republicans say as a matter of principle, and the reverse is also true.
"Can you articulate what the legal difference between the two categories of "citizen" in question are?"
Actually, hasn't that never actually been tested, with some claiming it requires "born on US soil" which McCain does not meet (born in Panama City proper rather than on the base his father was stationed at) and you claim Obama doesn't meet either despite evidence to the contrary. Others claim it requires being born to at least one parent who is a US citizen regardless of location of the birth, in which case both McCain and Obama pass the requirement. It's never been legally tested as far as the requirements for the office of President are concerned.
Or is factcheck.org an evil liberal leftist commie pinko site? Because I've seen them call out both sides on their lies more than once. Usually whichever party isn't currently in power has a habit of lying or distorting the truth the most, because they have the most to gain and least to lose by doing so.
Hadn't they won a lawsuit not all that long ago where their defense was that they had a 1st Amendment right to lie to and mislead the public actively so long as they didn't actually slander (or libel, I forget which is which) anyone?
Of course, that the "short form" birth certificate released is precisely what you get when you normally request your birth certificate from the state of Hawaii. Any Hawaiians of around the same age demonstrate how "easy" it is to request two different versions of your birth certificate (both the type released by Obama and the so called "long form") as a point that this is documentation that should be trivial to obtain? I could swear there's a quote from the keepers of said records in Hawaii that basically amounts to "that's the document you get when you request your birth certificate, there isn't a different one that we release."
That aside, the birth certificate released meets in every way the requirements to be a valid birth certificate for basically all purposes -- it's only questioned because the so called "birthers" want to believe that Obama is not eligible to be President in the first place, as they see a mechanism to remove him from office, which they feel will put "their guy" in somehow instead of, well, Biden.
As for college transcripts, is there any particular reason we need to know his college transcripts, or is it a matter of "he's a public persona, we need more ammo to poke holes in him"? AFAICT, beyond his having the diploma there's nothing that's really "public knowledge" about college transcripts. How many previous Presidents have we actually seen those for, and if it's not a routine thing for them to be released and scrutinized, why should Obama be treated any differently?
Amusingly, I currently work for an employer with decent benefits, "plenty" of hours (50/week is the norm, down to 40/week when the business is slow, and soon to hit 58/week because we're about to have some crunch time), a quarterly profit-sharing bonus, and yearly raises (barring people with really *really* terrible productivity). The owner of the company even started of all things a small fund of some kind to help employees in extreme circumstances, evaluated by a sort of council that includes management and the "head men" in production, though they've only actually met a couple of times total.
We've had a recent period of expansion and have gained like 20% more employees in the last quarter, as well as another expansion of facilities. In a manufacturing field, in the US. The amusing thing is that we're actually starving for people, especially production personnel.
The owner despises unions with an almost irrational hatred (and if asked he'll mostly point at the craziness the UAW has pulled as why unions are bad and destroy businesses), but then puts said hatred to good use by trying to minimize reasons anyone would want to try to unionize the company as far as he can budget for.
As for being a commodity, I know at the least I personally am ingrained deeply enough in too many and too vital a parts of the company's day to day business that I have some pretty solid job security, and I show enough loyalty that I have political capital to spend when I needs it. The downside to that being that they keep using me as a one-size-fits-all employee, inserting me into still more vital processes (the operations manager once joked that my job title was "hat rack" because they metaphorically made me wear so many different hats in a day).
Unfortunately, type I diabetes =/= celiac, as in, you can't just declare "it can be triggered by something simple" without actually knowing what that something is, which is the tricky part. Of course, the second problem hits -- what's if it's not something simple that involves a diet change but rather something like rhinovirus or any of several dozen random bugs that your immune system normally fights off just fine but happens to look *just* enough like a beta cell to a diseased immune system...
Ah, so you're one of those "there are people in California, and people in a couple of cities going down the eastern coastline, and nothing else counts" sorts, huh?
His statement is pretty spot on -- there are some pretty wide swaths in this country where you've either got low population density or geographical problems making it difficult. Look at Appalachia as a whole, for example -- a good chunk of it is "difficult" geographically, and having a significant percentage of the populace nestled in mountain hollows doesn't help.
Wait, you only picket at locations that will let you pay them to picket there? *boggle*
The DDoS case is more like a really dense picket line, where the sheer volume of space taken up y people with signs makes it hard to reach the doors. It might take you a while (excessive loading times) or you might have to back up and approach from a different angle (multiple reloads to get a page), but unless it's so bad that the store closes for the day in hopes that the crowd goes away (taking the site offline), it's nothing but a barrier to entry, an additional hassle created against the target.
...which explains why Anonymous generally acts like an unrestrained id being told it's toys were taken away by THAT GUY, or that THAT GUY will scream funny if you hit him. Anonymous not being a "group" so much as a loosely and temporarily affiliated swarm of ever changing internet mobsters and all.
You see, as I understood it, McCain was born in Panama City, not on the base itself. In Panama City he would have been born on foreign soil, regardless of where his father was stationed.
