First of all, I don't understand why you chose not to quote far enough into the conversation to actually give some context to your assertions. Just to figure out what you are trying to assert to be false I had to read back to my previous post.
That said:
the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment
I presume by the 14th amendment [wikipedia.org] you are referring to due process, equal protection, etc.
No. I am talking about equal protection only. That's why I referred to "the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment."
If your own opinion is that the entire problems nests there, then so be it. However if you were to actually speak with homosexual life partners who have been denied the full rights afforded to married couples, you would no that your assertion is not accurate.
Which is part of the cause but not all of it. Married couples recognized by the government also are automatically afforded certain liberties that gay couples do not automatically have access to.
Bzzzzzzt. It's all of it.
Again, if that is all that you see, then I can only encourage you to examine the matter in a more impartial manner. I mentioned that there are additional liberties and rights that are currently not automatically extended to homosexual couples but are given freely to heterosexual couples. If you do not see that as a problem you either don't realize what the problem is or you feel that for some reason those rights do not belong to them.
Government could stop recognizing marriage tomorrow, and no one's rights would be violated.
However life as we know it for married couples would become more difficult in some important facets as individual groups come up with their own criteria for marriage and spouse's rights (and obligations).
I defy you to come up with an example.
I can give you two rights that are afforded to wed spouses upon the death of their partner, which are not afforded to homosexual couples:
Inheritance
Custody of children
And those are the easy ones. Also important to living couples:
Insurance (health, property, and life in particular)
Tax filing status
However the philosophy of of creationism has no place being taught in life (or any) sciences.
Which, again, is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
No, it is not at all irrelevant.
False
Your one-word answer does not mean squat in this context. Let's look back to what you said earlier:
We're talking about freedom here, and in terms of freedom, forcing "creationism in schools" is no different from forcing "evolution in schools."
And again, if you don't want children to know about evolution, you can object to them taking classes in the life sciences. You can enroll them in schools that do not teach the subject, or home school them. But forcing "creationism in schools" is completely and utterly different from teaching evolution in schools. Evolution is a key component of the life sciences. Creation is not a component of any sciences. If you want theology taught in schools, I would not oppose it. But don't try to claim that it is in some way the same as science.
You have not, in any way, described how this is, in any way, related to the issue of "freedom." You talk about the merits of whether it should be taught in a specific context... but that's not about freedom. You haven't even ATTEMPTED to tie the issue to freedom.
Here, your statement is false. I already showed you the freedom
the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment
I presume by the 14th amendment you are referring to due process, equal protection, etc. Which is part of the cause but not all of it. Married couples recognized by the government also are automatically afforded certain liberties that gay couples do not automatically have access to.
Government could stop recognizing marriage tomorrow, and no one's rights would be violated.
However life as we know it for married couples would become more difficult in some important facets as individual groups come up with their own criteria for marriage and spouse's rights (and obligations).
However the philosophy of of creationism has no place being taught in life (or any) sciences.
Which, again, is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
No, it is not at all irrelevant. You are saying you want it taught and I am saying it is not science. If you want to propose a class that studies different religious perspectives on life, I have no qualms with that. However creation is not, in any way shape or form, science. Hence it does not belong in a science class.
Well, if a parent wants their child to have freedom from the oppression of scientific facts, they can choose to home school them, enroll them in a religious school, or enroll them in a school where the life sciences are not taught
And if a parent wants their child to have freedom from the oppression of creationism, they can choose to home school them, enroll them in a private atheist school, or enroll them in a school where creationism is not taught.
If creation is taught as a religious philosophy (where it belongs) and not as part of science instruction (where it has no place), then it should not be a problem. If it were forced into science instruction, then as I said it would at best be a waste of what could be useful and informative instruction time and at its worst be instruction that would put our students at a competitive disadvantage later in life.
Hence, as long as creation is handled reasonably - and not forced in as an "alternative to evolution" - I could care less. But we have enough problems with the educational system in this country without taking away valuable (and far too scarce) science instruction time to be replaced by gospel, scripture, mythology, and fairy tales.
The push for same-sex marriage is to get the government to recognize the marriage.
In this case, there's no distinction.
Pudge in this case you are simply wrong. There is, and always will be, a profound distinction between the government and its citizenry. While we have a government that is "of the people and by the people", we cannot expect every person in that populace to agree with every last thing the government says and does. The government would never be able to do anything at all if that were the criteria, and the government is not required to get every last citizen to agree with everything it does. If that were the criteria then my objection to the Iraq war would have been sufficient to prevent our invasion.
