No search warrant was obtained. They couldn't even prove probable cause when they attempted to get a warrant, so they found a loophole. Anything else?
Well, so it's up to Congress to close that loophole... or not. Until they do, that's the law. Whenever that may happen, it will probably be too late for the Icelandic MP.
So if they rule that the data must be kept private, how exactly are they planning on enforcing that ruling? I suppose the Council of Europe could use rude language, but... wait, they are doing that already.
Apple markets the iPhone 4S extensively featuring the "Dual Core A5" chip, and before that the "Retina" display. Apple uses technobabble when it suits them. Of course, they are usually behind on specs so they downplay them.
Of course, if you look at the Samsung Galaxy SII page, there is less technobabble than for the iPhone marketing. It talks about the stunning display, fast downloads, wireless sharing, voice talk, and apps. No technobabble.
It's because Android devices are marketed for nerds, by nerds.
The entire marketing department of a dozen different phone manufacturers is supposed to be nerds? It is nerds that are supposed to be responsible for putting out the vapid, shallow Motorola commercials? However, the source of this "it is nerds" refrain is quite clear: it's Apple's marketing department. They are trying to portray Apple as the "easy-to-use solution for the rest of us" while painting everybody else as being run by nerds for nerds. Really, man, stop being such a stupid Apple tool and stop doing their marketing for them.
The iPhone ad shown in the article is actually perfect. It answers why, it shows what you can do and it doesn't go on and on about things users don't directly care about, like processor speed.
And that's why Apple keeps touting their specs on the rare occasion where they are actually ahead? Retina display?
And the "answers" Apple gives are largely lies: lies about capabilities that their products are supposed to have and others don't, lies about who invented those capabilities, and lies about freedoms and future developments.
I don't have a problem with the fact that Apple defends its IP.
I don't have a problem with Apple defending their IP. The problem is that Apple takes other people's IP, claims it as their own, and then starts suing over it. And they have been doing that since the 1980's.
The technology used in Siri is mainstream and Google has lots of experts working on those areas. Few or the people involved at that are now at Apple. There are probably more ex-Calo contributors at Google than at Apple.
It seems like Apple shills are busy talking up their investments; Morgenthaler was involved in the Siri spin-out and probably has lots of Apple stock now.
Even the Galileo affair (which by the way disproves your assertion the Catholic Church *never* explicitly recants a position) can be better understood in the context of ecclesiastic politics.
Yes, that is exactly how one can understand it. And that means that Catholicism can't have it both ways. It can't say we proclaim divinely inspired, eternal, universal truths, and then say "oh, we were wrong on that one, we are just human, but we are right on all the other issues, really!".
Since Catholicism has failed numerous times to take the morally or scientifically right position--often causing great harm and suffering in the process--its positions on issues like health care, abortion, sexuality, and social justice is worthless and should be treated as such. If they are right, they are right by chance, no more.
Clear, unambiguous, and as far as I can tell, incorrect.
I addressed that in my quotes; read them carefully. The Pope is saying basically the same thing.
If you didn't know about the church, then you may possibly enter heaven even if you weren't a member, provided you do everything right by accident.
If you deliberately choose not to join, then you go to hell. (When you hear the statement "you will all go to hell unless you join our church", you naturally know about the church.)
(And even this loophole is a deviation for long-standing dogma; see the Divine Comedy.)
It's still all how you turn a phrase. You can make dogma sound like a bid for world domination easily by simply importing motives to that dogma that may or may not exist.
I think "you will all go to hell unless you join our church" is pretty clear and unambiguous.
At best, you are making a case for a serious reform of the Catholic Church
"Join our church or go to hell" is not subject to reform, it is the defining dogma of Catholicism. That is why the church is called "catholic", i.e., "universal".
In other words, in the current mindset with current attitudes, God as outlined by dogma may seem like a gigantic asshole. Anyone who makes that case convincingly in a debate is probably going to seem to win. Anyone who makes belief seem ridiculous will also win rhetorically (ie. "imaginary friend", "flying spaghetti monster", etc.). But none of that actually proves the truth of the assertion.
"God" isn't "outlined" by dogma, "God" is a proper noun defined by Christian, Jewish, and Islamic dogma. The term "God" is also used by deists. We don't need to debate whether deism is compatible with science, it obviously is. But that's not what Haught was arguing, he was arguing that the Abrahamic God and Abrahamic religion is compatible with science.
