My thoughts exactly. I'm not even sure I understand what the point of the author is. He is asserting that the Internet does not consist of man-made hardware and is instead an artificial and natural domain? And this matters why? I'll let the author go with his artificial and natural domain theory, and lets see what happens to his internet when the backbone is bombed, or the electrical grid is taken out.
He uses a lot of pretty words to say nothing of substance.
Sure you could make a datacenter handle a lightning storm like that easily. Simply take it off line every time you see a lightning storm. When the storm has passed, you bring it back online again. Just like they do with the amusement park.
Some people may have problems with that kind of availability and prefer the risk of the datacenter going down 1 day over a period of years instead of going down every lightning storm. But they are just being overly picky I am sure.
Re:HD is really good enough...
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When they have wallscreens, will they have soap operas where the characters interact with me and let me say lines? Will they get rid of all our books?
Just curious, I read some story about this before.
Your enigmatic statements mean nothing without context. I can think of several instances where unions have had a negative affect on the economy and the middle class. I hate it when people feel one concept is the solution to all problems. If you have a union make unreasonable demands and not take into account competition it can destroy an entire region. Just look at Detroit.
Nor are unions the only way to secure workers rights. You can easily leave a job and find another if you don't like the conditions. Why wait for someone else to fix the issues for you?
I am mostly concerned by your robotic repeating of mantras as if they have inherent meaning. Repeating mantras reveals a weak mind, ALWAYS. Saying slogans over and over means you are a dimbwit, ALWAYS.
Nudging technologies have existed ever since people had technology I would presume. Exit signs, Stop lights, one way street signs all of these things are meant to direct people in a certain way. I though the way the designers made an atrium where your choices would affect the environment in a fun and interesting way was great. You are basically rewarding behavior you want people to choose with a very modest display, but one that will encourage them to monitor each other's behavior and have a positive outcome. This is about as ethical as you can be. Is there any more ethical way to influence behavior you can think of?
You miss my point. Additionally, If your problem with her is that she says "because God says so" you have indeed constructed a religious test. You don't like that she is using her religion to determine a political viewpoint, simply because she is using her religion to determine her viewpoint. That is indeed a religious test by any definition a reasonable person might come up with. Following constitutional guidelines, you would not legally be able to bar her from office based on that assertion. I am not constructing a stawman, I am merely encouraging you to exercise your mental abilities and move beyond the "but she says GOD" this and "but she got history wrong" that and actually engage with policies, the things that will matter when they will lead. If you personally don't like that she uses God as her reason, don't vote for her. But you are silly if you think that the separation of church and state would prevent her from becoming president should she get a majority of the votes. Furthermore, that is not that great a logical reason to disagree with her, at least not one that would be convincing to someone not already agreeing with you. I'm hoping you can do better than that and provide well reasoned explanations as to what you believe and why. I'm trying to encourage you to grow beyond the level you are putting her (and yourself) at in your posts.
You have yet to even talk about my main point and the thing I was most trying to say, because you are so upset about all this other Palin stuff. If you looked deeper you might even find out that I, myself, am not even a Palin supporter.
Read the constitution and tell me where it says you can not have a religious viewpoint in office.
Ok:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
You don't feel that "you can't say God says so and be a politician" is a religious test? If anything your quote supports my argument.
Additionally, my link has not been refuted, as far as I have seen. It has been disagreed with. While Palin was undoubtedly editorializing the story of Paul Revere as she said it (like Reagon, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama have all done), it wasn't as wacky as some have made it out to be. Nor is my point to defend Palin.
My main point is this: What I want is people to disagree with her in an intelligent way supporting their arguments. When they don't, they are as bad as they make her out to be. If the best thing you have on her is "she talks about God!" and "But she got Paul Revere wrong!" then maybe her positions are better than your own. If you have better things on her positions than that, why are you resorting to arguing about that? You are then only muddying the waters making your arguments seem weak.
The problem with this is that so many loud "anti-government" idiots are only "anti-government" about the things they don't want it to do. They're perfectly happy with using the government to stop things they don't like, but as soon as someone suggests that maybe more guns aren't the answer to all of our problems, or that no-texting-while-driving laws are pretty reasonable, the "anti-government" lot immediately switches sides to keep the "nanny state" out of their business.
It's basically code for, "well, everything *I* believe is perfectly reasonable, but everything I *don't* believe is just big government nanny stateism," and you can't have a meaningful discussion with someone like that. They keep moving the goalposts to whatever suits the particular issue at hand. Instead of forming an argument specific to the issue, they play the big government card whenever someone suggests, for instance, regulating industrial pollution output; and then they have absolutely no problem with a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. You can't reason with that kind of stupid.
