My mom recently told me that I should switch to Opera, and she just turned 60 a few days ago. But, she also plays WoW and is more active in web development than I am... so I guess my family isn't exactly "average".
I don't contest that people are busy with real lives - I certainly am now. However, calling them pointless could spark a debate. Games definitely keep the brain active, and many companies see gaming as a valuable trait. Personally, I learned plenty of valuable skills from games, from programming mods to self improvement to social interactions. Before anyone mentions a typical example of counterstrike, I'd like to mention that some communities are good about encouraging intelligent conversation.
That's cool to know. In online FPS games, people always whine about the reflexes of the 12-17 year olds and so on, but I've always felt like it was because older gamers just didn't devote the time into games to get as good. Now that the crowd of mid-20 gamers has had years of experience in these games, they are still the majority at the top level of competition. (There are exceptions, but I'm just pointing out that once you are past 17, that doesn't mean you won't be able to compete with younger gamers anymore on the grounds of reflexes.)
encouraging and aiding voter fraud by fraudulently registering voters multiple times, fake voters, etc?
And if you actually look into it beyond fox news and the "sources" that they quote, you may find out that it is legally required by a voter registration group such as ACORN to submit every single registration form that they receive, regardless of if they think it is valid. They are allowed to mark ones that they believe to be invalid, so that they will be further inspected by actual officials, but to my knowledge, no one has questioned the accuracy of their markings. The issues with false registrations are mostly being found as cases of the person collecting registrations attempting to hit quotas to prove that he/she is actually working. Molehill, not a mountain.
False registration is the first step in voter fraud, is it not?
It could be the first step, but it isn't necessary for voter fraud (as some other replies around this thread suggest, there are plenty of ways to mess with democracy).
As for this particular method, are you suggesting that people going to show up with fake ID's to match the false registrations that they submitted? Seems a bit more involved than designing the machines to falsely provide results.
Outside of that, I have recently realized an issue of concern regarding our electoral process... some people have realized that many minorities who are legal citizens of the country and should be allowed to vote aren't being allowed to vote because they lack ID that is accepted at the time of voting. The problem is that while the Democrats are fighting to get these ID laws removed, they aren't really acknowledging that false registrations in conjunction with no ID required would completely undermine our voting system. We still need to find a way for all citizens to vote though (preferably not a solution involving ID's with RFID chips, GPS tracking or whatever else is remotely possible).
In taking a quick glance, it seems like his estimates of
relying on nuclear weapons for our security is thousands of times more dangerous than having a nuclear power plant built next to your home
aren't even based on current technology of nuclear power plants. Plus I'd imagine that nuclear power plants are even better for our safety when you consider how a number of the new ones can be used to destroy old weapons-grade material...
I suppose you could justify shifting the problem if you hope that it lands on someone who has the time/money to take those people on legally. Also, if it becomes more widespread in the FBI's eyes (more than a handful of people complaining about it), maybe they will start acting more seriously about it.
1) the "smoking something" comment was directed at the belief that the "lower limit" of Obama's tax increases would stay at $250k. Numbers like that have a tendency to creep in a direction determined by party. I mean, if folks who make over $250k should pay more, why not $225k?, or $200k? Everybody uses a different definition of "middle class", and the definition changes to suit the political goals.
1) Giving the WSJ the benefit of the doubt and assuming this can happen, whether it changes in small amounts or not doesn't particularly matter to me. The issue that I take with Republican economics is that I don't believe "trickle-down" economics works very well, and if Democrats in control slightly tweak their policy, it will still be better for our country than what Bush has done and what McCain plans to do if he becomes President. Economically, I've seen plenty of articles that suggest that Democrats in control do much better than Republicans in control.
2) Regarding the "Muslim" vs. "not open and friendly" thing, I was simply pointing out that some people of EACH party make their decisions based on irrational criteria, and BOTH parties play that up.
2) You aren't arguing against how wide-spread this issue is on one side versus the other, so I think that my initial argument still stands. Just to reformulate it: Obama is getting a larger amount of unnecessary fear related to completely untrue issues, and many of these issues were spread by the McCain campaign itself.
3) My problem with the Obama/Ayers relationship isn't that they had one, but that Obama wasn't straightforward with it. He KNEW it was going to be an issue, but instead of saying "Yes, we did some business together; I detest what he did in the past but today, here and now, I needed to work with him to get results" he came up with "just a guy in the hood." Same with the Rev. Wright association - 20 years in church and he never heard Wright say what he said? If Obama had initially responded with "I don't agree with some of the things he has said from the pulpit, but there is far more to a church than the pastor and that's why I continue going" it would have been a dead issue.He could have simply told the truth up front and been done with it, but it seems that he expected the press and the public to swallow his dismissals and trivializations whole without any questioning. These things don't speak to his associations but to his veracity and character - he can't seem to tell the truth up front even when there's nothing really embarrassing about it.
3) So because he basically shrugged it off as something that no one should be concerned with then had people dig as deep as they could only to find nothing of substance, you are concerned? He was more or less right in the first place, so can we stick to things that actually have substance?
