I'm very sad to see so many people here making excuses for these young men's jihadist tendencies. Equating the perps extremist religious motives with the Western notion of youthful experimentation or benign curiosity is insulting to everyone, even the jihadis.
These guys were caught because one of them wrote a "bye, I'm going to fight for Allah" note to his parents. He promised to engage in conventional warfare (as opposed to domestic terrorism). He quoted two passages from the Koran to support his position:
Surah al-baqarah 2:216: Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But God knoweth, and ye know not.
And:
Surah at-tawbah 9:29 Fight those who believe not in God nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by God and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
For those who think they know something about this dispute, quick...answer these questions:
1. Which telecoms get immunity? 2. What are the telecoms accused of doing EXACTLY? What actual actions did they take? 3. Who wants to sue the telecoms? What are their motives? 4. What is the purpose of the lawsuits? Money, or something else? Remember these are civil lawsuits (you knew that, right?), so no one is going to jail.
The real purpose of bringing civil lawsuits against the telecoms is to get them to fully reveal what information the government asked them for, and to reveal what was given. Revealing this information publicly would be a great boon to enemies of the US and will help them adjust their operations to elude the authorities.
It's too bad so many well-meaning libertarians are ignorant of the real dangers in the world, and the dangers brought by technology, and are so quickly willing to be stooges. And not the funny kind.
The event you are describing was a specific response against a specific enemy (Midianites and Moabites) who had conspired against the much more numerous Israelites to seduce Israelite men to engage in idolatry. It was not a Jihad, which is "to wage war against non-[believers] to establish the religion." (from wikipedia).
The Israelite religion was a non-proselytizing one - they did not seek to expand their religion through conversion, whether voluntary or coerced. The Islamic concept of Jihad is the opposite of that - the duty of every muslim is to expand Islam. It applies to all muslims all the time against all non-muslims. The options for non-believers are conversion, dhimmitude (2nd class citizenship), or death.
Oh yeah, the Moses thing also happened 3000 years ago. The jihad thing is alive and well.
These are very interesting comments. I can't address your prejudices against religion, I am rarely a defender of religion myself.
But if education has disintegrated in the past, say, 50 years, then ask yourself this question: Is the influence of religion in our culture greater now than it was 50 years ago? I don't think anyone will answer this question "yes", and if they do, they are ignorant of history. School prayer and bible teaching in public schools were common 50 years ago. They are very rare now and usually warrant a lawsuit.
Culturally, religion is probably at its lowest point of influence now.
Finland has a much lower birth rate than the US, which means each child has much more invested in it than in cultures with higher birth rates. This is true in most of Europe and Japan. 20% of Finnish women do not have children, so the impact of divorce on children is going to be lower in a culture where there are fewer children. Also (not being an expert on Finland or Finnish family law) I don't know if it is culturally acceptable for a divorced father to be absent from their children's life. In the US it is very common.
Also Finland also has a very small immigrant population, so the problem of cultural assimilation is not there. It is probably more difficult to teach math and science to immigrants who are not culturally assimilated and have little to no exposure to math and science in their native countries. The US has a large immigrant population, and of course it has a large population of historically un-assimilated and discriminated against people (blacks and native Americans).
My "morality" based agenda is little more than common sense. Are you opposed to strong families and communities? You must not realize that civilization has depended on them for tens of thousands of years.
The greatest challenge in education is the disintegration of two-parent families and strong communities. This is particularly pronounced in minority communities. The very occasional teaching of ID in public classrooms is probably not even a factor. But I guess confronting real problems isn't as much fun as kicking religious people, is it?
right back until a few billionths of a second before the big bang
Until you can answer the question of what happened before then (or even if there was a "before" to contemplate), the God basket will not be empty. Science tells us that what happened "before" is unknowable because any pre-big bang information could not survive. The ability to explain nature has nothing to do with why nature exists at all.
If you're looking for arrogance, Zahi Hawass is your man. He's been running Egypt's antiquities program for 30 years and you don't get to examine a spoonful of Egyptian dirt or talk about it without his blessing or payment of the proper tribute. He's also a media whore.
It's not bad news, it's good news. If the Al-Haramain lawyers were allowed to use their "recollections", they could say anything, and the only effective defense the govt would have would be to produce the documents and thus reveal state secrets.
