Note that the language of the Constitution is clear and unambiguous and says nothing about the citizenship of the people for whom Habeas Corpus may be suspended. Note also the 10th amendment says (basically) "If it isn't specifically written in the constitution as one of it's powers, the federal government can't do it". I've looked everywhere, and I don't see anything about the DEA, NEA, mandatory federal ID number (SSN, Real ID), or the power to try to federally ban incandescent light bulbs--- yet all these things exist in some form. The feds have been essentially applying "selective interpretation" of the constitution since the mid 19th century.
My favourite thing about the April 1st posts every year, is reading the commens, and seeing that there is always a solid 10% minority who bitch about the April 1st posts.
It has become a Slashdot tradition to have the day filled with bogus stories designed to amuse, and for the most part, they seem to succeed.
If this doesn't appeal to you, I might suggest going somewhere else for your serious tech news for the day? I only come to slashdot to complain. This is the one day a year I get to complain about the stupidness of of having 100% intentionally bogus content, rather than my usual complaint, which is about the 15% unintentional bogus content. Really, it's all just complaining about the chimps they have as "editors". Dupes, blatant astroturfing, misleading titles... good thing they don't pay these guys for this, right?
Yep. Might as well turn off the computer and read a book. The next 24 hours will be nothing but childishly obvious, not-particularly-funny "joke" posts. Hah, yes. "Microsoft to Release Vista Under GPLv3". Hilarious.
The exact same thing happened before, when religious poeple were prosecuting scientists who said that the earth was not flat. When was that? I think perhaps your thinking of the church rejecting heliocentrism. Even the greeks knew the earth was round.
I believe you are wrong here. Evolution has been forced on and indoctrinated into youth today and yet these figures seem to show that young adults are growing up with a faith in a higher power. Interesting that no matter how much science you push on somebody, people still see the beauty and power that surrounds everything in the scientific world that is not definable by any empirical means. People do not necessarily believe in God just because they are ignorant. I consider myself a well educated Junior in college with a well rounded education. It is true that I grew up in a Christian home, but I believe what I believe no matter what science says because of the personal impact it's had on my life.
I'm not about to change my beliefs just because somebody says to be "open minded". There is only one truth and being "open" to other ideas is completely contrary to having faith. What I believe in cannot be proved correct scientifically, therefore it cannot be proven wrong scientifically. All right mods! Nothing says "troll" like a man honestly expressing his belief on god, right?
One factor you are ignoring is that by using old images, they have made their maps less accurate. The idea of a map is that you know where you are and what the things around you look like. New Orleans has been dry for over a year, and you think that an image showing it under water is more accurate? The old images which actually show all the ROADS are more useful for navigation.
Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, but I'd be willing to bet it was simply decided based on quality/resolution of images, and some underling working on it didn't really think about the fact that it the imagery in question is significantly different from how it looks now. I think it's more likely that they rolled the imagery back because the older pics look more like it does now than the newer imagery that shows nothing but water, water, everywhere. The flood images were utterly useless for navigation.
Google used to use newer (flooded) images, then went back to older (unflooded) ones. It's not that they're outdated that's strange, it's that they went backwards. Isn't it fairly obvious? Images of land under 6 feet of water are largely useless for navigation. If the newest images they have are flood images, it stands to reason that at some point you'd want to get some images showing dry land, with streets, landmarks, etc. If all you have that shows that is pre-flood images, your only choice is to go back to the older images until the satellite images are updated.
and for them, we can have either a. your holier than thou scorn at their lack of willpower. or b. aspartame
think of aspartame as methadone for the heroin that is sugar, and accept that some humpty dumpties need it, and all of the evils of aspartame you describe is still less evil than continuing to consume sugar Oh, so now you're changing the debate from "aspartame is harmless" to "aspartame is better than nothing for those that can't control their cravings". Well, that's not true either. It's not a binary choice. Take, for example, stevia. Totally natural, non-carbohydrate sweetener. Currently it's not permitted to be used or sold in the US as anything but a "dietary supplement". Why? It's not patentable. The artificial sweetener industry leaned on the FDA to keep it from killing their cash cow, patented, chem lab monstrosities.