--Jeremy
I absolutely agree with you on this, Jeremy. I see this on both sides of the political spectrum. My point, is just because there are some that move the goalposts and are unreasonable in their arguments, that doesn't mean we should also do the same. If you are going to disagree, know why you do it, and explain it. Otherwise you are simply piling on and you may or may not actually be wrong in your position. I find so much of the internet disagreements lack people trying to see the opposing side's view of what is going on. Instead they demonize and vilify the opposition. Examples that come to mind is what Palin has to say about "the media" and what anti-Palin people have to say about Palin. Just because the other side is dumb doesn't mean you're not an idiot too. That's all I'm saying.
I have found that over time, my positions on some issues have changed. I'm sure that there are many people who are the same way. If you argue all your political positions so dogmatically, you are then an idiot at least at some point. I just want people to avoid being idiots.
I, for instance, feel the government should leave marriage to the states to decide, and not step in to defining or regulating it.
Unfortunately for your position, there are significant inter-state commerce issues that revolve around who is and who isn't married. Those can not be resolved by the states.
That is not strictly true. You can resolve the commerce issue without forcing a federal marriage law. Perhaps you don't like what that would end up meaning, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.
Simply because of those views she has you are claiming her religious views rob her of her objectivity?
Yes. When her argument boils down to "God said so", she loses all objectivity.
I'm not talking about her credibility. I'm not enamored with her credibility for other reasons not discussed here. My point is when you jump against her views based on the same religious argument, you aren't furthering anything except making people who already agree with you agree with you again. You fall into the same trap she did, if indeed arguing a religious argument instantly makes you lose credibility, which I would dispute. She says because God says so, so your argument is "if you say God says so you aren't credible". Both of you are not advancing any reason that supports your viewpoints then. You both lose.
Is it now prohibited to let your religious views inform your political ones?
That depends if you believe the founders when they explicitly stated they were not creating a Christian nation, or if you believe the revisionists like Palin who like to claim they did.
That is absolutely and patently false. Read the constitution and tell me where it says you can not have a religious viewpoint in office. The only thing that the separation of church and state part of the constitution asserts is that no state religion can be established. Moral laws are not the same as a state religion. There are so many examples of where this is shown to be true that I need you really to prove your point on this. Examples: prohibition, drug laws, underage pornography, marriage age limits, anti-nudity laws etc. All of these are moral laws where a certain view of morality is enforced and it is not deemed as violating church/state divisions.
If this is the case can we now say that any philosophical position you have rob you of objectivity and allow us to discredit your political positions?
No, because one can back up a philosophical position with a rational argument. See: Rand Paul's foolishness about lunch counters. He backed his bad position with a logical argument. That is not something that is possible when your argument is "God says so".
My point is that while everyone is asserting they "can" back up their position with a logical argument, it is amusing that they are not doing so. The anti Palin people are sounding as ill-informed as the Palin fans.
or claiming she has her history wrong so her view is invalid
or claiming she has her history wrong so her view is invalid
Her failure at history is not the disqualifying event. Her failure at history demonstrates she doesn't have the mental faculties for the job. Since this gaffe, she has doubled-down on her error and refused to admit she's wrong. That also disqualifies her for the job.
My point is since when does having religious beliefs discredit someone on that basis alone? Can we then discredit people because of philosophical stances? At some point we will discredit everyone. On what basis do we believe that "all men are created equal" and deserve certain inalienable rights? If you don't believe that life begins at conception, when does it begin and why? On what basis are you making that decision? Certainly not on science. There is no scientific basis for establishing life doesn't begin until birth, for instance. Furthermore, when will marriage stop being redefined? On what basis is marriage OK between 2 people of the same gender? Why not between 3 or 4 people? Why not between an adult and a 5 year old child?
At some point values and determinations of what is wrong and what is right become established as law. Prohibiting people's religious backgrounds to inform their values is silly and is not what the constitution means by "separation of church and state". Stopping or permitting someone from having an abortion does not require them to become a practitioner of any particular religion established by the state.
It seems you are allowing your own irrational fear of religion to guide your processing of this issue.
So which ones do you want the government deciding then? Should we be frightened of you because you want the same thing but opposite? I'm not surprised you posted as an anonymous coward. You are making a false dichotomy. It is reasonable for people to feel government should limit some things and allow for freedom in others. Honest and reasonable people can disagree over where the line of government involvement should be drawn.
I, for instance, feel the government should leave marriage to the states to decide, and not step in to defining or regulating it. Palin feels differently. I see no dichotomy between this and her wanting less restrictions on gun ownership. It is an entirely different topic. I may disagree with her, but the grounds on which you do is so wildly illogical I find myself not sympathizing with your stance or wanting to see your point of view. Simply because of those views she has you are claiming her religious views rob her of her objectivity? On what logical grounds? Is it now prohibited to let your religious views inform your political ones? If this is the case can we now say that any philosophical position you have rob you of objectivity and allow us to discredit your political positions? To me that is a far scarier road to go down than even having Palin as president. We are moving towards the realm of though crimes.
