Speaking as a lifelong Christian, I'd have to say things like this are fantastic. Why? Well, there's two kinds of things in the bible, things that are meant to be taken literally
Unfortunately, there exists a significant fraction of the population that disagrees with you, and believes [1] that everything in the Bible is absolutely, literally true.
Sixty percent of Americans believe that God created the world in six days, that Moses parted the Red Sea, and the Noah's Flood actually occured.
It's cognitive dissonance. No matter how much evidence you can accumulate, hard-line Creationists will still claim that the Earth is 6000 years old, and that God created man exactly as he is today. They are not willing to entertain any idea that will contradict their beliefs.
[1] A friend of mine often says that people like to say they take the Bible literally, but no one really does. To say that you believe the Bible is the unquestionable Word of God, to be interpreted word-for-word literally makes one sound much more devout than those silly liberal Christians that think parts of it are metaphor and allegory.
True. So's a hot tub. And since the word "hot" appears in the name of the product, it's reasonable to assume that anyone getting into a hot tub knows that it's hot.
If, however, said hot tub was hot enough to boil the flesh off her bones, then maybe something's not quite right with it?
A non-American's opinion in the 2004 presidential election is pretty much as irrelevant as it gets. Likewise, my opinion on Tony Blair's campaign is also irrelevant.
Really? I would think that the opinion of an American soldier in Iraq would be quite relevant.
[Ashcroft] said the Motion Picture Association of America estimates that 2.6 billion songs, movies and software programs are illegally distributed over the Internet every month.
That's like asking Halliburton, "How much money do you need to rebuild Iraq?" The MPAA is hardly unbiased. It's in their own best interest to inflate that number.
I'd estimate that 550 million albums are sold in the US each year. [Source data] Say 8 songs per albumn, average. That comes to 4.4 billion songs per year, while the MPAA is claiming 2.6 billion per month are infringed. Yeah, they lump music, movies, and software all into one, but that's just a rough estimate, and I figure more music is downloaded than movies, just because of the bandwidth issues. Still, I don't find that 2.6 billion figure at all credible.
But why do people think they deserve money for something like this?
I don't think it's so much that they think they deserve money, but that's the only thing the courts can deal with. It's not like you can sue to get your dignity back.
there is NO research stating there are ANY animals that practice ONLY homosexuality.
Well, here's one example for you:
gay penguins. They're pair-bonded, monogamous, and even adopted an egg together. And since they wear tuxes, they're better dressed than most waterfowl.
Furthermore, there's actually tons of evidence. See, for example, Biological Exuberance by Bruce Bagemihl. He lists well over a hundred animal species in which homosexual behavior has been observed, in the wild and in captivity. From dogs to wolves to dolphins to whales to butterflies.
i've seen male dogs jump on other male dogs (which, BTW, is actually a display of dominance, NOT sexuality)
Not always. In wolves, the dominant dog is sometimes the one getting mounted, sometimes the one doing the mounting.
They didn't explain why they would have to go back later and remove the titanium scaffold. People have titanium hips, vertabrae, skull plates, and teeth--how come those don't have to be removed?
They often do. I'm not sure, but I think the life of a titanium hip is somewhere around 10 to 15 years. Don't quote me on that, however.
The problem isn't the implant itself. Remember, bone is alive, not an inert ceramic framework inside your body. It's constantly being grown and cut away and refined by the body.
Metal implants carry a lot of the mechanical load in a joint. So much so that they relieve the surrounding bone from much of the stress it's seeing. That bone then atrophies, and the joint loosens in its socket. That causes joint pain, but I'm not sure how bad the situation can get if left entirely unchecked.
You probably don't hear about it much because the people that get hip replacements are usually already rather old, and the duration of the implant may be longer than their lifespan.
Much of the financing for the efforts, known as Operation Slam Spam, comes from the Direct Marketing Association, a trade group that wants to promote what it sees as the legitimate use of e-mail marketing.
Yeah, the spam issue aside, when did law enforcement start getting funded by non-governmental, private organizations? Does this mean they are less likely to investigate and prosecute spam sent by DMA members?
I got burned by SpamCop this week. Someone sent out Viagra spam that appeared to be from the IP of my site. There were no complaints to my hosting company, but I couldn't send mail to a SpamCop user's domain.
My host looked things over, I looked things over, and we found no logical reason why the Spam appeared to originate at my site.