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I am glad that my argument made sense to you and you now see the important distinction between the government and its people.
If you cannot demonstrate the force that you fear to exist, then you really should stop asserting that it is there. In your opinion there may be some great "force" that wishes to "force" you to accept something you do not accept, but you haven't given any reason why we should believe that to be in some way related to reality.
The push for same-sex marriage is to get the government to recognize the marriage.
In this case, there's no distinction.
Pudge in this case you are simply wrong. There is, and always will be, a profound distinction between the government and its citizenry. While we have a government that is "of the people and by the people", we cannot expect every person in that populace to agree with every last thing the government says and does. The government would never be able to do anything at all if that were the criteria, and the government is not required to get every last citizen to agree with everything it does. If that were the criteria then my objection to the Iraq war would have been sufficient to prevent our invasion.
So? Why not just work on those few rights, instead of "gay marriage"?
Why should they be forced to accept that compromise? Are they less human than straight people? Isn't marriage a right that is extended to all straight humans currently? What makes those straight couples superior to the rest, and worthy of rights that are exclusively theirs?
Evolution is a scientific principle that can be observed. Creationism is entirely faith-based and cannot be observed or tested.
None of what you said about evolution or creationism is related, in any way, to the issue of freedom.
Well, if a parent wants their child to have freedom from the oppression of scientific facts, they can choose to home school them, enroll them in a religious school, or enroll them in a school where the life sciences are not taught.
However the philosophy of of creationism has no place being taught in life (or any) sciences. It is in no way a meaningful alternative to evolution. Forcing creationism into school curriculum is at best wasteful of the time of the students and faculty, and at worst dealing a disadvantageous hand to those who actually want to learn the material and use it in their future educational and/or career paths.
The issue of same-sex marriage, despite popular misunderstanding, is primarily about forcing society to recognize something
Really? How do you come to that conclusion?
The push for same-sex marriage is to get the government to recognize the marriage. Whether or not every person in society recognizes it is not that important. There are still individuals in this country who do not recognize interracial marriages, but the government does recognize them. This is not about force as you state, it is about equality.
Every gay couple is free to marry outside of government recognition, and through contract law, to get almost all the rights afforded married couples.
Except that they don't want almost all the rights that are afforded to straight couples. They want all the rights. If I said that you could have most of the gun rights that your neighbor has, would you be content?
Creationism in schools?
We're talking about freedom here, and in terms of freedom, forcing "creationism in schools" is no different from forcing "evolution in schools."
No, those are completely different. Evolution is a scientific principle that can be observed. Creationism is entirely faith-based and cannot be observed or tested. Genetics allows for the testing of molecular evolutionary principles. No such tests exist for creationism. If one wants to choose to not accept evolution, that is fine, but they probably shouldn't be studying the life sciences; as anyone who refuses to accept gravity should not be studying physics.
I never said it was practical, feasible, or even possible. Nor did I suggest (or at least I didn't _intend_ to) that I'm in favour of murdering, even spammers.
But my point is that in a magical fairy-world, where I had a button on my desk that would publicly kill all spammers legally and without moral repercussions for me (hah!), then after a few regular applications, people would seriously start to avoid spamming. It's not that you've increased the risk of being found, it's that by spamming, you have just GUARANTEED your own death in the very near future. There's no profit in dying (although there's lots of profit in death.)
You can apply all the moral relativism you want, but in the end you are still endorsing murder. Killing another human being is murder; you can justify it however you want but if you've killed someone, you committed murder.
The only achilles tendon that spam has is its lack of willing consumers.
You're actually not far from identifying the real problem here... Well, OK you are a ways off but at least at this point you've stopped pushing for murder as a "solution".
I'm curious how you think spam can be stopped, though.
Spam can be stopped by removing it from that which keeps it going. Spam isn't sent to piss you off. Spam is sent because people make money off of it. The spamvertised domains are paying the spammers to advertise on their behalf. The spammers have entire networks setup (social, physical, virtual, and otherwise) to help their enterprise. You just need to impair the profitability and eventually it won't be worth their while. I have previously identified how this can be done; and it turns out there are some computer security professionals who are beginning to agree with me.
This isn't the same as collecting spammers and carrying out a consistent, focused, public slaughter.
Allow me to state once again that murder, no matter how much it might make you feel good, will never solve the problem.
If every commercial spammer on planet earth showed up dead one day,
You'd be just as well off hoping for the flying spaghetti monster to come and enlighten all the spammers to stop spamming this afternoon for good. Those two situations are roughly of equal probability.