4) You lightly dismiss 2A concerns - "unnecessarily worrying", etc. You forget (conveniently?) that the National Firearms Act, the Gun Control Act, and the "Assault Weapons" Ban were all enacted under Democrat administrations and congresses, and that both Obama's and Biden's past voting and policy records are very anti-gun. As I said in a previous reply, you may not believe that gun issues are important under the grand scheme of things, but don't try to tell me they are irrational.
4) I'll admit my ignorance on the specifics of gun laws that the candidates have supported, but I have yet to see any convincing evidence that any candidate will ever be able to restrict gun ownership to the extent that many gun owners fear. As for the section that I bolded, that's the important point that I would like to get across. (my bulleted list of economy, foreign policy, healthcare, and education being what I think is most important in the grand scheme of things)
5) As for your last point, you keep on missing what I'm trying to say - th
You can certainly discount the importance of gun controls to the populace, and you may be right.
Just so you know where I stand on the issue, I'd like to state this: I wouldn't argue the importance of gun laws because I don't believe it is the best path. Maybe if we could achieve it in the end over a long period of time it would be for the greater good, but there would be too much time during which only criminals would have those illegal weapons. I don't want to put our country through such times, and I don't think the right of owning a gun causes enough of an issue that it needs to be "fixed".
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You are doing the exact same thing I just criticized... don't try to convince those who care about 2A rights that "there is nothing to worry about". I don't want to wait 4 years to find out if I was right.
No, what I'm saying is that the heavy restrictions on guns that you are imagining won't happen, and it can't happen. There are major proponents of gun ownership on both sides of the political fence, and even if Obama felt strongly enough to ban all guns, it would not happen. This is why I said that you should consider the next 4 years as they pass. Here is a quote from the man himself a month and a half ago, and I think it strikes some major truth.
Obama (Sept. 5): The bottom line is this. If you've got a rifle, you've got a shotgun, you've got a gun in your house, I'm not taking it away. Alright? So they can keep on talking about it but this is just not true. And by the way, here's another thing you've got to understand. Even if I wanted to take it away, I couldn't get it done. I don't have the votes in Congress.
My arguments against McCain are different than what you are saying about guns because: The ban on guns that you fear can't happen. The destruction of our country in the ways listed above DID happen, and McCain went along with the administration that caused them to happen a huge portion of the time. McCain, being from the same party as Bush, is likely to surround himself with the same "proven and experienced" Republicans who have caused this mess.
so, despite a consistent history of positions and votes antithetical to gun rights, now that he has issued a statement that the 2A is an individual right we should believe him? Was he on the road to Damascus lately? Going to change his name to Paul?
I'll tell you what... given that it looks very much like Obama is going to be elected, how about 4 years from now in the next presidential elections, you ask yourself how much gun laws have changed since now. If it is significantly different from the state it is in today, I would be VERY surprised.
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Obama's entire campaign is based on McCain voting with Bush for 8 years, and tells us to ignore McCain's protests that he is a reformer.
Is it deniable that the Bush administration has ravaged our country in so many different areas in the past 8 years?
Our economy blows right now (I'll admit this was caused by both sides, but Republicans who are so economically minded should have been able to do something about it in the 6 years of congressional control + president, right?)
Our 'inalienable rights' have been badly damaged as opposed to theoretically taking away our gun rights
We have a widely unpopular war that many of our international allies are calling unwinnable, and there are many reports coming out that despite it looking like the surge worked, it actually has failed just as much as everything else in that country
Our international relations have been totally destroyed, and we are losing ground as a superpower
Is it deniable that McCain has voted with Bush during the past 8 years? Even McCain himself proudly spoke about how much he went along with the Bush administration. FFS, look at what actually happened.
Again, in 4 years I want you to ask yourself how much things have changed for guns. This shouldn't be the major issue for anyone - the major issues in no particular order should be (IMO):
education.
economy
foreign policy
healthcare (both candidates are better than Bush on this, so this is a moot point)
On the first three that I listed, I see Obama as the clear winner.
I apologize for being a little late, but lets see here...
As for the taxes part, the $250k lower limit is what he'll do first. Reasonable, no? But the rest of the plan has some interesting aspects. From the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385651698727257.html And if you think that lower limit will remain $45k, you're smoking something.
Conveniently enough, I just ran across this, which even points out the specific WSJ article that you linked. Search for
Furthermore, the Journal's editorial misstated a key fact in its "welfare" argument. It said that anyone who doesn't pay federal income taxes is not a "taxpayer," which is simply incorrect.
In reading various independent analysis of the tax policies of the two candidates, I'm pretty sure that you are reading a little too much republican propaganda if you think that I'm smoking something.
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Finally, your bit about Terrorists and Muslims is lame - yes, there are people who believe that and vote that way. There are also people who don't like McCain because, since he can't raise his arms, "doesn't look open and friendly". But it doesinvite the question about the company he keeps, and his forthrightness. Obama initially only admitted a trivial association with Ayers, but apparently there was quite a bit more to it.
