ABI, no. But recompiling a 2.4 driver with the 2.4 kernel is much easier than trying to make it work in 2.2 or 2.6...
I want them to stick with the same branch as long as possible, because that means I can easily try cutting-edge kernels to work with weird stuff (RAID 6, etc) without having to switch to a whole new set of userland tools to do it.
Under the laws of their land, the citizens have committed no crime and are still unable to leave. How can they be said to be consenting of anything done to them when they aren't allowed to disagree, or to leave?
Yes, I was talking about different countries. Far more than the few examples I included. Iran isn't the issue here, nor is Iraq, or Afghanistan, nor even China and Taiwan. The issue is quite simply that some people are mistreated by their leaders and have no recourse.
And no, if the Iranian, or you, can't see that mistreating someone who can't leave is an offense against them, you're wrong.
Your philosophy is moral relativism, it's a shallow and fairly obviously flawed philosophy, used only to justify abuses. Look it up and read the rebuttals.
Ask any young girl about to have her genitals mutilated if she fully consents to the procedure.
Stable doesn't mean it doesn't crash - for that, wait until your distro release it if you aren't a kernel hacker. Stable means that the interfaces don't change. That software written for that kernel (device drivers, module managers, etc) will interface with the whole series.
Ahhh, I see. You're mistaking EULAs and usage restrictions with copyright exemptions.
They aren't saying you can't use GPLed software for any use. Microsoft is entitled to take the latest GPLed software and study it, and run servers dedicated to bringing doom to the FSF, or whatever they might want. The *only* thing they can't do is release it to a third party without making the source code available.
It's very free. Wall-street can use GPLed software, orphanges can use it, Bill Gates can use it, Osama can use it. They can use it because nobody can stop them - it's perfectly legal to use any software you are given (or buy, or find). The thing you usually can't do is copy it for a friend. The GPL merely says (in perhaps many thousand words more than it needs - but this is the land of lawyers...) that you must give your friend everything that was given to you - including the source code - so that he has the same freedoms you have.
To me, that's one narrow restriction. Honestly narrow. I download tons of GPLed apps and I've only had to follow the GPL on the few occasions where I've wanted to modify it before giving it to someone else. I am completely GPL compliant and it doesn't require any real attention. I don't have to keep track of where I've installed software, of what I use it for, or how many times at once. I don't need to sign an NDA to see the source or modify it...
Honestly, how many users (1 in 20,000 maybe?) would want to download GPLed software and release their own proprietary version?
That's the ONLY thing that the GPL restricts. Personally I think the twisting is yours - where you try to imply that that ammounts to "draconian restriction".
Because us intellectual masturbators don't want everyone using our code - we only want to share with people who would share with us. We really aren't blindly altruistic, we have the common-sense to get rid of freeloaders.
I don't mind property at all, but I don't see my rights to use my things as something that you can call property. Yet that is exactly what "big media" is trying to push copyright law towards. They see my eyeballs as their property. They want to sell a movie and know that I'm going to have to watch it in a certain way. Tough I say - property doesn't work this way - that's slavery you want. Property belongs to someone and within the realm of non-criminal actions they're free to do anything they like with it - if they transfer ownership then the other owner can do what he wants with it, etc.
Trying to change what property is, and what a sale (transfer of property rights) entails is tantamount to trying to control someone's life. As soon as toasters won't toast blueberry waffles, or won't toast a competitor's bread, you've been sold a broken toaster that the seller isn't willing to fix or take back.
I fully support your property rights, in a way that even a libertarian would agree with. What's yours is *yours*. My rights stop where yours start and I can't control your property at all until it's my property and then your rights stop. If you write code that you want to own, fine. Don't sell it to someone and they won't do something with it that you don't like.
I like the concept of property and am certainly not looking to abolish it. My goal is to enforce the tradition of property - that the owner controls it.
Strange, they'd consider it an act of war even if the only thing done was to offer all of their citizens a chance to relocate to an area where their religious and secular leaders weren't in a position of power.
Technically these people have committed no crime, so why would their leaders refuse to let them leave? What are they being punished for?
Compare this to actual free countries where culture is being offered to its residents, not forced on them with the barrel of a gun. Go to Canada, or Switzerland, or Australia, or most other countries, and stand on a street corner and offer free tickets to your country. Nobody will stop you. The government might investigate and enforce honest advertising laws, and issue travel advisories, but they wouldn't actually stop people from going.