And on top of that, there would be no way to ever verify that "every commercial spammer" showed up dead. The whereabouts of many of the top spammers is unknown, and many others are in countries that have no policies at all against spam (though most of them do have laws against murder).
And ultimately there is too much profit in spam for that to deter spammers from entering the business. If you personally murdered several dozen of the top spammers this afternoon there would still be many, many, more spammers ready to take their place.
If you honestly want to stop spam - and are not just looking for a way to justify (to yourself) murdering another human being - you would look at the real source of the problem. Spam can be stopped, but murder won't do it.
3) provide insurance to 30 million people who now lack it
This bill doesn't actually do that. It is designed to help some fraction of those 30 million purchase insurance, it doesn't provide much of anything to much of anyone beyond that which is already provided to those who already have something.
So while
Obama is instituting a new national policy - health care, a basic fundamental right ina civilized society
Sounds great and all, it has already been stricken from the bill.
The majority of Americans don't want this legislation
While that is likely true, many of those people from "the majority of Americans" don't want it because they believe the BS that the "main stream media" and the various conservative activists are telling them. If they actually knew what was in it, they would oppose it for a different reason entirely.
OR single payer
I am not aware of a statistically meaningful survey that ever asked Americans if they wanted single-payer health care. It is almost always a loaded question when it is posed that doesn't really pose the issue honestly.
Most people voted for change, they got more of the same. That we can agree on.
Indeed I do agree on that. This bill does not represent anything resembling real change. The change it will bring is so slight and trivial that it is barely worth the paper the bill is printed on. Indeed the concept of change isn't that different in and of itself from the idea of Obama versus the real Obama.
the AMA carefully controls how many new MDs are granted every year
Have you looked at your local medical school lately? Many medical schools are at or extremely close to capacity. We can't just start certifying more doctors this afternoon just because we need them - at least not if we want qualified doctors - we need more schools for training those doctors. The closest medical school to where I live has an auditorium that seats over 100 students, and is used for many of their first-year-MD classes. We cannot expect to arbitrarily increase the enrollment numbers and not have the quality of education suffer when the student-teacher ratio changes.
It won't do anything. This will go down as the 2010 Health Insurance Bailout act. Few Americans who currently don't have insurance will be helped, and few who do will notice one iota of difference. The largest group of people who will see positive change from this is the top executives at our health insurance companies.
please tell me this means the next step involves burning all spammers alive
Russia (and other countries) have already murdered spammers. It didn't make any difference. Just because it makes you feel better doesn't mean it has a positive effect on the spamming problem.
File this one with all the others who think they will get money out for punitive damages from spammers. We all know in the end it won't work, the plaintiff won't see any money; hence don't hold your breath for your "share" either.
Of course, IANAL, however we see that the PDF states the lawsuit (note it was not a criminal trial) was against a company. If the company doesn't have any responsible staffers in the US, then this suit isn't worth the paper the ruling was printed on. Furthermore if the company goes under then the payment for the ruling will be decided in bankruptcy court (though only if they are a US-based company).
The plaintiff(s) would have been wise to just save their time and not bother bringing a lawyer into the matter, as in the end they will likely end up paying a lot more money to that lawyer than they will ever see form the company they just sued.
I have yet to go to a 3D movie where I didn't leave with a headache from the glasses themselves. I wear prescription eyeglasses, and without fail before the movie is over I am sore from the poor fit of the 3D glasses. Some of them fit so poorly that they end up putting all their weight on the end of my nose to make life even more interesting.
I think next time I'll save the $3 and see the movies in 2D instead. The theaters should be able to provide us with more comfortable glasses by now...
General Electric stopped their product (at least in the US) of incandescent bulbs around a year ago. That story (which was not covered in slashdot as best I can tell) was probably more significant for the slashdot readers in North America - I know I still have quite a few GE incandescent bulbs in my house.
In a move sure to surprise no one, Obama has come out on the side of the MPAA/RIAA and has backed the ACTA:
I'm glad to see that slashdot maintains such a fair and unbiased approach to reporting. This goes well with the editorial opinion they passed on to us as news on Tuesday. Sure, I know that slashdot is not an actual news agency and has no reporters of its own, but they could at least pretend to not be promoting an agenda when choosing which articles to link to from the front page.
