The key word is ILLEGAL. If I were to walk into the DMV carrying a huge baggie of crack, which is illegal, I'd most likely be leaving in handcuffs. So why can an illegal walk into the DMV with documents basically proving he's a non-citizen and expect to be treated any differently? Quick -- what's the punishment for simply being here illegally?
If you answered "deportation", you're right. The first time you get caught, you're just sent back home. No jail time. No trial. That's what we do to actual criminals, btw -- send them to jail.
Illegal immigration is the "real crime" version of jaywalking -- to use your drug analogy, it's a underage kid with a pack of cigarettes. The DMV won't deny you a license because you cheated on your taxes or broke the speed limit last year, so why should they care if the renewal for your temporary visa was delayed?
Attempting to limit temporary migration of workers is foolish; all we accomplish is to create an underclass that has no protection of law, because they're so terrified that they'll be deported that they won't even call 9-1-1 when they witness a cold-blooded murder. But we know that it's foolish--which is why it's such a minor violation.
why would they get a license and insurance just because they were able to? They're breaking the law just by being there, why not flout the traffic regs, too? Because most of the "illegal immigrants" came here perfectly legally, and just liked it so much that they stayed.
And once you're actually in the country, with a residence, it can take a court order to get you OUT.
I'm sure it makes you all warm and fuzzy to picture them as "criminals", but that just makes me think that you haven't ever actually spoken with any of them.
Buying from a union shop just ensures you're buying overpriced cheap crap.
From a strict Capitalist perspective, whether or not you purchase from a union shop should not matter at all. If it's a good value -- acceptable ratio of quality to price -- then get it. If not, don't. Unions do not add extraordinary cost to any industry where they cannot justify the increased pay by increased quality. All it takes is one alternative and the downward spiral begins, forcing the union-shop to either raise quality further or reduce price if it doesn't want to go out of business.
Yes, there are cases where union shops are no better and cost more, and there are also cases where the union shop is higher quality but no higher cost. And there are even cases where the reverse of either happens. But as a consumer, you're just being a fool if you base your capitalist decision on which shop is or isn't unionized. You might as well decide based on if the company is ran by a man or a woman.
That said...
You have a bias against unions. Great. Go to town. It's a free planet, and you can decide that unions are so distasteful that you won't buy for them unless you get X% better quality/lower price. Someone else might tack on the same premium for country of origin, or ecological sensitivity of the manufacturer, or they might even be like me and have a bias towards unions.
There's nothing wrong with a bias like this. Just don't pretend that it's anything more than it is, no matter what lies you hear from people who think they need to lie to get you to agree with them.
Am I the only one that cannot stand a single thing this man has ever released? Yes. You watched the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, and have never given anything else he did a fair shot.
Buffy/Angel, Firefly/Serenity, and Astonishing X-Men are about as different as you can get and still be in the genre of "fantasy." Sorry, but if you dismiss them all as the same ball of wax, and you don't have some obnoxious dislike of fantasy, it's true.
Why, yes, he tends to write about characters who are in conflict with "The Man". And they usually have some exceptional ability. And they're usually ensemble pieces. That's because he's writing fantasy.
1: I know Palm is ran by a bunch of Q#$s. Consider that a testament to how well they did it -- Apple and MS, working with actual programmers, still haven't matched Palm.
2:
They don't, for example, keep trotting out the same tired hardware in a new case and refuse to add features people might actually want, like memory protection and wifi. I'm too lazy to look, but the only palms without "memory protection" might be the bargain-basement ones. The PDAs have WiFi, and the Phones don't, because Palm doesn't have the corporate weight to make it worthwhile to include and convince teh carriers not to disable it.
Since your Yahoo profile doesn't mention it, I'll assume that you're not a lawyer. (Neither am I, but I defer to lawyers in questions regarding the law.)
anyway...
Until that point, the transaction is not complete and you don't own the goods. That depends entirely on the terms of the sales agreement. If there's nothing in writing to the contrary, I take ownership of the goods as soon as you deliver them to me (or to my shipping company), and I then need to pay you, either in cash or some other form of payment that you find acceptable.