If people don't have an honest and reasonable chance to leave, you can't say that they actually agree to anything.
Personally, I highly doubt that anyone agrees to be sentenced to death for being raped, or agrees to be drafted into a war they disagree with, or agrees to genital mutilation...
Or perhaps you believe that the East-Germans who were killed in the mine field, or shot by the guards, or killed by the dog, or otherwise died trying to escape from their birth country were okay with this?
The only people who support those systems are those who benefit from them. I'm sure 95% of the rest would gladly accept being relocated to a neutral area where they can decide for themselves (without stupid religious leaders or nasty dictators to interfere) what parts of their culture they really care about.
Why did you upgrade to 2.6.8? Was it the version shipped with your distro? Did you require it to fix a specific problem? A new kernel version is *not* like a new game. It's not something you have to run out.
Stable in kernel speak means stable interfaces - as in you can code against any 2.6.x interchangably. Of course they can't guarantee that new code doesn't have any consequences so that's why they don't say "Hey Newbies! Come get your brand-new and untested kernel!"
It really is better - it means that because the new code is being developed as part of a kernel in mass use it means that it's easier for the new features to be stabilized. It means that if you really do need 2.6.8 you can get it by the time 2.6.10 is out, as opposed to if you needed a feature from 2.7.8 - you might have to wait till 2.8 is out, or until RedHat or someone else goes to probably no small ammount of work to backport it to the older kernel.
The only problem with this development model is that because new dev kernels are compatible with stable ones there's less of a technical barrier which means that average users try these kernels without understanding the consequences.
He can't make copies, but if he modifies the one copy that he owns, he can distribute it that way.
This is what confuses most people. They've got the idea that their copyright means they control all the copies. Really, all they control is the creation of the copies. Once the copy is created there are only a very few things that are prohibited.
Well, EULAs also confuse people who seem to think that you don't actually have to have been told about a contract beforehand for it to be binding... That's another post though.
I'm going to have to agree with the AC, though he went a bit overboard.
I've never found school to encourage you to learn, it always seems to be about agreeing with the teacher. I've had a few teachers who seem interested in expanding their horizons - by which I mean exploring outside of the book. They're notable because the other teachers weren't.
I think this is understandable because I also agree with the statement about most people being in school for the paper. If you want to learn there are a lot of ways to do it, university being one of the worst. It's expensive, it's very time consuming, and it's all geared towards getting people a degree. How often do you hear of someone taking a few university courses because they just happen to like some subject?
Everyone I see in school is doing it for the paper - the number of exceptions is countable on one hand. Those people may also want to learn, but the extra 30% wage and the increased demand is the primary reason. There's also the stigma in many circles from not having a degree.
With all the incentive to have a piece of paper, and the incentive to charge $40k a year for the paper, why wouldn't schools embrace standardized tests and simplistic courses? Why wouldn't people cheat, if what's on the line isn't their knowledge of the subject, but rather the future advancement the degree translates into?
Re:I hate college - university and autonomy
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The autonomy is fine, if you really have it. Really, they've got just as many arbitrary policies as grade school but they flunk you without warning and blame you. What would be refreshing is if schools recognized their place - as businesses providing a service, not someone you work for.
Or rather, you should have to deal with the problem. If the highway was there first it makes sense that towns that spring up around it shouldn't interfere.
Build the town on one side of the highway, or build walkways over and sound-deadening berms around the highway. Whatever. Just deal with your problem yourself.
Examine it again. DeCSS is almost exactly like a receiver. It lets you receive with a homemade device a signal/data that a big company or the government wants you to receive in their way only. ("Licensed" viewing, holes poked into coverage range, remote disabling of certain device features...)
DeCSS is only different because is "breaks" what was assumed to be strong protection whereas radio receivers are being selectively disabled in order to provide what many mistakenly assume to be strong protection against evesdropping.
The argument of "but it's still available to those who can demonstrate a valid need" is just a rewording of "only those with something to hide want privacy." Neither are valid - they both place the burden on the individual to enforce his own rights. They make goverment crackdowns on users of these technologies easy by providing a handy list of registrants to start enforcing the rules on.
Actually, this is false. Most sleazy lawyers go out and search for people either sleazy, stupid, or merely clueless enough to be clients in high-dollar cases.
