Gay people can already do what they want. Gays are asking for the government to get involved through marriage.
Should the government get involved in heterosexual marriages? Maybe, maybe not. But the point is that gays are specifically asking the government to get involved in their partnerships.
So, you're saying, "Gays want the government to do stuff! And the government doesn't do that stuff! I mean, they do, but for other people, not them. So they should stop asking."
Does this argument differ substantively in any way from, "Because that's the way it is?"
If you need outside reassurance of your union, maybe it's best to just not get together?
Wow! Convenient position to have for someone who will never have to 1. Fight for the right to make medical decisions for a spouse, 2. Fight for the right to claim the assets of a deceased spouse, 3. Pay taxes at a higher rate because the government doesn't think that your marriage "counts..."
You have a pretty good grasp on what "civil liberties" means. How's your grasp of "equality under the law?"
Oops. In review, I realize I missed an important part of your post, which is a shame because I think it's the part worthiest of a response:
Because the general consensus is that US troops won't pull out until after the Iraqis are sufficiently trained to protect themselves. Coming out of hiding then would be politically stupid, because Iraqi "freedom fighters" who kill legitimate Iraqi policemen would (IMO) have a much harder time justifying their murderous ways.
That's a legitimate response, and I thank you for it. But it begs the question of why a timetable for training the newly formed Iraqi army can't be prepared. God only knows I took longer than I was supposed to to come up with a bachelor's degree. But at least a plan would be nice.
Also: we now have two competing theories as to why a timetable can't be set. First, because the Iraqi army is too weak to protect itself now; second, because if we announce a timetable for our departure, the insurgents will just wait until we leave before resuming attacks. Does anyone else see something inconsistent here?
Lastly, a clarification. I wrote: I'm aware that servicemen get court martialed for going AWOL, and I'm not suggesting that they do.
I meant: I'm aware that servicemen get court martialed for going AWOL, and I'm not suggesting that they just ditch their posts.
(Smirking) I wonder why that is. First of all, you assume here that US forces are "provoking" attacks. The term is loaded, and I doubt you used it by accident.
You're correct. I used the term deliberately. I did not, however, intend it in the way that you seem to be implying.
If you prefer, reread what I wrote as, "the presence of US forces is exacerbating the attacks." But don't suggest that I'm impugning the actions of the troops. And, come to think of it, wipe that smirk of your face.
Second, US service men are their in Iraq under threat of imprisonment. Stop acting like we marched in with a gang of Viking raiders to rape and pillage, it's not accurate, and it's childish.
I'm trying very hard to respond to this rationally, but I find this passage so bizarre that it's not an easy task. So, in order: I'm aware that servicemen get court martialed for going AWOL, and I'm not suggesting that they do. I'm suggesting that it would be a good idea to set out a phased timetable for withdrawal. Nor do I compare our servicemen and women anywhere to vikings, barbarians, visigoths, mongols, or even pirates, despite the fact the last of those comparisons would no doubt be pleasing to his noodliness. If there was any "bad intent" in the deployment of troops in Iraq, I place it squarely with the Bush adminstration and those figures at the top. But that's an argument for somewhere else, and one I don't feel it's necessary to take up here.
Perhaps if you allowed yourself a moment to view the world without your overwhelmingly corrupting bias, you'd realize that MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, the terrorists are power hungry despots looking for an opportunity to gain the upper hand in a rapidly developing country.
I'll grant you that in a heartbeat. Allow me to suggest that if you viewed the world without your overwhelmingly corrupting bias, you'd realize that maybe, just maybe, whatever popular support the insurgents are enjoying right now in Iraq would dry up pretty quickly if we weren't there.
Of course, if you'd bothered to read that PDF I linked to previously, you'd know that another organization considerably better informed than either of us had already come to that conclusion. That hotbed of traitorous liberalism? The US State Department.
Couldn't this backfire on him, though? One of the rules about trademark law is that the holder of the trademark must regularly police infringments. The idea is to prevent a trademark from entering common usage (think "Xerox"), then surprising competitors years later with infringement lawsuits.
If Cohen lets a bunch of "infringements" slide, then selectively goes after one bad actor, he may put his legal argument in jepoardy.
(again, IANAL, but I think that the "easy" way around this problem is to force developers to get permission to use the trademark in their products. This could be done via a licensing document which says something like, "Hand on the bible, I swear I won't use this trademark to market my Bad, Evil, Horrible Malware.")
I didn't intend to impugn his character, rather to criticize his stance.