. For the US to actually have a law that removes any aid to the rest of the world when a particular entity is recognized seems downright childish,
The UN is a voluntary association of nations, and nations make voluntary contributions to it. If they stop serving US interests, of course the US should withdraw from them and stop paying for them.
what also seems to be implied in this law is the assumption that the US has such a powerful position in these bodies that this response will affect the foreign policy of other sovereign nations in the future.
Of course it is. The US spends a lot of money both on the UN and on the US military, and Americans expect that other nations come in line with US policies and interests in return. If other nations don't like it, they can spend their own money to advance their own policies.
The only difference I see is that one for the most part attempts to follow the law (or probably more correctly make it look that way) while the other couldn't care less. I have pretty reasonable guarantees neither are looking out for my best interests (or my interests at all).
Of course, corporations are not interested in helping you; they are interested in making a profit. That is what they way they are supposed to function. And as long as they do that within the laws and boundaries we, as a society, set them, that is a good thing.
When economies are run in a way in which entities try to look out for the best interests of the people, that's called socialism or communism. It seems like a good idea and sounds good, but it just doesn't work in practice.
facts are facts, science is compatible with whatever is transcendent by definition of both science and transcendent
But Catholicism isn't (just) transcendent, it makes very real claims about the real world, claims that are objectively wrong. It is those aspects of Catholicism that are at issue in these debates, and those aspects have real-world consequences, from the Crusades to world hunger, Proposition 8, and the spread of AIDS.
This doctrine of the absolute necessity of union with the Church was taught in explicit terms by Christ. Baptism, the act of incorporation among her members, He affirmed to be essential to salvation. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: he that believeth not shall be condemned"
it has been seen how clearly it is laid down that only by entering the Church can we participate in the redemption wrought for us by Christ
Whoever, under the impulse of actual grace, elicits these acts receives immediately the gift of sanctifying grace, and is numbered among the children of God. Should he die in these dispositions, he will assuredly attain heaven. It is true such acts could not possibly be elicited by one who was aware that God has commanded all to join the Church, and who nevertheless should willfully remain outside her fold.
In short, if you know about the Catholic church and you refuse to join it, you can't go to heaven and instead suffer eternal damnation (hell, limbo, purgatory).
As for recruitment, that's the purpose of the Catholic church: to "spread the gospel of Jesus Christ", which the Catholic church defines as including the universality of the Catholic church itself.
Unlike evangelicals, the Catholic church realized a while ago that creationism was untenable. So, they did what they always do: they changed their tunes. Catholicism basically just slowly retreats on everything where it is proven wrong and redefines God to fit the data. Yet, at the same time, they proclaim that they had it right all along and present a consistent and unchanging universal truth. It's bullshit, of course. Catholicism employs the same propaganda techniques all totalitarian institutions employ.
But when people disagree on facts and logic, we have debates and arguments in order to resolve those disagreements. Afterwards, people should change their views accordingly.
The Catholic church claims that their world view is rational and that its theology and morality follows logically and rationally from observable fact. If one disagrees with them (as the majority of humans on this planet do), then one can have a debate with them about it in order to test their statements.
Despite the sugar coating by Catholic representatives, fundamentally, Catholic dogma requires that the entire world should submit to the rule of the Catholic church or suffer eternal damnation, and that it is the obligation of its followers to recruit and convert by any means allowed within its own rules.
And although the Catholic church is nowhere near as powerful as it used to be, it is still an important political force, and as such we need to deal with it just like any other political force: debate it and expose the flaws in its views.
It is "bad" in the sense that you need a reality check, both in your knee-jerk condemnation of corporations, and your understanding of the function and purpose of the UN.
I suspect both the research itself and the education of the researchers involved were paid for by grants and fellowships. The patent will likely go to MIT, with some pay-off to the researchers. (I have no opinion on whether that's good or bad.)
I think most Americans and most US politicians couldn't care less at this point. If UN organizations don't want American tax dollars in support of their causes, they are welcome not to take them.
If you want to improve the UN the best way to do it would be to revoke the special veto powers given to the winners of WW2,
Great idea! Let's hand over control of the UN to a collection of communists, monarchies, corrupt governments, and Islamic theocracies, which together make up the majority of UN members. What could possibly go wrong!
the blind support of Israel by the west and Syria by the East would be much harder to maintain.
Israel is a small desert state of no particular significance. The only reason it is an issue at all in the UN is because Arab nations like to use it to distract their citizens from the miserable state of their own economies and their own corruption.
