So let us imagine what the difference between the UK and the US could be. Oh yes the fact that you let every loony and criminal arm themselves to the teeth with cheap firearms. Or how about the fact that the UK can really only be described as a "police state", while in the US, despite all sorts of ridiculous privacy issues almost none of the many absurd invasions of privacy are aimed at quelling "regular old crimes"?
In Griswold v Connecticut the supreme court found by extrapolation of numerous other explicit rights found in the constitution that people have a right to privacy (in that particular case it was a right to marital privacy - the supreme court was overturning a law banning the use of contraceptives). While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I would hope that most slashdot readers would agree that the government has no business governing what consensual acts one does or does not commit with their own wife in their own bedroom.
With a right to privacy established, when Roe came before the court it was only a small leap to conclude that if the fetus is not a human being with rights of its own then the federal government has no more business telling a woman what she may do with it than it has telling her she may not cut her fingernails or undergo surgery.
The real issue (if you aren't someone who thinks a right to privacy is bullshit) is at what point does the fetus go from being an appendage to being an individual with constitutionally protected rights (the constitution does not seem to protect your right to privately kill your children). The court, if I recall, decided that the fetus becomes an individual when it becomes "viable" - when it can be disconnected from its mother and still live.
Interestingly, the court gave some reference time for when this typically occurs (second trimester or somesuch - look it up if you want correct information), but seems to have left open the possibility that with advancing technology this time might come sooner for fetuses in the future.
In conclusion, those who oppose abortion on its actual merits can typically be broken into two categories - the first is people who believe that a fetus is a constitutionally protected being at some point earlier than the law acknowledges (the vast majority of those who oppose abortion oppose it on these grounds, including those who oppose it for religious reasons) and the second is people who believe that we have no right to privacy (and I have found that this group includes not only big business people and fascists, but also a good number of legal scholars who may support the idea of a right to privacy but think the law behind Griswold was bullshit). Ron Paul would seem to be among the former.
However, all told I still support Ron Paul. The effect of his small government concepts is that in today's world in practice he is more socially liberal than any major democratic candidate.
My biggest beef with him is his lazes faire economic policies (opposing net neutrality for instance), and I have concluded that most probably he is "right" in a big picture sense on most of his policies and that I simply disagree because they won't benefit me personally (ie, I still respect him, but I respectfully want what is best for me).
Yes. And when you ask me for a gun so you can murder your wife, if I give it to you then most people would consider that "evil". When my brother asks to borrow my gun to go hunting most people (non-animal-rights activists anyway) would consider it to be just fine for me to loan it to him.
Circumstances are important in judging the morality of an action by most standards (unless you've been reading Kant - in which case I'm sorry).
Don't be absurd, they're not trying to balance anything with the interests of their share holders.
Google is a company that relies heavily on its public image. Hurting that image is bad for it's share holders. Thats why any significant company has PR people. Just that with Google they take it a good deal further than most, and its obviously served their wallets well.
I don't mean to disparage Google, I tremendously enjoy a good number of their services, but lets be realistic.
I'm not sure that I fully understand the situation, but if Google had waited until the final ruling to release the IP would that have actually prevented the blogger in question from fighting the ruling?
If that is the case then short of simply defying a court order (which is something that should be considered on a case by case basis) this would seem to have been the best thing Google could have done. Had they waited they would have been allowing the plaintiff to "pull an RIAA" on the guy (or girl).
If, on the other hand, that is not the case then shame on Google (a bit anyway - I still think Yahoo's games with the guy in China were much worse, but that doesn't excuse this).
My moral outrage needs no God. You can not justify the contamination, pollution and suffering caused by Soviet bomb making methods on any grounds
If there is indeed no "God" then no one needs to justify anything because without any absolute morality there can be nothing to act immorally relative to.
Luckily, its informational value doesn't depend on whether or not it makes you with your theistic system of morality sick.
I believe the question it was addressing was whether radiation is as dangerous as it was thought to be. The death rates resulting from exposure is absolutely an important factor to consider. Its certainly (and this may have been where you began before you went off on your irrelevant tangent) not the only factor to consider, but it is definitely an important one.
Can anyone with experience with either of these devices remark on their functionality as an eBook reader?