All that aside, neither the govt nor the Al-Haramain lawyers actually want the top secret documents revealed. The govt because the information is top secret and would harm ongoing investigations; the Al-Haramain lawyers because even though the documents may prove standing the govt illegally wire-tapped them, would also show Al-Haramain's guilt in funding world-wide terrorism. Remember, copies of these documents were sent to Al-Haramain in Saudi Arabia - they could have been released already with no legal consequence by Al-Haramain in Saudi Arabia.
What Al-Haramain really wants is for the federal courts to restrict wire-tapping - any wire-tapping - as much as possible. Why? Take a wild guess.
Here is the best source for details about this conflict and Al-Haramain terrorism links.
In history, the winners get to write the history books. This is usually applied to military winners, but since war is so un-PC these days, it's the cultural war winners who write the books. Right now the winners are the PC nanny-staters who, in spite of their message of tolerance, are some of the most intolerant people on earth for those buck their orthodoxy.
Figure out what the agreement is worth and ask them for compensation. If they want 6 months of your "inventions" after you leave employment, they need to pay you 6 months salary, or a reasonable portion thereof, up front.
Since you didn't agree to this new contract when you were hired, you should have your pay adjusted accordingly.
As usual, this post and supporting links are very biased and miss many important facts.
* HAVA is a voluntary program. New York elected to join and received federal money ($221 million) to implement the requirements. * New York delayed writing a HAVA compliant state law longer than any other state. They didn't have the law written until Summer 2005 with a Jan 1, 2006 deadline to have the system in place. HAVA was passed on Oct 29, 2002. * New York has also failed to provide access for the disabled, another requirement of HAVA.
All this talk about unreliable electronic voting machines is a just the latest excuse for state pols to blame the Feds instead of themselves.
Hey NY, if you don't want to play by the Feds rules, don't take their (our) money.
Because you don't hear about 80 gazillion people who shop there and don't have a problem. When was the last time Slashdot posted a story about a good user experience at a big box retailer? It doesn't fit the agenda.
I don't think you are disincentivizing pollution from the producers standpoint if their bottom line remains the same. If they just raise their rates to cover the costs of polluting, they have no incentive to replace coal plants with something cheaper. The end user will likely not reduce the amount of energy they use unless the cost increase is sizable (consider the fact that gasoline usage has not fallen even though gas is much more expensive now than several years ago).
Spitzer knows that and he knows consumers are going to pay the higher costs. Thus it's unlikely that the power companies will have incentive to replace coal plants with cleaner sources of electricity, which is what we really need.
This is a bad thing? Companies being forced to pay the full price of the pollution they cause and users being forced to absorb that price on the sticker of the choices they make. That's the free market at work.
It's a good thing if examined in a vacuum (assuming the ludicrous notion of CO2 being a pollutant, or that you could accurately figure out the damage caused by climate change within trillions of dollars).
When you consider China and India doing nothing to pass those costs on to their users, you don't have a free market. You have the US destroying their competitiveness (and their ability to innovate) while doing little to solve the problem on a global scale (it is called "global warming").
Guys like Spitzer are always the first to attack private business. A better solution would be to offer tax incentives to companies that want to replace coal plants with clean power sources, including nuclear. But you won't see Spitzer proposing that because it's a truly innovative idea. Suing the Feds and attacking business is the easy way out.
The implication is coming from a guy trying to save his own ass - alleging something that the govt will not and can not acknowledge or deny. Clever and slimy.
Stores are always overcharging for doing simple things for clueless or busy people. It's not "news". If the market didn't support it, they would lower their price or stop offering it.
Pissing on the big retailers is part of the/. agenda. That's why these stories keep showing up. No one else cares.
It is also amusing how so many people regurgitate the lingo fed to them by propagandists of all stripes - like using the term "denyers" ("deniers", actually), which (previous to global warming skepticism) was used almost exclusively to describe those who believe the Holocaust never happened. Nope, no negative connotation there.
Sure, this will get a lot of press (NASA seems to get nothing but bad press these days), but almost all of it will be qualified by statements downgrading the mistake's significance. The meme: NASA screwed up again, but Global Warming is still da bomb!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Or lying under oath.
I'm very sad to see so many people here making excuses for these young men's jihadist tendencies. Equating the perps extremist religious motives with the Western notion of youthful experimentation or benign curiosity is insulting to everyone, even the jihadis.