Having said that, I think the US should get out of the Middle East. The Europeans created that mess, let them fix it or live with the consequences.
Most people in the world will never have heard of many of those organizations. So, maybe it's time to question that.
The US pays for 22% of UNESCO's budget. What is the US tax payer getting for that? Are the activities of those organizations aligned with US interests?
There is simply no evidence for this statement, yet a tremendous amount of evidence that it is false.
I'm not making a simplistic argument that more CO2 is good for plants. I'm saying the following. We are currently in an interglacial warm period. Usually, those last only a few thousand years, then temperatures rapidly drop by several C, and long term by about 8C and sea levels fall by 120m. Sometimes, interglacial warm periods also have sudden temperature rises of 4C before dropping precipitously. That's the normal climate pattern.
Arguments that our current interglacial period is any more stable or long lasting than the last ones are weak at best, because nobody understands how these cycles work. If emitting large amounts of CO2 has the potential to alter this pattern, then that's a good thing, because the normal pattern would be devastating.
Also, there is little evidence that the soils in high latitude environments could be improved... Also there is little reason to believe that most crops would grow at higher latitudes simply because of more carbon dioxide...
I'm not making that argument. But since you bring it up, there is plenty of evidence, because for many millions of years, those environments were lush and teeming with life. The fact that they are frozen wastelands right now is the exception in earth's history, not the rule.
Also, there is little evidence that the soils in high latitude environments could be... As for sea level rises not being a sufficient argument "to do anything", what you are saying is...
What I am saying is that rapid climate change has been an unavoidable fact of life on this planet for the past several million years. If it is not the normal climate cycles, then volcanoes, deforestation, desertification, meteorites, sun cycles, ocean currents, clathrate releases, and all sorts of other things can cause temperatures to swing and even sea levels to change in a short period of time.
To suggest otherwise is only to reveal that your position regarding the effects of climate change have moved from merely living in denial to living in delusion.
The "delusion" is that we can somehow maintain a stable climate; that is far beyond our capabilities. We may be lucky and have a choice between glaciation and global warming, and between those two, global warming is far preferable. The changes predicted even by the worst case IPCC scenarios are something humanity can easily cope with. Glaciation is not.
Every Android tablet and laptop is also a Linux laptop. You can drop down into the shell. If you like, you can get root on it and install tons of packages.
The difference between Android and Ubuntu has traditionally been that Ubuntu runs a standard X11-based Linux desktop. But I don't see much of an advantage of a Wayland/Unity-based Ubuntu device over an Android device.
The fact is that Wayland creates a new, incompatible set of APIs in addition to X11. X11 apps won't have all the same functionality and desktop integration available to them as Wayland apps. That's exactly the situation on OS X and it sucks.
So, realistically, all the engineering and scientific apps need to be rewritten to use native Wayland APIs and desktop integration. But the problem with that is that the Wayland developers have their sights set on the consumer and tablet market, so Wayland isn't going to address professional needs very well (and if you have any doubt that they don't give a damn, just look at Unity).
So, Ubuntu is doing the same thing Apple and Microsoft have been doing: targeting the consumer market, with the professional market as an afterthought. The difference is that Apple and Microsoft have consumer market share, while Ubuntu has next to none.
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Well, so it's up to Congress to close that loophole... or not. Until they do, that's the law. Whenever that may happen, it will probably be too late for the Icelandic MP.
So if they rule that the data must be kept private, how exactly are they planning on enforcing that ruling? I suppose the Council of Europe could use rude language, but... wait, they are doing that already.
Apple markets the iPhone 4S extensively featuring the "Dual Core A5" chip, and before that the "Retina" display. Apple uses technobabble when it suits them. Of course, they are usually behind on specs so they downplay them.
Of course, if you look at the Samsung Galaxy SII page, there is less technobabble than for the iPhone marketing. It talks about the stunning display, fast downloads, wireless sharing, voice talk, and apps. No technobabble.
http://www.samsung.com/us/microsite/galaxysII/
This persistent accusation against Apple competitors is itself an Apple marketing gimmick... and a lie.
(Of course, the Samsung is also a much better phone than the iPhone 4S, at a lower price.)
