According to Wikipedia: "The Boy Scouts of America's position is that atheists and agnostics cannot participate as Scouts (youth members) or Scouters (adult leaders). According to the Bylaws of the BSA, Declaration of Religious Principle:
"The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God. In the first part of the Scout Oath or Promise the member declares, "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law." The recognition of God as the ruling and leading power in the universe and the grateful acknowledgment of His favors and blessings are necessary to the best type of citizenship and are wholesome precepts in the education of the growing members."
And: "Since 1991, openly gay adults have been officially prohibited from joining the Boy Scouts of America. A 1991 Position Statement states: "We believe that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirement in the Scout Oath that a Scout be morally straight and in the Scout Law that a Scout be clean in word and deed, and that homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts." The BSA thus "believes that a known or avowed homosexual is not an appropriate role model of the Scout Oath and Law."
The language used to describe the BSA's policies on homosexuals has evolved over time. Prior to 2004, the policy stated:
"We do not allow for the registration of avowed homosexuals as members or as leaders of the BSA."
In 2004, the BSA adopted a new policy statement:
"Boy Scouts of America believes that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations in the Scout Oath and Scout Law to be morally straight and clean in thought, word, and deed. The conduct of youth members must be in compliance with the Scout Oath and Law, and membership in Boy Scouts of America is contingent upon the willingness to accept Scoutingâ(TM)s values and beliefs."
So, there is clearly institutionalized discrimination. The Girl Scouts of America, however, do not discriminate on the basis of sexuality or (lack of) religion.
Actually, it's my understanding that sidewalks may be used by bikes outside of business districts. Riding on a sidewalk in a residential area, around here at least, is legal. In fact, I'm waiting for a sidewalk to be completed before I can ride safely to my work - until it's finished the only route takes you on a 3-lanes each way road, where people drive 50+mph. I'm not willing to risk it, personally. Then of course there's the fact that in the summer it's too hot to ride if you don't have shower facilities, so that's going to reduce the number of days I'm willing to ride once I actually can...
Have you ever thought that
those idiot-borgs who walk around with the $49 blue tooth thing in their ear trying to impress how important they are upon us are actually, y'know, just trying to make a phone call in a public place? Where's the crime in that? Note, I don't use a headset OR an iphone, I'm just saying there are two sides to everything.
One to two thousand a year for a family sounds like a bargain to me. Even if you're paying with that strong Canadian dollar! It pains me to think what I'm paying...
There are lots of cases where it's easier/cheaper to just replace something rather than try to fix it. Most consumer electronics come to mind. Similarly, if something looks like it could take a significant amount of time to troubleshoot, it's a rational choice to decide to reinstall, since you know that it'll only take a few hours and the results are likely to be good.
Actually, at the end of a lot of the Magic School Bus episodes, they have a little chat with the "producer" where the kids point out the liberties that were taken with the actual science during that episode. It's made clear that there are things done to move the story along which couldn't happen in real life. I think the series does a decent job of educating and entertaining; I know my kids have popped up with things I didn't know they knew, which upon investigation turned out to be from the Magic School Bus.
In our industry, there are external sites we can integrate with for a community with lots of resources; we just need to decide if we're willing to pay the price to do that. If it's worth doing, that's the way we'd go rather than try to create something from scratch. So you're right, community functions are important, I just think that we can safely outsource their provision.
Yeah, I think Drupal might be overkill for us, CMS Made Simple seems more our speed. We'll be hiring designers to create the look of the new site, the real question is do I then stick with static pages or put our content into a CMS? A host like opensourcehost.com seems to have it all set to go, so hopefully between a good design team & a decent host my personal learning curve wouldn't have to be too bad... Nice pictures, by the way.
That looks great, and is the kind of thing we're looking to do. We'll need to hire designers to get the initial look & feel, but then I or someone else here could easily do the day to day content updating etc. Thanks.