Clearly they are afraid to make a decision which is in and of itself a decision
No, ICANN is willing to make decisions. They just aren't willing to make decisions that make any fucking sense. They have already decided some time ago to start selling TLDs outright, which will inevitably result in.xxx being sold outright to someone if they don't establish it first. And being as it would make sense for them to establish it first so that they could make some small revenue from it, they will instead continue to table the issue until someone else sells it and it no longer matters.
Sometimes it seems that ICANN is itself being run by people who have as their own goals the destruction of ICANN.
ICANN has already told us that they will move ahead with the plan to start selling top level domains (TLDs). If they don't establish the.xxx TLD themselves, someone else will buy the rights to it. They might as well establish it themselves now so that they can make slightly more direct revenue from it than if it is sold entirely to someone else who can then run it however they see fit.
According to wikipedia, a US Quarter is 1.75mm thick. They also tell us a MicroSD card is 1mm thick. Hence if you hollowed out the Quarter for essentiall no play, you would have.75mm of quarter (you've hollowed out 5/9ths of the thickness). That also means you'd have.5mm on each side of the microSD...
What is the minimum thickness of a Copper-Nickel alloy needed to diffract all airport scanner x-ray beams?
But no, seriously, do you think that the day will never come when people's phones are seized?
It could happen.
However, seizing every laptop for additional scrutiny as it passes through airport security isn't that difficult, because there aren't that many laptops passing through at any given time. Cell phones, though, are another matter altogether.
Think of it this way - what fraction of the traveling public travels with a laptop? What fraction travels with a cell phone of some sort?
Based on my own informal observations at the airport I would say that more people travel with cell phones than do not. And the fraction who travel with laptops are still pretty small. So scrutinizing all the laptops isn't that big of a deal. But scrutinizing all the phones would be insane.
So unless something changes technologically to make it easier to screen all phones in less time, I wouldn't be concerned for the moment on more intense searches on cell phones. Hence the coins are not of any meaningful advantage over a phone.
Re:Hiding in plain sight
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So the coin makes sense but mostly all of the devices point out how security is basically stupid at best.
I disagree with you on that. The purpose of these coins is just to hide the microSD card. Except that a hollowed-out coin would look more suspicious at the airport scanner. You can physically put the same microSD card into your phone (any phone that takes a microSD, that is) and raise no suspicion whatsoever.
Hence the coin makes no sense, unless you don't own a phone that can take a microSD - in which case you're a terrible excuse for a spy.
So if the point is to make security look silly, then the best route would be to keep doing what we already do. And if someone released a 128gb microSD tomorrow, you could still physically place it in your phone even if it only supports up to 16 or 32gb; your phone just wouldn't be able to read it. But a non-readable card in a phone is still equally as useful as the same card in a coin, and still just as useful when you get to the other end.
they could care less what phone any of us have, as they rarely ever inspect it
That is pretty much the point I am making. We already have good tools for smuggling microSD cards to wherever. We can move arbitrarily large microSD cards through security today without anyone asking questions. These coins are meaningless toys.
Hiding in plain sight
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Considering how laptops have become fair game for involuntary search and seizure at US borders, I think putting your 'important stuff' on a microSD card inside a hollow coin is probably a good idea.
My blackberry has a microSD card in it. I have passed through many different customs / airport security examinations and nobody has ever examined the contents of the card. I don't see the point of paying for an even smaller microSD card carrier, when I already have a small microSD reader that I carry with me everywhere that nobody ever raises an eye towards.
And even if my phone is off, or the battery is dead, it still does just fine at carrying the card and looking extremely ordinary. You could also substitute most Motorola phones in the same role, and any number of other phones that I haven't paid attention to that also use microSD.
Sounds rather disappointing, really
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This is just a slashvertisement for hollowed-out coins. I would really consider them "spy coins" as the title is selling them to us. A "spy coin" should actively do some spying, really. I could just as well call my wallet a "spy wallet", as it can hold mico-SD cards too.
This story belongs under "editorials" not "games". It is expressing the opinion that someone has that this death was related to the Wii. There is not a shred of evidence that this would not have happened had the family not owned a Wii.
When a child burned down the family trailer after watching Beavis and Butt-Head, cooler heads eventually prevailed and realized that the cartoon didn't have anything to do with the fact that the mother of the child was an idiot. While Beavis and Butt-head were never the same afterwards, we collectively came to realize that the cartoon was not actually at fault.
Similarly we need to collectively come to realize that the Wii is not at fault in this child's death. Nintendo did not put a loaded gun within reach of a three-year-old. And the opinion that a three-year-old learned unsafe gun manners from a game console is not news for the slashdot front-page; rather it is an opinion that deserves to be recognized as such.