McCain actually is a fairly amiable looking candidate in my opinion, despite what the media claims. But are you seriously arguing that the racism and fear of terrorism in this country is less of an issue than voting in a guy who doesn't look open and friendly (which I'd argue against)? What exactly do you define as "quite a bit more" to the Ayers connection, by the way? A meet the candidate night at the guy's house? Oh shit, they must have been preparing to bomb something. I guess what scares you about Ayers nowadays is that the foundation he is involved in funded two projects that the McCain campaign quoted as being radical - "one having to do with a United Nations-themed Peace School and another that focused on African-American studies." (from the same politifact link I pasted earlier).
I was actually a fan of McCain around 2000 before he changed a number of his stances, such as the Bush tax cuts and immigration. If you ask economists, immigration in particular is actually pretty damn good for the economy. It helps to look past the "They're taking our jobs!" meme that people like to spout out, and put a little thought into whether immigrants actually have the training necessary to take said jobs.
As a sponsor of two comprehensive reform bills, McCain should be unbeatable on this issue. Standing up to fellow Republicans (and some Democrats), he declared that the nation could not turn its back on the impoverished millions who have come here to work and prosper. Unfortunately, the free-thinker has become a follower, trailing behind the worst instincts of his party. Abandoning problem-solving for politics, McCain has made border security and employment enforcement his new mandate. That may be good Republican politics, but it's not sound policy.
McCain used to have great ideas that go against common belief, but he has since turned his back on such in order to get more mainstream votes.
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You seem to think that all Republicans are either knuckle dragging cretins or amoral titans of industry.
I actually like to break it down slightly differently... (but I do like your wording of one, so I'll borrow that)
Amoral titans of industry
Regular people (potentially church-goers, but not always) who feel
It looks like you only read the first quote, where he appears to support 2nd amendment rights (although he doesn't really answer the questions asked). It's later that the page shows his positions that should scare the crap out of gun owners.
You picked out the oldest possible stance that is shown on that page, which is inconsistent with what he has done since then. This is exactly why I linked that article - you cherry pick things that scare you instead of looking at the whole picture.
I'll get back to you on the rest of the post later . (I hope - work is just about over, so I don't have time now, and I don't regularly check slashdot over the weekend, but I'll try to make an effort to do so)
and the democrats have yet to effectively use their majority lead to show the republicans that they shouldn't be allowed to get away with the BS they have been pulling
OK, honestly, why is this guy modded as flamebait? Sure, he said "propaganda", which has a negative connotation, but the definition that I'm reading is "information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause", (notice that it doesn't say anything about the veracity of the information being spread) so it seems legitimately used in this case. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but are there really that many Democrats out there who have the intention of banning all guns? It seems like the majority of mainstream democratic candidates out there just want to let the local law decide what is appropriate for their area.
For the record, I think banning guns would be really stupid at this point in our history, and I'm a registered democrat.
Agreed. I'd like to see a list of fears that your average registered republican voter has of Obama getting into office. I'd bet that a huge portion of them are along the lines of "He's Muslim!"/"He's gonna take away our guns!"/"He pals around with terrorists!"/"He's going to raise taxes on me!" (of course, this is true for people who make over $250K/yr, but plenty of people not in that bracket who are voting against him believe this to be true). Bleh.
Apparently not... So, I'll just quote the part of the post you obviously didn't read:
"...that's not to say these people shouldn't be allowed to vote..." to rephrase: Despite what I just said, I do think these people should be allowed to vote.
Allow me to provide the full context of that quote that you just copied.
And that's not to say these people shouldn't be allowed to vote, but is to say that there are people in this country that ought to vote more, if you will. There have been propositions that would offer additional votes to people that meet certain criteria (like owning land, etc), but like most voting reform they never even made it to a draft bill.
This seems to matches perfectly with the rest of your sentiments about being disgusted by the homeless voting. You suggest that people who are not homeless should vote more to counter the homeless who do vote - perfectly in line with the rest of your post that the parent was quoting.
Hell, given the absolutely ridiculously knee jerk reactions to my post
It's almost like people on this forum respond to the content of what you post instead of something else. What is wrong with these people! */sarcasm*
every category of law that homeless people don't interact with, since, after all, it's one hell of a list.
So since they don't directly deal with it, they shouldn't have any say in it. Great logic... lets extend that a little further.
Since I'm not a woman, I shouldn't have a say in abortion rights.
Since I'm not gay, I shouldn't have a say in gay marriage rights
Since I don't make a 6 figure salary, I shouldn't have a say in tax policy since the major difference between the two candidates isn't in my bracket.
Since I don't own a business, I shouldn't have a say in any corporate law.
Since I don't run a bank, I shouldn't have a say in how they handle my money.
Since I am not Jewish, I shouldn't have a say in what our government does with Jerusalem.
Since I've never been out of the country, I shouldn't have a say in foreign policy at all.