I've just spent the morning looking at CMSs, in preparation for moving our company website over, so this review is very timely for me. We have a fairly standard small business site, lots of static content, a number of reply forms, etc. We're not looking to build a community or anything like that, so I'm leaning towards something like CMS Made Simple. My question is, for a site like this, should I even bother moving to a CMS or stick to a straight html/CSS static site? It would be nice to have other people be able to update content, but would the initial learning curve & added complexity be worth it? Anyone have any experience with this move?
(BTW, the site I'm discussing is not the one in my sig.)
Yep, Zoneminder is great. I set it up in an afternoon using an old 1Ghz PIII with a 40Gb hard drive & 2 cheap Creative USB webcams; it could use more horsepower but it does everything we want at work. It can store several weeks of motion detected at our doors and is easy to administer. If you can do a net install of CentOS you'll be able to get it going no problem, and if the webcams aren't good enough you can look into capture cards.
Well, every version of Windows since 2000 has been a damn good OS...
... when compared to Microsoft's previous operating systems.
When 2000 came out, it was a damn good os compared to everything else available. OS9 was as big a pile as 98 was, desktop Linux was weak (I remember, I would try the latest every 6 months & go back to Windows). I don't think there was a better general purpose OS out there when 2000 came out. I still use it as my main home pc, and it still does everything I want it to in a stable manner.
I'm not sure of your statistics, but I am looking into getting some form of power filter for my new TV. I'm not sure what caused it, but I recently lost my DVD player and the AV inputs on my TV; I opened up the DVD, and the fuse wasn't blown, so I don't think it was a huge surge or anything. I'm looking into protection for my new LCD TV, but it's next to impossible to wade through all the claims & counter claims out there (try reading some of the threads on AVS Forums, for example). I'll probably let inertia take hold & stick with a decent surge protector...
In my experience, at least in the US, these types of tickets are treated in the same way as parking tickets - the owner pays, there are no points. This avoids the whole mess of trying to prove who was driving. (In the UK, they do try to determine the driver.)
Dude. He qualified it by saying "because caching works". Think of it as a poor man's solid state disk. I don't have (or really, want) Vista, but I can see that having the OS make good use of any RAM you install is not a bad thing. 2GB sticks are less than $40 delivered from Newegg; if my old Athlon system kicks, I can't see going to the trouble of building a box with less than 4GB, whether I run Linux or Windows or both. Yeah, I remember when RAM was expensive, but it's cheap now & someone who puts a lot in a machine is not (necessarily) an asshole.
So, back in the day, I was using DC++ & sharing lots of stuff. Then my ISP passed on a Cease & Desist from one of the movie studios about a movie in my share. This was when the RIAA was starting to take people to court etc. I stopped sharing anything except Linux ISOs and the like after that, and I only use torrents for the same. The risks don't outweigh the benefits, so while I would prefer not to be a leech, until (if?) there's a truly anonymous form of p2p, that's what I am. I'll still download from DC++ hubs, but there's nothing exceptional in my share:(
I do have to take that report with a grain of salt - the issues they cite are basically that there are some uncertainties over the right of a reporter to protect their sources, and these can lead to reporters being held in contempt of court if they refuse to reveal their sources. This is not a unique issue to the US; there was a German reporter detained a few years ago for similar reasons, who was just cleared last year, and a number in France. Their other main issue is that a Sudanese cameraman, arrested in Pakistan, is being held in Guantanamo. While I do think that this administration has acted illegally and immorally in detaining many of these "foreign combatants", I think that citing this as a restriction on the press in the US is a bit of a stretch. I would say that the French law, cited by RSF, "banning denial of the 1915 Armenian massacres on pain of five years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros", is a far more egregious restriction. When Americans see these types of laws, they tend to compare their constitutionally enshrined right to free speech and conclude (with some justification) that speech is freer here than "most European countries". I have lived in Europe and the US, and I know that nowhere is perfect; I'd move to Iceland if it were a little warmer;)
People do change their behavior in response to things like this, though. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging for a response to HOV lanes. Some will continue to pay, sure, but some will change their habits as a rational response.
