This is just another instance that would have shown up in Chris Mooney's book had it been reported a couple of years ago. The tactics and arguments are the same as those used on many other issues and point out the desperate need to revive the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment that was destroyed by the Republican majority in the House following the 1994 election.
Quoth the poster: Oh yeah, in geological terms, human history is less than the blink of an eye.
True.
With fossils unearthed recently showing _tropical_ weather in Northern Canada, I think it's safe to say that the Arctic ice cap is a temporary feature.
Regarding tropical weather in Northern Canada... think plate tectonics and continental drift... there used to be tropical weather in what is now northern Ellesmere Island because that patch of land was on the equator in Devonian times.:P
It would be more accurate to say that ice-free poles are a very transient feature of earth. IIRC, earth's orbit is pretty far out in the sun's liquid water zone and ice ages are more common than warm stages in our climatic history.
Prosecutors, at least in my neck of the woods, don't give two shits about justice or truth. They just want convictions.,/b>
Quoth the parent:
Well, that's their fucking job! They represent the accusation, after all.
Errrmmmm... actually no. The prosecutor represents the State, not the complainant, who is merely an accusing witness. The prosecutor has NO obligation whatsoever to the victim of a crime. His/her obligation is to represent the peace and dignity of the State and to seek justice.
Quoted from the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct: (Tex. Disciplinary R. Prof. Conduct, (1989) reprinted in Tex. Govt Code Ann., tit. 2, subtit. G, app. (Vernon Supp. 1995)(State Bar Rules art X [[section]]9))
3.09 Special Responsibilities of a Prosecutor
The prosecutor in a criminal case shall:
(a) refrain from prosecuting or threatening to prosecute a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause;
(b) refrain from conducting or assisting in a custodial interrogation of an accused unless the prosecutor has made reasonable efforts to be assured that the accused has been advised of any right to, and the procedure for obtaining, counsel and has been given reasonable opportunity to obtain counsel;
(c) not initiate or encourage efforts to obtain from an unrepresented accused a waiver of important pre-trial, trial or post-trial rights;
(d) make timely disclosure to the defense of all evidence or information known to the prosecutor that tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense, and, in connection with sentencing, disclose to the defense and to the tribunal all unprivileged mitigating information known to the prosecutor, except when the prosecutor is relieved of this responsibility by a protective order of the tribunal; and
(e) exercise reasonable care to prevent persons employed or controlled by the prosecutor in a criminal case from making an extrajudicial statement that the prosecutor would be prohibited from making under Rule 3.07.
Comment:
Source and Scope of Obligations
1. A prosecutor has the responsibility to see that justice is done, and not simply to be an advocate. This responsibility carries with it a number of specific obligations(emphasis added). Among these is to see that no person is threatened with or subjected to the rigors of a criminal prosecution without good cause. See paragraph (a). In addition a prosecutor should not initiate or exploit any violation of a suspects right to counsel, nor should he initiate or encourage efforts to obtain waivers of important pre-trial, trial, or post-trial rights from unrepresented persons. See paragraphs (b) and (c). In addition, a prosecutor is obliged to see that the defendant is accorded procedural justice, that the defendants guilt is decided upon the basis of sufficient evidence, and that any sentence imposed is based on all unprivileged information known to the prosecutor. See paragraph (d). Finally, a prosecutor is obliged by this rule to take reasonable measures to see that persons employed or controlled by him refrain from making extrajudicial statements that are prejudicial to the accused. See paragraph (e) and Rule 3.07. See also Rule 3.03(a)(3), governing ex parte proceedings, among which grand jury proceedings are included. Applicable law may require other measures by the prosecutor and knowing disregard of those obligations or a systematic abuse of prosecutorial discretion could constitute a violation of Rule 8.04. <END of quoted material>
Almost every state has the same, or similar rules, in place, as does the federal court system. Care to try again, ArsenneLupin?
Oh, and while we are on the subject IAAL I just don't practice law.
Why don't we ask Russia how well Marx's system works.
