Yeah so now every time a plane overshoots a runway we have a radiation leak...
Nuclear energy is great for things like space travel and for generating electricity. It isn't so great for earth-bound transportation where it could easily leak. Not to mention the restrictions on a plane. Who cares if it can go from New York to Paris in an hour if it won't be able to be landed in Paris due to the fact it has nuclear material...
I'm not sure about anyone else, but isn't the standard procedure for owning a smartphone to keep a few extra mini/micro USB cables handy and charge it when at work/home and on the computer?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It is entirely up to interpretation if allowing prayer in schools constitutes an "establishment of religion" or whether it is "prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
Nowhere in the constitution does it say that there is "separation of church and state" all that the constitution says it that congress can't pass any laws forbidding you from practicing your religion and from establishing a national religion. Such claims are, as rightfully stated, matters of interpretation.
That isn't to say that I don't agree with the interpretation, but it is just that: an interpretation.
The problem with them is that private school and home school kids generally end up to have no common sense.
If your parent has an education degree and is generally intelligent and is homeschooling you, you'd probably turn out fine. However, most parents who homeschool these days have gone to a pretty terrible school and their kids end up knowing very little academically and less about social life.
As for private schools, sometimes they end up trying a bit too hard. Unless your kid really, really wants to go to Harvard or go overseas, private schools generally teach kids useless things that they will have to be taught at university level. The problem is that most people going to state universities and the like have had a public education and unless the kid in the private school took lots of AP exams or college-level classes (which they could have) they will be stuck in boring classes for the first years of university.
encourage high school students to question the legal doctrine of church-state separation -- a sore point for social conservative groups who disagree with court decisions that have affirmed the doctrine, including the ban on school-sponsored prayer.
While there are numerous problems with the curriculum, isn't teaching students to be skeptical of government a good thing? If you blindly follow what the government says, democracy in a free society falls apart.
A free thinking individual should be skeptical of all things the government has done, question the motives for various laws and if they believe they are unjust, vote against them or otherwise try to get them repealed.
There are some good examples in this particular case. It just comes down to interpretation.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Is the actual text, it says nowhere about "separation of church and state" it comes down to interpretation if school prayer is a violation of establishing a national religion.
Really, out of all the things wrong in the Texas curriculum why does TFS point out something that could very well be a benefit. Teaching students to question government.
Yeah, Linux is a major force in the industry but good luck getting Linux ports of obscure software. For example, a business I worked with about three years ago would have been a perfect target for mass Linux adoption except for the fact that nearly all their computers needed an obscure, proprietary program that the developers had been long gone but it was needed to interact with some legacy hardware for controlling their aging magnetic entry system. Had WINE supported that program we would have ~30 computers now running Linux and the business saving money, but because WINE didn't run that program well enough, they decided to stick with Windows.
Linux has a good office suite, great hardware support, decent usability, very easy installation, but lacks a lot of specialty software that is a make-or-break program for many businesses.
It isn't that slow when the target keeps moving. 17 years ago, we weren't even using NT, some of us were still using DOS as being "good enough" and the rest of us were using Windows 3.x, now those goals have changed and WINE has to run 32 and 64 bit software written for Vista and Windows 7. 15 years would be a long time for a "dead" platform like the Atari 2600 or the SNES. But Windows is changing and what was "good enough" one year now needs major work to keep up with the programs.
If you don't like it, don't use it. If my Facebook feed is correct, most everyone loves it. If you don't like it turn down the volume for a single day or use http://www.gamertech.com/googlelite/ or something. Just a plain search box. There, no distracting images or cool JavaScript features there.
What is it advertising? Nothing, other than perhaps Google. It does, however, let people who have games blocked on a school/corporate network play a game or two of Pac Man.
The US congressional system needs to be reformed though for it to really happen. We need proportional representation, badly. We need to have more representatives, we need to encourage politicians to have parties consistent with their standings.
Our current system makes it impossible to secure representation for any political party unless they are all in a concentrated area. It is nearly impossible to convince voters to vote for a third party because either they will vote republican/democrat because their parents/grandparents did or they get hung up on little, petty issues that mean nothing but they want done (eg: stem cell research, abortion, etc) and don't affect them and instead support a party that they disagree with completely in order to support/ban one of those things.
