Actually, PETA was mad that Obama killed a fly during an interview. They even sent him a little device to 'catch and release' future flies from indoors to outdoors...
Creationism means that people descend from a dude missing a rib who was sculpted from mud. It's not only incompatible with evolution, it's incompatible with rational thought.
Not if you presuppose an omnipotent Diety. Similarly to the way a shelter is assumed to be constructed rather than formed by other natural processes if you presuppose someone was there to build it. You might say it's crazy to assume someone built something that looked like a pueblo on Mars, but don't bat an eye claiming the same thing in Arizona.
That doesn't make it science, but the only 'leap of faith' here is assuming existence and omnipotence of God. After that point, everything is internally consistent.
The point is, evolution in schools has become much more a political thing than a scientific thing, and by the time kids get to high school, it doesn't matter what the schools teach, because the kids have mostly made up their mind already, and have heard both sides of the issue, and will most likely end up thinking, "that's it?"
Agreed, particularly because the evolution proponents (more accurately, the ones fighting for it in textbooks) have ended up pushing too far the other way and we get equally ill-informed neo-Darwinist crap.
One example was the description of the Peppered Moth experiment. The common criticisms aside (micro-evolution, falsified data, etc), my textbook gave a patently false description. It stated that the proportion of dark colored moths went from 0% to 100% (as in, the dark coloration allele 'spontaneously' evolved), rather than from 2% to 95% (indisputable and reasonable shift in allele frequency). Rather than sticking with the facts, the book felt it had to distort the truth to prove a different point.
But all science has become politicised, I don't see that changing any time soon.
To be clear, that action would most likely violate some California and federal laws as well, but that doesn't change the fact that sender from California would be subject to Florida laws and penalties.
It's the fact that this violates federal laws that would get him arrested and tried, not the Florida laws. It's quite likely the federal gov't would also turn him over to Florida (or in this case, Tampa) authorities to be tried there, but that's a very different case.
So yes. Every website that pushes out potentially infringing content would have to set up blacklists/whitelists. It sounds like a viable business plan to me.
Several problems with that:
1) There are a lot of local laws to keep track of. We're not just talking state and major cities, you'd also need to keep track of towns with populations under 100. Otherwise you'd need to refuse to sell to them, rather than jsut assuming that if they're ordering it, it's because it's legal there.
2) Laws change, and would need to be constantly tracked. There are also a lot of laws, and whoever sets up this system would conceivably need to read every single one to make sure they don't have an obscenity law on the books. Multiply the number of laws per locality by the number of places and you end up with a ludicrous number of laws to read.
3) Laws are fickle. It's up to interpretation of a judge/jury if you violate. Where do you draw the line if the law just says 'no obscene material'? It's not like the law enumerates 'no videos of naked women vomiting on each other'. And, you have to do this for every one of the ludicrous number of laws on the books anywhere.
And the kicker: what if by a reasonable standard you would not expect your wares to be illegal anywhere? Perhaps you sell soldering irons, and some town bans their sale without a license because some kids stabbed someone with a soldering iron once and the public outcry got them banned. How are you to possibly expect that this one order out of thousands (or more) might violate some obscure law in an obscure town? It's unreasonable to expect you to know that, the only reasonable interpretation of the law would be to prosecute the buyer for using the internet to circumvent local law.
That's why the law is ridiculous: if it were applied by every locality with a unique law, it would make any form of internet commerce impossible, or at least incredibly costly.
My point is that the obscenity law shouldn't even exist, because it violates three separate Supreme Laws - the U.S. Constitution, the Florida Constitution, and the California Constitution.
But those laws also state that one is 'responsible for their abuse of this right'. If obscenity is determined by law to be an 'abuse' of their free speech, and the courts rule that it does not violate the constitution on those grounds, then the law would stand. There is still an argument against the constitutionality of obscenity laws, but it's not automatic.