Regular sucrose may be a natural part of our diet, but the HFCS that has replaced it in most countries (you guessed it: because it's cheaper!) is not. Oh, I totally agree. Corn has no place in soft drinks! Still, I'd take the unnaturally produced, government subsidy cheapened HFCS over aspartame.
Now the other side of the coin is that Vitamin C is one of the most overhyped vitamins ever. Small amounts are neccessary for the production of healthy tissue, and that's about it. There is no medical evidence that it helps prevent or cure colds, etc. And a balanced diet provides more than enough Vitamin C. That depends entirely on your definition of "enough". The USRDA of 60mg a day is just enough to prevent scurvy. The problem with vitamin C is that because it isn't a patentable drug, very little research is done beyond the occasional study of the classic wive's tales about it curing colds and such. When you look at the animal kingdom and vitamin C, you can't help but question the 60mg USRDA. Most animals produce their own vitamin C, and only a very few do not. The biological process for making vitamin C from glucose requires four enzymes. Primates (which includes us) share a damaged gene for producing the fourth enzyme. We have the other three, but because we lack the fourth, the incomplete product of the third enzyme is simply broken down and recycled. Only primates, guinea pigs, red vented bulbul birds, channel catfish, and Indian fruit-eating bats require dietary vitamin C--- and in all cases this is traceable to a genetic mutation breaking the enzyme chain that originally allowed them to produce it from glucose. So the question then becomes, "how much vitamin C would we be producing internally if the enzyme chain were intact?" Well, an examination of vitamin C producing mammals indicates that a healthy animal produces and average of anywhere from 50 to 300mg per kg per day, and an animal with a serious illness will generate anywhere from 10 to 50 times that amount. Even taking the low average, it sure seems like a 150kg man should be getting 7500mg per day rather than 90mg, and that doesn't even take into account how you'd need to take 15000mg orally to equal 7500mg self-produced because the digestive system destroys half of it in the absorption process.
See, before we even get to the possible benefits of vitamin C, we already have good reason to believe 90mg/day is an unnaturally low number. We, as a species, suffer from hypoascorbia due to a genetic defect. The fact that it hasn't killed us doesn't mean it's healthy. Not all mutations are good. If vitamin C is so inconsequential, why did all animal life evolve to produce so much of it?
[sugar] increases obesity (stroke, heart disease) and risk of diabetes. Sugar is a natural part of our diet.
aspartame's real and clear dangers to your health are exactly what? About 10% of ingested aspartame (by weight) is converted to methanol, which turns into formaldehyde. Our bodies can handle small quantities of formaldehyde, but it's definitely not good for us.
About 40% of it is converted to aspartic acid. Aspartic acid is tolerated at low levels, but if it spikes to high levels (as it does when aspartame is consumed and absorbed quickly, as in a beverage) it is an excitotoxin, potentially causing nerve and brain cell damage.
Relation to cancers of various sorts are implied by some, but are largely unproven. Studies on humans show no cancer increase, but because aspartame is hardly a quarter century old, there does not exist a human population over age 40 (the age range where they look for cancer correlations) that has had a life-long exposure to it. Studies with rats show increase in some cancers in correlation with aspartame ingestion starting at a young age. It'll be about 2020 before a meaningful study of lifelong aspartame consumption and cancer can be made.
Basically, what it comes down to is that aspartame does turn into harmful substances in the body, but that the effect is probably entirely dependent on the individual's health and the quantity consumed.
Sugar is just sugar. Like any other nutrient, overindulgence causes problems. Personally, I'll stick with sugar and monitor my consumption, rather than lavishly indulging my sweet tooth with a mildly toxic artificial sweetener that may or may not be too much for my liver and brain to handle.
That's a very specious line of reasoning. It's easy to say that you wouldn't have bought it anyways, but impossible to prove such a thing. Nothing wrong with his reasoning. It's impossible to prove the converse, so we only have his word to go on anyway. I tend to believe him, as I have a university site license copy of Photoshop that I use for little more than resizing digital photos. If it wasn't free, you can bet your ass I wouldn't buy it just for resizing my crappy JPG snapshots. His argument stands to reason. The converse, that he would have bought it despite his probable limited need for it, does not.