Now, you can specify different terms -- the goods might be mine as soon as the purchase agreement happens, or they might remain yours until I provide payment. We could specify that payment will be in the form of cash, credit card, check, certified check, or even some in-kind service or trade. If we have lawyers on staff, we'd include a forfeit term in the contract--a little something that I have to pay extra if I'm suddenly unable to provide anything but cash, or that you would have to pay me if the goods aren't delivered by a certain time or of a certain quality.
All that said, the contract is just something that the courts will enforce. If I decide to sell all my earthly belongings and go sit on a mountaintop, and tell my spiritual brethren to pay you in cash, you pretty much have to accept it. You can probably go to a court and get them to issue a judgement, but my spiritual brethren can just hand the court the cash. In all likelihood, the court would even order you to accept it.
Generally speaking, I take ownership of them as soon as I have direct liability for their destruction. If they really are your good sitting in my warehouse, I can
The ODF is OPEN for any application to implement 100%, that allows for clearer communication between applications, and as a result, real living people. Funny, that's the exact same logic used by proponents of Esperanto.
ODF won't be worth anymore than the proprietary format OOo used before it, if there isn't enough added-value that it's worth it for common people to spend the resources to convert. Right now, there isn't -- not until either Microsoft signs on, or an ODF compatible software package is able to reach the level of expert-usability that Office has.
(Tonight's list of what an ODF suite needs to do before it can dethrone MS Office? PDA/smartphone capability, and direct script control of the UI.)
Of course you can. "Legal tender" simply means that it is a legally acceptable form of payment, not that you must accept it.
Well, that depends. Have you given me a good yet? If so, I'm in debt to you -- and you have to accept cash. Or if you don't, well, I can say "it's this or nothing", give you a letter to that effect, and walk away if you don't pay me.
If you don't want cash, you need to make it a condition of the sale -- like how Apple is doing right now. Or how a gas station does when they say "pay first."
We're being taxed and surcharged into oblivion, and we're passing the savings on to you! Yes, exactly.
The only way greenhouse gases will ever be corrected for is by the market. And that will only work if the cost of polluting power rises to reflect the ecological cost. Anything else is, well, pseudo-socialism destined (and possibly intended) to fail.
1: Proofs. A good graphics design shop will have a printer with commercial-level print quality, with, ideally, chemically identical ink and paper to what their usual print shop will use (offset vs. fully digital.)
2: Very careful color matching. Photoshop can match colors exactly to a PANTOME color wheel, which is a selection of swatches of how a particular color will look.
3: Fake it. Design with the expectation that "red" will range anywhere from almost-pink to almost-magenta, or whichever variety yo can get. You know, like how web designers sometimes limit themselves to "web-safe" colors.
4: Don't bother. Go with black and white only, and don't mess with color. Make a design that relies more on contrast and design than color shading, thus leaving you both more flexible in your arrangements, and more tolerant of varying print quality.
Once Apple releases a reasonable SDK, it's game over for the entire handheld computer market. If all Apple does is release an SDK, they're going to wind up giving Palm the biggest PR coup ever.
The iPhone/iPod lacks basic features that are standard in Palm -- copy & paste, an IR-device port, bluetooth, expandable memory, integrated search, being able to schedule a calendar event, etc.
If Palm suddenly knows what they're doing, they'll launch a new Linux-based Palm OS PDA within 3 months of the iPhone SDK, and aim their PR campaign as "don't hack your iPhone -- buy the device that does what you want already." Unfortunately, it seems like they don't.:(
1: It's the FCC that smacks you around, not the telcos. Every single electronic device that communicates in a licensed spectrum -- that is, every useful spectrum beyond about 50 feet -- has to go through a battery of FCC tests. If you hack your device so it doesn't perform as intended, the FCC is the one who knocks down your door and throws the book at you.
2: The DMCA is a copyright law. It has nothing at all whatsoever to do with patents.
3: The DMCA itself is no worse than the "a flimsy lock is still a legal lock" law your local state/town/dirt road has.