There are also jurisdictional problems - a Californian should not be subject to the laws of a foreign state (Florida). No legislation without representation. i.e. Florida should not be able to legislate anybody who does not have a representative to speak for them within the Florida government.
Agreed there, and that's the real issue. More importantly, there is nothing in the article that says an ordinary citizen purchased this material, only an 'investigator'. So, it seems the guy was prosecuted because it was possible for one of their residents to break a local city ordinance, even though it's possible nobody did. Something smells rotten here... and it's not just all the feces and vomit that's supposedly in this guys videos...
It probably never ocurred to them that what they were doing was illegal in Florida, but it's quite simple to set up the website so that it doesn't accept orders with a shipping address in that state. Having read TFA, we know that we're not talking about downloaded digital photos/videos, we're talking about physical media that was ordered and shipped through the mail.:)
The question is, should it be a website's burden to know every local law? Where do you draw the line?
Perhaps it is reasonable to expect websites keep track of state laws that pertain to their business. That's still 49 additional states to keep track of, though, plus DC, the Virgin Islands, and other US territories. Not really an easy task, especially for smaller businesses.
In this case, though, it's not even a state law, it's a local (Tampa) law. Should every company who seeks to sell online be expected to know the laws of every county in the nation? Every city? Every township or municipality? What if they give an address in an adjacent town (which the USPO will adjust to deliver correctly) with different laws? Can you even give an estimate of the ammount of time it would take to research that many local laws and be certain your shipment will not violate some local statute?
I don't see how a small business can be reasonably expected to comply with all laws simultaneously, only that they act in good faith that the person ordering the material is legally allowed to do so by their local laws.
"The amount of detail about proteins, chemical signals and gene regulation that these 15-year-olds were devouring was amazing."
I don't recall anything like this in Civ.
You obviously never read the Civilopedia. With the obvious difference of describing history rather than cellular biology, it had a similar wealth of information that was almost as vital for success. I learned about the Great Library, Colossus at Rhodes, Hanging Gardens, and most other wonders of the ancient world through that game. These are things we never studied in school, and I wouldn't have learned about them unless I happened to watch the right program on the History channel (while they weren't airing shows about UFOs and other bollocks).
But more importantly, it opens a learning opportunity outside of the game. It provides an incentive and interest in the topic that most kids wouldn't otherwise have. In this instance, it's a depiction of the immune system that takes it from words on a page about immunoglobin and mast cells to an exciting view of the actual processes as they happen. Even if the game doesn't describe a particular process, many students would be interested to pursue the topic afterward. The game doesn't need to be the only vector for learning, it can increase the interest in further learning from textbooks and lectures.
On a related note, my aunt allows my younger cousin (5th grade) to play Age of Empires, but he must first research and write a short report on the nation he intends to play. Again, he has an incentive to learn beyond his natural curiosity, and as such he probably knows more about ancient culture and history than I do.
It's common to see 50:1 point ratios on TF2 servers between players, which is just insane, if you stop and think about it.
Actually, if you think about it, it's quite reasonable. I've had 150:1 ratios compared to others, because I had played 3 full rounds of Payload (150+ points) and the guy with 1 only joined 2-3 minutes ago, is on defense, and has only had the chance to get a single kill because of circumstances beyond his control. I've never seen two TF2 players who played for the same ammount of time yet had a 50x difference in points.
I like to think of this analogy: imagine how stupid it would be if the world championship game of, say, football, had one team member replaced by a fucktard who just does "whatever he feels like", because, you know, "it's just a game", and there would be absolutely nothing the other players could do about it. Does that sound like a good game to you?
This analogy has nothing to do with public servers. Sure, you expect not to get 10-yo noobs in a competitive match and that's where you should be playing in that case. Otherwise, it's more like that jean commercial where Bret Favre plays pickup football with some random guys, it's not the venue for him to bitch at a guy for dropping a pass or whatever. Why should we place limits on skill for a pickup game? It sounds more like your fault for not playing competitive or private matches, rather than others fault for not being good.