Our current system is left over from when we had a constitutional government: a very small federal government and a slightly larger but limited state government. And also, it didn't really -matter- who you sent to Washington because it was unlikely to affect you in any meaningful way. Today we have an out of control federal government and state governments are left unchecked. Illegal taxes like the income taxes (seriously, read the constitution, the framers wanted income taxes to be illegal, hence why the government had to pass an amendment to override it) and large government programs affect everyone now.
We need two things to happen: more representatives per person, this increases accountability. And also proportional representation, because in this century, it doesn't matter too much if a senator was from Iowa or Florida, they still have the power to affect you and I'd much rather have a senator representing my political beliefs from a far-off state than to have a senator not representing my beliefs who is from my home state.
You are one programmer. Google is dealing with hundreds of programmers and -huge- programs. Some bit of old code they thought they deleted or disabled really wasn't, it got a bit of data, Google realized it, and is going to delete it. I don't see how this is sooooo terrible. This is less data per user than your neighbor with Wireshark running for 15 minutes would get, if you care about your privacy use encryption. Simple as that.
It depends. First off, I would be in favor of elimination those imperialistic and harmful wars such as the "war on terror" and the "war on drugs" and focusing on defense not "lets go out and attack a country or fund tyrants because we don't like a policy". Defense is quite cheap for the time being because we have the technology already developed. So the fee would be very low, as in a hundred dollars or less per year. Now, this would be per household (as in reality it costs no more to defend a house of 1 as it does a family of 8).
Secondly, you have to ask why are they poor? Yeah, a few people really are unlucky, other people on the other hand completely deserve what they got. When working as a store clerk for a while while in university, I got to see the "poor", many of them would come dressed up nicely, buy booze with cash and then spend their food stamps buying their food. Those people? I have no sympathy for. Now, there were some people who were simply victims of bad circumstances, people who honestly wanted to work but couldn't and needed help to keep fed. However, welfare is inefficient and is prone to abuse. The government needs to help private charities by allowing for reduced regulations and otherwise supporting them.
Thirdly, are these people living beyond their means? Are they living in the cheapest area possible? If not, then, again, I have no sympathy for them just as I don't have sympathy that everyone can't afford a Ferrari, you live within your means.
So, do I support social safety nets? Yes. Do I think we need to do a through evaluation to why people are poor and then determine if they are worthy of public funds? Absolutely. Do I think that the government should be secondary to private charity? Yes.
I find it ironic that the US should decide to introduce this measure under a new government when the old one was notorious for abuse of authority.
You live in the UK though, there are major differences between the political parties, the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Plaid, etc. With the US there are no ideological differences, the only difference is who pays them more. For example, "green" businesses have paid a lot of money to the democrats, therefore they support "green" jobs. Etc.
They only have differences when it is politically convenient. For example, stem cell research and abortion.
The largest 3rd party (the Libertarian party) has no representation in congress.
One of the first proposals brought up by our new coalition government, indeed one of the points where both parties agreed on almost everything despite their general political differences, was a "Freedom Bill". That will basically be a mass repeal of all the draconian, intrusive, guilt-assuming laws that the previous lot brought in under a climate of fear that they perpetuated more effectively from the corridors of power than any terrorist group ever could. Introducing safeguards so that innocents' DNA is removed from the database in a timely fashion will be an acid test of that bill: they've talked the talk, now will they really follow through?
Well of course they will have to follow through, because you have a political system that, despite its flaws, gives representation to third parties so everyone's political views can be represented. In the US, if you vote for a "third party" you are throwing your vote away (more or less), in the UK if you vote for a "minor" political party, chances are they will have at least some representation in government.
In all honesty, no your income should not be taxed. But by paying income/property taxes you fund a lot of things. Myself I would be in favor of a flat fee for defense that is paid per household and then paying only for what you use. Such a tax is the only fair tax and is fiscally responsible.