I'm assuming you mean kijabe.org, or 209.152.169.186. Not currently listed at SpamCop or any or DNSBL.
You say your hosting company received no complaints, so it's not clear what they "looked over." If your machine was sending to SpamCop's spamtraps, they would have receive no reports, because that would give away the spamtrap address.
I'm not quite sure what you mean that it "appeared to be from your site." The receiving server should know the IP address of the sending server. I don't think that can be spoofed, but what do I know? Anyway, the receiver should know where the spam originated, or at least what the last hop was.
Of course, if the receiving mail server somehow misrecorded the sending mail server's address, anything is possible. SpamCop can't really do much if it's given incorrect data.
Without more detail, it's hard to judge what's really going on here.
Except the more agressive (and popular) anti-spam organizations do take a "shoot first, ask questions later" policy.
No, they don't. Most, like SpamCop list the origin of the spam. Not the spamvertized website, but the IP address of the sending mail server. The place where the spam is actually coming from, whether or not it's a joe-job.
One of the few blacklists that lists web addresses (well, their respective IP addys) is SPEWS, which generally lists only after persistent spamming has been ignored by the hosting ISP. That's hardly "shoot first, ask questions later."
Although marketers regard pop-ups as one of the most effective ways of advertising online, many surfers find them hugely annoying.
What I cannot believe is that marketing people think that popups are effective advertising!
Part of the problem with the sentence in the article is that it comes at the end of the article and is basically a throwaway. Much like, "4 out of 5 dentists..." There's so little detail it's almost meaningless.
The article states that the D Squared popups came up even if the user wasn't actively browsing the web. Duh. These came in through the Windows Messenger service, not the web browser. They might as well have said that the user didn't have to be actively word processing, either.
The "marketers" being polled are probably talking about web browser popups, and throwing this sentence in isn't really fair to them. (Not that I'm overly worried about being fair to the people that came up with the concept of telemarketing.) It is reasonable that a user will expect popups when browsing to a commercial web page. Those popups are also less likely to be deceptive, since they can be traced back to their origin very easily. They may well be an effective form of advertising. I'm not happy about that fact, but it may be true.
The popups in question here are basically a "feature" of the OS, and much more intrusive.
I'm not happy that this is basically a consequence-free "settlement," but this is, basically, a victory for the good guys.
It is not, for example, unusual for the same research to given to a conference, published in conference proceedings, published as a journal article and even as a chapter in a book at some point.
If you are talking about basically word-for-word reproductions of a paper, this is strictly prohibited for every journal I've ever published in. You have to certify that the work you are submitting for publication is original, and has never been published anywhere else. That way, the journal is assured that the work they are looking at is of high-value, and is new and novel enough to warrant publication. Otherwise, you'd have some guy submitting basically the same paper to five different journals at the same time.
What if a Pharoah hadn't ordered the pyramids: There would have been a lot of happy slaves.
Tiny little nitpick. I don't think the pyramids were built by slaves. Remember, Egypt was a desert culture where some of the best ariable land was covered by water for a significant part of the year. The pyramids were built in the off-season.
Proof? Easy. Look up The Fermi Paradox. One of the corollaries that convince me is the fact that, even at sublight speeds, it only takes 1-10 million years to fill up a galaxy, since a race would tend to fill up in a geometric progression.
Maybe, at a certain level of sophistocation, intelligent species realize that filling up the galaxy like swarms of locusts isn't a good idea.
Or maybe they already have filled up the galaxy and are just tiptoeing around our little corner of the universe saying, "Shh, we don't want to bother the primitive monkey-people."
Never Say Never Nanofactories such as those made by this link are already a reality, and every year they master more elements. Diamonds are easy- food and clothing is hard in comparison, but it won't be very long before we have EXACTLY such a device.
Except that the link you provided was for a microscope micromanipulator. Sure, it's called a nanofactory, but you can't really build anything with it.
And I'm not saying you can't manipulate tiny nanotubes and even individual atoms, just that it's never going to lead to large-scale manufacturing. It's just too time-consuming for one thing. Yes, you can use an AFM to move individual atoms around and make really cool logos and things, but you'll never build a car atom-by-atom.
This is NOT 1984! They are installing extreme security measures in preparation for the DNC because of what the DHS tells them is a considerable threat from terrorists. Then, once the DNC is over, they don't want to just throw everything away.