I see politics.slashdot.org has transformed into a lefty politics section for nerds, even thought FAQ clearly states this section was for US government political stories.
I don't even see US stories here much anymore. Shouldn't the editors follow their own procedures? You misspelled "janitors".
The chimps approving submissions at slashdot are definitely not "editors".
a lot of people see Apple and die hard Apple users as elitist techno snobs. My favorite kind of elitist techno snob is the people who smugly, with a touch of pride, "Oh, I don't know anything about computers. I use a Mac."
Always sounds to me like someone saying "Oh I don't know how to read, I listen to books on tape."
Well, we have a right to copy. However, what about the creators' rights? If you actually look at the long history of artistry and creativity, and the comparatively short history of copyrights, you'd understand that creators basically have no rights to claim any sort of "ownership" of their creations. Copyright was a bargain we'd struck, granting them a limited monopoly on copying for a short time, to give them an incentive to create more. Point is, as soon as these works are shared, we all own them. They are artifacts of our common culture. Who owns the fairy tales recorded by the brothers Grimm? Well, nowadays Disney will claim ownership of many of them, but only because they and the publishing industry have made a concerted effort to bastardize the limited incentive that copyright was meant to be into some sort of ownership. Personally, I find their unspoken assertion of ownership of huge swathes of our common culture to be nearly as reprehensible as claiming ownership of human beings. Creators rights? We're way beyond that discussion now. Right now it is more important to smash the infernal machine of perpetual copyright. The original deal with "creators" has long since been broken. We can worry about re-establishing the deal later.
I had to replace a ~$200 Hoover... The real lesson here is "don't expect a bad vacuum cleaner to do a good job". Price is largely meaningless. Do some research. The Kenmore 35922 blows the Dyson away and costs $100 less. The Sebo X4 goes for $700 and performs worse than the Dyson.
but the roomba algorithm is actually quite sophisticated.
Clearly it's very sophisticated. You can easily notice this when the Roomba twirls around in a position for an hour and a half in areas less than 9 squared feet.
I'm not saying the roomba is bad... it could just be a LOT smarter. You could also try reading the instructions that came with the Roomba, and move your stupid (treadmill? exercise bike?) so the Roomba has room to do its job.
Honestly, you complain about the performance of a $150 robot, but don't even read the instructions to learn its limitations.
where did you get the idea that potatoes require "next to no fertilizers"? Despite the name, sweet potatoes are only distantly related to "regular" potatoes. They generally require very little in the way of soil amendment and can practically be grown in sand. I have no idea what a "brown potato" is, but presumably it is related to the sweet potato.
What more should they be doing to verify the identity of the people they are suing? I haven't followed every detail of these cases, but it has been my understanding that they have had trouble identifying the people through legal means. This falls under the heading of "Not an excuse for filing suit without probable cause". See, the fact that it's hard for them to prove copyright infringement is not society's problem.
Costco. They...have a good return policy. Not any more. Too many assholes were "buying" big screen TVs for the [Superbowl/playoffs/world cup/etc] and then return them afterwards, before the Amex bill came due. It's what always happens. A handfull of shit eating NASCAR fucktards crap in the punchbowl and the party's over.
Slashdot Mirror
It has become a Slashdot tradition to have the day filled with bogus stories designed to amuse, and for the most part, they seem to succeed.
If this doesn't appeal to you, I might suggest going somewhere else for your serious tech news for the day?
I only come to slashdot to complain. This is the one day a year I get to complain about the stupidness of of having 100% intentionally bogus content, rather than my usual complaint, which is about the 15% unintentional bogus content. Really, it's all just complaining about the chimps they have as "editors". Dupes, blatant astroturfing, misleading titles... good thing they don't pay these guys for this, right?
Is it april 2nd yet?
Seriously, all this April 1 faux-story crap is neither amusing nor interesting. What's the fucking point?
