If there's an mp4 HD version of the video, and you dump (not re-encode) the AAC audio it can actually sound pretty good.
I'm assuming mp4 on youtube is always h.264/AAC, which it seems to be. Sometimes an flv video will also have AAC audio, but it's usually, like you said, compressed as hell.
It's nice once you get used to it if you do unix-y things a lot, because ctrl-c, ctrl-z, ctrl-d do not conflict with copy paste undo, etc...
However, I understand completely why you wouldn't want to change from what you are used to. That tends to be Apple's thing, though: sacrifice customizability for the sake of usability. BUT, In this case, it IS very easy to change.
It is apparently very difficult to talk about probability over a uniform distribution of an infinite space (link) so I'm not sure that what you're saying about a boy that likes the number 1835736583 would be true (see also xckd puzzle).
But yes, as N possibilities increases the probability seems to converge to 1/2, but it's hard to talk about if N is actually countably or uncountably infinite.
Sorry if you already know this or I grossly misunderstand something or are far more knowledgable than me on the subject (you probably are), I just thought it might be interesting if anyone hasn't read that article.
Hence, I am in full agreement that there is a clear biological component to sexuality.
Let me be clear, I acknowledge that the factors determining sexuality are probably more complicated than simple genetics, but the fact that sexuality is an immutable trait is not up for debate here. You're trying to argue the philosophical nature of being a turtle to an actual turtle.
But there is also a clear choice function in sexuality, as monogamy and even celibacy appear practicable in individuals who do experience biological drives to have sex. Not always with great success, of course! But the act is, if not really separable, at least a "separate event" from sexuality. Which leads to the recent official position of my particular faith ("it's okay to be gay if you never have gay sex") which, if someone were to say something similar to me regarding straight sex with my wife, I would laugh in their face. d^_^b
Even so, the emphasis on separability is a kind of clinging in the face of a materialistic (in the philosophical, rather than consumerist, sense) tidal wave. If homosexuality is an immutable trait, so must be heterosexuality, and bisexuality--and so might be any number of so-called paraphilias. Which I don't raise as some kind of bogeyman or parade of horribles (in my experience, the parade rarely arrives), but more to illustrate the reluctance of certain groups to accept the "genetic trait" argument. Genetic homosexuality is just one drop in a flood of mechanistic approaches to human behavior (genetic depression, genetic intelligence, genetic athletic ability...) that erode our ability to speak coherently about free will, which rests at the heart of not only many of our religious beliefs but also our criminal justice system and our own individual desire to be "free."
We're starting to get off track...
Do you think that your sexuality comes in to play when you kiss your wife goodnight? How about the crush you had on a little girl when you were 11? You're conflating the term "sexuality" with "having sex". You're, ahem, "chosen paraphilia" as you put it, pervades more of your life than maybe you realize. Did you have to sue the state government to go to the prom with who you wanted? Did you have Bill O'Reilly mouth off at your school for you and your girlfriend being nominated as cutest couple (with the balls to claim that it is because "sexuality" doesn't belong in high school)? Everyone *constantly* exerts their "sexuality" and doesn't even realize it. It blows peoples minds that you can be gay or lesbian without, gasp, actually having sex.
I *hate* the term sexuality. I wish there was another term that didn't have the word "sex" in it.
As far as the word "paraphilia" goes, the definition of paraphilia includes the precondition of being harmful. Apparently you're using it in a different way that includes heterosexuality? Unless you want to count your middle school heterosexual crush as paraphilia, please stop using the word that way. By the way, when you think "homosexuality" vs "heterosexuality" in the future, I want you to think of the earliest crush you had on a little girl, because that's the thing I think of, and they're both about that scary.
Because the prevailing zeitgeist is a small-l "liberal" tolerance of belief (or idea, or emotion), which we proudly and boldly distinguish from our intolerance of acts, no matter how inseparable they might seem to practitioners.
I'm lost now... small l liberals don't tolerate acts that violate the rights of others -- in fact they explicitly allow acts that do not violate the rights of others.
You're starting to get off on this tangent of free will vs genetics, and separating, uh, "belief" from acting on that "belief". See above, sexuality is more than actually having sex. It's pretty ridiculous to claim that someone should forego all romantic involvement and be alone their whole life simply b
I know this conversation is a million years old now, but I'd like to say thanks again for being reasonable and civil, and, like samoanbiscuit said, not mentioning hitler, nazis, or satan even once!:)
I'd like to respond to some of the questions you had though...
I don't get automatic visitation and am not automatically able to make medical decisions for my partner if she is hospitalized.
In your state, is it possible to rectify this through a power of attorney or similar medical-related document?
I replied earlier with an (admittedly opinionated) story of how this often is far more difficult than it sounds or than it should be. Read about it here
If my spouse loses her job, we are put in federal income tax brackets as if we made twice as much as we actually do (even though I am providing for her).