If you have a problem with Palin, do the rest of us that also disagree with her a favor. Disagree with her using substance and reasoning, not these silly things like demonizing her because of religious views, or claiming she has her history wrong so her view is invalid. If her views are wrong, show us. If you disagree, explain why, but in a way that others can relate.
You obviously don't understand what this station is used for. It is meant to provide a brief buffer in the event of a power interruption or changeover. Previously this was done by powering up a natural gas generator which is a huge waste of energy because you provide excess (unneeded) power for a while. These units can be used on demand, and don't use a lot of energy when they are on stand by. Think of them as a UPS for the electrical company.
I would guess they are preventing these changes in their calculators to preserve their status as a preferred calculator at high schools and Colleges. I would speculate they are preventing possible cheating on tests with their locking down of the calculators. Completely understandable as if they aren't the preferred calculators in schools, they lose most of their revenue stream.
WordPerfect also blew a big chunk of the revenues from their office suite on tech support. You'd call in, and one of 1000 or so well-trained staff would answer almost instantly and talk you through how to solve your problem.
Ever try calling tech support for Lotus, or Microsoft, or just about anyone else? Endless voicemail maze, eventually you wait on hold for half an hour to reach someone who doesn't speak your language and has never used the product. Much, much cheaper for the company.
Out of curiousity, what exactly did you call tech support about on a word processor?
So the standard now is its OK for kids to see things unless it will kill them? Sounds like someone who doesn't have kids. Parental controls are tools for proactive parents to help enforce the policies they have decided are best for the families they are in. Parenting is indeed the job of a parent, but in today's age (and especially on Slashdot) we use computers to help us do our work. If I feel my kid shouldn't watch a certain type of movie, I will put policies in place to stop it.
For instance, my 4 year old likes to use computers and watch movies VERY much. But if he sees a scary movie, he has trouble going to bed at night and has nightmares. Why is it lazy parenting setting up a computer so he can start a movie he wants to watch in such a way that movies that will harm him isn't possible? To me that seems more like smart parenting.
i knew a lot of people that worked for UPS loading trucks... they said if you sent a long cardboard tube it was pretty much guaranteed to be used as a hockey stick or baseball bat on other small packages.
I worked at UPS, and had several friends that worked there as well. Either you are trolling slashdot and making stories up, or your friends were spinning quite the story. You are dealing with such a high volume of packages, you don't have time to play around with individual packages for your own amusement at UPS. Additionally, they grade your performance based on the volume of packages you handle, and the percentage of them that are mishandled (damaged, lost, sent to the wrong area). Anyone who would play around and intentionally damage packages wouldn't last long. I suspect the same would be true of any package delivery company, really.
It interesting what slashdot chooses to reward the informative score to.
That being said, long cardboard tube do seem to be damaged more often than normal boxes. This is because they are typically weaker than the average cardboard box, very often they are not filled to capacity, giving them no internal structure to resist crushing forces, and the conveyers and rollers don't handle them as well as a normal box, because of their narrow shape and ability to roll around. Also they are an odd shape, so if a load shifts in a trailer, they can be exposed to some shearing forces because of they are usually longer than the average box.
I would disagree with many people. Religion and science should have things to say to each other. If you have science unrestrained by religion, you have the ability of science to go unrestrained into immoral acts. The scientists of Nazi Germany were unrestrained by religion and did unspeakable atrocities. Religion unrestrained and controlling science gave us periods of time where to speak scientific truth would earn you torture and prison. Neither should control the other, but I do believe the two should strongly influence each other.
I know that atheists will come and try to claim they are moral and don't require religious influence, but I respectfully disagree. I am not saying you have no morals if you are an atheist. But if you are an atheist and have morals, you have been influenced by religion. You can deny it, but I would be willing to bet any language and concepts you use to describe your morals have been developed and established using concepts and language made by a religion. Additionally, there is nothing inherently moral about atheism as people familiar with Pol Pot and Stalin will easily tell you. While there have been religious offenders that have done unspeakable things, I see no movement shaping the morality of our culture without religious influence behind it, and cultures die without morals (at least shared ones).
Religions at their core gave us their vision of how society should be. I'm not sure it would be to our benefit to cast that off, and societies that have done that have not been the better for it.
This is your big problem with Windows 7? Really? I actually like the ability to customize how much goes in the recycle bin before it deletes things (Or how long things stay in the recycle bin before they get purged). I think Microsoft did a better job than apple on that. But that's just me (I'm typing this from my macbook by the way).