That said, it looks like you want ranked matchmaking for normal play, rather than player-run custom servers. That's fine with me, but you'll have to pry TF2's custom dedicated servers from my cold dead hands.
In the days of mechanical aperature radars, absolutely.
Now with AESA radar, the beam is much smaller and harder to determine direction. The analogy is that if the old radars were flashlights, new radars are like laser pointers: they don't even know you're looking at them most of the time, and if they do they can't determine where the beam is coming from.
This Russian fighter; the F22; F35; and F15s, F16s, and F18s with retrofits have AESA radar.
The counter to a stealth fighter would be better radar, not more stealth fighters of your own.
Actually, the counter is both on the same platform. You need weapons that can defeat the stealth fighter, since ideally you want to eliminate the target, not just look at it.
So, you want a fighter that has a small enough radar cross-section and sensitive enough radar that you see the other guy first. Then your missile just needs to be pointed in the right direction, it can aquire the lock later when it's close enough to detect their radar cross-section.
I'm not even sure why there's a supposed role for fighters any more anyway. When's the last time a plane was downed by another plane, rather than being bombed on or shot from the ground?
We shot down an Iranian drone over Iraq a few months ago. Before that, seems the last fighter-fighter engagements were Desert Storm, only because we haven't been in an air-war since. It's possible I'm missing some conflict, though. Assuming things were to go south with Iran, Pakistan, India, Russia, China, or North Korea we would need air superiority fighters. Air superiority doesn't win wars on its own, but it's hard to win a conventional war without it.
If the cable and fiber companies had to do the same thing, that would be perfectly reasonable. However, the lobbies prevent that from happening, so we're stuck with regulation.
You could just go with out internet (not easy, I know but a choice) and if thousands did this then it would make a impact.
The same argument was made about phone and electricity in the past. However, that's simply not an option in our society anymore.
While we're at it, what day are we not visiting the gas station? If thousands of people refuse to buy gas on one day, it will send a message to the oil companies... give me a break.
Thanks, I was looking for a reference to that case to post. But yes, it's political suicide to break-up these monopolies, especially now that corporations can contribute money directly to political causes...
Of course the ISP can block whatever they want, but they can't control everything or they will have no customers.
Competition only works to prevent this kind of stuff when it exists.
This is the cruz of why America needs regulation like this. Because of the local monopolies, you may not have another choice for ISP. At best, you have the choice of DSL, Cable, and Fiber and each from exactly one provider. At worst, you may have only cable provider for broadband internet. Thus, the providers know that they have a captive public, very few users would voluntarily forego all internet access overall to protest their ISP blocking some of their usage. They can do whatever they want, their customers have nowhere to go.
And it's pretty clear that, like some other defense boondoggles.... the F-35
Since when is the F-35 a defense boondoggle? For one, it's an international project. And if you wanted a modern fighter example, why not the F22 which hasn't run a single combat flight over Iraq or Afghanistan? The F35 has better electronics, is cheaper, and is multi-role rather than a superiority fighter for a non-existent adversary. Did I miss something? Or, beyond that, possibly the new aerial refueling tanker which is on its third round of bidding back and forth?
Hopefully, MS will decide to take this case on and crush the lawyers and hapless patsy that is their client. And ban them all from XBL. Bastards.
The last thing we want is for this douche-nozzle to have a legitimate complaint and win a lawsuit. Let him get laughed out of court, but don't give him more fodder.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, PETA was mad that Obama killed a fly during an interview. They even sent him a little device to 'catch and release' future flies from indoors to outdoors...
If it can track and kill 100 mosquitos per second, each kill must last 10ms or less (assuming it's just one laser).
According to Wiki, if the beam power is under 1mW/cm^2 we'd be just fine.