Slashdot Mirror
That said:
the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment
I presume by the 14th amendment [wikipedia.org] you are referring to due process, equal protection, etc.
No. I am talking about equal protection only. That's why I referred to "the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment."
If your own opinion is that the entire problems nests there, then so be it. However if you were to actually speak with homosexual life partners who have been denied the full rights afforded to married couples, you would no that your assertion is not accurate.
Which is part of the cause but not all of it. Married couples recognized by the government also are automatically afforded certain liberties that gay couples do not automatically have access to.
Bzzzzzzt. It's all of it.
Again, if that is all that you see, then I can only encourage you to examine the matter in a more impartial manner. I mentioned that there are additional liberties and rights that are currently not automatically extended to homosexual couples but are given freely to heterosexual couples. If you do not see that as a problem you either don't realize what the problem is or you feel that for some reason those rights do not belong to them.
Government could stop recognizing marriage tomorrow, and no one's rights would be violated.
However life as we know it for married couples would become more difficult in some important facets as individual groups come up with their own criteria for marriage and spouse's rights (and obligations).
I defy you to come up with an example.
I can give you two rights that are afforded to wed spouses upon the death of their partner, which are not afforded to homosexual couples:
And those are the easy ones. Also important to living couples:
However the philosophy of of creationism has no place being taught in life (or any) sciences.
Which, again, is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
No, it is not at all irrelevant.
False
Your one-word answer does not mean squat in this context. Let's look back to what you said earlier:
We're talking about freedom here, and in terms of freedom, forcing "creationism in schools" is no different from forcing "evolution in schools."
And again, if you don't want children to know about evolution, you can object to them taking classes in the life sciences. You can enroll them in schools that do not teach the subject, or home school them. But forcing "creationism in schools" is completely and utterly different from teaching evolution in schools. Evolution is a key component of the life sciences. Creation is not a component of any sciences. If you want theology taught in schools, I would not oppose it. But don't try to claim that it is in some way the same as science.
You have not, in any way, described how this is, in any way, related to the issue of "freedom." You talk about the merits of whether it should be taught in a specific context ... but that's not about freedom. You haven't even ATTEMPTED to tie the issue to freedom.
Here, your statement is false. I already showed you the freedom
the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment
I presume by the 14th amendment you are referring to due process, equal protection, etc. Which is part of the cause but not all of it. Married couples recognized by the government also are automatically afforded certain liberties that gay couples do not automatically have access to.
Government could stop recognizing marriage tomorrow, and no one's rights would be violated.
However life as we know it for married couples would become more difficult in some important facets as individual groups come up with their own criteria for marriage and spouse's rights (and obligations).
However the philosophy of of creationism has no place being taught in life (or any) sciences.
Which, again, is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
No, it is not at all irrelevant. You are saying you want it taught and I am saying it is not science. If you want to propose a class that studies different religious perspectives on life, I have no qualms with that. However creation is not, in any way shape or form, science. Hence it does not belong in a science class.
Well, if a parent wants their child to have freedom from the oppression of scientific facts, they can choose to home school them, enroll them in a religious school, or enroll them in a school where the life sciences are not taught
And if a parent wants their child to have freedom from the oppression of creationism, they can choose to home school them, enroll them in a private atheist school, or enroll them in a school where creationism is not taught.
If creation is taught as a religious philosophy (where it belongs) and not as part of science instruction (where it has no place), then it should not be a problem. If it were forced into science instruction, then as I said it would at best be a waste of what could be useful and informative instruction time and at its worst be instruction that would put our students at a competitive disadvantage later in life.
Hence, as long as creation is handled reasonably - and not forced in as an "alternative to evolution" - I could care less. But we have enough problems with the educational system in this country without taking away valuable (and far too scarce) science instruction time to be replaced by gospel, scripture, mythology, and fairy tales.
The push for same-sex marriage is to get the government to recognize the marriage.
In this case, there's no distinction.
Pudge in this case you are simply wrong. There is, and always will be, a profound distinction between the government and its citizenry. While we have a government that is "of the people and by the people", we cannot expect every person in that populace to agree with every last thing the government says and does. The government would never be able to do anything at all if that were the criteria, and the government is not required to get every last citizen to agree with everything it does. If that were the criteria then my objection to the Iraq war would have been sufficient to prevent our invasion.
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I am glad that my argument made sense to you and you now see the important distinction between the government and its people.
Because that's what it literally is.