These guys were caught because one of them wrote a "bye, I'm going to fight for Allah" note to his parents. He promised to engage in conventional warfare (as opposed to domestic terrorism). He quoted two passages from the Koran to support his position:
Surah al-baqarah 2:216: Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But God knoweth, and ye know not.
And:
Surah at-tawbah 9:29 Fight those who believe not in God nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by God and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
The letter is here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/13_02_08_rajaletter1.pdf
I hope all of you defenders of freedom get that.
For those who think they know something about this dispute, quick...answer these questions:
1. Which telecoms get immunity?
2. What are the telecoms accused of doing EXACTLY? What actual actions did they take?
3. Who wants to sue the telecoms? What are their motives?
4. What is the purpose of the lawsuits? Money, or something else? Remember these are civil lawsuits (you knew that, right?), so no one is going to jail.
The real purpose of bringing civil lawsuits against the telecoms is to get them to fully reveal what information the government asked them for, and to reveal what was given. Revealing this information publicly would be a great boon to enemies of the US and will help them adjust their operations to elude the authorities.
It's too bad so many well-meaning libertarians are ignorant of the real dangers in the world, and the dangers brought by technology, and are so quickly willing to be stooges. And not the funny kind.
The event you are describing was a specific response against a specific enemy (Midianites and Moabites) who had conspired against the much more numerous Israelites to seduce Israelite men to engage in idolatry. It was not a Jihad, which is "to wage war against non-[believers] to establish the religion." (from wikipedia).
The Israelite religion was a non-proselytizing one - they did not seek to expand their religion through conversion, whether voluntary or coerced. The Islamic concept of Jihad is the opposite of that - the duty of every muslim is to expand Islam. It applies to all muslims all the time against all non-muslims. The options for non-believers are conversion, dhimmitude (2nd class citizenship), or death.
Oh yeah, the Moses thing also happened 3000 years ago. The jihad thing is alive and well.
These are very interesting comments. I can't address your prejudices against religion, I am rarely a defender of religion myself.
But if education has disintegrated in the past, say, 50 years, then ask yourself this question: Is the influence of religion in our culture greater now than it was 50 years ago? I don't think anyone will answer this question "yes", and if they do, they are ignorant of history. School prayer and bible teaching in public schools were common 50 years ago. They are very rare now and usually warrant a lawsuit.
Culturally, religion is probably at its lowest point of influence now.
Finland has a much lower birth rate than the US, which means each child has much more invested in it than in cultures with higher birth rates. This is true in most of Europe and Japan. 20% of Finnish women do not have children, so the impact of divorce on children is going to be lower in a culture where there are fewer children. Also (not being an expert on Finland or Finnish family law) I don't know if it is culturally acceptable for a divorced father to be absent from their children's life. In the US it is very common.
Also Finland also has a very small immigrant population, so the problem of cultural assimilation is not there. It is probably more difficult to teach math and science to immigrants who are not culturally assimilated and have little to no exposure to math and science in their native countries. The US has a large immigrant population, and of course it has a large population of historically un-assimilated and discriminated against people (blacks and native Americans).
My "morality" based agenda is little more than common sense. Are you opposed to strong families and communities? You must not realize that civilization has depended on them for tens of thousands of years.
The greatest challenge in education is the disintegration of two-parent families and strong communities. This is particularly pronounced in minority communities. The very occasional teaching of ID in public classrooms is probably not even a factor. But I guess confronting real problems isn't as much fun as kicking religious people, is it?
That's so unfair...swinging a dead cat.
right back until a few billionths of a second before the big bang
Until you can answer the question of what happened before then (or even if there was a "before" to contemplate), the God basket will not be empty. Science tells us that what happened "before" is unknowable because any pre-big bang information could not survive. The ability to explain nature has nothing to do with why nature exists at all.
I have the official Christie's catalog - it says it was "worn by Brent Spiner as Data" in "Descent, Part I" and "All Good Things".
If you're looking for arrogance, Zahi Hawass is your man. He's been running Egypt's antiquities program for 30 years and you don't get to examine a spoonful of Egyptian dirt or talk about it without his blessing or payment of the proper tribute. He's also a media whore.
It's not bad news, it's good news. If the Al-Haramain lawyers were allowed to use their "recollections", they could say anything, and the only effective defense the govt would have would be to produce the documents and thus reveal state secrets.
