Not only is mental health less empirical, it is defined by the Government. Could it be said that someone imprisoned for selling illegal and 'harmful' substances is very likely to go out and sell those substances after release? Especially if the person was found to continue selling them while in prison? Doesn't this make the person a 'danger' to society?
A person prone to extreme violence due to some deficient mental faculty represents a very clear danger, and the evidence can usually be presented in a very clear way. My issue is when we begin to apply the same ideas to other crimes, and child pornography, drugs, and terrorism are the three that the Government loves to hold up as justification for no end to civil abuses.
I've always said that if a bill were to be named "The Anti-Child Slavery Act" and all it did was give billions of dollars to the bill's author, it would still get passed because of its name. In reality it can do much worse than just legal plunder, as we see with this ruling, it can overturn rights guaranteed in the Constitution.
Ex post facto is interesting, but the first thing that crossed my mind was the 6th amendment because the Government is bypassing the right to a jury trial.
This whole case emphasizes what Jefferson talked about with the Government's ability to define its own rules. If we let the Supreme Court decide the very definitions of the law, then we are doomed.
Amendment VI, Section 1:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
And I had to call a plummer. Not a single one would come out to my house without guarantee of my paying them at least $150.
I have the most ridiculous driveway you have ever seen and one time my car slid halfway off of it. The tow truck bill was $175.
In both cases the contractors were at my house for less than 30 minutes and they both had their own licenses. They were also not very interested in being competitive in price due to an abundance of work. Getting a contractor's license usually means apprenticing for a while at 'low' pay, vs. going to college and digging a deep hole of debt.
I went to community college for a while and I would always tell the kids there that if they're not that interested in school, regardless of academic potential, they should get a contractor's license and go to school when they are more into it. They'll make more money and if they ever do get a degree it will be something more enjoyable for them.
It was at a club in Las Vegas. I called the LVPD and they immediately got hot on the trail to find the perp. I then called AT&T, and they employed all of their special tracking software to activate the phone's GPS and locate it to aid the police.
NOT! The police sent me a letter with the information I gave them over the phone and most disappointing was AT&T, who offered me a $50 discount on a replacement, but only because I had been a customer for so long. I guess AT&T looks at the stolen phone as a potential new customer and could care less about the $1000 a year they get from me, because they know I'll just get a new phone regardless.
Actually, that was a totally screwed-up amalgam of two sentences. What I meant to say is that most people are getting their material from either iTunes or a similar service or torrents, which are not CD quality, and generally lower than 128 kbps. I fully realize that AAC is a 'lossy' compression and not as good as a CD, but the bast majority people are not buying CD's and then converting to FLAC and playing on their iTouch or what have you.
To tell you the truth, I've been totally disappointed with the music industry ever since the mid-90s. When they announced they were creating newer formats like DVD-Audio, I thought that finally we would get something that, from a fidelity perspective, was truly an evolution in playback. The CD was actually a downgrade from reel-to-reel and often, depending on the quality of final mixing, worse than even record players. Of course that format never came down in price to match CD's, which I had hoped for since it's basically the same manufacturing process and no more expensive to produce an album for, but that never happened. And XM and downloadable music is pretty much a complete joke.
My understanding is that 128 kbps AAC is better than CD quality. What is the source material?
My point is just that nearly any device capable of decoding an AAC stream can produce extremely high quality music. Most headphone jacks, even very cheap ones, have a very flat frequency response and little noise, especially considering the final amplifier.
And let's face it, if the parents are giving their kid everything the kid asks for, is this really going to make any difference anyway? It seems the only real effect would be to remove a competitive advantage from McDonald's.
Being a Santa Clara County resident, my second thought was that there is no Santa Clara county, per se.
BTW, the Mercury runs more javascript than I've ever seen on a single webpage. At last count, I spotted 27 URL's in NoScript.
I think you're missing the point of Opera Mini and confusing it with Opera Mobile.
The point of Mini is just to have a simple, fast browser that renders text quickly. For reading articles on my BlackBerry I haven't found a better option. It magically makes every column of text the exact width of the screen while rendering it in a nice, large font. Pages are easily browsed using only the number pad, with 5 for zoom and up, down, left, right the 2, 8, 4, 6 keys respectively. Plus, when moving across the page using the number keys, it automatically aligns to the columns of text on the page.