Since I don't own a gun, I shouldn't have a say in gun laws.
Since I don't work for a medical care facility or insurance agency, I shouldn't have a say in health care.
This list is getting pretty overwhelming. I guess I shouldn't vote, despite being a 23 year old college graduate with a job.
And honestly, I'm very lucky to have a decent job. What if the President's economic decisions made the economy slightly worse, to the point where my current employer decided against hiring a new programmer? Oops, I would have been homeless by now if I was still working at Circuit City like I was for half a year (barely above the minimum wage can't support college debts, car payments, insurance, rent, utilities, and food. Trust me, it's not even close). No vote for me under your rules.
Do a little more research. Obama was the #2 candidate of donations from Fannie.
Nice cherry picking. For starters, Fannie Mae donated mostly to Democrats, but Freddie Mac donated mostly to Republicans. I haven't seen individual breakdowns to show what one candidate received from just Fannie, but I don't particularly care - the big picture is more important.
Politifact has a decent explanation of what is going on, and I would like to highlight the fact that the statistic that shows Obama as the second highest receiver of donations is only counting donations by individual employees, not the board of directors/lobbyists/etc. When you add in those numbers, McCain's donations swells a good bit over Obama's.
And honestly, is it so bad that individual employees of large companies that donated to a candidate? Do you think the Obama had a chance of directly spending time with every one of these donors as much as McCain had of the lobbyists who donated significantly more $/person?
I assume that you are looking for a currently operating reactor to fit this criteria, but that's a little difficult with no reactors being built for so many years. If, however, we accept that our designs from so far back aren't exactly top-notch nowadays, we could extend our research into something that does happen to fit your criteria, such as this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor.
No, if McCain would have won the nomination in 2000, people would have been reacting to McCain the same way as they are now, only it would have been 8 years earlier. Liberals didn't hate McCain in 2000 only because they didn't have to run against him. Now they do. Life is tough. sorry.
I'll preface this by saying that I'm clearly not speaking for every registered voting democrat, but I was a much bigger fan of McCain back in 2000 than I am now. Back around that time, McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts and argued to pay off the federal debt instead.
There are a number of other things that I agreed with him on back then, but since he got the nomination, he changed many of his stances to the cookie-cutter Republican stance. Now, maybe him being nominated forced him to do this, so it would have happened back in 2000 as well, but I assume that it was something related to senility or general displeasure with the Republican party for not nominating him (potentially due to his stances) that caused his change of heart on a number of topics.
Unfortunately, the terrible response rate (about 8%) means that there is huge probability of non-response bias.
I'm not so sure that I agree with this. Be it that I program online surveys (though not for the company that sent out this one), I highly doubt that they worded it in such a way that would create a non-response bias before anyone entered the interview. It is very likely that they had the grouping questions (are you registered with any of the following parties:, are you employed by a university, etc.) at the end of the survey, and the meat of the questionnaire at the beginning. This is a typical design in online surveys when you don't intend on setting quotas on how many people you want from specific groups, and given that he sent out ~6000 invites, I doubt that Scott Adams was concerned about getting exactly x% democrats and y% republicans.
Who cares? You might want to ask your representatives why they're allowing the Fed to transfer trillions of dollars of losses onto the taxpayer's bill, though. Someone may actually have to pay that back someday.
I care to the extent that if we don't figure out who is responsible, those trillions of dollars of losses may become tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars of losses.
note: IANAE, so I don't know if our national debt reaching such levels would just cause our country to spontaneously explode or if it is actually salvageable at that point.
It'd probably take a half-acre to generate 40kW, but it's not like they're shy on square-footage
I'd consider getting it up there a mildly annoying problem. It would likely be much heavier and take up much more space than the small nuclear reactors that they are proposing.
and on the light side of the moon, it's high noon 24/7.
One side of the moon always faces the Earth, not the Sun. You'd be dealing with a day/night cycle that is 28 Earth days long. As posters up above mentioned, you'd need to store this power in batteries, which would not be cheap.
No, you misinterpreted what I was saying and that's at least partly my fault.
When I was reading through this thread, I interpreted what you said exactly the same way the GP and others have interpreted it. A major reason that we interpreted it that way is because the parent to your original post never was talking about 3rd party applications causing instability issues. Specifically, he said:
I own an Acer laptop, which ran like bloody hell with the OEM shartware installed. I also own an HP laptop, which ran like bloody hell with the OEM shartware installed.
Thus, if you really intended to say that 3rd party software was causing instability issues, you were misconstruing what BronsCon said. (unless I'm misunderstanding what he - I assume he means that the software is slowing down the laptop)
There is no need to yell at ShadowRangerRIT saying stuff like "This really is the only ambiguous part of my entire post, and your entire response hinges on it" since you didn't concisely say what you meant, and it conflicted with what was being discussed anyway.
In that sense, is a soul nothing more than a spectator? Could there be multiple souls to a body? Could there similarly be no souls to a body? Is there any perceivable difference between having no souls, a single soul, or multiple souls to a body?