But remember - all the races are the same, right? I'm sure when enough Africans have lived on previously WHITE land, the LAND itself will magically make them intelligent enough to land a rover on Mars, right? Since that's the 'official' story: white people aren't more intelligent than blacks, no sirree... It's the LAND that whites LIVE ON, that makes us more intelligent! Nothing to do with our genes, of course... Nope. It's a strict case of upbringing. There are any number of "whites" in Africa who are dumb as rocks (same here too, btw.) And there are also numerous examples of "African Americans" who were quite simply brilliant -- the only reason why there weren't more blacks involved in the Apollo program was racism, plain and simple.
1: Stop. Your behavior is exactly what Jesus railed against in his own time.
2; The country we're in is the one who's economy is tanking, who has a disproportionate share of the world's wealth, and who has a bolder "vice" element than the rest of the world. If actions judge morality, then we're probably the ones who are lacking.
3: A Christian who claims to be moral has utterly missed the point.
would realize that "Linux" and "PC" are as comparable as communism and democracy.
Funny, but you're right for the wrong reason.
In theory, communism and democracy work just fine together. In practice, the guys who are ruled by their baser nature cause enough disturbance, that either communism dies or democracy does. Capitalism works because it aligns the most amoral drives of society with those of society as a whole: for something to displace capitalism, it will have to overcome this serious advantage.
In a like way, "PC" is a personal computer. It is intended to be used by a non-programmer, to do tasks that are relatively mundane compared to classic computing works -- writing, accounting, maybe playing a few games. Linux, thanks to the GPL, doesn't cater to this market very well; the base nature of the programmers prevents them from bothering to make a computer for someone else, and the base nature of the owners keeps them from fiscally rewarding those who would try so.
OTOH, if you said "socialism" instead of "communism", and "home computer" instead of "PC", well, then Europe and the Tivo would prove you right.
If you are comparing it to the average, you should include that word. No, they shouldn't.
In the case where a reasonable person would understand that "average" is meant, then "average" is just a useless word cluttering up the sentence. Its presence or omission is best left to the writer, subject to the needs of the surrounding text and the work as a whole.
when they are on active duty in such foreign countries overthrowing evil dictators and securing those vital supplies of oil upon which they are now less reliant. Actually, it means that the DoD can spend less time defending its fuel source, and more time in battles where they can actually do some objective good.
You must have slept through that whole anti-trust thing, where the Federal government proved that M$ did everything in it's power to break Netscape.
Psst. Netscape is not a competitor to Windows. Never was.
MS cripples themselves when they try and lean on Windows to get IE, or Office, or Visual Studio more market share. But Windows itself -- well, there's been to date, what, four serious attempts at competting with MS, and they haven't even managed to get half the market between them?
BeOS, UNIX et al, OS/2, and the Mac. All told, maybe 30% of the worldwide userbase. Microsoft is doing something right -- or else the "here, you can have this for free" crowd is doing something even worse than MS.
Why is the parent modded "flamebait"? Do you really think someone here is going to violently come to Wal-Mart's defense? 1: Fuck yeah. Wal-Mart is evil, but RFID isn't. I'm sick and fucking tired of a new technology being held up by anti-technology "privacy" luddites. Especially in the fucking tech sector.
2: doesn't matter if anyone responds or not, flamebait's flamebait.
Question: Which pagan deity is Allah? Or else who was Abd'allah named for? "Allah" was a misremembered deity. As Mohammad's followers believed, their people are the descendants of the Biblical Ishmael, younger son of the Jewish Patriarch Abraham. Over the generations the specialness of Allah faded, and he became just one deity in the polytheistic arabic pantheon.
That said, some addendums:
1: Islam is a mature religion. Like all mature religions, it has answers to essentially any question, although said answers will be from the point of view of the religion, and so will be about as scientifically credible as the religion as a whole. But they do have answers.
2: IIRC, "Allah" is more accurately translated as "The God", or "Old God." Like Christians and Jews, they do not refer to Deity as a whole using a common proper noun.
3: You can't get any further in a religious study than "this is what the first followers believed." You're just waisting you time if you try and make a historical case for anything else -- there simply isn't enough evidence.