I'm a bit of a leftie, and these days, we have fairly short fuses when it comes to accusations of treason or unpatriotism, and tend to see them where they really aren't. So my bad there, and thanks for clearing that up.
I did read the release that you linked. The full quote reads, "According to The LAT, Murtha called for beginning withdrawal immediately with completion in six months. He also urged a rapid deployment force remain in the region." That is a substantively different stance than "everyone out now," but the issue has been politicized so far by both sides that it's easy to lose the distinction.
I think the reason some people are against a timetable is because it gives insurgents and terrorists a date they can shoot for (no pun intended) when they can resume operations.
This argument makes little sense to me. How would having a timetable make terrorists more likely to attack after the US withdraws than not having a timetable? If terrorists are waiting for the US to leave before stepping up attacks, why wouldn't they go into hiding and stop their attacks, then resume once the Bush Administration declares that we've won, packs up their things, and goes home?
The only answer I can come up with is that it's the very presence of the US forces that are provoking the attacks. In fact, once again from the PDF you linked to, a State Deparment study released in 2004 indicated that terrorism was on the rise in Iraq, and concluded that the US presence in Iraq was actually exacerbating the problem.
As for their politicians condemning terrorists without condemning insurgents, that's probably more pandering to their own base than anything else.
The Iraqi politicians are condoning attacks on US troops because it's what their constituents want to hear?
Then on the left we have people like Murtha and Kennedy screaming that we should leave, RIGHT NOW GODDAMNIT!!! That's just insane, we can't leave the Iraqis in a worse position than we found them. That would be like walking away from a car stuck underwater with a woman trapped inside. I mean, what kind of man does that?
First, and with respect to your service, impugning the character of Jack Murtha is beneath you. It's little better than when "Mean" Jean Schmidt did so on the house floor, and is disrespectful of the Representative's service and, even more importantly, his dedication to the well-being of our troops.
Third: rather than debate the "immediacy" of the representatives plan, many supporters of the administration have chosen to take issue with the notion of an "artificial timetable." Obviously you're free to agree or disagree with the idea, but keep in mind that a sizeable portion of the Iraqi National Assembly recently released a statement in which they called for that very timetable. Even more recently, they repeated that demand: tellingly, they condemned terrorism, but defined terrorism in such a way that excludes insurgents who attack the US Military.
So, respectfully, I would suggest that the Iraqis that you fought to "liberate" have spoken, and what they're saying is, "Thank you. Now get out."
According to Broussard, "there's a lot that's finished. All the guns are finished. Most of the creatures are finished...we're just basically pulling it all together and trying to make it fun."
Oh. Well, good luck with that.
Re:Rails and unit tests
on
Beyond Java
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· Score: 1
A quick note: there is indeed a great testing model "baked right in," as the Rails folks like to say. But it's not just unit tests. The model also does functional testing as well.
The rails framework follows the Model-View-Controller pattern. Tests on models are unit tests. Tests on controllers are functional tests. Both are part of the framework, which is a nice gesture.
Yeah - I'm not sure how I could possibly have missed the fact that we're talking about Canada (while I go willy nilly citing SCTOUS decisions), but somehow I did. Well said.
Also, the whole idea of a "credible threat" sent by email from a neighbouring public library is just, well, not very credible to me. They couldn't resist bringing 9/11 into it, as if Osama or any real terrorist would go for such a chicken-shit target...
Be fair. The 9/11 quote was from a representative of Brandeis, not from the FBI.
Yeah - the pull quote you make is what I was referring to by "According to Mayor Cohen and an FBI representative..."
And the more I read it, the odder it gets. Reconciling "immediate danger" with "decided to wait for a warrant" is tough, unless they were having second thoughts about the legitimacy of the threat.
Non-competes are not useless, and have been upheld in courts. But their scope and duration has to be well defined and not something the court views as "overreaching," or it is likely to be voided.
Translation: you can't have a noncompete that says, "never work for any of my competitors, their subsidiaries, or an organization that provides services to them, ever again." However, lots of places have non-competes that say, "You're not going to work for my competitors in X industry for a period of one year following the end of your employment with us." In many contexts, that kind of contract will be upheld.
The same story, edited down to the bare minimum, because apparently the vast majority of people here can't be bothered to clicky-clicky. Emphasis is mine.
An e-mail threat... prompted the evacuation of more than a dozen Brandeis University buildings [along with a local elementary school]. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents tried to seize 30 of the library's computers without a warrant... Ms. Glick-Weil allowed an FBI computer-forensics examiner to work with information-technology specialists at the library to narrow down which computers might have been used to send the threatening message. They determined that three computers were implicated in the alleged crime. Late that evening, the FBI received a warrant to cart away the three computers...