Creationism means that people descend from a dude missing a rib who was sculpted from mud. It's not only incompatible with evolution, it's incompatible with rational thought.
Not if you presuppose an omnipotent Diety. Similarly to the way a shelter is assumed to be constructed rather than formed by other natural processes if you presuppose someone was there to build it. You might say it's crazy to assume someone built something that looked like a pueblo on Mars, but don't bat an eye claiming the same thing in Arizona.
That doesn't make it science, but the only 'leap of faith' here is assuming existence and omnipotence of God. After that point, everything is internally consistent.
The point is, evolution in schools has become much more a political thing than a scientific thing, and by the time kids get to high school, it doesn't matter what the schools teach, because the kids have mostly made up their mind already, and have heard both sides of the issue, and will most likely end up thinking, "that's it?"
Agreed, particularly because the evolution proponents (more accurately, the ones fighting for it in textbooks) have ended up pushing too far the other way and we get equally ill-informed neo-Darwinist crap.
One example was the description of the Peppered Moth experiment. The common criticisms aside (micro-evolution, falsified data, etc), my textbook gave a patently false description. It stated that the proportion of dark colored moths went from 0% to 100% (as in, the dark coloration allele 'spontaneously' evolved), rather than from 2% to 95% (indisputable and reasonable shift in allele frequency). Rather than sticking with the facts, the book felt it had to distort the truth to prove a different point.
But all science has become politicised, I don't see that changing any time soon.
Besides, if you just keep forcing the cheater to retake classes you can squeeze several additional semesters of tuition out of them.
To be clear, that action would most likely violate some California and federal laws as well, but that doesn't change the fact that sender from California would be subject to Florida laws and penalties.
It's the fact that this violates federal laws that would get him arrested and tried, not the Florida laws. It's quite likely the federal gov't would also turn him over to Florida (or in this case, Tampa) authorities to be tried there, but that's a very different case.
So yes. Every website that pushes out potentially infringing content would have to set up blacklists/whitelists. It sounds like a viable business plan to me.
Several problems with that:
1) There are a lot of local laws to keep track of. We're not just talking state and major cities, you'd also need to keep track of towns with populations under 100. Otherwise you'd need to refuse to sell to them, rather than jsut assuming that if they're ordering it, it's because it's legal there.
2) Laws change, and would need to be constantly tracked. There are also a lot of laws, and whoever sets up this system would conceivably need to read every single one to make sure they don't have an obscenity law on the books. Multiply the number of laws per locality by the number of places and you end up with a ludicrous number of laws to read.
3) Laws are fickle. It's up to interpretation of a judge/jury if you violate. Where do you draw the line if the law just says 'no obscene material'? It's not like the law enumerates 'no videos of naked women vomiting on each other'. And, you have to do this for every one of the ludicrous number of laws on the books anywhere.
And the kicker: what if by a reasonable standard you would not expect your wares to be illegal anywhere? Perhaps you sell soldering irons, and some town bans their sale without a license because some kids stabbed someone with a soldering iron once and the public outcry got them banned. How are you to possibly expect that this one order out of thousands (or more) might violate some obscure law in an obscure town? It's unreasonable to expect you to know that, the only reasonable interpretation of the law would be to prosecute the buyer for using the internet to circumvent local law.
That's why the law is ridiculous: if it were applied by every locality with a unique law, it would make any form of internet commerce impossible, or at least incredibly costly.
My point is that the obscenity law shouldn't even exist, because it violates three separate Supreme Laws - the U.S. Constitution, the Florida Constitution, and the California Constitution.
But those laws also state that one is 'responsible for their abuse of this right'. If obscenity is determined by law to be an 'abuse' of their free speech, and the courts rule that it does not violate the constitution on those grounds, then the law would stand. There is still an argument against the constitutionality of obscenity laws, but it's not automatic.
There are also jurisdictional problems - a Californian should not be subject to the laws of a foreign state (Florida). No legislation without representation. i.e. Florida should not be able to legislate anybody who does not have a representative to speak for them within the Florida government.