The entire marketing department of a dozen different phone manufacturers is supposed to be nerds? It is nerds that are supposed to be responsible for putting out the vapid, shallow Motorola commercials? However, the source of this "it is nerds" refrain is quite clear: it's Apple's marketing department. They are trying to portray Apple as the "easy-to-use solution for the rest of us" while painting everybody else as being run by nerds for nerds. Really, man, stop being such a stupid Apple tool and stop doing their marketing for them.
And that's why Apple keeps touting their specs on the rare occasion where they are actually ahead? Retina display?
And the "answers" Apple gives are largely lies: lies about capabilities that their products are supposed to have and others don't, lies about who invented those capabilities, and lies about freedoms and future developments.
She didn't claim "linkage", she claimed causation. And that is nutty.
I wonder how much of the good baroness's success results from taking politically expedient "scientific" positions based on very limited data.
I don't have a problem with Apple defending their IP. The problem is that Apple takes other people's IP, claims it as their own, and then starts suing over it. And they have been doing that since the 1980's.
Most of the research that forms the basis for Siri was done as part of the DARPA Calo project:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO
The technology used in Siri is mainstream and Google has lots of experts working on those areas. Few or the people involved at that are now at Apple. There are probably more ex-Calo contributors at Google than at Apple.
It seems like Apple shills are busy talking up their investments; Morgenthaler was involved in the Siri spin-out and probably has lots of Apple stock now.
Yes, that is exactly how one can understand it. And that means that Catholicism can't have it both ways. It can't say we proclaim divinely inspired, eternal, universal truths, and then say "oh, we were wrong on that one, we are just human, but we are right on all the other issues, really!".
Since Catholicism has failed numerous times to take the morally or scientifically right position--often causing great harm and suffering in the process--its positions on issues like health care, abortion, sexuality, and social justice is worthless and should be treated as such. If they are right, they are right by chance, no more.
I addressed that in my quotes; read them carefully. The Pope is saying basically the same thing.
If you didn't know about the church, then you may possibly enter heaven even if you weren't a member, provided you do everything right by accident.
If you deliberately choose not to join, then you go to hell. (When you hear the statement "you will all go to hell unless you join our church", you naturally know about the church.)
(And even this loophole is a deviation for long-standing dogma; see the Divine Comedy.)
I think "you will all go to hell unless you join our church" is pretty clear and unambiguous.
"Join our church or go to hell" is not subject to reform, it is the defining dogma of Catholicism. That is why the church is called "catholic", i.e., "universal".
"God" isn't "outlined" by dogma, "God" is a proper noun defined by Christian, Jewish, and Islamic dogma. The term "God" is also used by deists. We don't need to debate whether deism is compatible with science, it obviously is. But that's not what Haught was arguing, he was arguing that the Abrahamic God and Abrahamic religion is compatible with science.
The UN is a voluntary association of nations, and nations make voluntary contributions to it. If they stop serving US interests, of course the US should withdraw from them and stop paying for them.
Of course it is. The US spends a lot of money both on the UN and on the US military, and Americans expect that other nations come in line with US policies and interests in return. If other nations don't like it, they can spend their own money to advance their own policies.
Of course, corporations are not interested in helping you; they are interested in making a profit. That is what they way they are supposed to function. And as long as they do that within the laws and boundaries we, as a society, set them, that is a good thing.
When economies are run in a way in which entities try to look out for the best interests of the people, that's called socialism or communism. It seems like a good idea and sounds good, but it just doesn't work in practice.
But Catholicism isn't (just) transcendent, it makes very real claims about the real world, claims that are objectively wrong. It is those aspects of Catholicism that are at issue in these debates, and those aspects have real-world consequences, from the Crusades to world hunger, Proposition 8, and the spread of AIDS.
Is the Catholic encyclopedia good enough for you?
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03744a.htm
In short, if you know about the Catholic church and you refuse to join it, you can't go to heaven and instead suffer eternal damnation (hell, limbo, purgatory).
As for recruitment, that's the purpose of the Catholic church: to "spread the gospel of Jesus Christ", which the Catholic church defines as including the universality of the Catholic church itself.
It doesn't get you out of the logic trap, however, when religion actually starts making claims about science, nature, or "natural law".
Unlike evangelicals, the Catholic church realized a while ago that creationism was untenable. So, they did what they always do: they changed their tunes. Catholicism basically just slowly retreats on everything where it is proven wrong and redefines God to fit the data. Yet, at the same time, they proclaim that they had it right all along and present a consistent and unchanging universal truth. It's bullshit, of course. Catholicism employs the same propaganda techniques all totalitarian institutions employ.