Having driven a Toyota, I can assert there is no noticeable difference between their throttle and brake placement and any other vehicle I have driven. I can confidently assert that anyone not able to ascertain the difference between a Toyota brake and accelerator does not belong on the road. Anyone who is driving a Toyota and worried they will not be to differentiate between the brake and the accelerator just needs to remember this: The accelerator is the one on the right. The brake is on the left. Another helpful hint, is if you are pressing it, and it causes the car to go faster, stop pressing it if you are intending to stop. At that point try pressing the other pedal. Hopefully by moving your foot to the left. If this is too hard for you, don't drive.
I'm not sure why people are marking any of these comments about how it STILL could have been ECU/Software problems as insightful. Anyone who works in programming for physical devices will be able to tell you it would take two independent faults working together in perfect harmony for this kind of problem to even be possible. One: the gas pedal sensors or programming would have to fail. It would have to fail in a way that gave full acceleration. Toyota's accelerators are designed to fail in a way that would give an indicator of no acceleration to the car, so it would probably have to be some odd programming fault that caused the ECU to show "full throttle". Two: the brake pedal would have to completely fail. Since NONE of the cars could duplicate the brake failure later, it would have to be some computer problem that showed no brake input no matter what. The likelihood of this is so low as to be ridiculous, especially when the fault cannot be duplicated, yet is allegedly happening so often.
The disturbing thing about this thread to me, is that so many comments that are modded up show a feeling that computer controls are bad, and mechanical ones are good, and computers cannot be trusted. Mechanical connections are much more likely than computer controls to fail in a dangerous way. Electronic controls have been used successfully and safely in just about every transportation device known to man. They have a better track record than mechanical ones in almost any situation. Even cases where they are used and faults are found, they are mostly in cases where sophisticated interpretation of data needs to be made, and almost never result from two independent sensors or controls giving completely opposite readings than they are designed to give.
I used to think that Slashdot was not the place for modern luddites. Obviously I haven't been paying attention. Anyone who actually questions the Toyota black box and feels it is still likely to be a computer fault or programming error even in the face of an NHTSA investigation showing user error is doing the equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears and shouting "NANANANA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" and pretending this is a reasonable response to actual investigation and data.
The easy test of this is to try to come up with a scenario where there would be enough evidence to convince these Slashdot luddites the car was indeed safely made and there was user error. We tested the software..."but maybe corrosion in wires could cause this scenario!" No corrosion found..."but maybe temperature caused the faults" We cannot duplicate thermal failure "but maybe...." Nothing will ever satisfy these people, because they have already determined in their minds computer controls are evil, and they are operating on confirmation bias now. While I understand people like this exist, I am confused as to why they get modded up in slashdot. They seem to belong somewhere else.
Unless they make money off the EV1, there is no reason to make the car. Businesses exist to make money. GM tried everything possible to make money off of electric cars, including trying to elicit goodwill by making a non-profitable zero emissions vehicle. The goodwill generated wasn't worth the cost of the program. It ends up they were headed in the wrong direction anyway. Hybrid vehicles are the only thing that is likely to sell in any significant quantities at a profit for quite some time.
Who killed the electric car is such a silly movie with a false premise. Its funny how people will assume car companies are willing to kill their own customers to make a buck (Ford Pinto, Ralph Nader "Unsafe at any speed"), yet they are loyal to the point of going bankrupt to big oil? Come on. If GM had a way to make a billion dollar profit yet it would make half the oil companies go under, they would do it right away. If you want to see who killed the electric car look in a mirror. People want powerful, long range, higher performance, safe vehicles. Do you want to drive a golf cart or a Ferrari? For most, the answer is obvious, and that's why zero emissions vehicles aren't very popular.
The resolution of your eye may be 570 Megapixels, but your brain doesn't come anywhere near processing that. We don't have the ability to continually process all that information, so the data is almost immediately dumped after reception (lasts less than a fraction of a second). Your brain will only hold a small representative part of that information for 1 to 3 seconds, and even less after that.
Try reading text when you are not looking directly at it, and you will notice your eyes have very high resolution in only a small portion of your vision. Most people can only make out a couple of words on either side of their center of focus. The rest of your vision is just a vague impression noticing only high contrast and motion for the most part. Vision is fascinating, and how our brain interprets and deals with it is even more fascinating.
I was inspired by your post and decided to add some more info. Thanks for the educational input! Its stuff like this that keeps me coming back to Slashdot.
Crts are nicer for color photos or videos, but for black and white text, LCD's are much better. Unless you get a really high quality crt, the lcd will always be sharper.