Mr. Cohen said in an interview on Monday that he and Ms. Glick-Weil demanded the warrant because the FBI agents did not indicate that anyone at Brandeis faced a "clear and present danger." If there had been such a danger, Mr. Cohen added, agents probably would have seized the computers without even asking for them...
The key to this story is the "clear and present danger" issue. According to Mayor Cohen and an FBI representative, the law actually would have permitted the agents to go ahead and just take the computers if they had believed the situation to be an emergency. And that's why there was a standoff: because FBI agents paused to evaluate the situation, balanced the risks of waiting for a warrant with the benefit of having the assistance of library IT staff, and decided to get the warrant.
So, kudos for Ms. Glick-Weil for requesting the warrant. And kudos to the FBI for considering the request and deciding it was the best course of action. Had they thought the threat was credible and immediate, I'm sure they would have responded differently, and I would have a hard time faulting them for it.
There's a very strong anti-fat prejudice that runs through... well, basically the vast majority of contemporary culture. Fat folks are basically the only people it's widely considered okay to make fun of anymore.
I think that it cost John Kerry a lot of votes when it was discovered that he and his idle billionaire wife were paying taxes at a rate of 15%, thanks to clever lawyering, while calling for higher taxes on hard-working dentists and doctors and small businessmen who were already paying 30% or more marginal tax rates.
Could you be a little more specific as to what you're referring to here, or provide a reference? (Preferably a non-partisan/extremist one - I've been wading through some sites on the far left and right, and my tolerance for it is thin.)
I'm just puzzled because on the face of it, it seems like you're either accusing him of tax fraud or of having a good accountant. I've never met anyone who doesn't try to pay the smallest amount of money possible in taxes, but that doesn't make everyone I know unprincipled.
I know it's not a popular choice, but Volition's "Freespace 2" is still one of the best damn games I've ever played. It had a genuinely interesting storyline with good voice acting and some truly terrifying moments, graphics which were unbelieveably good for the time, and the best space-sim game play of all time, Tie Fighter be damned.
The president makes the laws. Therefore, anything he deems to be legal is legal.
I don't mean to poke fun, because there are serious defenders of the current administration who are coming very close to advancing this exact argument. But you know who the last guy to say this was, right?
The best reporting I've seen on this topic has come courtesy of blogger Glenn Greenwald. He's a lawyer who has gone into pretty exhaustive detail on his site about the nature of the FISA legislation, and his analysis of the administration's arguments.
The short version: he doesn't buy it. More specifically, he has catalogued and refuted pretty much every argument that has been used to defend the adminsitrations actions, ranging from the schizoid("No, really, the surveillance complied with FISA, even though the President himself admits that it doesn't"), to the merely bizarre ("Congress gave its authorization to this program when it Authorized the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against terrorists.")
A quick look back through my posting history will reveal my political bias, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that I'm siding against the administration on this one. But Greenwald's work on this subject, to my knowledge, hasn't been equalled anywhere on the internet.
"It's fast, fast as in a superlative and not a comparative sense. One wonders why Steve Jobs didn't blow the crowd away with the saturated colors and excessive frame rates of WoW on an iMac. It loaded fast, and when the first character popped up in town, the frame rate never dropped below 60, and this was pretty much going full tilt in the settings."
Pfft. Do they really need to ask this question?
The Jobinator has connected. QtElfASSASSINlord596: n00b
(Apologies for the obvious fact that I've never played WoW, or the status messages above would look more realistic.)
I, for one, can't wait to see what our elected representatives choose to put on their LiveJournals.
And then, he told me that he was going to take away my chairmanship of the Joint Subcommitte on Intelligence! The whip is a douchebag! I'm going to eat a whole bag of oreos. Listening to: How Soon Is Now Mood: Depressed
Slashdot Mirror
So, you're saying, "Gays want the government to do stuff! And the government doesn't do that stuff! I mean, they do, but for other people, not them. So they should stop asking."
Does this argument differ substantively in any way from, "Because that's the way it is?"
Wow! Convenient position to have for someone who will never have to 1. Fight for the right to make medical decisions for a spouse, 2. Fight for the right to claim the assets of a deceased spouse, 3. Pay taxes at a higher rate because the government doesn't think that your marriage "counts..."
You have a pretty good grasp on what "civil liberties" means. How's your grasp of "equality under the law?"