You could control a robot playing tennis remotely! Oh wait.. What if the network lags.
The same thing that happened ten years ago when we were playing Quake over the internet.
Take a look at what netcode in modern FPS games - they like to use client-side prediction algorithms that give you a good idea of where enemy players will be by the time your mouse click gets to the server to say that you fired your gun. With the Tennis ball's velocity/rotational velocity, wind speed, and a general idea of how lagged your network is, you can give the client side a smooth, "unlagged" feeling.
Of course, this gets more complicated in FPS games due to those evil enemy players not moving in predictable straight lines:).
Slashdot Mirror
My mom recently told me that I should switch to Opera, and she just turned 60 a few days ago. But, she also plays WoW and is more active in web development than I am... so I guess my family isn't exactly "average".
I don't contest that people are busy with real lives - I certainly am now. However, calling them pointless could spark a debate. Games definitely keep the brain active, and many companies see gaming as a valuable trait. Personally, I learned plenty of valuable skills from games, from programming mods to self improvement to social interactions. Before anyone mentions a typical example of counterstrike, I'd like to mention that some communities are good about encouraging intelligent conversation.
- reaction time peaks at 30
That's cool to know. In online FPS games, people always whine about the reflexes of the 12-17 year olds and so on, but I've always felt like it was because older gamers just didn't devote the time into games to get as good. Now that the crowd of mid-20 gamers has had years of experience in these games, they are still the majority at the top level of competition. (There are exceptions, but I'm just pointing out that once you are past 17, that doesn't mean you won't be able to compete with younger gamers anymore on the grounds of reflexes.)
encouraging and aiding voter fraud by fraudulently registering voters multiple times, fake voters, etc?
And if you actually look into it beyond fox news and the "sources" that they quote, you may find out that it is legally required by a voter registration group such as ACORN to submit every single registration form that they receive, regardless of if they think it is valid. They are allowed to mark ones that they believe to be invalid, so that they will be further inspected by actual officials, but to my knowledge, no one has questioned the accuracy of their markings. The issues with false registrations are mostly being found as cases of the person collecting registrations attempting to hit quotas to prove that he/she is actually working. Molehill, not a mountain.
False registration is the first step in voter fraud, is it not?
It could be the first step, but it isn't necessary for voter fraud (as some other replies around this thread suggest, there are plenty of ways to mess with democracy).
As for this particular method, are you suggesting that people going to show up with fake ID's to match the false registrations that they submitted? Seems a bit more involved than designing the machines to falsely provide results.
Outside of that, I have recently realized an issue of concern regarding our electoral process... some people have realized that many minorities who are legal citizens of the country and should be allowed to vote aren't being allowed to vote because they lack ID that is accepted at the time of voting. The problem is that while the Democrats are fighting to get these ID laws removed, they aren't really acknowledging that false registrations in conjunction with no ID required would completely undermine our voting system. We still need to find a way for all citizens to vote though (preferably not a solution involving ID's with RFID chips, GPS tracking or whatever else is remotely possible).
In taking a quick glance, it seems like his estimates of
relying on nuclear weapons for our security is thousands of times more dangerous than having a nuclear power plant built next to your home
aren't even based on current technology of nuclear power plants. Plus I'd imagine that nuclear power plants are even better for our safety when you consider how a number of the new ones can be used to destroy old weapons-grade material...
I suppose you could justify shifting the problem if you hope that it lands on someone who has the time/money to take those people on legally. Also, if it becomes more widespread in the FBI's eyes (more than a handful of people complaining about it), maybe they will start acting more seriously about it.
1) the "smoking something" comment was directed at the belief that the "lower limit" of Obama's tax increases would stay at $250k. Numbers like that have a tendency to creep in a direction determined by party. I mean, if folks who make over $250k should pay more, why not $225k?, or $200k? Everybody uses a different definition of "middle class", and the definition changes to suit the political goals.
1) Giving the WSJ the benefit of the doubt and assuming this can happen, whether it changes in small amounts or not doesn't particularly matter to me. The issue that I take with Republican economics is that I don't believe "trickle-down" economics works very well, and if Democrats in control slightly tweak their policy, it will still be better for our country than what Bush has done and what McCain plans to do if he becomes President. Economically, I've seen plenty of articles that suggest that Democrats in control do much better than Republicans in control.
2) Regarding the "Muslim" vs. "not open and friendly" thing, I was simply pointing out that some people of EACH party make their decisions based on irrational criteria, and BOTH parties play that up.
2) You aren't arguing against how wide-spread this issue is on one side versus the other, so I think that my initial argument still stands. Just to reformulate it: Obama is getting a larger amount of unnecessary fear related to completely untrue issues, and many of these issues were spread by the McCain campaign itself.