I'm sure that if the Russians answered honestly your response would be "How the hell would we know? We never followed Marx closely enough to know the answer."
I'm sure the millions of people murdered under their collectivist system would wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments.
See, actually answered your own question, if you think about it... you're talking about Stalinism, not Marxism. Get your philosophies straight before you wade into these waters again.
I'm really not familiar with the non-OSS graphics driver situation, but a couple of years ago, you had to go the Nvidia's web site, find the appropriate tarball, download it, patch your current kernel tree with the source "glue-code" supplied, then compile and install the patched kernel. The driver, itself, was distributed as a binary. It was always my feeling that the kernel patch didn't offend the GPL unless the kernel tree would not compile without having the binary installed where it belonged. If the kernel compilation failed because the TRULY proprietary part of the package was missing then you had a licensing problem.
Use nice(1) and renice(8) to performance-tune your server... DUH!
C'mon IBM... this is not even sysadmin 101-level material...
Here I was all ready to receive the latest recommendations from Big Blue about WHICH processes should be set to WHICH nice(1) level to make a decent first approximation of a well-balanced server and all I get is this stuff.
Which leads me to wonder about something. I wonder what percentage of Slashdot is college educated in Comp. Si./devel vs. those who have completely unrelateed degrees vs. those who have no degrees and learned it all on their own (I.T. that is).
I am a Unix admin at a rather large state university in Texas. There are a total of five admins (the other four handle Windows issues) in the college where I work. We are all seconded there from an IT group called "Distributed Support." Of the five, I am the only anglo... the others are asian (3), and hispanic (1), so I guess this recruiter hasn't gotten the message yet.
The easiest way to handle a matter of this nature is to file suit where the defendant is located. This is because you only have to get your judgment and then, after a certain period has expired (varies according to local law), have the court issue a writ of execution on the judgment. Under the writ, a local constable will tell the judgment debtor to surrender sufficient assets to be sold at auction to satisfy the judgment or to pay up in cash. Never underestimate the ability of someone big, not too smart, and bearing a badge and gun, to collect a debt.
If you decide to go the stubborn way and sue in your own local court you could well find your case going all the way to the US Supreme Court before you have a collectible judgment. Trust me, IAAL, suing in the defendant's locale is the easy way to handle small claims.
Like my wife who dropped out of school in the ninth grade? She loves her Fedora Core 3 box and has become a militant penguinista since I convinced her to try it as an alternative to buying XP. Now, I will confess that she has moved on to more education than that, but you get my drift... right? She's damned intelligent, but not a rocket scientist (in the technical sense) or assembly-language programmer... she's an end-user.
but Windows has its uses.
I haven't found any except wasting time on the latest & greatest FPS... for productive use by a home user, a complete Fedora installation has everything you need, including applications.
The bottom line with linux right now is that it's still a pain in the ass to do most things that are only cumbersome in other platforms... I actually find administering Windows boxes to be a bigger pain in the ass than Linux. For example... a bad shutdown messed up the filesystem on my wife's box resulting in corruption of part of the directory links in/usr/lib/python2.3... imagine a RedHat developed system with broken python... not pretty, right? In about an hour I had identified all the files and moved them from/lost+found back where they belonged. Last time "chkdsk" recovered anythin for me it was in the form "file0001.chk" and there was NO hope of making it work again... What's a bigger pain to you anyway, repairing a filesystem or reinstalling a system?
When I can put my (70 year old) parents on a linux install that requires basically zero maintainence and zero support from me and stays up to date by itself then I'll consider taking them off of OSX....
Wait 'til the lights flicker while that OS X box is running if you are expecting ANY computer to run with "zero maintainence and zero support from me"... as for "stay[s]ing up to date by itself," I admin a beowulf cluster that does just that... it's called "cron" and it's part of every POSIX-based system, including OS X.
MS itself provides free viewers for all their formats.
Provided you run Windows. I have not seen Microsoft provide free viewers for OS X, Solaris, Linux or FreeBSD.