But when people disagree on facts and logic, we have debates and arguments in order to resolve those disagreements. Afterwards, people should change their views accordingly.
The Catholic church claims that their world view is rational and that its theology and morality follows logically and rationally from observable fact. If one disagrees with them (as the majority of humans on this planet do), then one can have a debate with them about it in order to test their statements.
Despite the sugar coating by Catholic representatives, fundamentally, Catholic dogma requires that the entire world should submit to the rule of the Catholic church or suffer eternal damnation, and that it is the obligation of its followers to recruit and convert by any means allowed within its own rules.
And although the Catholic church is nowhere near as powerful as it used to be, it is still an important political force, and as such we need to deal with it just like any other political force: debate it and expose the flaws in its views.
It is "bad" in the sense that you need a reality check, both in your knee-jerk condemnation of corporations, and your understanding of the function and purpose of the UN.
No, we haven't done that yet: that's what the security council and veto power are for.
I suspect both the research itself and the education of the researchers involved were paid for by grants and fellowships. The patent will likely go to MIT, with some pay-off to the researchers. (I have no opinion on whether that's good or bad.)
I think most Americans and most US politicians couldn't care less at this point. If UN organizations don't want American tax dollars in support of their causes, they are welcome not to take them.
Great idea! Let's hand over control of the UN to a collection of communists, monarchies, corrupt governments, and Islamic theocracies, which together make up the majority of UN members. What could possibly go wrong!
Israel is a small desert state of no particular significance. The only reason it is an issue at all in the UN is because Arab nations like to use it to distract their citizens from the miserable state of their own economies and their own corruption.
Having said that, I think the US should get out of the Middle East. The Europeans created that mess, let them fix it or live with the consequences.
Highly regarded by who? Have a look at UNESCO's activities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unesco
Most people in the world will never have heard of many of those organizations. So, maybe it's time to question that.
The US pays for 22% of UNESCO's budget. What is the US tax payer getting for that? Are the activities of those organizations aligned with US interests?
I'm not making a simplistic argument that more CO2 is good for plants. I'm saying the following. We are currently in an interglacial warm period. Usually, those last only a few thousand years, then temperatures rapidly drop by several C, and long term by about 8C and sea levels fall by 120m. Sometimes, interglacial warm periods also have sudden temperature rises of 4C before dropping precipitously. That's the normal climate pattern.
Arguments that our current interglacial period is any more stable or long lasting than the last ones are weak at best, because nobody understands how these cycles work. If emitting large amounts of CO2 has the potential to alter this pattern, then that's a good thing, because the normal pattern would be devastating.
I'm not making that argument. But since you bring it up, there is plenty of evidence, because for many millions of years, those environments were lush and teeming with life. The fact that they are frozen wastelands right now is the exception in earth's history, not the rule.
What I am saying is that rapid climate change has been an unavoidable fact of life on this planet for the past several million years. If it is not the normal climate cycles, then volcanoes, deforestation, desertification, meteorites, sun cycles, ocean currents, clathrate releases, and all sorts of other things can cause temperatures to swing and even sea levels to change in a short period of time.
The "delusion" is that we can somehow maintain a stable climate; that is far beyond our capabilities. We may be lucky and have a choice between glaciation and global warming, and between those two, global warming is far preferable. The changes predicted even by the worst case IPCC scenarios are something humanity can easily cope with. Glaciation is not.
Every Android tablet and laptop is also a Linux laptop. You can drop down into the shell. If you like, you can get root on it and install tons of packages.
The difference between Android and Ubuntu has traditionally been that Ubuntu runs a standard X11-based Linux desktop. But I don't see much of an advantage of a Wayland/Unity-based Ubuntu device over an Android device.
The fact is that Wayland creates a new, incompatible set of APIs in addition to X11. X11 apps won't have all the same functionality and desktop integration available to them as Wayland apps. That's exactly the situation on OS X and it sucks.
So, realistically, all the engineering and scientific apps need to be rewritten to use native Wayland APIs and desktop integration. But the problem with that is that the Wayland developers have their sights set on the consumer and tablet market, so Wayland isn't going to address professional needs very well (and if you have any doubt that they don't give a damn, just look at Unity).
So, Ubuntu is doing the same thing Apple and Microsoft have been doing: targeting the consumer market, with the professional market as an afterthought. The difference is that Apple and Microsoft have consumer market share, while Ubuntu has next to none.