3) My problem with the Obama/Ayers relationship isn't that they had one, but that Obama wasn't straightforward with it. He KNEW it was going to be an issue, but instead of saying "Yes, we did some business together; I detest what he did in the past but today, here and now, I needed to work with him to get results" he came up with "just a guy in the hood." Same with the Rev. Wright association - 20 years in church and he never heard Wright say what he said? If Obama had initially responded with "I don't agree with some of the things he has said from the pulpit, but there is far more to a church than the pastor and that's why I continue going" it would have been a dead issue.He could have simply told the truth up front and been done with it, but it seems that he expected the press and the public to swallow his dismissals and trivializations whole without any questioning. These things don't speak to his associations but to his veracity and character - he can't seem to tell the truth up front even when there's nothing really embarrassing about it.
3) So because he basically shrugged it off as something that no one should be concerned with then had people dig as deep as they could only to find nothing of substance, you are concerned? He was more or less right in the first place, so can we stick to things that actually have substance?
4) You lightly dismiss 2A concerns - "unnecessarily worrying", etc. You forget (conveniently?) that the National Firearms Act, the Gun Control Act, and the "Assault Weapons" Ban were all enacted under Democrat administrations and congresses, and that both Obama's and Biden's past voting and policy records are very anti-gun. As I said in a previous reply, you may not believe that gun issues are important under the grand scheme of things, but don't try to tell me they are irrational.
4) I'll admit my ignorance on the specifics of gun laws that the candidates have supported, but I have yet to see any convincing evidence that any candidate will ever be able to restrict gun ownership to the extent that many gun owners fear. As for the section that I bolded, that's the important point that I would like to get across. (my bulleted list of economy, foreign policy, healthcare, and education being what I think is most important in the grand scheme of things)
5) As for your last point, you keep on missing what I'm trying to say - th
You can certainly discount the importance of gun controls to the populace, and you may be right.
Just so you know where I stand on the issue, I'd like to state this: I wouldn't argue the importance of gun laws because I don't believe it is the best path. Maybe if we could achieve it in the end over a long period of time it would be for the greater good, but there would be too much time during which only criminals would have those illegal weapons. I don't want to put our country through such times, and I don't think the right of owning a gun causes enough of an issue that it needs to be "fixed".
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You are doing the exact same thing I just criticized... don't try to convince those who care about 2A rights that "there is nothing to worry about". I don't want to wait 4 years to find out if I was right.
No, what I'm saying is that the heavy restrictions on guns that you are imagining won't happen, and it can't happen. There are major proponents of gun ownership on both sides of the political fence, and even if Obama felt strongly enough to ban all guns, it would not happen. This is why I said that you should consider the next 4 years as they pass. Here is a quote from the man himself a month and a half ago, and I think it strikes some major truth.
Obama (Sept. 5): The bottom line is this. If you've got a rifle, you've got a shotgun, you've got a gun in your house, I'm not taking it away. Alright? So they can keep on talking about it but this is just not true. And by the way, here's another thing you've got to understand. Even if I wanted to take it away, I couldn't get it done. I don't have the votes in Congress.
My arguments against McCain are different than what you are saying about guns because:
The ban on guns that you fear can't happen.
The destruction of our country in the ways listed above DID happen, and McCain went along with the administration that caused them to happen a huge portion of the time. McCain, being from the same party as Bush, is likely to surround himself with the same "proven and experienced" Republicans who have caused this mess.
so, despite a consistent history of positions and votes antithetical to gun rights, now that he has issued a statement that the 2A is an individual right we should believe him? Was he on the road to Damascus lately? Going to change his name to Paul?
I'll tell you what... given that it looks very much like Obama is going to be elected, how about 4 years from now in the next presidential elections, you ask yourself how much gun laws have changed since now. If it is significantly different from the state it is in today, I would be VERY surprised.
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Obama's entire campaign is based on McCain voting with Bush for 8 years, and tells us to ignore McCain's protests that he is a reformer.
Is it deniable that the Bush administration has ravaged our country in so many different areas in the past 8 years?
Is it deniable that McCain has voted with Bush during the past 8 years? Even McCain himself proudly spoke about how much he went along with the Bush administration. FFS, look at what actually happened.
Again, in 4 years I want you to ask yourself how much things have changed for guns. This shouldn't be the major issue for anyone - the major issues in no particular order should be (IMO):
On the first three that I listed, I see Obama as the clear winner.
I apologize for being a little late, but lets see here...
As for the taxes part, the $250k lower limit is what he'll do first. Reasonable, no? But the rest of the plan has some interesting aspects. From the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385651698727257.html And if you think that lower limit will remain $45k, you're smoking something.
Conveniently enough, I just ran across this, which even points out the specific WSJ article that you linked. Search for
Furthermore, the Journal's editorial misstated a key fact in its "welfare" argument. It said that anyone who doesn't pay federal income taxes is not a "taxpayer," which is simply incorrect.
In reading various independent analysis of the tax policies of the two candidates, I'm pretty sure that you are reading a little too much republican propaganda if you think that I'm smoking something.
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Finally, your bit about Terrorists and Muslims is lame - yes, there are people who believe that and vote that way. There are also people who don't like McCain because, since he can't raise his arms, "doesn't look open and friendly". But it doesinvite the question about the company he keeps, and his forthrightness. Obama initially only admitted a trivial association with Ayers, but apparently there was quite a bit more to it.