That's a legitimate response, and I thank you for it. But it begs the question of why a timetable for training the newly formed Iraqi army can't be prepared. God only knows I took longer than I was supposed to to come up with a bachelor's degree. But at least a plan would be nice.
Also: we now have two competing theories as to why a timetable can't be set. First, because the Iraqi army is too weak to protect itself now; second, because if we announce a timetable for our departure, the insurgents will just wait until we leave before resuming attacks. Does anyone else see something inconsistent here?
Lastly, a clarification. I wrote:
I'm aware that servicemen get court martialed for going AWOL, and I'm not suggesting that they do.
I meant:
I'm aware that servicemen get court martialed for going AWOL, and I'm not suggesting that they just ditch their posts.
You're correct. I used the term deliberately. I did not, however, intend it in the way that you seem to be implying.
If you prefer, reread what I wrote as, "the presence of US forces is exacerbating the attacks." But don't suggest that I'm impugning the actions of the troops. And, come to think of it, wipe that smirk of your face.
I'm trying very hard to respond to this rationally, but I find this passage so bizarre that it's not an easy task. So, in order: I'm aware that servicemen get court martialed for going AWOL, and I'm not suggesting that they do. I'm suggesting that it would be a good idea to set out a phased timetable for withdrawal. Nor do I compare our servicemen and women anywhere to vikings, barbarians, visigoths, mongols, or even pirates, despite the fact the last of those comparisons would no doubt be pleasing to his noodliness. If there was any "bad intent" in the deployment of troops in Iraq, I place it squarely with the Bush adminstration and those figures at the top. But that's an argument for somewhere else, and one I don't feel it's necessary to take up here.
I'll grant you that in a heartbeat. Allow me to suggest that if you viewed the world without your overwhelmingly corrupting bias, you'd realize that maybe, just maybe, whatever popular support the insurgents are enjoying right now in Iraq would dry up pretty quickly if we weren't there.
Of course, if you'd bothered to read that PDF I linked to previously, you'd know that another organization considerably better informed than either of us had already come to that conclusion. That hotbed of traitorous liberalism? The US State Department.
(IANAL)
Couldn't this backfire on him, though? One of the rules about trademark law is that the holder of the trademark must regularly police infringments. The idea is to prevent a trademark from entering common usage (think "Xerox"), then surprising competitors years later with infringement lawsuits.
If Cohen lets a bunch of "infringements" slide, then selectively goes after one bad actor, he may put his legal argument in jepoardy.
(again, IANAL, but I think that the "easy" way around this problem is to force developers to get permission to use the trademark in their products. This could be done via a licensing document which says something like, "Hand on the bible, I swear I won't use this trademark to market my Bad, Evil, Horrible Malware.")
In a Slashdot discussion, you read the phrase
I'm a bit of a leftie, and these days, we have fairly short fuses when it comes to accusations of treason or unpatriotism, and tend to see them where they really aren't. So my bad there, and thanks for clearing that up.
I did read the release that you linked. The full quote reads, "According to The LAT, Murtha called for beginning withdrawal immediately with completion in six months. He also urged a rapid deployment force remain in the region." That is a substantively different stance than "everyone out now," but the issue has been politicized so far by both sides that it's easy to lose the distinction.
This argument makes little sense to me. How would having a timetable make terrorists more likely to attack after the US withdraws than not having a timetable? If terrorists are waiting for the US to leave before stepping up attacks, why wouldn't they go into hiding and stop their attacks, then resume once the Bush Administration declares that we've won, packs up their things, and goes home?
The only answer I can come up with is that it's the very presence of the US forces that are provoking the attacks. In fact, once again from the PDF you linked to, a State Deparment study released in 2004 indicated that terrorism was on the rise in Iraq, and concluded that the US presence in Iraq was actually exacerbating the problem.
The Iraqi politicians are condoning attacks on US troops because it's what their constituents want to hear?
Do you really find that comforting?
First, and with respect to your service, impugning the character of Jack Murtha is beneath you. It's little better than when "Mean" Jean Schmidt did so on the house floor, and is disrespectful of the Representative's service and, even more importantly, his dedication to the well-being of our troops.
Second, you mischaracterize Rep. Murtha's proposal. Should you care to read it, it's available here. It calls for large-scale redeployment at "the earliest practicable date," which Murtha has in the past estimated as requiring about six months. This is hardly equivalent to "leaving right now."
Third: rather than debate the "immediacy" of the representatives plan, many supporters of the administration have chosen to take issue with the notion of an "artificial timetable." Obviously you're free to agree or disagree with the idea, but keep in mind that a sizeable portion of the Iraqi National Assembly recently released a statement in which they called for that very timetable. Even more recently, they repeated that demand: tellingly, they condemned terrorism, but defined terrorism in such a way that excludes insurgents who attack the US Military.