This is interesting, and I'm not sure I understand it. My understanding of tax law is far from perfect, but as I understand it is possible to claim anyone you want as a dependent, so long as no one is claimed twice. Is that not operable here? Or is this something else?
Well, maybe... but it's not exactly the same. A married couple filing jointly get to take the married standard deduction (double the single SD), and pay taxes in brackets as if they were two individuals making the average of the two incomes (roughly). Say I made 80,000, and my wife lost her job and made 0 for the whole year (totally imaginary, I don't make that much:) If we were married, we'd have maybe $1,000 of income in the 25% tax bracket, while if we file separately, I get $40,000 dollars counted in the 25% tax bracket, if I'm doing the math correctly. Assuming head of household, I'd get a higher standard deduction, which I *think* equals the married filing jointly deduction once you add in the personal exemption for a dependent, but our income would get put in tax brackets like an individual, not a couple... so I think it works out that everything is the same, except $34,000 dollars gets taxed at 25%, instead of about $1,000 at 25%. My head hurts. The real solution is to structure tax law so that this works out the same either way, but that's not the way it works now. One of my very libertarian friends suggested abolishing the welfare system and implementing an equivalent negative income tax, which actually solves the whole marriage tax inequality problem nicely, but it is too early in the morning to argue the merits of that:)
In my state, it is illegal for us to adopt children.
Is it illegal for you to adopt children as an individual? (I recognize that this is an unattractive alternative to a committed couple, but I am not aware of any state where only married couples may legally adopt.)
Florida (the state I live in) prohibits single and joint gay adoption, as far as I know. It sucks. At least one of us could biologically have children, but I'm not sure if the other could adopt them. There's apparently a constitutional ruling on the 1977 law that's being appealed right now, so in the future, who knows...
It costs a great deal of money to put her on my company insurance plan, and everyone else at my company gets it for free.
Is this not something your company, or your insurance company, is willing to address? Or is it illegal for them to do so in your state? Do you feel that additional state intrusion is the best possible approach to this particular problem?
No, I don't think that state intrusion is the best approach, and of *course* it's not *illegal* for them to do so in Florida, but companies tend to follow the lead of the government. If there were no such thing as state sponsored marriage, then they'd have to
And finally, if the abolishment of state-sponsored marriage is equivalent to the adoption of state-sponsored gay marriage, are conservatives wrong when they say that same-sex marriage is in fact an attack on traditional marriage?
I was following your argument until this point.... buh?
Very dumb analogy: Suppose the government gave financial incentives for curling, but not ice skating. What everyone here is trying to show is that only one of:
1. neither should receive an incentive 2. all sports should receive incentives in a sport-neutral way 3. incentives should be predicated on another *unrelated* factor
is fair. Is this an "attack on curling"? That's an illogical and emotional argument... but maybe that's what you're trying to show? I'm honestly not following.
The rights and obligations incident to marriage are almost all available through other means--for example, a carefully drafted will, or a contractual relationship. Of course, that "almost" is a sticking point, and the comparative convenience is also something worth discussing.
But you're painting the picture as deliberately bleak. This is good rhetoric, I suppose, but if my statements were disingenuous for painting an unnecessarily rosy picture, yours fall prey to the same problem in reverse
First of all, let me state that I've read all your posts for this story, and you seem to make very cogent, logical arguments. Thank you. Even if I disagree with someone, hearing a well, thought out, rational argument is never a bad thing:)
I'm also coming in to the conversation pretty late, but I felt I had to respond to some of your suggestions because this actually affects me personally:
What you don't seem to realize is that everything you have argued that gay people should be allowed to have, they are allowed to have in virtually every state in the union.
Huh? I don't get automatic visitation and am not automatically able to make medical decisions for my partner if she is hospitalized. If my spouse loses her job, we are put in federal income tax brackets as if we made twice as much as we actually do (even though I am providing for her). In my state, it is illegal for us to adopt children. It costs a great deal of money to put her on my company insurance plan, and everyone else at my company gets it for free. If she had emigrated to the US from another country, my spouse would not automatically be eligible for citizenship. If we bought a house together, my spouse would have to pay inheritance taxes on the house in order to stay in it if I died.
Most of these things are true in most states, as far as I know.
That being said, I see where you are coming from with your suggestion that the government should get out of the business of marriage in general. I agree that, given enough time, you could dismantle the 1,138 federal laws referencing marriage and make sure that they applied in a marriage neutral way, or eliminate them altogether.
I'm also not necessarily against the idea that many of the rights given to married couples could be be predicated on actually raising children, but I would argue that this should apply to couples who raise adopted children also, including same sex couples who do so.
All in all, I'd actually prefer a system that was marriage neutral, but the reality of the situation today is that being "married but not married" in a culture where marriage is embedded so deeply in the culture is complicated. Even simple things like *renting a car* are a hassle when you have to argue with three different people so that you're not charged double what a heterosexual couple would be charged (sorry, off-topic, just annoyed because it happened to me recently)
Most people that I know that are a proponent of legalizing gay marriage are also not automatically against the idea of doing what you suggest, but just feel that it's the looong way around. How about a compromise? Legalize gay marriage now, *then* set about dismantling the national/state/local marriage system. (Hah! there's a suggestion that angers just about everyone!)