If the definition of "natural born citizen" is anyone who is a citizen at the time of their birth, then why would the birthers even try their particular argument against Obama? His mother was a US citizen, so he is. Full stop. I had always assumed that their argument fell into semantics over the phrase "natural born citizen" as used in the Constitution having never actually been tested as such and claiming that being born outside our borders was sufficient to not be "natural born."
...and a couple of decades later, no one will care anymore.
That's also conveniently what I see as the ultimate result of businesses checking myspace and facebook profiles -- either the majority will become much tighter about how they present themselves on the 'net, or the current older crop will die and eventually no one will care because it's not "shocking" anymore -- everyone does it and always has.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, the believable, sane version of the "truthers": "or they consciously hijacked the tragedy for their own ends." Politicians are explicitly good at that sort of thing -- hijacking events which impress upon the public for their own advantage.
Mental state effects body's normal healing processes -- perfectly reasonable and potentially testable hypothesis.
Water sampled from water that at one point was mixed with substance X = powerful cure for Y in and of itself when there is no detectable trace of X remaining and in fact it can't be discerned from simple distilled water in any way -- insane.
You mean like "visible from publicly accessible locations to the naked eye, with no attempt made to shield said location from the public view"? That seems like a perfectly fair mark to me -- if you don't want someone to look at or photograph something in your yard in clear view, then put up a fence (or draw your blinds/curtains, or what have you) so it's no longer in clear view?
So, we need to cut off all payment to the New York Times et al, as they are equally connected to the documents in question, yes? Oh, wait, that was tried against the times wrt the Pentagon Papers. Here's the real question -- other than being a smaller and potentially squelchable organization who is almost certainly not in bed with any of the organizations that would be made to look bad, how does Wikileaks differ from the Times? Remember, you are about to set a clear line about what point something is or is not considered journalism, and it will come back to bite you in the most horrible manner possible.
Wikileaks isn't the first case of VISA/MC refusing to process transactions without a court order to such effect. Particularly "unusual" parts of the porn industry have had to deal with that at one point or another. I'd be willing to bet there are at least a few instances of that going on right now, if you get weird/disturbing enough with your porn. Enough for "gross factor" (whether their own or that of another, larger customer) to outpace "income from this customer", to be specific.
It also needs to be able to be exchanged for local currency, or for goods and services directly, which is where bitcoin fails, isn't it?
This. I think the common "slashthink" on this one is that the internet shouldn't be regulated, but ISP should be regulated in such a way as to keep connectionc content and destination neutral, and no more.
It's not a matter of "reasoning" it's a matter of knowledge and perspective. The "common man" isn't versed whatsoever in every possible scientific discipline, and doesn't have a "whole nation" perspective, or even a "my state" perspective in mind. It would be better to allocate $X to the NSF and leave it entirely up to a bunch of scientists of myriad disciplines to determine who should get grants. The "common man" has a better understanding of "to advance the sciences and technology" than the details of why theoretical comp sci/chemistry/physics/whatever project X is useful simply because no one is an expert in every field, and the vast majority is not an expert in any given single field.
Yes, a lot of small cuts can add up, but if your total bills for the months are a hundred million dollars, that $600 in total isn't even a drop in the bucket.
Cutting a dozen grants is less of a reduction to the total budget than buying one single fewer plane or tank for the military. The difference being that the purpose of that plane or tank is far more apparent to an onlooker, and something like "to develop computer models to analyze the on-field contributions of soccer players" isn't so obvious to someone who's far detached from the field. Even without hearing any details about it, I know I can see the applications, and I'd bet a significant percentage of this particular website's community can too, but I'd also bet that if you went to your closest industrial site and asked the workers, they'd have no idea. I'd also bet that a lot of people who "get" that example would not see the applications of many chemistry or physics related project proposals.
Frankly, I think it should work as such -- the NSF should get a budget of $X to give out as grants, and it should be entirely up to the NSF what projects they feel should be funded with that money. Of course, having said that makes me obviously specifically in favor of the most depraved sounding interpretation of the most extreme proposal submitted to the NSF, so I probably want to hook electrodes to the genitals of 5 year olds while they watch porn or something. =p
Downside of having no official national language.
Honestly, I think this case is one of the better cases of a judge doing what's right, and from my home state nonetheless. You want to sue several thousand people for committing different individual offenses that are completely unrelated except for being all the same general type of offense? Sue them individually -- it's not one offense perpetrated by thousands, it's not thousands working together and committing smaller offenses.
No, it's an almost completely different pack, because the pack that thinks the Democrats represent regular people simply won't listen to anything the Republicans say as a matter of principle, and the reverse is also true.
"Can you articulate what the legal difference between the two categories of "citizen" in question are?"
Actually, hasn't that never actually been tested, with some claiming it requires "born on US soil" which McCain does not meet (born in Panama City proper rather than on the base his father was stationed at) and you claim Obama doesn't meet either despite evidence to the contrary. Others claim it requires being born to at least one parent who is a US citizen regardless of location of the birth, in which case both McCain and Obama pass the requirement. It's never been legally tested as far as the requirements for the office of President are concerned.
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html
Or is factcheck.org an evil liberal leftist commie pinko site? Because I've seen them call out both sides on their lies more than once. Usually whichever party isn't currently in power has a habit of lying or distorting the truth the most, because they have the most to gain and least to lose by doing so.