It seems to me that the UK is slowly moving towards US style free(er) market capitalism, with the good & bad that entails. I remember discussing TV when I lived there years ago - my educated, middle/upper class friends staunchly defended the BBC vs the crap produced by the American networks. I pointed out that the US networks are catering to the lowest common denominator, and that whatever the most people want to watch, they'll make. (Presciently anticipating the race-to-the-bottom of reality TV.) The BBC, on the other hand, was controlled by the elite, producing TV for the elite, and the general British public had to take it or leave it. There are now huge numbers of people in the UK with satellite TV, so that they can get the crap they want over the quality offerings of the BBC. If you let people freely do whatever they want it's not always pretty, but I do think that ultimately it's better than dictating to them.
I love to ride, and have had bikes for 25 years, but I never encourage anyone else to get a motorcycle. It's really a stupid idea, at least in the US. Most of the fun bikes I've owned get worse mileage than an old Tercel, you get wet when it rains, you can't carry much, and everyone else on the road is trying to run you over. If someone really wants to ride, they will, and if someone is on the fence I am certainly not going to push them. This little car is more practical than a motorcycle any day.
That is pretty cool, but at $10K it's more expensive than all but one of the vehicles I've ever owned, let alone bicycles. If Tata starts churning them out for $250 then I'll get one!
I'm not sure what your setup is, but I can use the bluetooth DUN to my work-provided Verizon E815 and dial a modem at 14.4 - painful, but it's come in handy. So it certainly is possible, at least on some Verizon provided devices.
I must have read 100+ books on my various Palms, starting with the original Palm Pilot. When I first saw the Kindle I thought, as I have with every other ebook, "No way". Too expensive, too limiting. But the more I read about it, the more I think it might have a chance. Getting books from Gutenberg, newsgroups etc is hit and miss in terms of quality. The more I think about it, the more the wireless aspect seems to me to be a great idea. Buying books easily, with guaranteed quality, is a good thing. The newspaper & magazine subscriptions are also a really great idea - I haven't subscribed to a paper for years & years, but I might consider it on this thing, and access to Wikipedia anywhere would be nifty. I still think it's too expensive, and a bit ugly, but I can tell you that it's easy to lose yourself in a good book even on a crappy little Palm screen. Here's hoping the 1st generation ones end up on Woot cheap real soon!
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According to Wikipedia:
"The Boy Scouts of America's position is that atheists and agnostics cannot participate as Scouts (youth members) or Scouters (adult leaders). According to the Bylaws of the BSA, Declaration of Religious Principle:
"The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God. In the first part of the Scout Oath or Promise the member declares, "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law." The recognition of God as the ruling and leading power in the universe and the grateful acknowledgment of His favors and blessings are necessary to the best type of citizenship and are wholesome precepts in the education of the growing members."
And:
"Since 1991, openly gay adults have been officially prohibited from joining the Boy Scouts of America. A 1991 Position Statement states: "We believe that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirement in the Scout Oath that a Scout be morally straight and in the Scout Law that a Scout be clean in word and deed, and that homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts." The BSA thus "believes that a known or avowed homosexual is not an appropriate role model of the Scout Oath and Law."
The language used to describe the BSA's policies on homosexuals has evolved over time. Prior to 2004, the policy stated:
"We do not allow for the registration of avowed homosexuals as members or as leaders of the BSA."
In 2004, the BSA adopted a new policy statement:
"Boy Scouts of America believes that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations in the Scout Oath and Scout Law to be morally straight and clean in thought, word, and deed. The conduct of youth members must be in compliance with the Scout Oath and Law, and membership in Boy Scouts of America is contingent upon the willingness to accept Scoutingâ(TM)s values and beliefs."
So, there is clearly institutionalized discrimination. The Girl Scouts of America, however, do not discriminate on the basis of sexuality or (lack of) religion.
You can usually get a big tub of Lego at Target for under $20, my kids have two of them & there's enough there that we'll never need to buy more.
My guess is that lots of laptops get hooked to projectors, and most projectors use VGA.
Actually, it's my understanding that sidewalks may be used by bikes outside of business districts. Riding on a sidewalk in a residential area, around here at least, is legal.