I'm also not necessarily against the benefits for polyamorous couples and other forms of marriage, but there's one point that needs to be made here.... Choosing to participate in a polyamorous marriage vs a two person marriage is very much a choice, whereas choosing to participate in a heterosexual vs homosexual marriage is very much *not*. I am aware this assumes some pretty modern, romantic, western values here where people are not forced into marriage for the mechanical act of child bearing, but still... assuming you're not gay, could you imagine having sex with another member of the same sex? That's how much of a choice it is.
Now, if you believe that homosexuality is not congenitally determined... I'd say that's an axiom that we're probably not going to resolve here.
The debate is not so simple. Corporations aren't just groups; their members are shielded from liability for the corporations actions, so they don't make decisions like normal people do.
I think a lot of people would take issue with such a simple assertion that the constitution automatically grants natural rights to artificial entities.
The issue has been debated for forever, so I'm not going to replay it here. I just wanted to point out that it's not so simple.
You're right, of course. This is something I did know, but had a momentary lapse in thinking. Thank you for pointing it out.
That being said...
I understand completely, but it can get a little silly. If you're sitting on another planet, and that planet's moon eclipses the star, is it called a star eclipse? An extrasolar eclipse? If we send a rover to an exoplanet, will it be powered by star power, from star panels (As opposed to solar power, from solar panels?)
[Thousands of years in the future, in some planetary system, near an expoplanet...]
OMG, we're about to crash into a planet!
Uh, we're 20 light years from Sol, how can we crash into a::CRASH::
Plus I always liked "planetary system" rather than "star system", since "Star system" carries a connotation of a star cluster.
Maybe it would give us hints about what to look for in other solar systems when looking for rocky planets with similar atmospheres?
Maybe it would tell us something about whether or not our type of atmosphere is rare in the universe?
Who knows, it might be useful. It should be at least as useful as studying the mating habits of the short-tailed horned lizard, or a million other things scientists study.
I knew that, but I don't usually use a mac keyboard. I still remap the window and alt key so everything is the same position as on my macbook pro, though, so when I was responding I just looked down.
I think the apple way of doing this is to hit the expose key, then use the keyboard if you're looking for a specific window.
I really really love the dock concept -- why do I have to have a firefox window open to keep downloads running? Why do programs have to go out of their way to manage system tray entries? If a program has a system tray entry, why are there *two* ways to minimize that app's window? All of this is solved by the dock!
But, it's taken me forever to get used to the two level window switching that you're talking about. It still tends to feel clunky. I guess I could use the expose key, but it's not as conveniently placed where my left hand can reach it in the resting position. I can't help but think there is a better way.
Yeah, we a better discussion of this further down... my blanket statement here wasn't well justified.
I have of course had exactly that experience, on both sides, but never something that I felt was patentable. This might be that most of my programming work has been very tightly coupled to mathematics. I feel math shouldn't be patentable, so I never feel that my programming implementation of it shouldn't be, but I understand how someone could feel that way. A good counterexample to what I was saying would be the RSA patent... shorter than most, and very clear on what the novel algorithm is and what it's useful for right up front.
I should have qualified what I was saying and emphasized *most*. Granted I haven't looked at *that many* patents, but all the ones I've seen are just vague descriptions of what some system looks like at the interface level. There was one that patented... something to do with slot machines that were networked and shared data. They weren't networked in any novel way, the patent didn't describe anything particularly novel they were doing with the data, it just seemed to patent *the idea of having slot machines in a network*.
That sort of patent doesn't show you how to do something, it just makes a land grab. I think we're in agreement about the USPTO and probably about patents in general, but I shouldn't have made such a blanket statement without qualifying it.
Oh, trust me, I read past the claims section.. these were two patents that caught my attention because they were on slashdot previously, and I wanted to see what the average software patent looked like. They always look like a laywer and a programmer sat down and translated every diagram and requirements document into legalese.
I mean look...
The system management tools available with the present invention allow system administrators to monitor, control and customize an institution's online teaching and learning environment from the web browser. The system administrator may control security permissions and enable/disable features for numerous user roles. Batch user enrollment (and unenrollment) may be performed system wide. Preferences and options may be managed on multiple courses, all from within a central system administrator panel. The system administrator may also track and report faculty, student and course statistics, may plan and manage system hardware requirements by assigning instructors with pre-assigned disk quotas for content storage, and may employ system-wide announcements to broadcast messages to users about system maintenance or institutional announcements.
In the Course & Portal Manager embodiment, the enterprise database support provides support for tens of thousands of users across an entire institution or system of institutions. User and course data may be managed efficiently and effectively. Moreover, large volumes of transactions may be managed efficiently and effectively. The "My Institution" interface includes portal and community functionality along with quick access to web email, course and institutional announcements, and links to other campus departments. Administrators may enable or disable portal modules and establish required and optional modules from the portal options menu bar. Administrators may also assign different portal default settings to different user roles (e.g. students get different portals than instructors).