So, respectfully, I would suggest that the Iraqis that you fought to "liberate" have spoken, and what they're saying is, "Thank you. Now get out."
Oh. Well, good luck with that.
A quick note: there is indeed a great testing model "baked right in," as the Rails folks like to say. But it's not just unit tests. The model also does functional testing as well.
The rails framework follows the Model-View-Controller pattern. Tests on models are unit tests. Tests on controllers are functional tests. Both are part of the framework, which is a nice gesture.
Sure. And then you're left supporting a half dozen (or however many) functions instead of the one you would have gotten with dynamic typing.
Yeah - I'm not sure how I could possibly have missed the fact that we're talking about Canada (while I go willy nilly citing SCTOUS decisions), but somehow I did. Well said.
Be fair. The 9/11 quote was from a representative of Brandeis, not from the FBI.
Yeah - the pull quote you make is what I was referring to by "According to Mayor Cohen and an FBI representative..."
And the more I read it, the odder it gets. Reconciling "immediate danger" with "decided to wait for a warrant" is tough, unless they were having second thoughts about the legitimacy of the threat.
Uh... no.
Non-competes are not useless, and have been upheld in courts. But their scope and duration has to be well defined and not something the court views as "overreaching," or it is likely to be voided.
Translation: you can't have a noncompete that says, "never work for any of my competitors, their subsidiaries, or an organization that provides services to them, ever again." However, lots of places have non-competes that say, "You're not going to work for my competitors in X industry for a period of one year following the end of your employment with us." In many contexts, that kind of contract will be upheld.
By the way, assisted suicide is legal in some states.
The key to this story is the "clear and present danger" issue. According to Mayor Cohen and an FBI representative, the law actually would have permitted the agents to go ahead and just take the computers if they had believed the situation to be an emergency. And that's why there was a standoff: because FBI agents paused to evaluate the situation, balanced the risks of waiting for a warrant with the benefit of having the assistance of library IT staff, and decided to get the warrant.
So, kudos for Ms. Glick-Weil for requesting the warrant. And kudos to the FBI for considering the request and deciding it was the best course of action. Had they thought the threat was credible and immediate, I'm sure they would have responded differently, and I would have a hard time faulting them for it.
There's a very strong anti-fat prejudice that runs through... well, basically the vast majority of contemporary culture. Fat folks are basically the only people it's widely considered okay to make fun of anymore.
Could you be a little more specific as to what you're referring to here, or provide a reference? (Preferably a non-partisan/extremist one - I've been wading through some sites on the far left and right, and my tolerance for it is thin.)
I'm just puzzled because on the face of it, it seems like you're either accusing him of tax fraud or of having a good accountant. I've never met anyone who doesn't try to pay the smallest amount of money possible in taxes, but that doesn't make everyone I know unprincipled.
I know it's not a popular choice, but Volition's "Freespace 2" is still one of the best damn games I've ever played. It had a genuinely interesting storyline with good voice acting and some truly terrifying moments, graphics which were unbelieveably good for the time, and the best space-sim game play of all time, Tie Fighter be damned.
I'd love to know the context in which that conversation took place.
I mean, beyond "you were trying to pee standing up with someone else around."
I don't mean to poke fun, because there are serious defenders of the current administration who are coming very close to advancing this exact argument. But you know who the last guy to say this was, right?
The best reporting I've seen on this topic has come courtesy of blogger Glenn Greenwald. He's a lawyer who has gone into pretty exhaustive detail on his site about the nature of the FISA legislation, and his analysis of the administration's arguments.
The short version: he doesn't buy it. More specifically, he has catalogued and refuted pretty much every argument that has been used to defend the adminsitrations actions, ranging from the schizoid("No, really, the surveillance complied with FISA, even though the President himself admits that it doesn't"), to the merely bizarre ("Congress gave its authorization to this program when it Authorized the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against terrorists.")
A quick look back through my posting history will reveal my political bias, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that I'm siding against the administration on this one. But Greenwald's work on this subject, to my knowledge, hasn't been equalled anywhere on the internet.
And pity me, the lowest of the low, who has both a Slashdot id in the low five digits, and a LiveJournal account.
I am a wretched creature.
"The nail that stands above the rest invites the hammer."
I never liked that one.
Pfft. Do they really need to ask this question?
(Apologies for the obvious fact that I've never played WoW, or the status messages above would look more realistic.)