Also, since when is open source a guarantee that a file format will be around forever? It seems to me the opposite is true.
Open source is not a guarantee that the file format will be supported forever but open formats are because anyone who wants to can implement the format for whatever platform they need it for, whether it be Linux or Windows 2050.
It seems to me like Massachussett's decision is based more on politicking than anything else.
It seems to me that Massachussetts's decision was based on the theory that governments should provide official documents in formats that can be read by the largest percentage of citizens possible, and that governments should opt for the least expensive (OpenOffice.org is, after all, FREE) way of doing business so as to save the taxpayers' money. After all, there is NO reason Microsoft can't support the Open Document standard in their products too, although I doubt that they can be very cost-competitive with OpenOffice.org. They may, if they wish, sell Office for the price Sun charges for Star Office... IIRC, it's US$75.00 per seat.
You are right, in that it is mostly a political debate, not a scientific debate.
You are incorrect in that it is PURELY a political fight... the "pro-ID" forces have no scientific credibility whatsoever. What they are doing is using the political muscle of highly motivated religious fundamentalists against the apathy of the majority who don't care one way or the other. The overriding strategic goal is the destruction of scientific materialism, both in the fields of biology and physics (specifically astrophysics). This is to be accomplished in three "phases," of which we are well into the third. By bringing an end to naturalistic scientific inquiry, the success of the "Wedge Strategy" will destroy the United States' leadership in the natural sciences.
With respect to "teach the controversy," it should be noted that the scientific "validity" of the theory of evolution is only controversial in the United States where the recent rise of extreme right wing religious fundamentalists to policial power has made it controversial.
Quoth the poster: I don't think Intelligent Design should be taught in schools. Why would I, as a Christian, want a non-Christian to teach his or her warped perspective on Intelligent Design? If the teacher doesn't believe it, they cannot teach it.
I, on the other hand, as an agnostic with atheistic leanings, have NO problems with teaching ID in the public schools PROVIDED it is taught where it belongs... in classes like philosophy, sociology and/or comparative religions.
The creation myth put forth in Genesis is one of hundreds in the world. It is neither an accurate account of historical events nor is it a treatise on biology. It is an early iron-age hymn to creation and to the God that the Hebrew people believed was the author of that creation. The science in "creation science" has no validity because there is NO set of facts that could, if observed, falsify a theory built upon it, therefore it is pure religion.
Notwithstanding the word choice error in the parent, I think the actual force driving the geniuses to seek to immigrate to the US was "promises of religious (how many German and Russian Jews were involved in the Manhattan Project again?) and intellectual freedom." Thanks to the "voice of the majority" that promise is passing by the wayside.
The United States had best listen up. This country is NOT "destined by GAWD" to rule the world. Holding a position of leadership in today's world requires a constant effort to excel in the sciences and technology, NOT teaching "Intelligent Design" to grade school and high school biology students while cutting education budgets.
I find it hilarious that one of those who helped bring this situation about, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, is supporting new federal legislation to improve the quality of science and math through financial incentives (e.g. student loan forgiveness) to students. While I am all for targeted student loan forgiveness, IMHO, it's too little too late and improperly targeted to bring about the desired results.
Added to that people in packs tend not to act with the same restraint they would individually.
I assume you are talking about the police here, otherwise
When a crowd turns nasty, the people they're targeting are usually vastly outnumbered and have no chance of defending themselves "fairly".
makes absolutely NO sense.
The fact of the matter is that the VAST majority of police in the United STates are under-educated and under-trained to properly handle crowd control operations. On top of that, a significant number of them, especially in the so-called "red states" joined the force because they suffer from a "John Wayne" complex and have at least mild delusions of authoritarian grandeur.
Telling them a weapon like this is "non-lethal" is an open invitation to "sit on the trigger until the battery's drained" to enforce compliance with their orders whether they are lawful or not.
Like many Americans, I love my country, but I fear this government.