In particular, I understood the OLPC to have some sort of eInk like ability in the screen. Given the option of paying $400 to get a small laptop that can run Linux and read eBooks plus some kid in a third world country getting another one, or paying $400 dollars for a device with some subset of the functionality of an XO without any charitable contribution built in, why should I choose the Kindle (or sony ebook reader, etc)?
Which is why I, for one, doubt that the back door was intentional. The approval that NSA gives is primarily for use by the US government itself, and most of the obstacles that NSA faces in spying on our own government are bureaucratic ones, not technical ones.
I thought the whole point of the common carrier thing was that it meant ISPs weren't liable for infringing material hosted on their network? A "don't shoot the messenger" sort of thing.
Can't Open Office read/write OOXML files? And I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the Mac OS 10.5 text editor can at least read OOXML files.
I'm not advocating use of OOXML, simply pointing out that even if somehow they currently think there is only one implementation, that solution to the "OOXML problem" won't last long.
1. Too many cars
2. Don't get a car
3. Less cars
4. Get a car
Too many cars isn't going to result in less cars. High gas prices, on the other hand, might.
Even if a person were as capable of shooting a fast moving target as a computer is, as you point out there is only a brief window of opportunity. And people get bored. Try convincing guys with guns to stand around pointing them at the sky for days on end in case an aircraft happens to come over the hill, and see how long they last.
There is a tremendous amount to patent, but I don't think the OLPC project owns the rights to most of it. Six hour battery life for active use, closer to 24 just using the screen in black and white to read. Pull the string for 1 minute and you get 10 minutes of use.
The interface is totally different than anything I have ever used before.
A tremendous amount of innovation went into these laptops, and whether I think the project will "succeed" or not, everyone who worked on this project has my respect.
Well see, we have this crazy thing called a first amendment that would make it very difficult to "prevent the media from reporting". Somehow I'm still in shock that someone on slashdot got modded insightful for suggesting that.
Does that work on any web page, or does it have to be specifically enabled? How can I know if the connection is secure? And when I click a link will that also use 'https'?
If I learned that in high school, but I was using an ssh tunnel to bypass their firewall to get on myspace does that still count as learning it in high school?
Slashdot Mirror
to start posting irrationally about your hatred for George Bush as if this really has much of anything to do with him.
In Griswold v Connecticut the supreme court found by extrapolation of numerous other explicit rights found in the constitution that people have a right to privacy (in that particular case it was a right to marital privacy - the supreme court was overturning a law banning the use of contraceptives). While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I would hope that most slashdot readers would agree that the government has no business governing what consensual acts one does or does not commit with their own wife in their own bedroom.
With a right to privacy established, when Roe came before the court it was only a small leap to conclude that if the fetus is not a human being with rights of its own then the federal government has no more business telling a woman what she may do with it than it has telling her she may not cut her fingernails or undergo surgery.
The real issue (if you aren't someone who thinks a right to privacy is bullshit) is at what point does the fetus go from being an appendage to being an individual with constitutionally protected rights (the constitution does not seem to protect your right to privately kill your children). The court, if I recall, decided that the fetus becomes an individual when it becomes "viable" - when it can be disconnected from its mother and still live.
Interestingly, the court gave some reference time for when this typically occurs (second trimester or somesuch - look it up if you want correct information), but seems to have left open the possibility that with advancing technology this time might come sooner for fetuses in the future.
In conclusion, those who oppose abortion on its actual merits can typically be broken into two categories - the first is people who believe that a fetus is a constitutionally protected being at some point earlier than the law acknowledges (the vast majority of those who oppose abortion oppose it on these grounds, including those who oppose it for religious reasons) and the second is people who believe that we have no right to privacy (and I have found that this group includes not only big business people and fascists, but also a good number of legal scholars who may support the idea of a right to privacy but think the law behind Griswold was bullshit). Ron Paul would seem to be among the former.
However, all told I still support Ron Paul. The effect of his small government concepts is that in today's world in practice he is more socially liberal than any major democratic candidate.
My biggest beef with him is his lazes faire economic policies (opposing net neutrality for instance), and I have concluded that most probably he is "right" in a big picture sense on most of his policies and that I simply disagree because they won't benefit me personally (ie, I still respect him, but I respectfully want what is best for me).
Yes. And when you ask me for a gun so you can murder your wife, if I give it to you then most people would consider that "evil". When my brother asks to borrow my gun to go hunting most people (non-animal-rights activists anyway) would consider it to be just fine for me to loan it to him.