In fact, I'm waiting for a sidewalk to be completed before I can ride safely to my work - until it's finished the only route takes you on a 3-lanes each way road, where people drive 50+mph. I'm not willing to risk it, personally. Then of course there's the fact that in the summer it's too hot to ride if you don't have shower facilities, so that's going to reduce the number of days I'm willing to ride once I actually can...
One to two thousand a year for a family sounds like a bargain to me. Even if you're paying with that strong Canadian dollar! It pains me to think what I'm paying...
There are lots of cases where it's easier/cheaper to just replace something rather than try to fix it. Most consumer electronics come to mind. Similarly, if something looks like it could take a significant amount of time to troubleshoot, it's a rational choice to decide to reinstall, since you know that it'll only take a few hours and the results are likely to be good.
Actually, at the end of a lot of the Magic School Bus episodes, they have a little chat with the "producer" where the kids point out the liberties that were taken with the actual science during that episode. It's made clear that there are things done to move the story along which couldn't happen in real life. I think the series does a decent job of educating and entertaining; I know my kids have popped up with things I didn't know they knew, which upon investigation turned out to be from the Magic School Bus.
In our industry, there are external sites we can integrate with for a community with lots of resources; we just need to decide if we're willing to pay the price to do that. If it's worth doing, that's the way we'd go rather than try to create something from scratch. So you're right, community functions are important, I just think that we can safely outsource their provision.
Yeah, I think Drupal might be overkill for us, CMS Made Simple seems more our speed. We'll be hiring designers to create the look of the new site, the real question is do I then stick with static pages or put our content into a CMS? A host like opensourcehost.com seems to have it all set to go, so hopefully between a good design team & a decent host my personal learning curve wouldn't have to be too bad...
Nice pictures, by the way.
That looks great, and is the kind of thing we're looking to do. We'll need to hire designers to get the initial look & feel, but then I or someone else here could easily do the day to day content updating etc. Thanks.
I've just spent the morning looking at CMSs, in preparation for moving our company website over, so this review is very timely for me. We have a fairly standard small business site, lots of static content, a number of reply forms, etc. We're not looking to build a community or anything like that, so I'm leaning towards something like CMS Made Simple. My question is, for a site like this, should I even bother moving to a CMS or stick to a straight html/CSS static site? It would be nice to have other people be able to update content, but would the initial learning curve & added complexity be worth it? Anyone have any experience with this move?
(BTW, the site I'm discussing is not the one in my sig.)
Yep, Zoneminder is great. I set it up in an afternoon using an old 1Ghz PIII with a 40Gb hard drive & 2 cheap Creative USB webcams; it could use more horsepower but it does everything we want at work. It can store several weeks of motion detected at our doors and is easy to administer. If you can do a net install of CentOS you'll be able to get it going no problem, and if the webcams aren't good enough you can look into capture cards.
... when compared to Microsoft's previous operating systems.
When 2000 came out, it was a damn good os compared to everything else available. OS9 was as big a pile as 98 was, desktop Linux was weak (I remember, I would try the latest every 6 months & go back to Windows). I don't think there was a better general purpose OS out there when 2000 came out. I still use it as my main home pc, and it still does everything I want it to in a stable manner.I'm not sure of your statistics, but I am looking into getting some form of power filter for my new TV. I'm not sure what caused it, but I recently lost my DVD player and the AV inputs on my TV; I opened up the DVD, and the fuse wasn't blown, so I don't think it was a huge surge or anything. I'm looking into protection for my new LCD TV, but it's next to impossible to wade through all the claims & counter claims out there (try reading some of the threads on AVS Forums, for example). I'll probably let inertia take hold & stick with a decent surge protector...
In my experience, at least in the US, these types of tickets are treated in the same way as parking tickets - the owner pays, there are no points. This avoids the whole mess of trying to prove who was driving. (In the UK, they do try to determine the driver.)
Dude. He qualified it by saying "because caching works". Think of it as a poor man's solid state disk. I don't have (or really, want) Vista, but I can see that having the OS make good use of any RAM you install is not a bad thing. 2GB sticks are less than $40 delivered from Newegg; if my old Athlon system kicks, I can't see going to the trouble of building a box with less than 4GB, whether I run Linux or Windows or both. Yeah, I remember when RAM was expensive, but it's cheap now & someone who puts a lot in a machine is not (necessarily) an asshole.