Well, when I build software for installation into/usr/local I like to have each app install into its own *versioned* subdirectory in order to make removal simpler when I upgrade / decide the program really isn't what I wanted / or any other quasi-rational reason to ditch software. I prevent my $PATH from getting irrationally long and clumsy by taking the extra step of symlinking the executable to/usr/local/bin, the libraries to/usr/local/lib, etc. It takes ME, the admin, a few minutes more, but it certainly reduces the number of user support requests I have to handle.
As for the/usr/local standard, it was the preferred location under BSD and EARLY SysV, but the intention was that it be used for non-standard apps on the LOCAL machine. The common practice of placing SHARED non-distro apps in an nfs-mounted/usr/local filesystem has led to the original practice being deprecated in favor of/opt in later versions of the Single Unix Standard. I would prefer to see this reversed and get/usr/local back to its original use and put site-wide shared apps in/opt, but who's going to listen to an admin who's actually IN the trenches on a daily basis?
Your literacy quotient is absolutely amazing. It just so happens that the Christian Science Monitor is one of the most respected newspapers in the world. It's writers have won several times as many Pulitzers as the NYT.
Slashdot Mirror
This is just another instance that would have shown up in Chris Mooney's book had it been reported a couple of years ago. The tactics and arguments are the same as those used on many other issues and point out the desperate need to revive the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment that was destroyed by the Republican majority in the House following the 1994 election.
Quoth the poster:
... think plate tectonics and continental drift ... there used to be tropical weather in what is now northern Ellesmere Island because that patch of land was on the equator in Devonian times. :P
Oh yeah, in geological terms, human history is less than the blink of an eye.
True.
With fossils unearthed recently showing _tropical_ weather in Northern Canada, I think it's safe to say that the Arctic ice cap is a temporary feature.
Regarding tropical weather in Northern Canada
It would be more accurate to say that ice-free poles are a very transient feature of earth. IIRC, earth's orbit is pretty far out in the sun's liquid water zone and ice ages are more common than warm stages in our climatic history.
I was '66 for me ... spent the money from my first summer job on my first guitar ... ah ... those were the days.
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, it has a dark side, and it binds the universe together.
Quoth the parent:
Errrmmmm
Quoted from the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct:
(Tex. Disciplinary R. Prof. Conduct, (1989) reprinted in Tex. Govt Code Ann., tit. 2, subtit. G, app. (Vernon Supp. 1995)(State Bar Rules art X [[section]]9))
3.09 Special Responsibilities of a Prosecutor
The prosecutor in a criminal case shall:
(a) refrain from prosecuting or threatening to prosecute a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause;
(b) refrain from conducting or assisting in a custodial interrogation of an accused unless the prosecutor has made reasonable efforts to be assured that the accused has been advised of any right to, and the procedure for obtaining, counsel and has been given reasonable opportunity to obtain counsel;
(c) not initiate or encourage efforts to obtain from an unrepresented accused a waiver of important pre-trial, trial or post-trial rights;
(d) make timely disclosure to the defense of all evidence or information known to the prosecutor that tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense, and, in connection with sentencing, disclose to the defense and to the tribunal all unprivileged mitigating information known to the prosecutor, except when the prosecutor is relieved of this responsibility by a protective order of the tribunal; and
(e) exercise reasonable care to prevent persons employed or controlled by the prosecutor in a criminal case from making an extrajudicial statement that the prosecutor would be prohibited from making under Rule 3.07.