This is why sleazy lawyers chase ambulances. All they need to do is plant the hook of greed, or rightful-payback, in a "client" willing to let the lawyer run the show. But really, wouldn't most people be there if the lawyer showed us "proof" that our mother's car crash was really part of an ongoing pattern of negligence in the maker of the brakes?
This whole coddle the lawyers thing is bullshit. They know what they go to law school for.
I don't know about tort reform specifically, but I think two changes could go a long way to taking away a company (or rich person)'s ability to sue you bankrupt, while still allowing for large settlements that a company can't shrug off.
1) Scale damages between the parties. If A died because of B's negligence, B should be fined as much as B's life is worth. If B is a huge multi-national company, that may be a hundred million.
1.1) Don't actually give all that money to A. You don't deserve to be richer just because a millionarie hit your husband with his car than you would be if a poor person hit your husband. Give the rest of the money to some appropriate charity or research project.
2) Limit spending on court proceedings to what both parties can afford. I've heard a few suggestions on how to do this (both sides put in X% (they decide on this percentage) and then it's split, or whatever). In some way, make the court system fair by keeping on side from bringing in OJ's defense team against the other guy's public defender.
We should also do something to keep companies like DirecTV from suing everyone with the intention of costing them $20K (minimum) in legal fees unless they "admit" their guilt. Something like fining DirecTV the same percentage that $20K is, of their victims worth. But, limiting the legal expenses they're allowed to spend would prevent that scenario from happening. (Unfortunately, without the charming scene of a mega-corp like DirecTV being shut down and auctioned off because they tried to ruin someone's life - maybe I'm just bitter about this one because I know (indirectly) a few guys who got the letters about the smart-card programmers. They bought them for their robotics club, but DirecTV didn't care at all.)
I have to disagree. The maturity of the hobbits was well dealt with - nobody was left wondering if they were abel to handle anything. We already saw them voluntarily go forth into greater danger, even though they'd personally all had plenty of chances to back out where everyone would have understood.
The problems with scouring is that it was ridiculous. "Sharky"? Doesn't it just seem corny? Besides, by even letting Sauruman live everyone is making a terrible mistake that I don't think they'd make. He's gone to the dark side and yet everyone thinks it makes sense to let him live. These are supposed to be mature people fighting a war to save their world - are they going to let one of the major generals in the enemy's war (not really, but for all intents and purposes) live while his forces are still roaming the countryside? They had mostly defeated him, but he still had a ton of orcs (obviously from the sacking of shire) with which to cause trouble.
By leaving out this tired scene, Jackson just sidesteps this plot hole.
So yes, I question Tolkein in putting that scene in. I like LOTR, but it's not some kind of bible, above any criticism. Tolkein had a lot of motivations that were higher priority than telling the best single story. He was religious and wanted to tell a good tale, and he wanted to build a whole mythology for a culture that he felt lacked one. These are the kinds of motivations that lead you to let the story suffer in order to get a message into it - something I feel he did in a few places.
Besides, I find flaws in books written by people I see as great authors all the time. You'd have to be near godlike to write a 1500-page or longer series and not have a single issue that an editor could help with. Why is Tolkein different?
I doubt a kidnapper arrested while the rest of their gang remained at large with the hostage would be allowed a phone call. They simply need to show evidence of a potential danger.
Sigma makes a 12-24 full-frame for most mounts. It's actually quite nice. There are some bad ones out there, but nobody I know has gotten one and Sigma has a nice return policy.
Re:Does /. want endorsements from the NY Times?
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In this case, to me that means getting the state out of the marriage business.
The only marriage benefits gays want are secular - that means getting the churches out of the equation.
Wow! The arogrance in that statement is incredible! Do you realize that you are talking about half the population being disenfranchised by your beliefs?
Was it arrogance to proclaim that the sun did not revolve around the earth? Was it less right just because millions of people violently disagreed?
Those 120M people aren't disenfranchised by having gays marry. Male/Female marriage would still remain legal.
they lose a capability to be clear in doctrine.
Bullshit. There's no consensus on what marriage actually means between the christian sects, let alone between religions. This hasn't killed anyone yet - when it's important to distinguish you specify "catholic marriage" and people can understand the difference.
You may not see that as an issue, but 120,000,000 others do.
And the KKK is upset about blacks integrating into white society, that doesn't mean we care what they think. Bigots will always try to control what others can do.
Re:Does /. want endorsements from the NY Times?
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What you seem to lack is the ability to see that this isn't happy playtime and the teacher isn't protecting your feelings. Often in "real" life, both sides can't be right.