Hadn't they won a lawsuit not all that long ago where their defense was that they had a 1st Amendment right to lie to and mislead the public actively so long as they didn't actually slander (or libel, I forget which is which) anyone?
Of course, that the "short form" birth certificate released is precisely what you get when you normally request your birth certificate from the state of Hawaii. Any Hawaiians of around the same age demonstrate how "easy" it is to request two different versions of your birth certificate (both the type released by Obama and the so called "long form") as a point that this is documentation that should be trivial to obtain? I could swear there's a quote from the keepers of said records in Hawaii that basically amounts to "that's the document you get when you request your birth certificate, there isn't a different one that we release."
That aside, the birth certificate released meets in every way the requirements to be a valid birth certificate for basically all purposes -- it's only questioned because the so called "birthers" want to believe that Obama is not eligible to be President in the first place, as they see a mechanism to remove him from office, which they feel will put "their guy" in somehow instead of, well, Biden.
As for college transcripts, is there any particular reason we need to know his college transcripts, or is it a matter of "he's a public persona, we need more ammo to poke holes in him"? AFAICT, beyond his having the diploma there's nothing that's really "public knowledge" about college transcripts. How many previous Presidents have we actually seen those for, and if it's not a routine thing for them to be released and scrutinized, why should Obama be treated any differently?
Amusingly, I currently work for an employer with decent benefits, "plenty" of hours (50/week is the norm, down to 40/week when the business is slow, and soon to hit 58/week because we're about to have some crunch time), a quarterly profit-sharing bonus, and yearly raises (barring people with really *really* terrible productivity). The owner of the company even started of all things a small fund of some kind to help employees in extreme circumstances, evaluated by a sort of council that includes management and the "head men" in production, though they've only actually met a couple of times total.
We've had a recent period of expansion and have gained like 20% more employees in the last quarter, as well as another expansion of facilities. In a manufacturing field, in the US. The amusing thing is that we're actually starving for people, especially production personnel.
The owner despises unions with an almost irrational hatred (and if asked he'll mostly point at the craziness the UAW has pulled as why unions are bad and destroy businesses), but then puts said hatred to good use by trying to minimize reasons anyone would want to try to unionize the company as far as he can budget for.
As for being a commodity, I know at the least I personally am ingrained deeply enough in too many and too vital a parts of the company's day to day business that I have some pretty solid job security, and I show enough loyalty that I have political capital to spend when I needs it. The downside to that being that they keep using me as a one-size-fits-all employee, inserting me into still more vital processes (the operations manager once joked that my job title was "hat rack" because they metaphorically made me wear so many different hats in a day).
Umm, I didn't think the government *could* search your desk at work without either a warrant or the consent of the business owner or his proxy?
Unfortunately, type I diabetes =/= celiac, as in, you can't just declare "it can be triggered by something simple" without actually knowing what that something is, which is the tricky part. Of course, the second problem hits -- what's if it's not something simple that involves a diet change but rather something like rhinovirus or any of several dozen random bugs that your immune system normally fights off just fine but happens to look *just* enough like a beta cell to a diseased immune system...
Ah, so you're one of those "there are people in California, and people in a couple of cities going down the eastern coastline, and nothing else counts" sorts, huh?
His statement is pretty spot on -- there are some pretty wide swaths in this country where you've either got low population density or geographical problems making it difficult. Look at Appalachia as a whole, for example -- a good chunk of it is "difficult" geographically, and having a significant percentage of the populace nestled in mountain hollows doesn't help.
Wait, you only picket at locations that will let you pay them to picket there? *boggle*
The DDoS case is more like a really dense picket line, where the sheer volume of space taken up y people with signs makes it hard to reach the doors. It might take you a while (excessive loading times) or you might have to back up and approach from a different angle (multiple reloads to get a page), but unless it's so bad that the store closes for the day in hopes that the crowd goes away (taking the site offline), it's nothing but a barrier to entry, an additional hassle created against the target.
...which explains why Anonymous generally acts like an unrestrained id being told it's toys were taken away by THAT GUY, or that THAT GUY will scream funny if you hit him. Anonymous not being a "group" so much as a loosely and temporarily affiliated swarm of ever changing internet mobsters and all.
So, the moment someone sees your picket line and decides to shop elsewhere rather than deal with it you are in the wrong?
You see, as I understood it, McCain was born in Panama City, not on the base itself. In Panama City he would have been born on foreign soil, regardless of where his father was stationed.
If the definition of "natural born citizen" is anyone who is a citizen at the time of their birth, then why would the birthers even try their particular argument against Obama? His mother was a US citizen, so he is. Full stop. I had always assumed that their argument fell into semantics over the phrase "natural born citizen" as used in the Constitution having never actually been tested as such and claiming that being born outside our borders was sufficient to not be "natural born."
...and a couple of decades later, no one will care anymore.
That's also conveniently what I see as the ultimate result of businesses checking myspace and facebook profiles -- either the majority will become much tighter about how they present themselves on the 'net, or the current older crop will die and eventually no one will care because it's not "shocking" anymore -- everyone does it and always has.