Oh and I get free internet access? I pay money to use the internet, charge the ISP for use of public lines but until I get free internet, or own an ISP, such a tax doesn't make sense because I paid for it once, why should I pay for it again?
No it shouldn't be taxed. People should only be taxed for what they use, when I buy an online good for physical money what service of the government am I using? I use paypal which is a private company to use my private credit card on a private site to get something online which go through the privately owned internet lines which I pay for out of my own pocket, to another privately owned server where I play my game.
Pay for what you use, the government doesn't even enter into the equation except for a very, very, very, small amount. Such exchanges should never be taxed. The government should be a service provider, nothing more. If you don't use the service for a transaction you don't have to pay. Taxing such things is like adding shipping and handling to them, they don't need it so it shouldn't be paid.
Well yes, but it still stands of an example of networks screwing up Android. The entire point of Android was to unleash the power that was in a cell phone without being tied to expensive and stupid software. Carriers have consistently tried to remove the entire point of Android by limiting what their phones can do.
So, let me get this right, even though I've already paid a large sum of money (more than enough to cover the hardware and the 20 feet of cable needed to go from the sidewalk to my house), it still costs $30 a month to get the signal to my house!? I think I could run Cat 5 cable and stream things from a small server to a neighborhood for less than that and that isn't even including the economies of scale with a large cable company such as Comcast.
In a lot of ways, while Verizon (oddly enough) has been pretty outgoing in embracing Android and not screwing with its customer's devices, AT&T doesn't let you install non-market apps, adds your phone with unusable bloatware that isn't removable, changes the default search engine to Yahoo! and generally takes out any open-ness of Android (see http://www.pcworld.com/article/191036/motorola_backflip_on_atandt_not_the_full_android_experience.html and note that AT&T has been heavily promoting the Backflip and it is their only Android phone).
Plus carrier's reluctance to letting you tether with your phone even though it doesn't affect the network any more at all (and seriously, you are paying $20-30 a month for crappy internet, the least they could do is let you use it whenever)
And I also believe that it is the carriers that make the Android phones be locked because the phones Google sells directly (Dev phone, Nexus One) are already rooted out of the box.
But what will the TV Networks and Cable Providers do about it? Cell phone companies have slaughtered Android and TV networks/cable providers think that even though you are -paying- for TV you still need to be shown tons and tons of ads. So the question remains whether this will remain untouched or if it will be corrupted like Android has been by the TV networks and cable providers?
Because it is a strategy to make people want to buy their new generation of devices and software.
In general, no one gets excited about firmware updates. However, if Apple can add in a blindingly obvious feature they can generate hype and money. Anyone could have told Apple they needed an SDK to be successful and that web apps sucked. However, because they didn't do it, they could get lots of hype when releasing the iPhone SDK and 2.0 firmware update. Same thing with copy/paste/search in iPhone OS 3.0 and multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0.
Same thing with hardware. Anyone could have told Apple they needed to have hardware volume up/down buttons on the iPod Touch, but they ignored it and made it be a "feature" of the 2nd generation, anyone could have told Apple a smartphone released in 2006 needed 3G (especially considering my samsung dumb phone I bought half a year before had it) but then they made it be a "feature"
If Apple did everything right the first time, they would fail to have lots of press coverage when they finally fixed things.
Gizmodo was creating positive publicity though. I mean, what could be more positive than spamming viewers with basic iPhone Generation 4 ads. A bit like someone playing a site full of movie trailers, it only generates good publicity.
But its -very- easy to see why it could be considered murder.
A) The baby has 100% human DNA
B) If carried to term the baby will grow into someone like you and me
C) There are people who are considered to be living at the moment who have less signs of life than a fetus in the mother's womb
On the other hand, no Muslim is going to say Mohammed is still living and making comics of him is going to offend him.
It makes sense to anyone rational that murder would be worse than blasphemy. The entire point of laws are to protect people's rights from being violated. What right is violated in drawing anything? Humans have a right to live, murder violates that. There is no right not to be offended. There is, however a basic human right to have the right to offend. Such a right is needed in a free society.
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Yeah so now every time a plane overshoots a runway we have a radiation leak...