Gays aren't hurting anyone, regardless of the word they use to describe their union. They can't sully a word except in the mind of a bigot. If you think you must keep gays from "marrying" secularly, you are a homophobe.
Sorry, but the other point of view here isn't valid. If 120M people believe it, it simply means that 120M people are wrong. They be wrong if they said 2+2 is 6, or that the sun revolved around the earth. This is just another case where they're saying something that doesn't make any sense - as such, they're wrong.
Look, replace gay with black and try the argument... "We don't mind what they do, but we don't want blacks to 'marry', that would destroy the meaning of the word and the sanctity of a true (white and religious) union." It's obviously racist. But the problem in it is the incorrect statements (that what someone else calls their marriage has any effect on yours) not the target (blacks, gays, etc).
Re:Does /. want endorsements from the NY Times?
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That's not the real reason and you know it.
The law can't force churches to accept same-sex marriages so a catholic/etc marriage will always be male-female.
Civil-unions also aren't intended to offer the same benefits and restrictions as a current marriage.
Gays aren't being offered a real alternative and people are obviously stuck on a lot more than a word whose moralistic meanings are church-defined and in no danger.
Even if the whole issue with these people is not wanting a shift in the vernacular, it's a pretty pathetic way to justify voting against a very imporant right for gays.
Simply use lights in the IR range - then use a half-silvered mirror design to pick up the flickering IR light (different frequency and flicker rate for each spotlight) and record the cues separately from the visible image. This way you wouldn't ruin the main image just to be able to make it 3D.
Re:Does /. want endorsements from the NY Times?
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Sorry, but trying to run someone's life according to your religion seems ignorant. If over half the population tries to do this (to be fair, a large number of Bush supporters weren't voting the gay issue) then it seems that they are all being ignorant. Behavior doesn't become reasonable just because a lot of people do it.
It may not be polite to point this out, but they're the ones who made an issue of their religion. Keep it behind closed doors and I won't mention it.
I don't want a dictatorship, anymore than people who wanted racial equality to be made part of the constitution wanted a dictatorship.
And no, the issue *is* that simple. What two consenting adults people do between themselves is none of your concern. I assume you'd complain if I tried to get a law passed that forbid religious ceremonies between consenting adults...
How long do I have to listen to the same religion-based arguments before I can dismiss them?
No. Not unless he ordered the army to fight an unpopular, pointless, and mishandled war like Vietnam or Iraq v2.
The issue is that Bush specifically did everything possible to avoid being sent into battle and then orders troops to do what he was afraid of. Clinton was a weenie as well, but at least he let the troops use cruise missiles for the most part.
Lest you think I'm just a democrat, I think Bush Sr. paid his dues - there's no question he was in WW2. Junior's just a hypocritical coward.
Re:Does /. want endorsements from the NY Times?
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You're just upset because I'm right. There's *no* reason why some gay guys getting married is going to disrupt your little atomic family. People who vote against gay marriage are doing it because of religion - by definition, an irrational decision.
I personally don't give a flying fuck about gay marriage, it's not my issue. But I can see that there are two classes voting for it, gays and people who believe the state shouldn't regulate sexuality, and one class of people voting for it, the conservative religious right-wing. I see the right of gays to do what they want *FAR* outweighing the "right" of religious people to make everyone else follow their religion.
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ABI, no. But recompiling a 2.4 driver with the 2.4 kernel is much easier than trying to make it work in 2.2 or 2.6...
I want them to stick with the same branch as long as possible, because that means I can easily try cutting-edge kernels to work with weird stuff (RAID 6, etc) without having to switch to a whole new set of userland tools to do it.
Under the laws of their land, the citizens have committed no crime and are still unable to leave. How can they be said to be consenting of anything done to them when they aren't allowed to disagree, or to leave?
Yes, I was talking about different countries. Far more than the few examples I included. Iran isn't the issue here, nor is Iraq, or Afghanistan, nor even China and Taiwan. The issue is quite simply that some people are mistreated by their leaders and have no recourse.
And no, if the Iranian, or you, can't see that mistreating someone who can't leave is an offense against them, you're wrong.
Your philosophy is moral relativism, it's a shallow and fairly obviously flawed philosophy, used only to justify abuses. Look it up and read the rebuttals.
Ask any young girl about to have her genitals mutilated if she fully consents to the procedure.