Ah, yes. A phone that rabbit-punches you. Very droll. The humor makes me roll on the floor, laughing.
Yep. Might as well turn off the computer and read a book. The next 24 hours will be nothing but childishly obvious, not-particularly-funny "joke" posts. Hah, yes. "Microsoft to Release Vista Under GPLv3". Hilarious.
I'm not about to change my beliefs just because somebody says to be "open minded". There is only one truth and being "open" to other ideas is completely contrary to having faith. What I believe in cannot be proved correct scientifically, therefore it cannot be proven wrong scientifically. All right mods! Nothing says "troll" like a man honestly expressing his belief on god, right?
Fucking shitbags.
Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, but I'd be willing to bet it was simply decided based on quality/resolution of images, and some underling working on it didn't really think about the fact that it the imagery in question is significantly different from how it looks now. I think it's more likely that they rolled the imagery back because the older pics look more like it does now than the newer imagery that shows nothing but water, water, everywhere. The flood images were utterly useless for navigation.
think of aspartame as methadone for the heroin that is sugar, and accept that some humpty dumpties need it, and all of the evils of aspartame you describe is still less evil than continuing to consume sugar
Oh, so now you're changing the debate from "aspartame is harmless" to "aspartame is better than nothing for those that can't control their cravings". Well, that's not true either. It's not a binary choice. Take, for example, stevia. Totally natural, non-carbohydrate sweetener. Currently it's not permitted to be used or sold in the US as anything but a "dietary supplement". Why? It's not patentable. The artificial sweetener industry leaned on the FDA to keep it from killing their cash cow, patented, chem lab monstrosities.
See, before we even get to the possible benefits of vitamin C, we already have good reason to believe 90mg/day is an unnaturally low number. We, as a species, suffer from hypoascorbia due to a genetic defect. The fact that it hasn't killed us doesn't mean it's healthy. Not all mutations are good. If vitamin C is so inconsequential, why did all animal life evolve to produce so much of it?
aspartame's real and clear dangers to your health are exactly what? About 10% of ingested aspartame (by weight) is converted to methanol, which turns into formaldehyde. Our bodies can handle small quantities of formaldehyde, but it's definitely not good for us.
About 40% of it is converted to aspartic acid. Aspartic acid is tolerated at low levels, but if it spikes to high levels (as it does when aspartame is consumed and absorbed quickly, as in a beverage) it is an excitotoxin, potentially causing nerve and brain cell damage.
Relation to cancers of various sorts are implied by some, but are largely unproven. Studies on humans show no cancer increase, but because aspartame is hardly a quarter century old, there does not exist a human population over age 40 (the age range where they look for cancer correlations) that has had a life-long exposure to it. Studies with rats show increase in some cancers in correlation with aspartame ingestion starting at a young age. It'll be about 2020 before a meaningful study of lifelong aspartame consumption and cancer can be made.
Basically, what it comes down to is that aspartame does turn into harmful substances in the body, but that the effect is probably entirely dependent on the individual's health and the quantity consumed.
Sugar is just sugar. Like any other nutrient, overindulgence causes problems. Personally, I'll stick with sugar and monitor my consumption, rather than lavishly indulging my sweet tooth with a mildly toxic artificial sweetener that may or may not be too much for my liver and brain to handle.
Tom You misspelled "janitors".
The chimps that work at slashdot are anything but "editors".
I don't even see US stories here much anymore. Shouldn't the editors follow their own procedures? You misspelled "janitors".
The chimps approving submissions at slashdot are definitely not "editors".
Always sounds to me like someone saying "Oh I don't know how to read, I listen to books on tape."
Clearly it's very sophisticated. You can easily notice this when the Roomba twirls around in a position for an hour and a half in areas less than 9 squared feet.
I'm not saying the roomba is bad... it could just be a LOT smarter. You could also try reading the instructions that came with the Roomba, and move your stupid (treadmill? exercise bike?) so the Roomba has room to do its job.
Honestly, you complain about the performance of a $150 robot, but don't even read the instructions to learn its limitations.