Agreed there, and that's the real issue. More importantly, there is nothing in the article that says an ordinary citizen purchased this material, only an 'investigator'. So, it seems the guy was prosecuted because it was possible for one of their residents to break a local city ordinance, even though it's possible nobody did. Something smells rotten here... and it's not just all the feces and vomit that's supposedly in this guys videos...
It probably never ocurred to them that what they were doing was illegal in Florida, but it's quite simple to set up the website so that it doesn't accept orders with a shipping address in that state. Having read TFA, we know that we're not talking about downloaded digital photos/videos, we're talking about physical media that was ordered and shipped through the mail. :)
The question is, should it be a website's burden to know every local law? Where do you draw the line?
Perhaps it is reasonable to expect websites keep track of state laws that pertain to their business. That's still 49 additional states to keep track of, though, plus DC, the Virgin Islands, and other US territories. Not really an easy task, especially for smaller businesses.
In this case, though, it's not even a state law, it's a local (Tampa) law. Should every company who seeks to sell online be expected to know the laws of every county in the nation? Every city? Every township or municipality? What if they give an address in an adjacent town (which the USPO will adjust to deliver correctly) with different laws? Can you even give an estimate of the ammount of time it would take to research that many local laws and be certain your shipment will not violate some local statute?
I don't see how a small business can be reasonably expected to comply with all laws simultaneously, only that they act in good faith that the person ordering the material is legally allowed to do so by their local laws.
"The amount of detail about proteins, chemical signals and gene regulation that these 15-year-olds were devouring was amazing."
I don't recall anything like this in Civ.
You obviously never read the Civilopedia. With the obvious difference of describing history rather than cellular biology, it had a similar wealth of information that was almost as vital for success. I learned about the Great Library, Colossus at Rhodes, Hanging Gardens, and most other wonders of the ancient world through that game. These are things we never studied in school, and I wouldn't have learned about them unless I happened to watch the right program on the History channel (while they weren't airing shows about UFOs and other bollocks).
But more importantly, it opens a learning opportunity outside of the game. It provides an incentive and interest in the topic that most kids wouldn't otherwise have. In this instance, it's a depiction of the immune system that takes it from words on a page about immunoglobin and mast cells to an exciting view of the actual processes as they happen. Even if the game doesn't describe a particular process, many students would be interested to pursue the topic afterward. The game doesn't need to be the only vector for learning, it can increase the interest in further learning from textbooks and lectures.
On a related note, my aunt allows my younger cousin (5th grade) to play Age of Empires, but he must first research and write a short report on the nation he intends to play. Again, he has an incentive to learn beyond his natural curiosity, and as such he probably knows more about ancient culture and history than I do.
It's common to see 50:1 point ratios on TF2 servers between players, which is just insane, if you stop and think about it.
Actually, if you think about it, it's quite reasonable. I've had 150:1 ratios compared to others, because I had played 3 full rounds of Payload (150+ points) and the guy with 1 only joined 2-3 minutes ago, is on defense, and has only had the chance to get a single kill because of circumstances beyond his control. I've never seen two TF2 players who played for the same ammount of time yet had a 50x difference in points.
I like to think of this analogy: imagine how stupid it would be if the world championship game of, say, football, had one team member replaced by a fucktard who just does "whatever he feels like", because, you know, "it's just a game", and there would be absolutely nothing the other players could do about it. Does that sound like a good game to you?
This analogy has nothing to do with public servers. Sure, you expect not to get 10-yo noobs in a competitive match and that's where you should be playing in that case. Otherwise, it's more like that jean commercial where Bret Favre plays pickup football with some random guys, it's not the venue for him to bitch at a guy for dropping a pass or whatever. Why should we place limits on skill for a pickup game? It sounds more like your fault for not playing competitive or private matches, rather than others fault for not being good.