Nuclear energy is great for things like space travel and for generating electricity. It isn't so great for earth-bound transportation where it could easily leak. Not to mention the restrictions on a plane. Who cares if it can go from New York to Paris in an hour if it won't be able to be landed in Paris due to the fact it has nuclear material...
I'm not sure about anyone else, but isn't the standard procedure for owning a smartphone to keep a few extra mini/micro USB cables handy and charge it when at work/home and on the computer?
Or is it just me?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It is entirely up to interpretation if allowing prayer in schools constitutes an "establishment of religion" or whether it is "prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
Nowhere in the constitution does it say that there is "separation of church and state" all that the constitution says it that congress can't pass any laws forbidding you from practicing your religion and from establishing a national religion. Such claims are, as rightfully stated, matters of interpretation.
That isn't to say that I don't agree with the interpretation, but it is just that: an interpretation.
The problem with them is that private school and home school kids generally end up to have no common sense.
If your parent has an education degree and is generally intelligent and is homeschooling you, you'd probably turn out fine. However, most parents who homeschool these days have gone to a pretty terrible school and their kids end up knowing very little academically and less about social life.
As for private schools, sometimes they end up trying a bit too hard. Unless your kid really, really wants to go to Harvard or go overseas, private schools generally teach kids useless things that they will have to be taught at university level. The problem is that most people going to state universities and the like have had a public education and unless the kid in the private school took lots of AP exams or college-level classes (which they could have) they will be stuck in boring classes for the first years of university.
encourage high school students to question the legal doctrine of church-state separation -- a sore point for social conservative groups who disagree with court decisions that have affirmed the doctrine, including the ban on school-sponsored prayer.
While there are numerous problems with the curriculum, isn't teaching students to be skeptical of government a good thing? If you blindly follow what the government says, democracy in a free society falls apart.
A free thinking individual should be skeptical of all things the government has done, question the motives for various laws and if they believe they are unjust, vote against them or otherwise try to get them repealed.
There are some good examples in this particular case. It just comes down to interpretation.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Is the actual text, it says nowhere about "separation of church and state" it comes down to interpretation if school prayer is a violation of establishing a national religion.
Really, out of all the things wrong in the Texas curriculum why does TFS point out something that could very well be a benefit. Teaching students to question government.
Yeah, Linux is a major force in the industry but good luck getting Linux ports of obscure software. For example, a business I worked with about three years ago would have been a perfect target for mass Linux adoption except for the fact that nearly all their computers needed an obscure, proprietary program that the developers had been long gone but it was needed to interact with some legacy hardware for controlling their aging magnetic entry system. Had WINE supported that program we would have ~30 computers now running Linux and the business saving money, but because WINE didn't run that program well enough, they decided to stick with Windows.
Linux has a good office suite, great hardware support, decent usability, very easy installation, but lacks a lot of specialty software that is a make-or-break program for many businesses.
It isn't that slow when the target keeps moving. 17 years ago, we weren't even using NT, some of us were still using DOS as being "good enough" and the rest of us were using Windows 3.x, now those goals have changed and WINE has to run 32 and 64 bit software written for Vista and Windows 7. 15 years would be a long time for a "dead" platform like the Atari 2600 or the SNES. But Windows is changing and what was "good enough" one year now needs major work to keep up with the programs.
If you don't like it, don't use it. If my Facebook feed is correct, most everyone loves it. If you don't like it turn down the volume for a single day or use http://www.gamertech.com/googlelite/ or something. Just a plain search box. There, no distracting images or cool JavaScript features there.
What is it advertising? Nothing, other than perhaps Google. It does, however, let people who have games blocked on a school/corporate network play a game or two of Pac Man.
The US congressional system needs to be reformed though for it to really happen. We need proportional representation, badly. We need to have more representatives, we need to encourage politicians to have parties consistent with their standings.
Our current system makes it impossible to secure representation for any political party unless they are all in a concentrated area. It is nearly impossible to convince voters to vote for a third party because either they will vote republican/democrat because their parents/grandparents did or they get hung up on little, petty issues that mean nothing but they want done (eg: stem cell research, abortion, etc) and don't affect them and instead support a party that they disagree with completely in order to support/ban one of those things.