Comment:
Source and Scope of Obligations
1. A prosecutor has the responsibility to see that justice is done, and not simply to be an advocate. This responsibility carries with it a number of specific obligations(emphasis added). Among these is to see that no person is threatened with or subjected to the rigors of a criminal prosecution without good cause. See paragraph (a). In addition a prosecutor should not initiate or exploit any violation of a suspects right to counsel, nor should he initiate or encourage efforts to obtain waivers of important pre-trial, trial, or post-trial rights from unrepresented persons. See paragraphs (b) and (c). In addition, a prosecutor is obliged to see that the defendant is accorded procedural justice, that the defendants guilt is decided upon the basis of sufficient evidence, and that any sentence imposed is based on all unprivileged information known to the prosecutor. See paragraph (d). Finally, a prosecutor is obliged by this rule to take reasonable measures to see that persons employed or controlled by him refrain from making extrajudicial statements that are prejudicial to the accused. See paragraph (e) and Rule 3.07. See also Rule 3.03(a)(3), governing ex parte proceedings, among which grand jury proceedings are included. Applicable law may require other measures by the prosecutor and knowing disregard of those obligations or a systematic abuse of prosecutorial discretion could constitute a violation of Rule 8.04.
<END of quoted material>
Almost every state has the same, or similar rules, in place, as does the federal court system. Care to try again, ArsenneLupin?
Oh, and while we are on the subject IAAL I just don't practice law.
I'm sure that if the Russians answered honestly your response would be "How the hell would we know? We never followed Marx closely enough to know the answer."
See, actually answered your own question, if you think about it
I'm really not familiar with the non-OSS graphics driver situation, but a couple of years ago, you had to go the Nvidia's web site, find the appropriate tarball, download it, patch your current kernel tree with the source "glue-code" supplied, then compile and install the patched kernel. The driver, itself, was distributed as a binary. It was always my feeling that the kernel patch didn't offend the GPL unless the kernel tree would not compile without having the binary installed where it belonged. If the kernel compilation failed because the TRULY proprietary part of the package was missing then you had a licensing problem.
Just my US$0.02
Use nice(1) and renice(8) to performance-tune your server ... DUH!
... this is not even sysadmin 101-level material ...
C'mon IBM
Here I was all ready to receive the latest recommendations from Big Blue about WHICH processes should be set to WHICH nice(1) level to make a decent first approximation of a well-balanced server and all I get is this stuff.
Very disappointing.
B.S. Biology - 1971
B.S. Engineering (non-specialized) - 1976
J.D. - 1994
Self trained in IT except for a few programming courses (about 15 semester hours, total), currently a UNIX admin. at a large U in Texas.
I am a Unix admin at a rather large state university in Texas. There are a total of five admins (the other four handle Windows issues) in the college where I work. We are all seconded there from an IT group called "Distributed Support." Of the five, I am the only anglo ... the others are asian (3), and hispanic (1), so I guess this recruiter hasn't gotten the message yet.
Not if the box says "Sun" on the front with a little "Powered by UltraSparc II" label on it.
How can I get a job on your show.
I think it's positively criminal that you guys get paid to have all that fun!
BTW, love the show.
for all the "al-Qaida means 'the base' in Arabic" and "All your base are belong to us" jokes?
The easiest way to handle a matter of this nature is to file suit where the defendant is located. This is because you only have to get your judgment and then, after a certain period has expired (varies according to local law), have the court issue a writ of execution on the judgment. Under the writ, a local constable will tell the judgment debtor to surrender sufficient assets to be sold at auction to satisfy the judgment or to pay up in cash. Never underestimate the ability of someone big, not too smart, and bearing a badge and gun, to collect a debt.
If you decide to go the stubborn way and sue in your own local court you could well find your case going all the way to the US Supreme Court before you have a collectible judgment. Trust me, IAAL, suing in the defendant's locale is the easy way to handle small claims.
Must ... use ... preview ... every ... time.
Like my wife who dropped out of school in the ninth grade? She loves her Fedora Core 3 box and has become a militant penguinista since I convinced her to try it as an alternative to buying XP. Now, I will confess that she has moved on to more education than that, but you get my drift
I haven't found any except wasting time on the latest & greatest FPS
Provided you run Windows. I have not seen Microsoft provide free viewers for OS X, Solaris, Linux or FreeBSD.
Open source is not a guarantee that the file format will be supported forever but open formats are because anyone who wants to can implement the format for whatever platform they need it for, whether it be Linux or Windows 2050.