Course e-commerce management functionality allows institutions to set prices and charge fees for course enrollment directly through the "e-Learning" platform
That's in the "DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS" section. That's like a back of the box product description. I know they go into more detail later, but it's always meaningless minutiae about what part of the website connects to what, or the fact that such and such field would be retrieved from a database. Well duh. Were these bad examples? Is this what a "design patent" looks like?
Even the figures are mostly grossly simplified networking diagrams and *screenshots* of the web interface. I mean, come on!
The second patent looks better, but the novel parts look to be in exactly how they tie information from different logged in users. It definitely seems *interesting*, but it sounds like it's interesting because their problem domain is unusual, not because the concept is amazingly novel independently of that.
Don't get me wrong, the flow chart comment aside, I think I qualify as a someone reasonably proficient in the field. Up until recently my job was primarily doing aeronatic and numerical processing code for the DoD and designing a library and application for easily integrating aeronautic flight models for the purposes of weapons effectiveness and defensive analysis in dogfights primarily for use at Top Gun and Fallon.
And these (well, mainly the first one) sound like nearly useless 50,000 views of a system filled mostly with information that you could garner just from *using* the system.
You know what seems like a straightforward patent? http://www.google.com/patents?vid=4405829 RSA is the most deserving software idea I can think of for being granted a patent... and it seemed to stall web commerce for a decade. It was absolutely a deserved patent... but the barrier to entry for software is just *so low*. It actually seems more valuable to
Lots and lots and lots of description of the minutia of any complex system that really wouldn't help me unless I was trying to do something that was exactly the same, and in the exact same environment, and maybe not even then. And that is buried in tons of description of basic computer science or engineering concepts like what a WAN or LAN is and what eeprom is.
Maybe you can make sense of that and gain something from it. I guess I could too, in the sense that they're like very obfuscated requirements documents.
But, you caught me, I have not had enough patience to actually read an *entire* patent like these before.
And, of course, they're not all like this... but man are there a lot of them.
Oh, and I thought the European Patent Convention required (at least recently) that the invention make significant contribution in an otherwise patentable area, i.e. no *pure* software patents. I might be wrong on that.
But yeah, I can read a flow chart, on a good day, I can even *draw* a mean flow chart. And I'm sure you can too:)
I think that *Europe* is pretty civilized, and they specifically exclude business method and software patents still, as far as I know.
And like fritsd said, we don't see source code attached to patent applications, and you go read most software patent applications and tell me if they *help* you develop anything.
That sounds pretty ridiculous... what you would have created would most definitely be a derivative work, which would have copyright protection.
If you clean-room reverse engineered the program down to the last pixel, wouldn't there be a copyright claim to the layout and specific appearance of the program?
If the program looks different, is coded independently, but performs the same algorithms and functions, well that's called *interoperability*. If you don't understand why that's important, then we'll never ever agree.
I'm talking about a specific steering wheel design, you're talking about *the entire idea of a steering wheel*.
Somebody else came up with the idea of html, markup, tying a scripting language to said markup, asynchronous updates on the markup, and everything else we're using to communicate here, and there are probably patents covering most of it. Do you think that only very large companies with very large armies of lawyers should be writing web pages?
I'll give you that there are probably a select few areas where some patentable idea could be expressed in software, but the barrier to entry is so low in software development, that they all would have been implemented anyway. Patents are not a land grab or a right, they were only supposed to be used to increase production and knowledge. They don't, they waste huge amounts of energy, which is why people around here get so frustrated (and make silly arguments).
Of course, I'm not adding anything new and you probably knew all this, so I'll shut up now.
I don't know if you're having the same problem as me, but my problem was that the install wouldn't reboot after installing karmic. I *think* kernel 2.6.31 has some problem with Parallels (or vice versa) that keeps any disk from being recognized. I get dumped to busybox, and there are no/dev/sd* devices:/
If you're having the same problem, just boot with kernel 2.6.28 from Jaunty.
Which in the grand scheme of things are pretty minor. The first one is really annoying if you play WoW in wine, because you have to manually turn off keyboard repeat:/
Other than that, I've upgraded 3 machines without problems. My parallels VM upgraded to karmic doesn't detect any drives unless I use the older kernel, but I'm 90% sure that that's not a bug in ubuntu.
Slashdot Mirror
If there's an mp4 HD version of the video, and you dump (not re-encode) the AAC audio it can actually sound pretty good.
I'm assuming mp4 on youtube is always h.264/AAC, which it seems to be. Sometimes an flv video will also have AAC audio, but it's usually, like you said, compressed as hell.
System Preferences -> Keyboard -> 'Keyboard' Tab -> 'Modifier Keys' button.
It's nice once you get used to it if you do unix-y things a lot, because ctrl-c, ctrl-z, ctrl-d do not conflict with copy paste undo, etc...