Circumstances are important in judging the morality of an action by most standards (unless you've been reading Kant - in which case I'm sorry).
Don't be absurd, they're not trying to balance anything with the interests of their share holders.
Google is a company that relies heavily on its public image. Hurting that image is bad for it's share holders. Thats why any significant company has PR people. Just that with Google they take it a good deal further than most, and its obviously served their wallets well.
I don't mean to disparage Google, I tremendously enjoy a good number of their services, but lets be realistic.
I'm not sure that I fully understand the situation, but if Google had waited until the final ruling to release the IP would that have actually prevented the blogger in question from fighting the ruling? If that is the case then short of simply defying a court order (which is something that should be considered on a case by case basis) this would seem to have been the best thing Google could have done. Had they waited they would have been allowing the plaintiff to "pull an RIAA" on the guy (or girl). If, on the other hand, that is not the case then shame on Google (a bit anyway - I still think Yahoo's games with the guy in China were much worse, but that doesn't excuse this).
If there is indeed no "God" then no one needs to justify anything because without any absolute morality there can be nothing to act immorally relative to.
But to each his own.
Luckily, its informational value doesn't depend on whether or not it makes you with your theistic system of morality sick. I believe the question it was addressing was whether radiation is as dangerous as it was thought to be. The death rates resulting from exposure is absolutely an important factor to consider. Its certainly (and this may have been where you began before you went off on your irrelevant tangent) not the only factor to consider, but it is definitely an important one.
Can anyone with experience with either of these devices remark on their functionality as an eBook reader?
In particular, I understood the OLPC to have some sort of eInk like ability in the screen. Given the option of paying $400 to get a small laptop that can run Linux and read eBooks plus some kid in a third world country getting another one, or paying $400 dollars for a device with some subset of the functionality of an XO without any charitable contribution built in, why should I choose the Kindle (or sony ebook reader, etc)?
Which is why I, for one, doubt that the back door was intentional. The approval that NSA gives is primarily for use by the US government itself, and most of the obstacles that NSA faces in spying on our own government are bureaucratic ones, not technical ones.
I thought the whole point of the common carrier thing was that it meant ISPs weren't liable for infringing material hosted on their network? A "don't shoot the messenger" sort of thing.
The exercise was presumably planned, so all he had to do was sit by the bottom and wait for the fleet to go overhead.
/.) as I'm about to read the article.
I won't be able to remark any more on the issue though (at least not on
In reality I should have 400 billion dollars. Damned errors.
Can't Open Office read/write OOXML files? And I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the Mac OS 10.5 text editor can at least read OOXML files. I'm not advocating use of OOXML, simply pointing out that even if somehow they currently think there is only one implementation, that solution to the "OOXML problem" won't last long.
1. Too many cars 2. Don't get a car 3. Less cars 4. Get a car Too many cars isn't going to result in less cars. High gas prices, on the other hand, might.
Even if a person were as capable of shooting a fast moving target as a computer is, as you point out there is only a brief window of opportunity. And people get bored. Try convincing guys with guns to stand around pointing them at the sky for days on end in case an aircraft happens to come over the hill, and see how long they last.
As far as I can tell they're doing a pretty good job of protecting them from successful US rule.
There is a tremendous amount to patent, but I don't think the OLPC project owns the rights to most of it. Six hour battery life for active use, closer to 24 just using the screen in black and white to read. Pull the string for 1 minute and you get 10 minutes of use. The interface is totally different than anything I have ever used before. A tremendous amount of innovation went into these laptops, and whether I think the project will "succeed" or not, everyone who worked on this project has my respect.
You mean an Apple product is overpriced?
Well see, we have this crazy thing called a first amendment that would make it very difficult to "prevent the media from reporting". Somehow I'm still in shock that someone on slashdot got modded insightful for suggesting that.
How has the IT industry made hardware "disposable"?
Someone mod that insightful.
Does that work on any web page, or does it have to be specifically enabled? How can I know if the connection is secure? And when I click a link will that also use 'https'?
Because foreign intelligence agencies are bound by the laws of the countries they operate in.
If I learned that in high school, but I was using an ssh tunnel to bypass their firewall to get on myspace does that still count as learning it in high school?