Slashdot Mirror
My thoughts exactly. I'm not even sure I understand what the point of the author is. He is asserting that the Internet does not consist of man-made hardware and is instead an artificial and natural domain? And this matters why? I'll let the author go with his artificial and natural domain theory, and lets see what happens to his internet when the backbone is bombed, or the electrical grid is taken out.
He uses a lot of pretty words to say nothing of substance.
Sure you could make a datacenter handle a lightning storm like that easily. Simply take it off line every time you see a lightning storm. When the storm has passed, you bring it back online again. Just like they do with the amusement park.
Some people may have problems with that kind of availability and prefer the risk of the datacenter going down 1 day over a period of years instead of going down every lightning storm. But they are just being overly picky I am sure.
When they have wallscreens, will they have soap operas where the characters interact with me and let me say lines? Will they get rid of all our books?
Just curious, I read some story about this before.
Your enigmatic statements mean nothing without context. I can think of several instances where unions have had a negative affect on the economy and the middle class. I hate it when people feel one concept is the solution to all problems. If you have a union make unreasonable demands and not take into account competition it can destroy an entire region. Just look at Detroit.
Nor are unions the only way to secure workers rights. You can easily leave a job and find another if you don't like the conditions. Why wait for someone else to fix the issues for you?
I am mostly concerned by your robotic repeating of mantras as if they have inherent meaning. Repeating mantras reveals a weak mind, ALWAYS. Saying slogans over and over means you are a dimbwit, ALWAYS.
Wow, Just get unions and instantly the economy, middle class and society improve! It's like magic. Do we also get unicorns?
Nudging technologies have existed ever since people had technology I would presume. Exit signs, Stop lights, one way street signs all of these things are meant to direct people in a certain way. I though the way the designers made an atrium where your choices would affect the environment in a fun and interesting way was great. You are basically rewarding behavior you want people to choose with a very modest display, but one that will encourage them to monitor each other's behavior and have a positive outcome. This is about as ethical as you can be. Is there any more ethical way to influence behavior you can think of?
Really, his price on this flashlight is quite good, if you remember the thing is capable of 500 lumens of output. Compare it to a flashlight like this: http://www.amazon.com/EagleTac-T20C2-MarKII-XM-L-Flashlight/dp/B004NEKA8Q
You miss my point. Additionally, If your problem with her is that she says "because God says so" you have indeed constructed a religious test. You don't like that she is using her religion to determine a political viewpoint, simply because she is using her religion to determine her viewpoint. That is indeed a religious test by any definition a reasonable person might come up with. Following constitutional guidelines, you would not legally be able to bar her from office based on that assertion. I am not constructing a stawman, I am merely encouraging you to exercise your mental abilities and move beyond the "but she says GOD" this and "but she got history wrong" that and actually engage with policies, the things that will matter when they will lead. If you personally don't like that she uses God as her reason, don't vote for her. But you are silly if you think that the separation of church and state would prevent her from becoming president should she get a majority of the votes. Furthermore, that is not that great a logical reason to disagree with her, at least not one that would be convincing to someone not already agreeing with you. I'm hoping you can do better than that and provide well reasoned explanations as to what you believe and why. I'm trying to encourage you to grow beyond the level you are putting her (and yourself) at in your posts.
You have yet to even talk about my main point and the thing I was most trying to say, because you are so upset about all this other Palin stuff. If you looked deeper you might even find out that I, myself, am not even a Palin supporter.
Read the constitution and tell me where it says you can not have a religious viewpoint in office. Ok: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
You don't feel that "you can't say God says so and be a politician" is a religious test? If anything your quote supports my argument.
Additionally, my link has not been refuted, as far as I have seen. It has been disagreed with. While Palin was undoubtedly editorializing the story of Paul Revere as she said it (like Reagon, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama have all done), it wasn't as wacky as some have made it out to be. Nor is my point to defend Palin.
My main point is this: What I want is people to disagree with her in an intelligent way supporting their arguments. When they don't, they are as bad as they make her out to be. If the best thing you have on her is "she talks about God!" and "But she got Paul Revere wrong!" then maybe her positions are better than your own. If you have better things on her positions than that, why are you resorting to arguing about that? You are then only muddying the waters making your arguments seem weak.
The problem with this is that so many loud "anti-government" idiots are only "anti-government" about the things they don't want it to do. They're perfectly happy with using the government to stop things they don't like, but as soon as someone suggests that maybe more guns aren't the answer to all of our problems, or that no-texting-while-driving laws are pretty reasonable, the "anti-government" lot immediately switches sides to keep the "nanny state" out of their business.