If you cannot demonstrate the force that you fear to exist, then you really should stop asserting that it is there. In your opinion there may be some great "force" that wishes to "force" you to accept something you do not accept, but you haven't given any reason why we should believe that to be in some way related to reality.
The push for same-sex marriage is to get the government to recognize the marriage.
In this case, there's no distinction.
Pudge in this case you are simply wrong. There is, and always will be, a profound distinction between the government and its citizenry. While we have a government that is "of the people and by the people", we cannot expect every person in that populace to agree with every last thing the government says and does. The government would never be able to do anything at all if that were the criteria, and the government is not required to get every last citizen to agree with everything it does. If that were the criteria then my objection to the Iraq war would have been sufficient to prevent our invasion.
So? Why not just work on those few rights, instead of "gay marriage"?
Why should they be forced to accept that compromise? Are they less human than straight people? Isn't marriage a right that is extended to all straight humans currently? What makes those straight couples superior to the rest, and worthy of rights that are exclusively theirs?
Evolution is a scientific principle that can be observed. Creationism is entirely faith-based and cannot be observed or tested.
None of what you said about evolution or creationism is related, in any way, to the issue of freedom.
Well, if a parent wants their child to have freedom from the oppression of scientific facts, they can choose to home school them, enroll them in a religious school, or enroll them in a school where the life sciences are not taught.
However the philosophy of of creationism has no place being taught in life (or any) sciences. It is in no way a meaningful alternative to evolution. Forcing creationism into school curriculum is at best wasteful of the time of the students and faculty, and at worst dealing a disadvantageous hand to those who actually want to learn the material and use it in their future educational and/or career paths.
Bullshit. Same sex marriage?
The issue of same-sex marriage, despite popular misunderstanding, is primarily about forcing society to recognize something
Really? How do you come to that conclusion?
The push for same-sex marriage is to get the government to recognize the marriage. Whether or not every person in society recognizes it is not that important. There are still individuals in this country who do not recognize interracial marriages, but the government does recognize them. This is not about force as you state, it is about equality.
Every gay couple is free to marry outside of government recognition, and through contract law, to get almost all the rights afforded married couples.
Except that they don't want almost all the rights that are afforded to straight couples. They want all the rights. If I said that you could have most of the gun rights that your neighbor has, would you be content?
Creationism in schools?
We're talking about freedom here, and in terms of freedom, forcing "creationism in schools" is no different from forcing "evolution in schools."
No, those are completely different. Evolution is a scientific principle that can be observed. Creationism is entirely faith-based and cannot be observed or tested. Genetics allows for the testing of molecular evolutionary principles. No such tests exist for creationism. If one wants to choose to not accept evolution, that is fine, but they probably shouldn't be studying the life sciences; as anyone who refuses to accept gravity should not be studying physics.
I though the best way to get updates was to just hack into a computer at the LHC.
I never said it was practical, feasible, or even possible. Nor did I suggest (or at least I didn't _intend_ to) that I'm in favour of murdering, even spammers.
But my point is that in a magical fairy-world, where I had a button on my desk that would publicly kill all spammers legally and without moral repercussions for me (hah!), then after a few regular applications, people would seriously start to avoid spamming. It's not that you've increased the risk of being found, it's that by spamming, you have just GUARANTEED your own death in the very near future. There's no profit in dying (although there's lots of profit in death.)
You can apply all the moral relativism you want, but in the end you are still endorsing murder. Killing another human being is murder; you can justify it however you want but if you've killed someone, you committed murder.
The only achilles tendon that spam has is its lack of willing consumers.
You're actually not far from identifying the real problem here... Well, OK you are a ways off but at least at this point you've stopped pushing for murder as a "solution".
I'm curious how you think spam can be stopped, though.
Spam can be stopped by removing it from that which keeps it going. Spam isn't sent to piss you off. Spam is sent because people make money off of it. The spamvertised domains are paying the spammers to advertise on their behalf. The spammers have entire networks setup (social, physical, virtual, and otherwise) to help their enterprise. You just need to impair the profitability and eventually it won't be worth their while. I have previously identified how this can be done; and it turns out there are some computer security professionals who are beginning to agree with me.
This isn't the same as collecting spammers and carrying out a consistent, focused, public slaughter.
Allow me to state once again that murder, no matter how much it might make you feel good, will never solve the problem.
If every commercial spammer on planet earth showed up dead one day,
You'd be just as well off hoping for the flying spaghetti monster to come and enlighten all the spammers to stop spamming this afternoon for good. Those two situations are roughly of equal probability.