There is a very big difference between doing something because of extreme, immediate, and reasonable threat to life and limb, and extending those behaviors into perpituity. In an emergency situation, extreme measures are sometimes necessary. But to say, OK, now we get to survail you now and forever, that's an entirely different thing.
Consider this: Egypt has been in a continuous state of emergency for twenty-five years. It's no longer an extraordinary situation, it's the norm. It would be very easy for the same sort of thing to happen here, all in the name of "preventing terrorism."
Do realize that when you have a device that can make atom-for-atom copies of ANYTHING -- including food, clothing, diamond, cars, etc -- that "making a living" suddenly gets a LOT easier and cheaper? No need for artificial scarcity. Open source applies to real-world objects too.
Except that we don't have such a device, and we're *never* going to have such a device, any more than we're going to have Star Trekish transporters or replicators. It's just plain science fiction.
Sure, nanotechnology may revolutionize a lot industries, but molecular assembers are just a pie-in-the-sky idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Only if you buy your years at Sam's Club. Regular supermarket years have 52 weeks.
Karl Rove, the same man that implied John McCain was gay and that Max Clelland was unpatriotic. Next question?
Unfortunately, there exists a significant fraction of the population that disagrees with you, and believes [1] that everything in the Bible is absolutely, literally true.
Sixty percent of Americans believe that God created the world in six days, that Moses parted the Red Sea, and the Noah's Flood actually occured.
It's cognitive dissonance. No matter how much evidence you can accumulate, hard-line Creationists will still claim that the Earth is 6000 years old, and that God created man exactly as he is today. They are not willing to entertain any idea that will contradict their beliefs.
[1] A friend of mine often says that people like to say they take the Bible literally, but no one really does. To say that you believe the Bible is the unquestionable Word of God, to be interpreted word-for-word literally makes one sound much more devout than those silly liberal Christians that think parts of it are metaphor and allegory.
True. So's a hot tub. And since the word "hot" appears in the name of the product, it's reasonable to assume that anyone getting into a hot tub knows that it's hot.
If, however, said hot tub was hot enough to boil the flesh off her bones, then maybe something's not quite right with it?
Really? I would think that the opinion of an American soldier in Iraq would be quite relevant.
We have this now. It's called voting.
Yes, that is the kind of poor English up with which we will not put.
(Paraphrased from an anonymous witticism.)
That's like asking Halliburton, "How much money do you need to rebuild Iraq?" The MPAA is hardly unbiased. It's in their own best interest to inflate that number.
I'd estimate that 550 million albums are sold in the US each year. [Source data] Say 8 songs per albumn, average. That comes to 4.4 billion songs per year, while the MPAA is claiming 2.6 billion per month are infringed. Yeah, they lump music, movies, and software all into one, but that's just a rough estimate, and I figure more music is downloaded than movies, just because of the bandwidth issues. Still, I don't find that 2.6 billion figure at all credible.
Similarly, we should teach teens to never drive anywhere, since seat belts will not save their lives 100% of the time, if they get in an accident.
Sex is a part of life for virtually every human being in the world. Life is not without risk. Get over it.
I don't think it's so much that they think they deserve money, but that's the only thing the courts can deal with. It's not like you can sue to get your dignity back.
I think it was a NY Times editorial that remarked the Republicans' use of the term "French" is code for "faggy."
Well, here's one example for you: gay penguins. They're pair-bonded, monogamous, and even adopted an egg together. And since they wear tuxes, they're better dressed than most waterfowl.
Furthermore, there's actually tons of evidence. See, for example, Biological Exuberance by Bruce Bagemihl. He lists well over a hundred animal species in which homosexual behavior has been observed, in the wild and in captivity. From dogs to wolves to dolphins to whales to butterflies.
Not always. In wolves, the dominant dog is sometimes the one getting mounted, sometimes the one doing the mounting.
They often do. I'm not sure, but I think the life of a titanium hip is somewhere around 10 to 15 years. Don't quote me on that, however.
The problem isn't the implant itself. Remember, bone is alive, not an inert ceramic framework inside your body. It's constantly being grown and cut away and refined by the body.
Metal implants carry a lot of the mechanical load in a joint. So much so that they relieve the surrounding bone from much of the stress it's seeing. That bone then atrophies, and the joint loosens in its socket. That causes joint pain, but I'm not sure how bad the situation can get if left entirely unchecked.