It's basically code for, "well, everything *I* believe is perfectly reasonable, but everything I *don't* believe is just big government nanny stateism," and you can't have a meaningful discussion with someone like that. They keep moving the goalposts to whatever suits the particular issue at hand. Instead of forming an argument specific to the issue, they play the big government card whenever someone suggests, for instance, regulating industrial pollution output; and then they have absolutely no problem with a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. You can't reason with that kind of stupid.
--Jeremy
I absolutely agree with you on this, Jeremy. I see this on both sides of the political spectrum. My point, is just because there are some that move the goalposts and are unreasonable in their arguments, that doesn't mean we should also do the same. If you are going to disagree, know why you do it, and explain it. Otherwise you are simply piling on and you may or may not actually be wrong in your position. I find so much of the internet disagreements lack people trying to see the opposing side's view of what is going on. Instead they demonize and vilify the opposition. Examples that come to mind is what Palin has to say about "the media" and what anti-Palin people have to say about Palin. Just because the other side is dumb doesn't mean you're not an idiot too. That's all I'm saying.
I have found that over time, my positions on some issues have changed. I'm sure that there are many people who are the same way. If you argue all your political positions so dogmatically, you are then an idiot at least at some point. I just want people to avoid being idiots.
Unfortunately for your position, there are significant inter-state commerce issues that revolve around who is and who isn't married. Those can not be resolved by the states.
That is not strictly true. You can resolve the commerce issue without forcing a federal marriage law. Perhaps you don't like what that would end up meaning, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.
Yes. When her argument boils down to "God said so", she loses all objectivity.
I'm not talking about her credibility. I'm not enamored with her credibility for other reasons not discussed here. My point is when you jump against her views based on the same religious argument, you aren't furthering anything except making people who already agree with you agree with you again. You fall into the same trap she did, if indeed arguing a religious argument instantly makes you lose credibility, which I would dispute. She says because God says so, so your argument is "if you say God says so you aren't credible". Both of you are not advancing any reason that supports your viewpoints then. You both lose.
That depends if you believe the founders when they explicitly stated they were not creating a Christian nation, or if you believe the revisionists like Palin who like to claim they did.
That is absolutely and patently false. Read the constitution and tell me where it says you can not have a religious viewpoint in office. The only thing that the separation of church and state part of the constitution asserts is that no state religion can be established. Moral laws are not the same as a state religion. There are so many examples of where this is shown to be true that I need you really to prove your point on this. Examples: prohibition, drug laws, underage pornography, marriage age limits, anti-nudity laws etc. All of these are moral laws where a certain view of morality is enforced and it is not deemed as violating church/state divisions.
No, because one can back up a philosophical position with a rational argument. See: Rand Paul's foolishness about lunch counters. He backed his bad position with a logical argument. That is not something that is possible when your argument is "God says so".
My point is that while everyone is asserting they "can" back up their position with a logical argument, it is amusing that they are not doing so. The anti Palin people are sounding as ill-informed as the Palin fans. or claiming she has her history wrong so her view is invalid
Her failure at history is not the disqualifying event. Her failure at history demonstrates she doesn't have the mental faculties for the job. Since this gaffe, she has doubled-down on her error and refused to admit she's wrong. That also disqualifies her for the job.
Ironically, her view is not actually false, and is more accurate than her detractors assert: check this link - http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/06/06/palin_defends_paul_revere_comments/ [boston.com]
My point is since when does having religious beliefs discredit someone on that basis alone? Can we then discredit people because of philosophical stances? At some point we will discredit everyone. On what basis do we believe that "all men are created equal" and deserve certain inalienable rights? If you don't believe that life begins at conception, when does it begin and why? On what basis are you making that decision? Certainly not on science. There is no scientific basis for establishing life doesn't begin until birth, for instance. Furthermore, when will marriage stop being redefined? On what basis is marriage OK between 2 people of the same gender? Why not between 3 or 4 people? Why not between an adult and a 5 year old child?
At some point values and determinations of what is wrong and what is right become established as law. Prohibiting people's religious backgrounds to inform their values is silly and is not what the constitution means by "separation of church and state". Stopping or permitting someone from having an abortion does not require them to become a practitioner of any particular religion established by the state.
It seems you are allowing your own irrational fear of religion to guide your processing of this issue.
So which ones do you want the government deciding then? Should we be frightened of you because you want the same thing but opposite? I'm not surprised you posted as an anonymous coward. You are making a false dichotomy. It is reasonable for people to feel government should limit some things and allow for freedom in others. Honest and reasonable people can disagree over where the line of government involvement should be drawn.