And on top of that, there would be no way to ever verify that "every commercial spammer" showed up dead. The whereabouts of many of the top spammers is unknown, and many others are in countries that have no policies at all against spam (though most of them do have laws against murder).
And ultimately there is too much profit in spam for that to deter spammers from entering the business. If you personally murdered several dozen of the top spammers this afternoon there would still be many, many, more spammers ready to take their place.
If you honestly want to stop spam - and are not just looking for a way to justify (to yourself) murdering another human being - you would look at the real source of the problem. Spam can be stopped, but murder won't do it.
3) provide insurance to 30 million people who now lack it
This bill doesn't actually do that. It is designed to help some fraction of those 30 million purchase insurance, it doesn't provide much of anything to much of anyone beyond that which is already provided to those who already have something.
So while
Obama is instituting a new national policy - health care, a basic fundamental right ina civilized society
Sounds great and all, it has already been stricken from the bill.
The majority of Americans don't want this legislation
While that is likely true, many of those people from "the majority of Americans" don't want it because they believe the BS that the "main stream media" and the various conservative activists are telling them. If they actually knew what was in it, they would oppose it for a different reason entirely.
OR single payer
I am not aware of a statistically meaningful survey that ever asked Americans if they wanted single-payer health care. It is almost always a loaded question when it is posed that doesn't really pose the issue honestly.
Most people voted for change, they got more of the same. That we can agree on.
Indeed I do agree on that. This bill does not represent anything resembling real change. The change it will bring is so slight and trivial that it is barely worth the paper the bill is printed on. Indeed the concept of change isn't that different in and of itself from the idea of Obama versus the real Obama.
the AMA carefully controls how many new MDs are granted every year
Have you looked at your local medical school lately? Many medical schools are at or extremely close to capacity. We can't just start certifying more doctors this afternoon just because we need them - at least not if we want qualified doctors - we need more schools for training those doctors. The closest medical school to where I live has an auditorium that seats over 100 students, and is used for many of their first-year-MD classes. We cannot expect to arbitrarily increase the enrollment numbers and not have the quality of education suffer when the student-teacher ratio changes.
Is there anything that the government runs that really functions correctly/efficiently?
Why do you hate the troops so much?
It won't do anything. This will go down as the 2010 Health Insurance Bailout act. Few Americans who currently don't have insurance will be helped, and few who do will notice one iota of difference. The largest group of people who will see positive change from this is the top executives at our health insurance companies.
please tell me this means the next step involves burning all spammers alive
Russia (and other countries) have already murdered spammers. It didn't make any difference. Just because it makes you feel better doesn't mean it has a positive effect on the spamming problem.
File this one with all the others who think they will get money out for punitive damages from spammers. We all know in the end it won't work, the plaintiff won't see any money; hence don't hold your breath for your "share" either.
Of course, IANAL, however we see that the PDF states the lawsuit (note it was not a criminal trial) was against a company. If the company doesn't have any responsible staffers in the US, then this suit isn't worth the paper the ruling was printed on. Furthermore if the company goes under then the payment for the ruling will be decided in bankruptcy court (though only if they are a US-based company).
The plaintiff(s) would have been wise to just save their time and not bother bringing a lawyer into the matter, as in the end they will likely end up paying a lot more money to that lawyer than they will ever see form the company they just sued.
I have yet to go to a 3D movie where I didn't leave with a headache from the glasses themselves. I wear prescription eyeglasses, and without fail before the movie is over I am sore from the poor fit of the 3D glasses. Some of them fit so poorly that they end up putting all their weight on the end of my nose to make life even more interesting.
I think next time I'll save the $3 and see the movies in 2D instead. The theaters should be able to provide us with more comfortable glasses by now...
General Electric stopped their product (at least in the US) of incandescent bulbs around a year ago. That story (which was not covered in slashdot as best I can tell) was probably more significant for the slashdot readers in North America - I know I still have quite a few GE incandescent bulbs in my house.
In a move sure to surprise no one, Obama has come out on the side of the MPAA/RIAA and has backed the ACTA:
I'm glad to see that slashdot maintains such a fair and unbiased approach to reporting. This goes well with the editorial opinion they passed on to us as news on Tuesday. Sure, I know that slashdot is not an actual news agency and has no reporters of its own, but they could at least pretend to not be promoting an agenda when choosing which articles to link to from the front page.