Whenever I'm doing something that requires me to fill out forms and such, I switch to the BlackBerry browser, which on the Bold is a reasonably good browser that just happens to be awful for reading articles (Opera Mobile is not available for BlackBerry).
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iPad Review
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How does being in the minority translate to elitism? I own 4 motorcycles, one of which can only be used on a race course. I know full well I'm in the minority for this but I don't feel superior because of it. It's just something I enjoy doing.
If someone buys books, but doesn't finish them, how is this person a reader? It seems this would be more of a book purchaser. I made several large purchases of stuff from Home Depot to do some work around my house, and much of it is still sitting in the Home Depot bags in my garage. Does this make me a home repair person? No, it makes me a Home Depot customer. But I know I don't spend nearly as much money at Home Depot as a close friend of mine who regularly completes projects around his house.
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iPad Review
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· Score: 1
I don't understand the ad hominem attacks and I can't keep evidence for every scrap of information I pick up in life. You are free to reject the evidence if it doesn't meet your standards or match up with your observations.
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iPad Review
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· Score: 1
What? You read about studies. You like to read -- why not read the actual studies? Does this alleged majority that only reads 10% of books read the same number of books? Do you know that they don't read 10% of the books they start, but they start 20x as many books as people who read 100% of books and thus actually read twice as much? Were these figures adjusted for page count?
A blog you follow mentions a book that Kindle users downloaded in "measureable volume"? And this proves your point? And how do you know that the downloaders read the book. Oh wait, they are Kindle users -- of course they read it.
Y'know, most people like the idea of being better read than everyone else. ..
I don't have time to read everything that I would like to. I usually read the summaries and determine if they make sense with what I have observed, and I have observed that most people do not finish most of the books they purchase. I have also observed that people who do not read books also tend to not have large book cases full of books. This is not meant to insult anyone, it's just an observation.
The author did not state the actual number of books sold, but given that the blog gets about 30,000 views per day and the nature of the book, I wouldn't be surprised if he sold a few thousand - the book was only $4. My point here is not that these people read the book, it's that there is a different distribution model for publishing the book. Instead of an author being picked up by a publisher who then promotes to a distribution channel, the author self-publishes electronically and gets promoted through a blog.
I don't care if I read more books than other people nor if other people read more books than me. I read for myself.
Re:He didn't address suitability of it as a ereade
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iPad Review
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I have never found back-lit LCD's to be good for reading. The Kindle battery life and comfortable reading, plus wireless that works pretty much everywhere, make it a great device for people who read. I emphasize that because few people actually read. I've read about studies indicating that only 10% of people who buy books read them to the end. I read almost all my books to the end. I like to read, thus I am in the minority of readers.
Most people like the idea of reading, but rarely actually read. These people are in the majority. They often buy books, but not in the quantity of the people who read. I certainly see them buying more iPads than Kindles, but how many books are going to actually be purchased by them? Kindle owners buy books all the time - a blog I follow linked to a short book being sold by a community member for $4 on Kindle, and a few days later the author thanked the community for downloading and reading his book in measurable volume.
I think the iPad will be similar to iTunes and the Wii. Most people store their own mp3's on their iPods and the attach rate on the Wii is the lowest of all consoles. So the hardware manufacturer will make a killing, but the content publishers are not necessarily in the same boat. That's why RIAA/MPAA focus more on P2P and game publishers invest in Xbox 360 games.
IMHO, the publishers that are working to damage their relationship with Amazon are going to be going back, tails between legs, begging for forgiveness. Meanwhile, an entirely new publishing model will be sprouting to compete with them, because the thing we people who read don't like is buying a $500 device that reduces the distribution costs for the publishers, and then still paying the same amount as the printed version. There's a whole new P2P market being created by this foolishness.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only is mental health less empirical, it is defined by the Government. Could it be said that someone imprisoned for selling illegal and 'harmful' substances is very likely to go out and sell those substances after release? Especially if the person was found to continue selling them while in prison? Doesn't this make the person a 'danger' to society?
A person prone to extreme violence due to some deficient mental faculty represents a very clear danger, and the evidence can usually be presented in a very clear way. My issue is when we begin to apply the same ideas to other crimes, and child pornography, drugs, and terrorism are the three that the Government loves to hold up as justification for no end to civil abuses.