I, for instance, feel the government should leave marriage to the states to decide, and not step in to defining or regulating it. Palin feels differently. I see no dichotomy between this and her wanting less restrictions on gun ownership. It is an entirely different topic. I may disagree with her, but the grounds on which you do is so wildly illogical I find myself not sympathizing with your stance or wanting to see your point of view. Simply because of those views she has you are claiming her religious views rob her of her objectivity? On what logical grounds? Is it now prohibited to let your religious views inform your political ones? If this is the case can we now say that any philosophical position you have rob you of objectivity and allow us to discredit your political positions? To me that is a far scarier road to go down than even having Palin as president. We are moving towards the realm of though crimes.
If you have a problem with Palin, do the rest of us that also disagree with her a favor. Disagree with her using substance and reasoning, not these silly things like demonizing her because of religious views, or claiming she has her history wrong so her view is invalid. If her views are wrong, show us. If you disagree, explain why, but in a way that others can relate.
You obviously don't understand what this station is used for. It is meant to provide a brief buffer in the event of a power interruption or changeover. Previously this was done by powering up a natural gas generator which is a huge waste of energy because you provide excess (unneeded) power for a while. These units can be used on demand, and don't use a lot of energy when they are on stand by. Think of them as a UPS for the electrical company.
I would guess they are preventing these changes in their calculators to preserve their status as a preferred calculator at high schools and Colleges. I would speculate they are preventing possible cheating on tests with their locking down of the calculators. Completely understandable as if they aren't the preferred calculators in schools, they lose most of their revenue stream.
WordPerfect also blew a big chunk of the revenues from their office suite on tech support. You'd call in, and one of 1000 or so well-trained staff would answer almost instantly and talk you through how to solve your problem.
Ever try calling tech support for Lotus, or Microsoft, or just about anyone else? Endless voicemail maze, eventually you wait on hold for half an hour to reach someone who doesn't speak your language and has never used the product. Much, much cheaper for the company.
Out of curiousity, what exactly did you call tech support about on a word processor?
So the standard now is its OK for kids to see things unless it will kill them? Sounds like someone who doesn't have kids. Parental controls are tools for proactive parents to help enforce the policies they have decided are best for the families they are in. Parenting is indeed the job of a parent, but in today's age (and especially on Slashdot) we use computers to help us do our work. If I feel my kid shouldn't watch a certain type of movie, I will put policies in place to stop it.
For instance, my 4 year old likes to use computers and watch movies VERY much. But if he sees a scary movie, he has trouble going to bed at night and has nightmares. Why is it lazy parenting setting up a computer so he can start a movie he wants to watch in such a way that movies that will harm him isn't possible? To me that seems more like smart parenting.
i knew a lot of people that worked for UPS loading trucks... they said if you sent a long cardboard tube it was pretty much guaranteed to be used as a hockey stick or baseball bat on other small packages.
I worked at UPS, and had several friends that worked there as well. Either you are trolling slashdot and making stories up, or your friends were spinning quite the story. You are dealing with such a high volume of packages, you don't have time to play around with individual packages for your own amusement at UPS. Additionally, they grade your performance based on the volume of packages you handle, and the percentage of them that are mishandled (damaged, lost, sent to the wrong area). Anyone who would play around and intentionally damage packages wouldn't last long. I suspect the same would be true of any package delivery company, really.
It interesting what slashdot chooses to reward the informative score to.
That being said, long cardboard tube do seem to be damaged more often than normal boxes. This is because they are typically weaker than the average cardboard box, very often they are not filled to capacity, giving them no internal structure to resist crushing forces, and the conveyers and rollers don't handle them as well as a normal box, because of their narrow shape and ability to roll around. Also they are an odd shape, so if a load shifts in a trailer, they can be exposed to some shearing forces because of they are usually longer than the average box.
I would disagree with many people. Religion and science should have things to say to each other. If you have science unrestrained by religion, you have the ability of science to go unrestrained into immoral acts. The scientists of Nazi Germany were unrestrained by religion and did unspeakable atrocities. Religion unrestrained and controlling science gave us periods of time where to speak scientific truth would earn you torture and prison. Neither should control the other, but I do believe the two should strongly influence each other.
I know that atheists will come and try to claim they are moral and don't require religious influence, but I respectfully disagree. I am not saying you have no morals if you are an atheist. But if you are an atheist and have morals, you have been influenced by religion. You can deny it, but I would be willing to bet any language and concepts you use to describe your morals have been developed and established using concepts and language made by a religion. Additionally, there is nothing inherently moral about atheism as people familiar with Pol Pot and Stalin will easily tell you. While there have been religious offenders that have done unspeakable things, I see no movement shaping the morality of our culture without religious influence behind it, and cultures die without morals (at least shared ones).
Religions at their core gave us their vision of how society should be. I'm not sure it would be to our benefit to cast that off, and societies that have done that have not been the better for it.