CD is not an acronym: it's an abbreviation. I do not believe it is a contraction either, but I'm less sure of that. The plural should be CDs not CD's. 1: Yes, it is. In fact, it's a classic acronym, written C.D. for the truly pendantic. (D.V.D.'s are the same way.) Acronyms are a subset of abbreviation, that tosses the absolute maximum out.
2: even if it wasn't, the point of the apostrophe is to improve clarity. The plural/posessive rule is important so as to eliminate ambiguity (Smiths tea and smith's tea are two different things), but most of the rest is just making it blind-stinking obvious. "CDs" could be read as "see dee ess", or "sids", or "cuhds,", while "CD's" can only be read "See Dee's"
The class action law suite should be thrown out, every Apple customer know that this is what Apple does. Apple is no better than MS, in fact, in many areas they are worse then MS. 1: A law suite? As in, a bunch of lawyers working in a group of connected rooms, like in a hotel? Yeah, that's kind of creepy. Better disbar the lot of them. (It's "lawsuit", one word.)
2: This is above and beyond Apple's previous behavior, and even if it weren't it may very well violate interoperability laws. An iPhone isn't a standalone device like an iPod or a PSP -- it's a part of a fairly regulated network, and the FCC has some fairly specific rules as to what they can and can't do on a cell phone.
When you get right down to it, Apple bricking unlocked cell phones is pretty much exactly what the FCC is supposed to stop with its jurisdiction over cell phone receivers. It's bad for the economy, and bad for the network.
After that the next time the contracts are negotiated they raise the rates everywhere and require everyone to use whatever brand of DRM they see fit. And when neither Amazon nor Apple play ball, they give up and come back. Quietly.
Heck, in that sort of situation Amazon and Apple could probably sue "them" for antitrust violations.
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If you answered "deportation", you're right. The first time you get caught, you're just sent back home. No jail time. No trial. That's what we do to actual criminals, btw -- send them to jail.
Illegal immigration is the "real crime" version of jaywalking -- to use your drug analogy, it's a underage kid with a pack of cigarettes. The DMV won't deny you a license because you cheated on your taxes or broke the speed limit last year, so why should they care if the renewal for your temporary visa was delayed?
Attempting to limit temporary migration of workers is foolish; all we accomplish is to create an underclass that has no protection of law, because they're so terrified that they'll be deported that they won't even call 9-1-1 when they witness a cold-blooded murder. But we know that it's foolish--which is why it's such a minor violation.
And once you're actually in the country, with a residence, it can take a court order to get you OUT.
I'm sure it makes you all warm and fuzzy to picture them as "criminals", but that just makes me think that you haven't ever actually spoken with any of them.
Buying from a union shop just ensures you're buying overpriced cheap crap.
From a strict Capitalist perspective, whether or not you purchase from a union shop should not matter at all. If it's a good value -- acceptable ratio of quality to price -- then get it. If not, don't. Unions do not add extraordinary cost to any industry where they cannot justify the increased pay by increased quality. All it takes is one alternative and the downward spiral begins, forcing the union-shop to either raise quality further or reduce price if it doesn't want to go out of business.
Yes, there are cases where union shops are no better and cost more, and there are also cases where the union shop is higher quality but no higher cost. And there are even cases where the reverse of either happens. But as a consumer, you're just being a fool if you base your capitalist decision on which shop is or isn't unionized. You might as well decide based on if the company is ran by a man or a woman.
That said...
You have a bias against unions. Great. Go to town. It's a free planet, and you can decide that unions are so distasteful that you won't buy for them unless you get X% better quality/lower price. Someone else might tack on the same premium for country of origin, or ecological sensitivity of the manufacturer, or they might even be like me and have a bias towards unions.
There's nothing wrong with a bias like this. Just don't pretend that it's anything more than it is, no matter what lies you hear from people who think they need to lie to get you to agree with them.
Buffy/Angel, Firefly/Serenity, and Astonishing X-Men are about as different as you can get and still be in the genre of "fantasy." Sorry, but if you dismiss them all as the same ball of wax, and you don't have some obnoxious dislike of fantasy, it's true.