McCain actually is a fairly amiable looking candidate in my opinion, despite what the media claims. But are you seriously arguing that the racism and fear of terrorism in this country is less of an issue than voting in a guy who doesn't look open and friendly (which I'd argue against)? What exactly do you define as "quite a bit more" to the Ayers connection, by the way? A meet the candidate night at the guy's house? Oh shit, they must have been preparing to bomb something. I guess what scares you about Ayers nowadays is that the foundation he is involved in funded two projects that the McCain campaign quoted as being radical - "one having to do with a United Nations-themed Peace School and another that focused on African-American studies." (from the same politifact link I pasted earlier).
I was actually a fan of McCain around 2000 before he changed a number of his stances, such as the Bush tax cuts and immigration. If you ask economists, immigration in particular is actually pretty damn good for the economy. It helps to look past the "They're taking our jobs!" meme that people like to spout out, and put a little thought into whether immigrants actually have the training necessary to take said jobs.
Quick note on the immigration from the LA Times:
As a sponsor of two comprehensive reform bills, McCain should be unbeatable on this issue. Standing up to fellow Republicans (and some Democrats), he declared that the nation could not turn its back on the impoverished millions who have come here to work and prosper. Unfortunately, the free-thinker has become a follower, trailing behind the worst instincts of his party. Abandoning problem-solving for politics, McCain has made border security and employment enforcement his new mandate. That may be good Republican politics, but it's not sound policy.
McCain used to have great ideas that go against common belief, but he has since turned his back on such in order to get more mainstream votes.
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You seem to think that all Republicans are either knuckle dragging cretins or amoral titans of industry.
I actually like to break it down slightly differently... (but I do like your wording of one, so I'll borrow that)
It looks like you only read the first quote, where he appears to support 2nd amendment rights (although he doesn't really answer the questions asked). It's later that the page shows his positions that should scare the crap out of gun owners.
You picked out the oldest possible stance that is shown on that page, which is inconsistent with what he has done since then. This is exactly why I linked that article - you cherry pick things that scare you instead of looking at the whole picture.
I'll get back to you on the rest of the post later . (I hope - work is just about over, so I don't have time now, and I don't regularly check slashdot over the weekend, but I'll try to make an effort to do so)
Maybe it would be more clear if
the democrats have yet to become vertebrates
was reworded as
and the democrats have yet to effectively use their majority lead to show the republicans that they shouldn't be allowed to get away with the BS they have been pulling
OK, honestly, why is this guy modded as flamebait? Sure, he said "propaganda", which has a negative connotation, but the definition that I'm reading is "information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause", (notice that it doesn't say anything about the veracity of the information being spread) so it seems legitimately used in this case. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but are there really that many Democrats out there who have the intention of banning all guns? It seems like the majority of mainstream democratic candidates out there just want to let the local law decide what is appropriate for their area.
For the record, I think banning guns would be really stupid at this point in our history, and I'm a registered democrat.
I don't get the fear about Obama, though.
Agreed. I'd like to see a list of fears that your average registered republican voter has of Obama getting into office. I'd bet that a huge portion of them are along the lines of "He's Muslim!"/"He's gonna take away our guns!"/"He pals around with terrorists!"/"He's going to raise taxes on me!" (of course, this is true for people who make over $250K/yr, but plenty of people not in that bracket who are voting against him believe this to be true). Bleh.
Apparently not... So, I'll just quote the part of the post you obviously didn't read:
"...that's not to say these people shouldn't be allowed to vote..."
to rephrase:
Despite what I just said, I do think these people should be allowed to vote.
Allow me to provide the full context of that quote that you just copied.
And that's not to say these people shouldn't be allowed to vote, but is to say that there are people in this country that ought to vote more, if you will. There have been propositions that would offer additional votes to people that meet certain criteria (like owning land, etc), but like most voting reform they never even made it to a draft bill.
This seems to matches perfectly with the rest of your sentiments about being disgusted by the homeless voting. You suggest that people who are not homeless should vote more to counter the homeless who do vote - perfectly in line with the rest of your post that the parent was quoting.
Hell, given the absolutely ridiculously knee jerk reactions to my post
It's almost like people on this forum respond to the content of what you post instead of something else. What is wrong with these people! */sarcasm*
every category of law that homeless people don't interact with, since, after all, it's one hell of a list.
So since they don't directly deal with it, they shouldn't have any say in it. Great logic... lets extend that a little further.
This list is getting pretty overwhelming. I guess I shouldn't vote, despite being a 23 year old college graduate with a job.
And honestly, I'm very lucky to have a decent job. What if the President's economic decisions made the economy slightly worse, to the point where my current employer decided against hiring a new programmer? Oops, I would have been homeless by now if I was still working at Circuit City like I was for half a year (barely above the minimum wage can't support college debts, car payments, insurance, rent, utilities, and food. Trust me, it's not even close). No vote for me under your rules.