Our current system is left over from when we had a constitutional government: a very small federal government and a slightly larger but limited state government. And also, it didn't really -matter- who you sent to Washington because it was unlikely to affect you in any meaningful way. Today we have an out of control federal government and state governments are left unchecked. Illegal taxes like the income taxes (seriously, read the constitution, the framers wanted income taxes to be illegal, hence why the government had to pass an amendment to override it) and large government programs affect everyone now.
We need two things to happen: more representatives per person, this increases accountability. And also proportional representation, because in this century, it doesn't matter too much if a senator was from Iowa or Florida, they still have the power to affect you and I'd much rather have a senator representing my political beliefs from a far-off state than to have a senator not representing my beliefs who is from my home state.
...Because after all the world is going to grow even larger so we need even more nuclear weapons?
You are one programmer. Google is dealing with hundreds of programmers and -huge- programs. Some bit of old code they thought they deleted or disabled really wasn't, it got a bit of data, Google realized it, and is going to delete it. I don't see how this is sooooo terrible. This is less data per user than your neighbor with Wireshark running for 15 minutes would get, if you care about your privacy use encryption. Simple as that.
It depends. First off, I would be in favor of elimination those imperialistic and harmful wars such as the "war on terror" and the "war on drugs" and focusing on defense not "lets go out and attack a country or fund tyrants because we don't like a policy". Defense is quite cheap for the time being because we have the technology already developed. So the fee would be very low, as in a hundred dollars or less per year. Now, this would be per household (as in reality it costs no more to defend a house of 1 as it does a family of 8).
Secondly, you have to ask why are they poor? Yeah, a few people really are unlucky, other people on the other hand completely deserve what they got. When working as a store clerk for a while while in university, I got to see the "poor", many of them would come dressed up nicely, buy booze with cash and then spend their food stamps buying their food. Those people? I have no sympathy for. Now, there were some people who were simply victims of bad circumstances, people who honestly wanted to work but couldn't and needed help to keep fed. However, welfare is inefficient and is prone to abuse. The government needs to help private charities by allowing for reduced regulations and otherwise supporting them.
Thirdly, are these people living beyond their means? Are they living in the cheapest area possible? If not, then, again, I have no sympathy for them just as I don't have sympathy that everyone can't afford a Ferrari, you live within your means.
So, do I support social safety nets? Yes. Do I think we need to do a through evaluation to why people are poor and then determine if they are worthy of public funds? Absolutely. Do I think that the government should be secondary to private charity? Yes.
I find it ironic that the US should decide to introduce this measure under a new government when the old one was notorious for abuse of authority.
You live in the UK though, there are major differences between the political parties, the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Plaid, etc. With the US there are no ideological differences, the only difference is who pays them more. For example, "green" businesses have paid a lot of money to the democrats, therefore they support "green" jobs. Etc.
They only have differences when it is politically convenient. For example, stem cell research and abortion.
The largest 3rd party (the Libertarian party) has no representation in congress.
One of the first proposals brought up by our new coalition government, indeed one of the points where both parties agreed on almost everything despite their general political differences, was a "Freedom Bill". That will basically be a mass repeal of all the draconian, intrusive, guilt-assuming laws that the previous lot brought in under a climate of fear that they perpetuated more effectively from the corridors of power than any terrorist group ever could. Introducing safeguards so that innocents' DNA is removed from the database in a timely fashion will be an acid test of that bill: they've talked the talk, now will they really follow through?
Well of course they will have to follow through, because you have a political system that, despite its flaws, gives representation to third parties so everyone's political views can be represented. In the US, if you vote for a "third party" you are throwing your vote away (more or less), in the UK if you vote for a "minor" political party, chances are they will have at least some representation in government.
In all honesty, no your income should not be taxed. But by paying income/property taxes you fund a lot of things. Myself I would be in favor of a flat fee for defense that is paid per household and then paying only for what you use. Such a tax is the only fair tax and is fiscally responsible.