So, back in the day, I was using DC++ & sharing lots of stuff. Then my ISP passed on a Cease & Desist from one of the movie studios about a movie in my share. This was when the RIAA was starting to take people to court etc. I stopped sharing anything except Linux ISOs and the like after that, and I only use torrents for the same. The risks don't outweigh the benefits, so while I would prefer not to be a leech, until (if?) there's a truly anonymous form of p2p, that's what I am. I'll still download from DC++ hubs, but there's nothing exceptional in my share :(
I do have to take that report with a grain of salt - the issues they cite are basically that there are some uncertainties over the right of a reporter to protect their sources, and these can lead to reporters being held in contempt of court if they refuse to reveal their sources. This is not a unique issue to the US; there was a German reporter detained a few years ago for similar reasons, who was just cleared last year, and a number in France. Their other main issue is that a Sudanese cameraman, arrested in Pakistan, is being held in Guantanamo. While I do think that this administration has acted illegally and immorally in detaining many of these "foreign combatants", I think that citing this as a restriction on the press in the US is a bit of a stretch. I would say that the French law, cited by RSF, "banning denial of the 1915 Armenian massacres on pain of five years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros", is a far more egregious restriction. When Americans see these types of laws, they tend to compare their constitutionally enshrined right to free speech and conclude (with some justification) that speech is freer here than "most European countries". I have lived in Europe and the US, and I know that nowhere is perfect; I'd move to Iceland if it were a little warmer ;)
People do change their behavior in response to things like this, though. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging for a response to HOV lanes. Some will continue to pay, sure, but some will change their habits as a rational response.
It seems to me that the UK is slowly moving towards US style free(er) market capitalism, with the good & bad that entails. I remember discussing TV when I lived there years ago - my educated, middle/upper class friends staunchly defended the BBC vs the crap produced by the American networks. I pointed out that the US networks are catering to the lowest common denominator, and that whatever the most people want to watch, they'll make. (Presciently anticipating the race-to-the-bottom of reality TV.) The BBC, on the other hand, was controlled by the elite, producing TV for the elite, and the general British public had to take it or leave it. There are now huge numbers of people in the UK with satellite TV, so that they can get the crap they want over the quality offerings of the BBC. If you let people freely do whatever they want it's not always pretty, but I do think that ultimately it's better than dictating to them.
I love to ride, and have had bikes for 25 years, but I never encourage anyone else to get a motorcycle. It's really a stupid idea, at least in the US. Most of the fun bikes I've owned get worse mileage than an old Tercel, you get wet when it rains, you can't carry much, and everyone else on the road is trying to run you over. If someone really wants to ride, they will, and if someone is on the fence I am certainly not going to push them. This little car is more practical than a motorcycle any day.
That is pretty cool, but at $10K it's more expensive than all but one of the vehicles I've ever owned, let alone bicycles. If Tata starts churning them out for $250 then I'll get one!
I'm not sure what your setup is, but I can use the bluetooth DUN to my work-provided Verizon E815 and dial a modem at 14.4 - painful, but it's come in handy. So it certainly is possible, at least on some Verizon provided devices.
I must have read 100+ books on my various Palms, starting with the original Palm Pilot. When I first saw the Kindle I thought, as I have with every other ebook, "No way". Too expensive, too limiting. But the more I read about it, the more I think it might have a chance. Getting books from Gutenberg, newsgroups etc is hit and miss in terms of quality. The more I think about it, the more the wireless aspect seems to me to be a great idea. Buying books easily, with guaranteed quality, is a good thing. The newspaper & magazine subscriptions are also a really great idea - I haven't subscribed to a paper for years & years, but I might consider it on this thing, and access to Wikipedia anywhere would be nifty. I still think it's too expensive, and a bit ugly, but I can tell you that it's easy to lose yourself in a good book even on a crappy little Palm screen. Here's hoping the 1st generation ones end up on Woot cheap real soon!