Why, yes, he tends to write about characters who are in conflict with "The Man". And they usually have some exceptional ability. And they're usually ensemble pieces. That's because he's writing fantasy.
2: They don't, for example, keep trotting out the same tired hardware in a new case and refuse to add features people might actually want, like memory protection and wifi. I'm too lazy to look, but the only palms without "memory protection" might be the bargain-basement ones. The PDAs have WiFi, and the Phones don't, because Palm doesn't have the corporate weight to make it worthwhile to include and convince teh carriers not to disable it.
anyway... Until that point, the transaction is not complete and you don't own the goods. That depends entirely on the terms of the sales agreement. If there's nothing in writing to the contrary, I take ownership of the goods as soon as you deliver them to me (or to my shipping company), and I then need to pay you, either in cash or some other form of payment that you find acceptable.
Now, you can specify different terms -- the goods might be mine as soon as the purchase agreement happens, or they might remain yours until I provide payment. We could specify that payment will be in the form of cash, credit card, check, certified check, or even some in-kind service or trade. If we have lawyers on staff, we'd include a forfeit term in the contract--a little something that I have to pay extra if I'm suddenly unable to provide anything but cash, or that you would have to pay me if the goods aren't delivered by a certain time or of a certain quality.
All that said, the contract is just something that the courts will enforce. If I decide to sell all my earthly belongings and go sit on a mountaintop, and tell my spiritual brethren to pay you in cash, you pretty much have to accept it. You can probably go to a court and get them to issue a judgement, but my spiritual brethren can just hand the court the cash. In all likelihood, the court would even order you to accept it.
Generally speaking, I take ownership of them as soon as I have direct liability for their destruction. If they really are your good sitting in my warehouse, I can
ODF won't be worth anymore than the proprietary format OOo used before it, if there isn't enough added-value that it's worth it for common people to spend the resources to convert. Right now, there isn't -- not until either Microsoft signs on, or an ODF compatible software package is able to reach the level of expert-usability that Office has.
(Tonight's list of what an ODF suite needs to do before it can dethrone MS Office? PDA/smartphone capability, and direct script control of the UI.)
Of course you can. "Legal tender" simply means that it is a legally acceptable form of payment, not that you must accept it.
Well, that depends. Have you given me a good yet? If so, I'm in debt to you -- and you have to accept cash. Or if you don't, well, I can say "it's this or nothing", give you a letter to that effect, and walk away if you don't pay me.
If you don't want cash, you need to make it a condition of the sale -- like how Apple is doing right now. Or how a gas station does when they say "pay first."
The only way greenhouse gases will ever be corrected for is by the market. And that will only work if the cost of polluting power rises to reflect the ecological cost. Anything else is, well, pseudo-socialism destined (and possibly intended) to fail.
In order of effectiveness vs. expense:
1: Proofs. A good graphics design shop will have a printer with commercial-level print quality, with, ideally, chemically identical ink and paper to what their usual print shop will use (offset vs. fully digital.)
2: Very careful color matching. Photoshop can match colors exactly to a PANTOME color wheel, which is a selection of swatches of how a particular color will look.
3: Fake it. Design with the expectation that "red" will range anywhere from almost-pink to almost-magenta, or whichever variety yo can get. You know, like how web designers sometimes limit themselves to "web-safe" colors.
4: Don't bother. Go with black and white only, and don't mess with color. Make a design that relies more on contrast and design than color shading, thus leaving you both more flexible in your arrangements, and more tolerant of varying print quality.
The iPhone/iPod lacks basic features that are standard in Palm -- copy & paste, an IR-device port, bluetooth, expandable memory, integrated search, being able to schedule a calendar event, etc.
If Palm suddenly knows what they're doing, they'll launch a new Linux-based Palm OS PDA within 3 months of the iPhone SDK, and aim their PR campaign as "don't hack your iPhone -- buy the device that does what you want already." Unfortunately, it seems like they don't.
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1: It's the FCC that smacks you around, not the telcos. Every single electronic device that communicates in a licensed spectrum -- that is, every useful spectrum beyond about 50 feet -- has to go through a battery of FCC tests. If you hack your device so it doesn't perform as intended, the FCC is the one who knocks down your door and throws the book at you.