This is your big problem with Windows 7? Really? I actually like the ability to customize how much goes in the recycle bin before it deletes things (Or how long things stay in the recycle bin before they get purged). I think Microsoft did a better job than apple on that. But that's just me (I'm typing this from my macbook by the way).
Having driven a Toyota, I can assert there is no noticeable difference between their throttle and brake placement and any other vehicle I have driven. I can confidently assert that anyone not able to ascertain the difference between a Toyota brake and accelerator does not belong on the road. Anyone who is driving a Toyota and worried they will not be to differentiate between the brake and the accelerator just needs to remember this: The accelerator is the one on the right. The brake is on the left. Another helpful hint, is if you are pressing it, and it causes the car to go faster, stop pressing it if you are intending to stop. At that point try pressing the other pedal. Hopefully by moving your foot to the left. If this is too hard for you, don't drive.
I'm not sure why people are marking any of these comments about how it STILL could have been ECU/Software problems as insightful. Anyone who works in programming for physical devices will be able to tell you it would take two independent faults working together in perfect harmony for this kind of problem to even be possible. One: the gas pedal sensors or programming would have to fail. It would have to fail in a way that gave full acceleration. Toyota's accelerators are designed to fail in a way that would give an indicator of no acceleration to the car, so it would probably have to be some odd programming fault that caused the ECU to show "full throttle". Two: the brake pedal would have to completely fail. Since NONE of the cars could duplicate the brake failure later, it would have to be some computer problem that showed no brake input no matter what. The likelihood of this is so low as to be ridiculous, especially when the fault cannot be duplicated, yet is allegedly happening so often.
The disturbing thing about this thread to me, is that so many comments that are modded up show a feeling that computer controls are bad, and mechanical ones are good, and computers cannot be trusted. Mechanical connections are much more likely than computer controls to fail in a dangerous way. Electronic controls have been used successfully and safely in just about every transportation device known to man. They have a better track record than mechanical ones in almost any situation. Even cases where they are used and faults are found, they are mostly in cases where sophisticated interpretation of data needs to be made, and almost never result from two independent sensors or controls giving completely opposite readings than they are designed to give.
I used to think that Slashdot was not the place for modern luddites. Obviously I haven't been paying attention. Anyone who actually questions the Toyota black box and feels it is still likely to be a computer fault or programming error even in the face of an NHTSA investigation showing user error is doing the equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears and shouting "NANANANA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" and pretending this is a reasonable response to actual investigation and data.
The easy test of this is to try to come up with a scenario where there would be enough evidence to convince these Slashdot luddites the car was indeed safely made and there was user error. We tested the software..."but maybe corrosion in wires could cause this scenario!" No corrosion found..."but maybe temperature caused the faults" We cannot duplicate thermal failure "but maybe...." Nothing will ever satisfy these people, because they have already determined in their minds computer controls are evil, and they are operating on confirmation bias now. While I understand people like this exist, I am confused as to why they get modded up in slashdot. They seem to belong somewhere else.
Unless they make money off the EV1, there is no reason to make the car. Businesses exist to make money. GM tried everything possible to make money off of electric cars, including trying to elicit goodwill by making a non-profitable zero emissions vehicle. The goodwill generated wasn't worth the cost of the program. It ends up they were headed in the wrong direction anyway. Hybrid vehicles are the only thing that is likely to sell in any significant quantities at a profit for quite some time.
Who killed the electric car is such a silly movie with a false premise. Its funny how people will assume car companies are willing to kill their own customers to make a buck (Ford Pinto, Ralph Nader "Unsafe at any speed"), yet they are loyal to the point of going bankrupt to big oil? Come on. If GM had a way to make a billion dollar profit yet it would make half the oil companies go under, they would do it right away. If you want to see who killed the electric car look in a mirror. People want powerful, long range, higher performance, safe vehicles. Do you want to drive a golf cart or a Ferrari? For most, the answer is obvious, and that's why zero emissions vehicles aren't very popular.
The resolution of your eye may be 570 Megapixels, but your brain doesn't come anywhere near processing that. We don't have the ability to continually process all that information, so the data is almost immediately dumped after reception (lasts less than a fraction of a second). Your brain will only hold a small representative part of that information for 1 to 3 seconds, and even less after that.
Try reading text when you are not looking directly at it, and you will notice your eyes have very high resolution in only a small portion of your vision. Most people can only make out a couple of words on either side of their center of focus. The rest of your vision is just a vague impression noticing only high contrast and motion for the most part. Vision is fascinating, and how our brain interprets and deals with it is even more fascinating.
I was inspired by your post and decided to add some more info. Thanks for the educational input! Its stuff like this that keeps me coming back to Slashdot.
Crts are nicer for color photos or videos, but for black and white text, LCD's are much better. Unless you get a really high quality crt, the lcd will always be sharper.