Some time ago I came upon a quote that I took to heart, "When dealing with a police officer, assume he is a sociopath who can act with impunity."
I've always said that if a bill were to be named "The Anti-Child Slavery Act" and all it did was give billions of dollars to the bill's author, it would still get passed because of its name. In reality it can do much worse than just legal plunder, as we see with this ruling, it can overturn rights guaranteed in the Constitution.
You are wrong, the law is subject to democratic review.
http://fija.org
Ex post facto is interesting, but the first thing that crossed my mind was the 6th amendment because the Government is bypassing the right to a jury trial.
This whole case emphasizes what Jefferson talked about with the Government's ability to define its own rules. If we let the Supreme Court decide the very definitions of the law, then we are doomed.
Amendment VI, Section 1:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
I think you're confusing it with the other soma.
And I had to call a plummer. Not a single one would come out to my house without guarantee of my paying them at least $150.
I have the most ridiculous driveway you have ever seen and one time my car slid halfway off of it. The tow truck bill was $175.
In both cases the contractors were at my house for less than 30 minutes and they both had their own licenses. They were also not very interested in being competitive in price due to an abundance of work. Getting a contractor's license usually means apprenticing for a while at 'low' pay, vs. going to college and digging a deep hole of debt.
I went to community college for a while and I would always tell the kids there that if they're not that interested in school, regardless of academic potential, they should get a contractor's license and go to school when they are more into it. They'll make more money and if they ever do get a degree it will be something more enjoyable for them.
It was at a club in Las Vegas. I called the LVPD and they immediately got hot on the trail to find the perp. I then called AT&T, and they employed all of their special tracking software to activate the phone's GPS and locate it to aid the police.
NOT! The police sent me a letter with the information I gave them over the phone and most disappointing was AT&T, who offered me a $50 discount on a replacement, but only because I had been a customer for so long. I guess AT&T looks at the stolen phone as a potential new customer and could care less about the $1000 a year they get from me, because they know I'll just get a new phone regardless.
Actually, that was a totally screwed-up amalgam of two sentences. What I meant to say is that most people are getting their material from either iTunes or a similar service or torrents, which are not CD quality, and generally lower than 128 kbps. I fully realize that AAC is a 'lossy' compression and not as good as a CD, but the bast majority people are not buying CD's and then converting to FLAC and playing on their iTouch or what have you.
To tell you the truth, I've been totally disappointed with the music industry ever since the mid-90s. When they announced they were creating newer formats like DVD-Audio, I thought that finally we would get something that, from a fidelity perspective, was truly an evolution in playback. The CD was actually a downgrade from reel-to-reel and often, depending on the quality of final mixing, worse than even record players. Of course that format never came down in price to match CD's, which I had hoped for since it's basically the same manufacturing process and no more expensive to produce an album for, but that never happened. And XM and downloadable music is pretty much a complete joke.
My understanding is that 128 kbps AAC is better than CD quality. What is the source material?
My point is just that nearly any device capable of decoding an AAC stream can produce extremely high quality music. Most headphone jacks, even very cheap ones, have a very flat frequency response and little noise, especially considering the final amplifier.
SomaFM is offering its Groove Salad station in 128 kbps AAC.
XM compression is shite. No respectable technophobe would ever use XM.
I really don't know much about 3COM, but I thought their timing for spinning off US Robotics and Palm was amazing.
Nobody lives in 'Santa Clara County'; they live in incorporated cities that generally border each other.
From your link: "(99% urban, 1% rural)".
And let's face it, if the parents are giving their kid everything the kid asks for, is this really going to make any difference anyway? It seems the only real effect would be to remove a competitive advantage from McDonald's.
Being a Santa Clara County resident, my second thought was that there is no Santa Clara county, per se.
BTW, the Mercury runs more javascript than I've ever seen on a single webpage. At last count, I spotted 27 URL's in NoScript.
What is libertarian or right-wing about the Constitution?
That is incredibly hateful diatribe that does nothing to dispute my point or my claim.
Is not removing the Morse Code requirement a relaxing of a regulation? And have not more people gotten their ham radio licenses since they did that?
Can you show me where in the Constitution that Congress is granted the power to create an organization such as the FCC?