2: The DMCA is a copyright law. It has nothing at all whatsoever to do with patents.
3: The DMCA itself is no worse than the "a flimsy lock is still a legal lock" law your local state/town/dirt road has.
1: Stop. Your behavior is exactly what Jesus railed against in his own time.
2; The country we're in is the one who's economy is tanking, who has a disproportionate share of the world's wealth, and who has a bolder "vice" element than the rest of the world. If actions judge morality, then we're probably the ones who are lacking.
3: A Christian who claims to be moral has utterly missed the point.
would realize that "Linux" and "PC" are as comparable as communism and democracy.
Funny, but you're right for the wrong reason.
In theory, communism and democracy work just fine together. In practice, the guys who are ruled by their baser nature cause enough disturbance, that either communism dies or democracy does. Capitalism works because it aligns the most amoral drives of society with those of society as a whole: for something to displace capitalism, it will have to overcome this serious advantage.
In a like way, "PC" is a personal computer. It is intended to be used by a non-programmer, to do tasks that are relatively mundane compared to classic computing works -- writing, accounting, maybe playing a few games. Linux, thanks to the GPL, doesn't cater to this market very well; the base nature of the programmers prevents them from bothering to make a computer for someone else, and the base nature of the owners keeps them from fiscally rewarding those who would try so.
OTOH, if you said "socialism" instead of "communism", and "home computer" instead of "PC", well, then Europe and the Tivo would prove you right.
In the case where a reasonable person would understand that "average" is meant, then "average" is just a useless word cluttering up the sentence. Its presence or omission is best left to the writer, subject to the needs of the surrounding text and the work as a whole.
Technically, in the USA, the Peoples vote doesn't even matter.
1: only when voting for President. All other elections are direct-election.
2: Even then, it's a choice of one of two slates of electors, who go and are usually required by law to vote a certain way.
You must have slept through that whole anti-trust thing, where the Federal government proved that M$ did everything in it's power to break Netscape.
Psst. Netscape is not a competitor to Windows. Never was.
MS cripples themselves when they try and lean on Windows to get IE, or Office, or Visual Studio more market share. But Windows itself -- well, there's been to date, what, four serious attempts at competting with MS, and they haven't even managed to get half the market between them?
BeOS, UNIX et al, OS/2, and the Mac. All told, maybe 30% of the worldwide userbase. Microsoft is doing something right -- or else the "here, you can have this for free" crowd is doing something even worse than MS.
2: doesn't matter if anyone responds or not, flamebait's flamebait.
3:
That said, some addendums:
1: Islam is a mature religion. Like all mature religions, it has answers to essentially any question, although said answers will be from the point of view of the religion, and so will be about as scientifically credible as the religion as a whole. But they do have answers.
2: IIRC, "Allah" is more accurately translated as "The God", or "Old God." Like Christians and Jews, they do not refer to Deity as a whole using a common proper noun.
3: You can't get any further in a religious study than "this is what the first followers believed." You're just waisting you time if you try and make a historical case for anything else -- there simply isn't enough evidence.
2: even if it wasn't, the point of the apostrophe is to improve clarity. The plural/posessive rule is important so as to eliminate ambiguity (Smiths tea and smith's tea are two different things), but most of the rest is just making it blind-stinking obvious. "CDs" could be read as "see dee ess", or "sids", or "cuhds,", while "CD's" can only be read "See Dee's"
2: This is above and beyond Apple's previous behavior, and even if it weren't it may very well violate interoperability laws. An iPhone isn't a standalone device like an iPod or a PSP -- it's a part of a fairly regulated network, and the FCC has some fairly specific rules as to what they can and can't do on a cell phone.
When you get right down to it, Apple bricking unlocked cell phones is pretty much exactly what the FCC is supposed to stop with its jurisdiction over cell phone receivers. It's bad for the economy, and bad for the network.
I had the beta, I liked what I saw. When I get my next PC or laptop, I'll put Vista on it as a preference to XP.
Heck, in that sort of situation Amazon and Apple could probably sue "them" for antitrust violations.