However, I understand completely why you wouldn't want to change from what you are used to. That tends to be Apple's thing, though: sacrifice customizability for the sake of usability. BUT, In this case, it IS very easy to change.
It is apparently very difficult to talk about probability over a uniform distribution of an infinite space (link) so I'm not sure that what you're saying about a boy that likes the number 1835736583 would be true (see also xckd puzzle).
But yes, as N possibilities increases the probability seems to converge to 1/2, but it's hard to talk about if N is actually countably or uncountably infinite.
Sorry if you already know this or I grossly misunderstand something or are far more knowledgable than me on the subject (you probably are), I just thought it might be interesting if anyone hasn't read that article.
How much is it?
I dunno, how much you got?
Fixing poverty is the best population control.
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/what-stops-population-growth/
Okay, last one, I promise.
Hence, I am in full agreement that there is a clear biological component to sexuality.
Let me be clear, I acknowledge that the factors determining sexuality are probably more complicated than simple genetics, but the fact that sexuality is an immutable trait is not up for debate here. You're trying to argue the philosophical nature of being a turtle to an actual turtle.
But there is also a clear choice function in sexuality, as monogamy and even celibacy appear practicable in individuals who do experience biological drives to have sex. Not always with great success, of course! But the act is, if not really separable, at least a "separate event" from sexuality. Which leads to the recent official position of my particular faith ("it's okay to be gay if you never have gay sex") which, if someone were to say something similar to me regarding straight sex with my wife, I would laugh in their face. d^_^b
Even so, the emphasis on separability is a kind of clinging in the face of a materialistic (in the philosophical, rather than consumerist, sense) tidal wave. If homosexuality is an immutable trait, so must be heterosexuality, and bisexuality--and so might be any number of so-called paraphilias. Which I don't raise as some kind of bogeyman or parade of horribles (in my experience, the parade rarely arrives), but more to illustrate the reluctance of certain groups to accept the "genetic trait" argument. Genetic homosexuality is just one drop in a flood of mechanistic approaches to human behavior (genetic depression, genetic intelligence, genetic athletic ability...) that erode our ability to speak coherently about free will, which rests at the heart of not only many of our religious beliefs but also our criminal justice system and our own individual desire to be "free."
We're starting to get off track...
Do you think that your sexuality comes in to play when you kiss your wife goodnight? How about the crush you had on a little girl when you were 11? You're conflating the term "sexuality" with "having sex". You're, ahem, "chosen paraphilia" as you put it, pervades more of your life than maybe you realize. Did you have to sue the state government to go to the prom with who you wanted? Did you have Bill O'Reilly mouth off at your school for you and your girlfriend being nominated as cutest couple (with the balls to claim that it is because "sexuality" doesn't belong in high school)? Everyone *constantly* exerts their "sexuality" and doesn't even realize it. It blows peoples minds that you can be gay or lesbian without, gasp, actually having sex.
I *hate* the term sexuality. I wish there was another term that didn't have the word "sex" in it.
As far as the word "paraphilia" goes, the definition of paraphilia includes the precondition of being harmful. Apparently you're using it in a different way that includes heterosexuality? Unless you want to count your middle school heterosexual crush as paraphilia, please stop using the word that way. By the way, when you think "homosexuality" vs "heterosexuality" in the future, I want you to think of the earliest crush you had on a little girl, because that's the thing I think of, and they're both about that scary.
Because the prevailing zeitgeist is a small-l "liberal" tolerance of belief (or idea, or emotion), which we proudly and boldly distinguish from our intolerance of acts, no matter how inseparable they might seem to practitioners.
I'm lost now... small l liberals don't tolerate acts that violate the rights of others -- in fact they explicitly allow acts that do not violate the rights of others.
You're starting to get off on this tangent of free will vs genetics, and separating, uh, "belief" from acting on that "belief". See above, sexuality is more than actually having sex. It's pretty ridiculous to claim that someone should forego all romantic involvement and be alone their whole life simply b
I know this conversation is a million years old now, but I'd like to say thanks again for being reasonable and civil, and, like samoanbiscuit said, not mentioning hitler, nazis, or satan even once! :)
I'd like to respond to some of the questions you had though...
I don't get automatic visitation and am not automatically able to make medical decisions for my partner if she is hospitalized.
In your state, is it possible to rectify this through a power of attorney or similar medical-related document?
I replied earlier with an (admittedly opinionated) story of how this often is far more difficult than it sounds or than it should be. Read about it here
If my spouse loses her job, we are put in federal income tax brackets as if we made twice as much as we actually do (even though I am providing for her).
This is interesting, and I'm not sure I understand it. My understanding of tax law is far from perfect, but as I understand it is possible to claim anyone you want as a dependent, so long as no one is claimed twice. Is that not operable here? Or is this something else?