There was an article a couple weeks ago about how lifting regulation sent more people into a market.
The FCC is actually unconstitutional.
I think you're missing the point of Opera Mini and confusing it with Opera Mobile.
The point of Mini is just to have a simple, fast browser that renders text quickly. For reading articles on my BlackBerry I haven't found a better option. It magically makes every column of text the exact width of the screen while rendering it in a nice, large font. Pages are easily browsed using only the number pad, with 5 for zoom and up, down, left, right the 2, 8, 4, 6 keys respectively. Plus, when moving across the page using the number keys, it automatically aligns to the columns of text on the page.
Whenever I'm doing something that requires me to fill out forms and such, I switch to the BlackBerry browser, which on the Bold is a reasonably good browser that just happens to be awful for reading articles (Opera Mobile is not available for BlackBerry).
Green; red; yellow; red; blue; green...
How does being in the minority translate to elitism? I own 4 motorcycles, one of which can only be used on a race course. I know full well I'm in the minority for this but I don't feel superior because of it. It's just something I enjoy doing.
If someone buys books, but doesn't finish them, how is this person a reader? It seems this would be more of a book purchaser. I made several large purchases of stuff from Home Depot to do some work around my house, and much of it is still sitting in the Home Depot bags in my garage. Does this make me a home repair person? No, it makes me a Home Depot customer. But I know I don't spend nearly as much money at Home Depot as a close friend of mine who regularly completes projects around his house.
I don't understand the ad hominem attacks and I can't keep evidence for every scrap of information I pick up in life. You are free to reject the evidence if it doesn't meet your standards or match up with your observations.
What? You read about studies. You like to read -- why not read the actual studies? Does this alleged majority that only reads 10% of books read the same number of books? Do you know that they don't read 10% of the books they start, but they start 20x as many books as people who read 100% of books and thus actually read twice as much? Were these figures adjusted for page count?
A blog you follow mentions a book that Kindle users downloaded in "measureable volume"? And this proves your point? And how do you know that the downloaders read the book. Oh wait, they are Kindle users -- of course they read it.
Y'know, most people like the idea of being better read than everyone else. . .
I don't have time to read everything that I would like to. I usually read the summaries and determine if they make sense with what I have observed, and I have observed that most people do not finish most of the books they purchase. I have also observed that people who do not read books also tend to not have large book cases full of books. This is not meant to insult anyone, it's just an observation.
The author did not state the actual number of books sold, but given that the blog gets about 30,000 views per day and the nature of the book, I wouldn't be surprised if he sold a few thousand - the book was only $4. My point here is not that these people read the book, it's that there is a different distribution model for publishing the book. Instead of an author being picked up by a publisher who then promotes to a distribution channel, the author self-publishes electronically and gets promoted through a blog.
I don't care if I read more books than other people nor if other people read more books than me. I read for myself.
I have never found back-lit LCD's to be good for reading. The Kindle battery life and comfortable reading, plus wireless that works pretty much everywhere, make it a great device for people who read. I emphasize that because few people actually read. I've read about studies indicating that only 10% of people who buy books read them to the end. I read almost all my books to the end. I like to read, thus I am in the minority of readers.
Most people like the idea of reading, but rarely actually read. These people are in the majority. They often buy books, but not in the quantity of the people who read. I certainly see them buying more iPads than Kindles, but how many books are going to actually be purchased by them? Kindle owners buy books all the time - a blog I follow linked to a short book being sold by a community member for $4 on Kindle, and a few days later the author thanked the community for downloading and reading his book in measurable volume.
I think the iPad will be similar to iTunes and the Wii. Most people store their own mp3's on their iPods and the attach rate on the Wii is the lowest of all consoles. So the hardware manufacturer will make a killing, but the content publishers are not necessarily in the same boat. That's why RIAA/MPAA focus more on P2P and game publishers invest in Xbox 360 games.
IMHO, the publishers that are working to damage their relationship with Amazon are going to be going back, tails between legs, begging for forgiveness. Meanwhile, an entirely new publishing model will be sprouting to compete with them, because the thing we people who read don't like is buying a $500 device that reduces the distribution costs for the publishers, and then still paying the same amount as the printed version. There's a whole new P2P market being created by this foolishness.
So does that other guy.
That's Reed Rothchild.