That said, it looks like you want ranked matchmaking for normal play, rather than player-run custom servers. That's fine with me, but you'll have to pry TF2's custom dedicated servers from my cold dead hands.
Inconceivable!
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
In the days of mechanical aperature radars, absolutely.
Now with AESA radar, the beam is much smaller and harder to determine direction. The analogy is that if the old radars were flashlights, new radars are like laser pointers: they don't even know you're looking at them most of the time, and if they do they can't determine where the beam is coming from.
This Russian fighter; the F22; F35; and F15s, F16s, and F18s with retrofits have AESA radar.
Stealth doesn't mean 'invisible', just harder to see. Even older radars will still see a 'stealth' aircraft if they fly close enough.
The counter to a stealth fighter would be better radar, not more stealth fighters of your own.
Actually, the counter is both on the same platform. You need weapons that can defeat the stealth fighter, since ideally you want to eliminate the target, not just look at it.
So, you want a fighter that has a small enough radar cross-section and sensitive enough radar that you see the other guy first. Then your missile just needs to be pointed in the right direction, it can aquire the lock later when it's close enough to detect their radar cross-section.
I'm not even sure why there's a supposed role for fighters any more anyway. When's the last time a plane was downed by another plane, rather than being bombed on or shot from the ground?
We shot down an Iranian drone over Iraq a few months ago. Before that, seems the last fighter-fighter engagements were Desert Storm, only because we haven't been in an air-war since. It's possible I'm missing some conflict, though. Assuming things were to go south with Iran, Pakistan, India, Russia, China, or North Korea we would need air superiority fighters. Air superiority doesn't win wars on its own, but it's hard to win a conventional war without it.
If the cable and fiber companies had to do the same thing, that would be perfectly reasonable. However, the lobbies prevent that from happening, so we're stuck with regulation.
You could just go with out internet (not easy, I know but a choice) and if thousands did this then it would make a impact.
The same argument was made about phone and electricity in the past. However, that's simply not an option in our society anymore.
While we're at it, what day are we not visiting the gas station? If thousands of people refuse to buy gas on one day, it will send a message to the oil companies... give me a break.
It got messy.
Thanks, I was looking for a reference to that case to post. But yes, it's political suicide to break-up these monopolies, especially now that corporations can contribute money directly to political causes...
Agreed, but it seems that the US government isn't willing do that, so the only alternative is regulations to prevent bad behavior.
Of course the ISP can block whatever they want, but they can't control everything or they will have no customers.
Competition only works to prevent this kind of stuff when it exists.
This is the cruz of why America needs regulation like this. Because of the local monopolies, you may not have another choice for ISP. At best, you have the choice of DSL, Cable, and Fiber and each from exactly one provider. At worst, you may have only cable provider for broadband internet. Thus, the providers know that they have a captive public, very few users would voluntarily forego all internet access overall to protest their ISP blocking some of their usage. They can do whatever they want, their customers have nowhere to go.
So the answer seems to be: yes, I did miss something.
Exactly, a much more fitting comparison, I think.
And it's pretty clear that, like some other defense boondoggles.... the F-35
Since when is the F-35 a defense boondoggle? For one, it's an international project. And if you wanted a modern fighter example, why not the F22 which hasn't run a single combat flight over Iraq or Afghanistan? The F35 has better electronics, is cheaper, and is multi-role rather than a superiority fighter for a non-existent adversary. Did I miss something? Or, beyond that, possibly the new aerial refueling tanker which is on its third round of bidding back and forth?
Hopefully, MS will decide to take this case on and crush the lawyers and hapless patsy that is their client. And ban them all from XBL. Bastards.
The last thing we want is for this douche-nozzle to have a legitimate complaint and win a lawsuit. Let him get laughed out of court, but don't give him more fodder.
In that case, there's abosolutely no leg for this guy to stand on, not that he would have had much of one anyway.