Oh and I get free internet access? I pay money to use the internet, charge the ISP for use of public lines but until I get free internet, or own an ISP, such a tax doesn't make sense because I paid for it once, why should I pay for it again?
No it shouldn't be taxed. People should only be taxed for what they use, when I buy an online good for physical money what service of the government am I using? I use paypal which is a private company to use my private credit card on a private site to get something online which go through the privately owned internet lines which I pay for out of my own pocket, to another privately owned server where I play my game.
Pay for what you use, the government doesn't even enter into the equation except for a very, very, very, small amount. Such exchanges should never be taxed. The government should be a service provider, nothing more. If you don't use the service for a transaction you don't have to pay. Taxing such things is like adding shipping and handling to them, they don't need it so it shouldn't be paid.
Well yes, but it still stands of an example of networks screwing up Android. The entire point of Android was to unleash the power that was in a cell phone without being tied to expensive and stupid software. Carriers have consistently tried to remove the entire point of Android by limiting what their phones can do.
So, let me get this right, even though I've already paid a large sum of money (more than enough to cover the hardware and the 20 feet of cable needed to go from the sidewalk to my house), it still costs $30 a month to get the signal to my house!? I think I could run Cat 5 cable and stream things from a small server to a neighborhood for less than that and that isn't even including the economies of scale with a large cable company such as Comcast.
In a lot of ways, while Verizon (oddly enough) has been pretty outgoing in embracing Android and not screwing with its customer's devices, AT&T doesn't let you install non-market apps, adds your phone with unusable bloatware that isn't removable, changes the default search engine to Yahoo! and generally takes out any open-ness of Android (see http://www.pcworld.com/article/191036/motorola_backflip_on_atandt_not_the_full_android_experience.html and note that AT&T has been heavily promoting the Backflip and it is their only Android phone).
Plus carrier's reluctance to letting you tether with your phone even though it doesn't affect the network any more at all (and seriously, you are paying $20-30 a month for crappy internet, the least they could do is let you use it whenever)
And I also believe that it is the carriers that make the Android phones be locked because the phones Google sells directly (Dev phone, Nexus One) are already rooted out of the box.
But what will the TV Networks and Cable Providers do about it? Cell phone companies have slaughtered Android and TV networks/cable providers think that even though you are -paying- for TV you still need to be shown tons and tons of ads. So the question remains whether this will remain untouched or if it will be corrupted like Android has been by the TV networks and cable providers?
Because it is a strategy to make people want to buy their new generation of devices and software.
In general, no one gets excited about firmware updates. However, if Apple can add in a blindingly obvious feature they can generate hype and money. Anyone could have told Apple they needed an SDK to be successful and that web apps sucked. However, because they didn't do it, they could get lots of hype when releasing the iPhone SDK and 2.0 firmware update. Same thing with copy/paste/search in iPhone OS 3.0 and multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0.
Same thing with hardware. Anyone could have told Apple they needed to have hardware volume up/down buttons on the iPod Touch, but they ignored it and made it be a "feature" of the 2nd generation, anyone could have told Apple a smartphone released in 2006 needed 3G (especially considering my samsung dumb phone I bought half a year before had it) but then they made it be a "feature"
If Apple did everything right the first time, they would fail to have lots of press coverage when they finally fixed things.
Gizmodo was creating positive publicity though. I mean, what could be more positive than spamming viewers with basic iPhone Generation 4 ads. A bit like someone playing a site full of movie trailers, it only generates good publicity.
But its -very- easy to see why it could be considered murder.
A) The baby has 100% human DNA
B) If carried to term the baby will grow into someone like you and me
C) There are people who are considered to be living at the moment who have less signs of life than a fetus in the mother's womb
On the other hand, no Muslim is going to say Mohammed is still living and making comics of him is going to offend him.
It makes sense to anyone rational that murder would be worse than blasphemy. The entire point of laws are to protect people's rights from being violated. What right is violated in drawing anything? Humans have a right to live, murder violates that. There is no right not to be offended. There is, however a basic human right to have the right to offend. Such a right is needed in a free society.