You probably don't hear about it much because the people that get hip replacements are usually already rather old, and the duration of the implant may be longer than their lifespan.
Yeah, the spam issue aside, when did law enforcement start getting funded by non-governmental, private organizations? Does this mean they are less likely to investigate and prosecute spam sent by DMA members?
I'm assuming you mean kijabe.org, or 209.152.169.186. Not currently listed at SpamCop or any or DNSBL.
You say your hosting company received no complaints, so it's not clear what they "looked over." If your machine was sending to SpamCop's spamtraps, they would have receive no reports, because that would give away the spamtrap address.
I'm not quite sure what you mean that it "appeared to be from your site." The receiving server should know the IP address of the sending server. I don't think that can be spoofed, but what do I know? Anyway, the receiver should know where the spam originated, or at least what the last hop was.
Of course, if the receiving mail server somehow misrecorded the sending mail server's address, anything is possible. SpamCop can't really do much if it's given incorrect data.
Without more detail, it's hard to judge what's really going on here.
No, they don't. Most, like SpamCop list the origin of the spam. Not the spamvertized website, but the IP address of the sending mail server. The place where the spam is actually coming from, whether or not it's a joe-job.
One of the few blacklists that lists web addresses (well, their respective IP addys) is SPEWS, which generally lists only after persistent spamming has been ignored by the hosting ISP. That's hardly "shoot first, ask questions later."
Part of the problem with the sentence in the article is that it comes at the end of the article and is basically a throwaway. Much like, "4 out of 5 dentists..." There's so little detail it's almost meaningless.
The article states that the D Squared popups came up even if the user wasn't actively browsing the web. Duh. These came in through the Windows Messenger service, not the web browser. They might as well have said that the user didn't have to be actively word processing, either.
The "marketers" being polled are probably talking about web browser popups, and throwing this sentence in isn't really fair to them. (Not that I'm overly worried about being fair to the people that came up with the concept of telemarketing.) It is reasonable that a user will expect popups when browsing to a commercial web page. Those popups are also less likely to be deceptive, since they can be traced back to their origin very easily. They may well be an effective form of advertising. I'm not happy about that fact, but it may be true.
The popups in question here are basically a "feature" of the OS, and much more intrusive.
I'm not happy that this is basically a consequence-free "settlement," but this is, basically, a victory for the good guys.
If you are talking about basically word-for-word reproductions of a paper, this is strictly prohibited for every journal I've ever published in. You have to certify that the work you are submitting for publication is original, and has never been published anywhere else. That way, the journal is assured that the work they are looking at is of high-value, and is new and novel enough to warrant publication. Otherwise, you'd have some guy submitting basically the same paper to five different journals at the same time.
Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on this one. The budget for the IRS is nowhere NEAR 50% of tax revenue.
Waste in the government, sure. And we should do our best to get rid of it. Half of all income going to fund tax collection? No way.
Tiny little nitpick. I don't think the pyramids were built by slaves. Remember, Egypt was a desert culture where some of the best ariable land was covered by water for a significant part of the year. The pyramids were built in the off-season.
Maybe, at a certain level of sophistocation, intelligent species realize that filling up the galaxy like swarms of locusts isn't a good idea.
Or maybe they already have filled up the galaxy and are just tiptoeing around our little corner of the universe saying, "Shh, we don't want to bother the primitive monkey-people."
Except that the link you provided was for a microscope micromanipulator. Sure, it's called a nanofactory, but you can't really build anything with it.
And I'm not saying you can't manipulate tiny nanotubes and even individual atoms, just that it's never going to lead to large-scale manufacturing. It's just too time-consuming for one thing. Yes, you can use an AFM to move individual atoms around and make really cool logos and things, but you'll never build a car atom-by-atom.
Consider this: Egypt has been in a continuous state of emergency for twenty-five years. It's no longer an extraordinary situation, it's the norm. It would be very easy for the same sort of thing to happen here, all in the name of "preventing terrorism."
Except that we don't have such a device, and we're *never* going to have such a device, any more than we're going to have Star Trekish transporters or replicators. It's just plain science fiction.
Sure, nanotechnology may revolutionize a lot industries, but molecular assembers are just a pie-in-the-sky idea.