It seems to me that Massachussetts's decision was based on the theory that governments should provide official documents in formats that can be read by the largest percentage of citizens possible, and that governments should opt for the least expensive (OpenOffice.org is, after all, FREE) way of doing business so as to save the taxpayers' money. After all, there is NO reason Microsoft can't support the Open Document standard in their products too, although I doubt that they can be very cost-competitive with OpenOffice.org. They may, if they wish, sell Office for the price Sun charges for Star Office
You are incorrect in that it is PURELY a political fight
With respect to "teach the controversy," it should be noted that the scientific "validity" of the theory of evolution is only controversial in the United States where the recent rise of extreme right wing religious fundamentalists to policial power has made it controversial.
Quoth the poster:
... in classes like philosophy, sociology and/or comparative religions.
I don't think Intelligent Design should be taught in schools. Why would I, as a Christian, want a non-Christian to teach his or her warped perspective on Intelligent Design? If the teacher doesn't believe it, they cannot teach it.
I, on the other hand, as an agnostic with atheistic leanings, have NO problems with teaching ID in the public schools PROVIDED it is taught where it belongs
The creation myth put forth in Genesis is one of hundreds in the world. It is neither an accurate account of historical events nor is it a treatise on biology. It is an early iron-age hymn to creation and to the God that the Hebrew people believed was the author of that creation. The science in "creation science" has no validity because there is NO set of facts that could, if observed, falsify a theory built upon it, therefore it is pure religion.
Notwithstanding the word choice error in the parent, I think the actual force driving the geniuses to seek to immigrate to the US was "promises of religious (how many German and Russian Jews were involved in the Manhattan Project again?) and intellectual freedom." Thanks to the "voice of the majority" that promise is passing by the wayside.
The United States had best listen up. This country is NOT "destined by GAWD" to rule the world. Holding a position of leadership in today's world requires a constant effort to excel in the sciences and technology, NOT teaching "Intelligent Design" to grade school and high school biology students while cutting education budgets.
I find it hilarious that one of those who helped bring this situation about, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, is supporting new federal legislation to improve the quality of science and math through financial incentives (e.g. student loan forgiveness) to students. While I am all for targeted student loan forgiveness, IMHO, it's too little too late and improperly targeted to bring about the desired results.
I assume you are talking about the police here, otherwise
makes absolutely NO sense.
The fact of the matter is that the VAST majority of police in the United STates are under-educated and under-trained to properly handle crowd control operations. On top of that, a significant number of them, especially in the so-called "red states" joined the force because they suffer from a "John Wayne" complex and have at least mild delusions of authoritarian grandeur.
Telling them a weapon like this is "non-lethal" is an open invitation to "sit on the trigger until the battery's drained" to enforce compliance with their orders whether they are lawful or not.
Like many Americans, I love my country, but I fear this government.
Well, when I build software for installation into /usr/local I like to have each app install into its own *versioned* subdirectory in order to make removal simpler when I upgrade / decide the program really isn't what I wanted / or any other quasi-rational reason to ditch software. I prevent my $PATH from getting irrationally long and clumsy by taking the extra step of symlinking the executable to /usr/local/bin, the libraries to /usr/local/lib, etc. It takes ME, the admin, a few minutes more, but it certainly reduces the number of user support requests I have to handle.
/usr/local standard, it was the preferred location under BSD and EARLY SysV, but the intention was that it be used for non-standard apps on the LOCAL machine. The common practice of placing SHARED non-distro apps in an nfs-mounted /usr/local filesystem has led to the original practice being deprecated in favor of /opt in later versions of the Single Unix Standard. I would prefer to see this reversed and get /usr/local back to its original use and put site-wide shared apps in /opt, but who's going to listen to an admin who's actually IN the trenches on a daily basis?
As for the
I seem to detect an irony meter in desparate need of recalibration. :)
Your literacy quotient is absolutely amazing. It just so happens that the Christian Science Monitor is one of the most respected newspapers in the world. It's writers have won several times as many Pulitzers as the NYT.