Well, maybe... but it's not exactly the same. A married couple filing jointly get to take the married standard deduction (double the single SD), and pay taxes in brackets as if they were two individuals making the average of the two incomes (roughly). Say I made 80,000, and my wife lost her job and made 0 for the whole year (totally imaginary, I don't make that much :) If we were married, we'd have maybe $1,000 of income in the 25% tax bracket, while if we file separately, I get $40,000 dollars counted in the 25% tax bracket, if I'm doing the math correctly. Assuming head of household, I'd get a higher standard deduction, which I *think* equals the married filing jointly deduction once you add in the personal exemption for a dependent, but our income would get put in tax brackets like an individual, not a couple... so I think it works out that everything is the same, except $34,000 dollars gets taxed at 25%, instead of about $1,000 at 25%. My head hurts. The real solution is to structure tax law so that this works out the same either way, but that's not the way it works now. One of my very libertarian friends suggested abolishing the welfare system and implementing an equivalent negative income tax, which actually solves the whole marriage tax inequality problem nicely, but it is too early in the morning to argue the merits of that :)
In my state, it is illegal for us to adopt children.
Is it illegal for you to adopt children as an individual? (I recognize that this is an unattractive alternative to a committed couple, but I am not aware of any state where only married couples may legally adopt.)
Florida (the state I live in) prohibits single and joint gay adoption, as far as I know. It sucks. At least one of us could biologically have children, but I'm not sure if the other could adopt them. There's apparently a constitutional ruling on the 1977 law that's being appealed right now, so in the future, who knows...
It costs a great deal of money to put her on my company insurance plan, and everyone else at my company gets it for free.
Is this not something your company, or your insurance company, is willing to address? Or is it illegal for them to do so in your state? Do you feel that additional state intrusion is the best possible approach to this particular problem?
No, I don't think that state intrusion is the best approach, and of *course* it's not *illegal* for them to do so in Florida, but companies tend to follow the lead of the government. If there were no such thing as state sponsored marriage, then they'd have to
And finally, if the abolishment of state-sponsored marriage is equivalent to the adoption of state-sponsored gay marriage, are conservatives wrong when they say that same-sex marriage is in fact an attack on traditional marriage?
I was following your argument until this point.... buh?
Very dumb analogy: Suppose the government gave financial incentives for curling, but not ice skating. What everyone here is trying to show is that only one of:
1. neither should receive an incentive
2. all sports should receive incentives in a sport-neutral way
3. incentives should be predicated on another *unrelated* factor
is fair. Is this an "attack on curling"? That's an illogical and emotional argument... but maybe that's what you're trying to show? I'm honestly not following.
(Maybe I should have made a car analogy :)
The rights and obligations incident to marriage are almost all available through other means--for example, a carefully drafted will, or a contractual relationship. Of course, that "almost" is a sticking point, and the comparative convenience is also something worth discussing.
But you're painting the picture as deliberately bleak. This is good rhetoric, I suppose, but if my statements were disingenuous for painting an unnecessarily rosy picture, yours fall prey to the same problem in reverse
Methinks you may have not tried it before.
First of all, let me state that I've read all your posts for this story, and you seem to make very cogent, logical arguments. Thank you. Even if I disagree with someone, hearing a well, thought out, rational argument is never a bad thing :)
I'm also coming in to the conversation pretty late, but I felt I had to respond to some of your suggestions because this actually affects me personally:
What you don't seem to realize is that everything you have argued that gay people should be allowed to have, they are allowed to have in virtually every state in the union.
Huh? I don't get automatic visitation and am not automatically able to make medical decisions for my partner if she is hospitalized. If my spouse loses her job, we are put in federal income tax brackets as if we made twice as much as we actually do (even though I am providing for her). In my state, it is illegal for us to adopt children. It costs a great deal of money to put her on my company insurance plan, and everyone else at my company gets it for free. If she had emigrated to the US from another country, my spouse would not automatically be eligible for citizenship. If we bought a house together, my spouse would have to pay inheritance taxes on the house in order to stay in it if I died.
Most of these things are true in most states, as far as I know.
That being said, I see where you are coming from with your suggestion that the government should get out of the business of marriage in general. I agree that, given enough time, you could dismantle the 1,138 federal laws referencing marriage and make sure that they applied in a marriage neutral way, or eliminate them altogether.
I'm also not necessarily against the idea that many of the rights given to married couples could be be predicated on actually raising children, but I would argue that this should apply to couples who raise adopted children also, including same sex couples who do so.
All in all, I'd actually prefer a system that was marriage neutral, but the reality of the situation today is that being "married but not married" in a culture where marriage is embedded so deeply in the culture is complicated. Even simple things like *renting a car* are a hassle when you have to argue with three different people so that you're not charged double what a heterosexual couple would be charged (sorry, off-topic, just annoyed because it happened to me recently)
Most people that I know that are a proponent of legalizing gay marriage are also not automatically against the idea of doing what you suggest, but just feel that it's the looong way around. How about a compromise? Legalize gay marriage now, *then* set about dismantling the national/state/local marriage system. (Hah! there's a suggestion that angers just about everyone!)