Clearly they are afraid to make a decision which is in and of itself a decision
No, ICANN is willing to make decisions. They just aren't willing to make decisions that make any fucking sense. They have already decided some time ago to start selling TLDs outright, which will inevitably result in .xxx being sold outright to someone if they don't establish it first. And being as it would make sense for them to establish it first so that they could make some small revenue from it, they will instead continue to table the issue until someone else sells it and it no longer matters.
Sometimes it seems that ICANN is itself being run by people who have as their own goals the destruction of ICANN.
ICANN has already told us that they will move ahead with the plan to start selling top level domains (TLDs). If they don't establish the .xxx TLD themselves, someone else will buy the rights to it. They might as well establish it themselves now so that they can make slightly more direct revenue from it than if it is sold entirely to someone else who can then run it however they see fit.
According to wikipedia, a US Quarter is 1.75mm thick. They also tell us a MicroSD card is 1mm thick. Hence if you hollowed out the Quarter for essentiall no play, you would have .75mm of quarter (you've hollowed out 5/9ths of the thickness). That also means you'd have .5mm on each side of the microSD...
What is the minimum thickness of a Copper-Nickel alloy needed to diffract all airport scanner x-ray beams?
But no, seriously, do you think that the day will never come when people's phones are seized?
It could happen.
However, seizing every laptop for additional scrutiny as it passes through airport security isn't that difficult, because there aren't that many laptops passing through at any given time. Cell phones, though, are another matter altogether.
Think of it this way - what fraction of the traveling public travels with a laptop? What fraction travels with a cell phone of some sort?
Based on my own informal observations at the airport I would say that more people travel with cell phones than do not. And the fraction who travel with laptops are still pretty small. So scrutinizing all the laptops isn't that big of a deal. But scrutinizing all the phones would be insane.
So unless something changes technologically to make it easier to screen all phones in less time, I wouldn't be concerned for the moment on more intense searches on cell phones. Hence the coins are not of any meaningful advantage over a phone.
So the coin makes sense but mostly all of the devices point out how security is basically stupid at best.
I disagree with you on that. The purpose of these coins is just to hide the microSD card. Except that a hollowed-out coin would look more suspicious at the airport scanner. You can physically put the same microSD card into your phone (any phone that takes a microSD, that is) and raise no suspicion whatsoever.
Hence the coin makes no sense, unless you don't own a phone that can take a microSD - in which case you're a terrible excuse for a spy.
So if the point is to make security look silly, then the best route would be to keep doing what we already do. And if someone released a 128gb microSD tomorrow, you could still physically place it in your phone even if it only supports up to 16 or 32gb; your phone just wouldn't be able to read it. But a non-readable card in a phone is still equally as useful as the same card in a coin, and still just as useful when you get to the other end.
they could care less what phone any of us have, as they rarely ever inspect it
That is pretty much the point I am making. We already have good tools for smuggling microSD cards to wherever. We can move arbitrarily large microSD cards through security today without anyone asking questions. These coins are meaningless toys.
Considering how laptops have become fair game for involuntary search and seizure at US borders, I think putting your 'important stuff' on a microSD card inside a hollow coin is probably a good idea.
My blackberry has a microSD card in it. I have passed through many different customs / airport security examinations and nobody has ever examined the contents of the card. I don't see the point of paying for an even smaller microSD card carrier, when I already have a small microSD reader that I carry with me everywhere that nobody ever raises an eye towards.
And even if my phone is off, or the battery is dead, it still does just fine at carrying the card and looking extremely ordinary. You could also substitute most Motorola phones in the same role, and any number of other phones that I haven't paid attention to that also use microSD.
This is just a slashvertisement for hollowed-out coins. I would really consider them "spy coins" as the title is selling them to us. A "spy coin" should actively do some spying, really. I could just as well call my wallet a "spy wallet", as it can hold mico-SD cards too.
This story belongs under "editorials" not "games". It is expressing the opinion that someone has that this death was related to the Wii. There is not a shred of evidence that this would not have happened had the family not owned a Wii.
When a child burned down the family trailer after watching Beavis and Butt-Head, cooler heads eventually prevailed and realized that the cartoon didn't have anything to do with the fact that the mother of the child was an idiot. While Beavis and Butt-head were never the same afterwards, we collectively came to realize that the cartoon was not actually at fault.
Similarly we need to collectively come to realize that the Wii is not at fault in this child's death. Nintendo did not put a loaded gun within reach of a three-year-old. And the opinion that a three-year-old learned unsafe gun manners from a game console is not news for the slashdot front-page; rather it is an opinion that deserves to be recognized as such.