All that aside, neither the govt nor the Al-Haramain lawyers actually want the top secret documents revealed. The govt because the information is top secret and would harm ongoing investigations; the Al-Haramain lawyers because even though the documents may prove standing the govt illegally wire-tapped them, would also show Al-Haramain's guilt in funding world-wide terrorism. Remember, copies of these documents were sent to Al-Haramain in Saudi Arabia - they could have been released already with no legal consequence by Al-Haramain in Saudi Arabia.
What Al-Haramain really wants is for the federal courts to restrict wire-tapping - any wire-tapping - as much as possible. Why? Take a wild guess.
Here is the best source for details about this conflict and Al-Haramain terrorism links.
http://www.zombietime.com/al-haramain_surveillance/
In history, the winners get to write the history books. This is usually applied to military winners, but since war is so un-PC these days, it's the cultural war winners who write the books. Right now the winners are the PC nanny-staters who, in spite of their message of tolerance, are some of the most intolerant people on earth for those buck their orthodoxy.
Figure out what the agreement is worth and ask them for compensation. If they want 6 months of your "inventions" after you leave employment, they need to pay you 6 months salary, or a reasonable portion thereof, up front.
Since you didn't agree to this new contract when you were hired, you should have your pay adjusted accordingly.
Just a small thing like wondering where their $221 million went to.
As usual, this post and supporting links are very biased and miss many important facts.
* HAVA is a voluntary program. New York elected to join and received federal money ($221 million) to implement the requirements.
* New York delayed writing a HAVA compliant state law longer than any other state. They didn't have the law written until Summer 2005 with a Jan 1, 2006 deadline to have the system in place. HAVA was passed on Oct 29, 2002.
* New York has also failed to provide access for the disabled, another requirement of HAVA.
All this talk about unreliable electronic voting machines is a just the latest excuse for state pols to blame the Feds instead of themselves.
Hey NY, if you don't want to play by the Feds rules, don't take their (our) money.
Because you don't hear about 80 gazillion people who shop there and don't have a problem. When was the last time Slashdot posted a story about a good user experience at a big box retailer? It doesn't fit the agenda.
I don't think you are disincentivizing pollution from the producers standpoint if their bottom line remains the same. If they just raise their rates to cover the costs of polluting, they have no incentive to replace coal plants with something cheaper. The end user will likely not reduce the amount of energy they use unless the cost increase is sizable (consider the fact that gasoline usage has not fallen even though gas is much more expensive now than several years ago).
Spitzer knows that and he knows consumers are going to pay the higher costs. Thus it's unlikely that the power companies will have incentive to replace coal plants with cleaner sources of electricity, which is what we really need.
This is a bad thing? Companies being forced to pay the full price of the pollution they cause and users being forced to absorb that price on the sticker of the choices they make. That's the free market at work.
It's a good thing if examined in a vacuum (assuming the ludicrous notion of CO2 being a pollutant, or that you could accurately figure out the damage caused by climate change within trillions of dollars).
When you consider China and India doing nothing to pass those costs on to their users, you don't have a free market. You have the US destroying their competitiveness (and their ability to innovate) while doing little to solve the problem on a global scale (it is called "global warming").
Guys like Spitzer are always the first to attack private business. A better solution would be to offer tax incentives to companies that want to replace coal plants with clean power sources, including nuclear. But you won't see Spitzer proposing that because it's a truly innovative idea. Suing the Feds and attacking business is the easy way out.
The implication is coming from a guy trying to save his own ass - alleging something that the govt will not and can not acknowledge or deny. Clever and slimy.
Stores are always overcharging for doing simple things for clueless or busy people. It's not "news". If the market didn't support it, they would lower their price or stop offering it.
/. agenda. That's why these stories keep showing up. No one else cares.
Pissing on the big retailers is part of the
It is also amusing how so many people regurgitate the lingo fed to them by propagandists of all stripes - like using the term "denyers" ("deniers", actually), which (previous to global warming skepticism) was used almost exclusively to describe those who believe the Holocaust never happened. Nope, no negative connotation there.
Sure, this will get a lot of press (NASA seems to get nothing but bad press these days), but almost all of it will be qualified by statements downgrading the mistake's significance. The meme: NASA screwed up again, but Global Warming is still da bomb!!!!
Presence of an eSATA port on the Tivo lite has not been confirmed.
Wow, you got modded troll...you really hit a nerve. Someone must have got their hypocrisy rubbed in their face.