I'm also not necessarily against the benefits for polyamorous couples and other forms of marriage, but there's one point that needs to be made here.... Choosing to participate in a polyamorous marriage vs a two person marriage is very much a choice, whereas choosing to participate in a heterosexual vs homosexual marriage is very much *not*. I am aware this assumes some pretty modern, romantic, western values here where people are not forced into marriage for the mechanical act of child bearing, but still... assuming you're not gay, could you imagine having sex with another member of the same sex? That's how much of a choice it is.
Now, if you believe that homosexuality is not congenitally determined... I'd say that's an axiom that we're probably not going to resolve here.
The debate is not so simple. Corporations aren't just groups; their members are shielded from liability for the corporations actions, so they don't make decisions like normal people do.
I think a lot of people would take issue with such a simple assertion that the constitution automatically grants natural rights to artificial entities.
The issue has been debated for forever, so I'm not going to replay it here. I just wanted to point out that it's not so simple.
Wow, 'expoplanet'. Dunno how I typed that.
It's like the sales-convention planet.
It will be the first to be nuked out of existence from orbit.
You're right, of course. This is something I did know, but had a momentary lapse in thinking. Thank you for pointing it out.
That being said...
I understand completely, but it can get a little silly. If you're sitting on another planet, and that planet's moon eclipses the star, is it called a star eclipse? An extrasolar eclipse? If we send a rover to an exoplanet, will it be powered by star power, from star panels (As opposed to solar power, from solar panels?)
[Thousands of years in the future, in some planetary system, near an expoplanet...]
OMG, we're about to crash into a planet!
Uh, we're 20 light years from Sol, how can we crash into a ::CRASH::
Plus I always liked "planetary system" rather than "star system", since "Star system" carries a connotation of a star cluster.
Maybe it would give us hints about what to look for in other solar systems when looking for rocky planets with similar atmospheres?
Maybe it would tell us something about whether or not our type of atmosphere is rare in the universe?
Who knows, it might be useful. It should be at least as useful as studying the mating habits of the short-tailed horned lizard, or a million other things scientists study.
I think we're all just in too much shock to say anything...
*slaps forehead* I feel dumb now.
I knew that, but I don't usually use a mac keyboard. I still remap the window and alt key so everything is the same position as on my macbook pro, though, so when I was responding I just looked down.
But yes, it's cmd not alt :)
Alt-` is what you're looking for, I think.
I think the apple way of doing this is to hit the expose key, then use the keyboard if you're looking for a specific window.
I really really love the dock concept -- why do I have to have a firefox window open to keep downloads running? Why do programs have to go out of their way to manage system tray entries? If a program has a system tray entry, why are there *two* ways to minimize that app's window? All of this is solved by the dock!
But, it's taken me forever to get used to the two level window switching that you're talking about. It still tends to feel clunky. I guess I could use the expose key, but it's not as conveniently placed where my left hand can reach it in the resting position. I can't help but think there is a better way.
Yeah, we a better discussion of this further down... my blanket statement here wasn't well justified.
I have of course had exactly that experience, on both sides, but never something that I felt was patentable. This might be that most of my programming work has been very tightly coupled to mathematics. I feel math shouldn't be patentable, so I never feel that my programming implementation of it shouldn't be, but I understand how someone could feel that way. A good counterexample to what I was saying would be the RSA patent... shorter than most, and very clear on what the novel algorithm is and what it's useful for right up front.
I should have qualified what I was saying and emphasized *most*. Granted I haven't looked at *that many* patents, but all the ones I've seen are just vague descriptions of what some system looks like at the interface level. There was one that patented... something to do with slot machines that were networked and shared data. They weren't networked in any novel way, the patent didn't describe anything particularly novel they were doing with the data, it just seemed to patent *the idea of having slot machines in a network*.
That sort of patent doesn't show you how to do something, it just makes a land grab. I think we're in agreement about the USPTO and probably about patents in general, but I shouldn't have made such a blanket statement without qualifying it.
Thank you for expressing my thoughts much better than I can :)
Oh, trust me, I read past the claims section.. these were two patents that caught my attention because they were on slashdot previously, and I wanted to see what the average software patent looked like. They always look like a laywer and a programmer sat down and translated every diagram and requirements document into legalese.
I mean look...
The system management tools available with the present invention allow system administrators to monitor, control and customize an institution's online teaching and learning environment from the web browser. The system administrator may control security permissions and enable/disable features for numerous user roles. Batch user enrollment (and unenrollment) may be performed system wide. Preferences and options may be managed on multiple courses, all from within a central system administrator panel. The system administrator may also track and report faculty, student and course statistics, may plan and manage system hardware requirements by assigning instructors with pre-assigned disk quotas for content storage, and may employ system-wide announcements to broadcast messages to users about system maintenance or institutional announcements.