Do a little more research. Obama was the #2 candidate of donations from Fannie.
Nice cherry picking. For starters, Fannie Mae donated mostly to Democrats, but Freddie Mac donated mostly to Republicans. I haven't seen individual breakdowns to show what one candidate received from just Fannie, but I don't particularly care - the big picture is more important.
Politifact has a decent explanation of what is going on, and I would like to highlight the fact that the statistic that shows Obama as the second highest receiver of donations is only counting donations by individual employees, not the board of directors/lobbyists/etc. When you add in those numbers, McCain's donations swells a good bit over Obama's.
And honestly, is it so bad that individual employees of large companies that donated to a candidate? Do you think the Obama had a chance of directly spending time with every one of these donors as much as McCain had of the lobbyists who donated significantly more $/person?
I assume that you are looking for a currently operating reactor to fit this criteria, but that's a little difficult with no reactors being built for so many years. If, however, we accept that our designs from so far back aren't exactly top-notch nowadays, we could extend our research into something that does happen to fit your criteria, such as this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor.
No, if McCain would have won the nomination in 2000, people would have been reacting to McCain the same way as they are now, only it would have been 8 years earlier. Liberals didn't hate McCain in 2000 only because they didn't have to run against him. Now they do. Life is tough. sorry.
I'll preface this by saying that I'm clearly not speaking for every registered voting democrat, but I was a much bigger fan of McCain back in 2000 than I am now. Back around that time, McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts and argued to pay off the federal debt instead.
There are a number of other things that I agreed with him on back then, but since he got the nomination, he changed many of his stances to the cookie-cutter Republican stance. Now, maybe him being nominated forced him to do this, so it would have happened back in 2000 as well, but I assume that it was something related to senility or general displeasure with the Republican party for not nominating him (potentially due to his stances) that caused his change of heart on a number of topics.
Unfortunately, the terrible response rate (about 8%) means that there is huge probability of non-response bias.
I'm not so sure that I agree with this. Be it that I program online surveys (though not for the company that sent out this one), I highly doubt that they worded it in such a way that would create a non-response bias before anyone entered the interview. It is very likely that they had the grouping questions (are you registered with any of the following parties:, are you employed by a university, etc.) at the end of the survey, and the meat of the questionnaire at the beginning. This is a typical design in online surveys when you don't intend on setting quotas on how many people you want from specific groups, and given that he sent out ~6000 invites, I doubt that Scott Adams was concerned about getting exactly x% democrats and y% republicans.
Who cares? You might want to ask your representatives why they're allowing the Fed to transfer trillions of dollars of losses onto the taxpayer's bill, though. Someone may actually have to pay that back someday.
I care to the extent that if we don't figure out who is responsible, those trillions of dollars of losses may become tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars of losses.
note: IANAE, so I don't know if our national debt reaching such levels would just cause our country to spontaneously explode or if it is actually salvageable at that point.
It'd probably take a half-acre to generate 40kW, but it's not like they're shy on square-footage
I'd consider getting it up there a mildly annoying problem. It would likely be much heavier and take up much more space than the small nuclear reactors that they are proposing.
and on the light side of the moon, it's high noon 24/7.
One side of the moon always faces the Earth, not the Sun. You'd be dealing with a day/night cycle that is 28 Earth days long. As posters up above mentioned, you'd need to store this power in batteries, which would not be cheap.
No, you misinterpreted what I was saying and that's at least partly my fault.
When I was reading through this thread, I interpreted what you said exactly the same way the GP and others have interpreted it. A major reason that we interpreted it that way is because the parent to your original post never was talking about 3rd party applications causing instability issues. Specifically, he said:
I own an Acer laptop, which ran like bloody hell with the OEM shartware installed. I also own an HP laptop, which ran like bloody hell with the OEM shartware installed.
Thus, if you really intended to say that 3rd party software was causing instability issues, you were misconstruing what BronsCon said. (unless I'm misunderstanding what he - I assume he means that the software is slowing down the laptop)
There is no need to yell at ShadowRangerRIT saying stuff like "This really is the only ambiguous part of my entire post, and your entire response hinges on it" since you didn't concisely say what you meant, and it conflicted with what was being discussed anyway.
In that sense, is a soul nothing more than a spectator? Could there be multiple souls to a body? Could there similarly be no souls to a body? Is there any perceivable difference between having no souls, a single soul, or multiple souls to a body?
You could control a robot playing tennis remotely! Oh wait.. What if the network lags.
The same thing that happened ten years ago when we were playing Quake over the internet.
Take a look at what netcode in modern FPS games - they like to use client-side prediction algorithms that give you a good idea of where enemy players will be by the time your mouse click gets to the server to say that you fired your gun. With the Tennis ball's velocity/rotational velocity, wind speed, and a general idea of how lagged your network is, you can give the client side a smooth, "unlagged" feeling.
Of course, this gets more complicated in FPS games due to those evil enemy players not moving in predictable straight lines :).