In the Course & Portal Manager embodiment, the enterprise database support provides support for tens of thousands of users across an entire institution or system of institutions. User and course data may be managed efficiently and effectively. Moreover, large volumes of transactions may be managed efficiently and effectively. The "My Institution" interface includes portal and community functionality along with quick access to web email, course and institutional announcements, and links to other campus departments. Administrators may enable or disable portal modules and establish required and optional modules from the portal options menu bar. Administrators may also assign different portal default settings to different user roles (e.g. students get different portals than instructors).
Course e-commerce management functionality allows institutions to set prices and charge fees for course enrollment directly through the "e-Learning" platform
That's in the "DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS" section. That's like a back of the box product description. I know they go into more detail later, but it's always meaningless minutiae about what part of the website connects to what, or the fact that such and such field would be retrieved from a database. Well duh. Were these bad examples? Is this what a "design patent" looks like?
Even the figures are mostly grossly simplified networking diagrams and *screenshots* of the web interface. I mean, come on!
The second patent looks better, but the novel parts look to be in exactly how they tie information from different logged in users. It definitely seems *interesting*, but it sounds like it's interesting because their problem domain is unusual, not because the concept is amazingly novel independently of that.
Don't get me wrong, the flow chart comment aside, I think I qualify as a someone reasonably proficient in the field. Up until recently my job was primarily doing aeronatic and numerical processing code for the DoD and designing a library and application for easily integrating aeronautic flight models for the purposes of weapons effectiveness and defensive analysis in dogfights primarily for use at Top Gun and Fallon.
And these (well, mainly the first one) sound like nearly useless 50,000 views of a system filled mostly with information that you could garner just from *using* the system.
You know what seems like a straightforward patent? http://www.google.com/patents?vid=4405829 RSA is the most deserving software idea I can think of for being granted a patent... and it seemed to stall web commerce for a decade. It was absolutely a deserved patent... but the barrier to entry for software is just *so low*. It actually seems more valuable to
Hey, I never meant anything personal, sorry if I offended you.
Most patents I've read look like this:
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=RX94AAAAEBAJ
or this:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=Ay99AAAAEBAJ&dq=7139761
Lots and lots and lots of description of the minutia of any complex system that really wouldn't help me unless I was trying to do something that was exactly the same, and in the exact same environment, and maybe not even then. And that is buried in tons of description of basic computer science or engineering concepts like what a WAN or LAN is and what eeprom is.
Maybe you can make sense of that and gain something from it. I guess I could too, in the sense that they're like very obfuscated requirements documents.
But, you caught me, I have not had enough patience to actually read an *entire* patent like these before.
And, of course, they're not all like this... but man are there a lot of them.
Oh, and I thought the European Patent Convention required (at least recently) that the invention make significant contribution in an otherwise patentable area, i.e. no *pure* software patents. I might be wrong on that.
But yeah, I can read a flow chart, on a good day, I can even *draw* a mean flow chart. And I'm sure you can too :)
I think that *Europe* is pretty civilized, and they specifically exclude business method and software patents still, as far as I know.
And like fritsd said, we don't see source code attached to patent applications, and you go read most software patent applications and tell me if they *help* you develop anything.
That sounds pretty ridiculous... what you would have created would most definitely be a derivative work, which would have copyright protection.
If you clean-room reverse engineered the program down to the last pixel, wouldn't there be a copyright claim to the layout and specific appearance of the program?
If the program looks different, is coded independently, but performs the same algorithms and functions, well that's called *interoperability*. If you don't understand why that's important, then we'll never ever agree.
I'm talking about a specific steering wheel design, you're talking about *the entire idea of a steering wheel*.
Somebody else came up with the idea of html, markup, tying a scripting language to said markup, asynchronous updates on the markup, and everything else we're using to communicate here, and there are probably patents covering most of it. Do you think that only very large companies with very large armies of lawyers should be writing web pages?
I'll give you that there are probably a select few areas where some patentable idea could be expressed in software, but the barrier to entry is so low in software development, that they all would have been implemented anyway. Patents are not a land grab or a right, they were only supposed to be used to increase production and knowledge. They don't, they waste huge amounts of energy, which is why people around here get so frustrated (and make silly arguments).
Of course, I'm not adding anything new and you probably knew all this, so I'll shut up now.
I don't know if you're having the same problem as me, but my problem was that the install wouldn't reboot after installing karmic. I *think* kernel 2.6.31 has some problem with Parallels (or vice versa) that keeps any disk from being recognized. I get dumped to busybox, and there are no /dev/sd* devices :/
If you're having the same problem, just boot with kernel 2.6.28 from Jaunty.
The two biggest problems I've had personally are https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/403339 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups/+bug/465916
Which in the grand scheme of things are pretty minor. The first one is really annoying if you play WoW in wine, because you have to manually turn off keyboard repeat :/
Other than that, I've upgraded 3 machines without problems. My parallels VM upgraded to karmic doesn't detect any drives unless I use the older kernel, but I'm 90% sure that that's not a bug in ubuntu.
But *man* that xorg bug is annoying.