Stable doesn't mean it doesn't crash - for that, wait until your distro release it if you aren't a kernel hacker. Stable means that the interfaces don't change. That software written for that kernel (device drivers, module managers, etc) will interface with the whole series.
Ahhh, I see. You're mistaking EULAs and usage restrictions with copyright exemptions.
They aren't saying you can't use GPLed software for any use. Microsoft is entitled to take the latest GPLed software and study it, and run servers dedicated to bringing doom to the FSF, or whatever they might want. The *only* thing they can't do is release it to a third party without making the source code available.
It's very free. Wall-street can use GPLed software, orphanges can use it, Bill Gates can use it, Osama can use it. They can use it because nobody can stop them - it's perfectly legal to use any software you are given (or buy, or find). The thing you usually can't do is copy it for a friend. The GPL merely says (in perhaps many thousand words more than it needs - but this is the land of lawyers...) that you must give your friend everything that was given to you - including the source code - so that he has the same freedoms you have.
To me, that's one narrow restriction. Honestly narrow. I download tons of GPLed apps and I've only had to follow the GPL on the few occasions where I've wanted to modify it before giving it to someone else. I am completely GPL compliant and it doesn't require any real attention. I don't have to keep track of where I've installed software, of what I use it for, or how many times at once. I don't need to sign an NDA to see the source or modify it...
Honestly, how many users (1 in 20,000 maybe?) would want to download GPLed software and release their own proprietary version?
That's the ONLY thing that the GPL restricts. Personally I think the twisting is yours - where you try to imply that that ammounts to "draconian restriction".
Because us intellectual masturbators don't want everyone using our code - we only want to share with people who would share with us. We really aren't blindly altruistic, we have the common-sense to get rid of freeloaders.
I don't mind property at all, but I don't see my rights to use my things as something that you can call property. Yet that is exactly what "big media" is trying to push copyright law towards. They see my eyeballs as their property. They want to sell a movie and know that I'm going to have to watch it in a certain way. Tough I say - property doesn't work this way - that's slavery you want. Property belongs to someone and within the realm of non-criminal actions they're free to do anything they like with it - if they transfer ownership then the other owner can do what he wants with it, etc.
Trying to change what property is, and what a sale (transfer of property rights) entails is tantamount to trying to control someone's life. As soon as toasters won't toast blueberry waffles, or won't toast a competitor's bread, you've been sold a broken toaster that the seller isn't willing to fix or take back.
I fully support your property rights, in a way that even a libertarian would agree with. What's yours is *yours*. My rights stop where yours start and I can't control your property at all until it's my property and then your rights stop. If you write code that you want to own, fine. Don't sell it to someone and they won't do something with it that you don't like.
I like the concept of property and am certainly not looking to abolish it. My goal is to enforce the tradition of property - that the owner controls it.
Strange, they'd consider it an act of war even if the only thing done was to offer all of their citizens a chance to relocate to an area where their religious and secular leaders weren't in a position of power.
Technically these people have committed no crime, so why would their leaders refuse to let them leave? What are they being punished for?
Compare this to actual free countries where culture is being offered to its residents, not forced on them with the barrel of a gun. Go to Canada, or Switzerland, or Australia, or most other countries, and stand on a street corner and offer free tickets to your country. Nobody will stop you. The government might investigate and enforce honest advertising laws, and issue travel advisories, but they wouldn't actually stop people from going.
If people don't have an honest and reasonable chance to leave, you can't say that they actually agree to anything.
Personally, I highly doubt that anyone agrees to be sentenced to death for being raped, or agrees to be drafted into a war they disagree with, or agrees to genital mutilation...
Or perhaps you believe that the East-Germans who were killed in the mine field, or shot by the guards, or killed by the dog, or otherwise died trying to escape from their birth country were okay with this?
The only people who support those systems are those who benefit from them. I'm sure 95% of the rest would gladly accept being relocated to a neutral area where they can decide for themselves (without stupid religious leaders or nasty dictators to interfere) what parts of their culture they really care about.
Why did you upgrade to 2.6.8? Was it the version shipped with your distro? Did you require it to fix a specific problem? A new kernel version is *not* like a new game. It's not something you have to run out.
Stable in kernel speak means stable interfaces - as in you can code against any 2.6.x interchangably. Of course they can't guarantee that new code doesn't have any consequences so that's why they don't say "Hey Newbies! Come get your brand-new and untested kernel!"
It really is better - it means that because the new code is being developed as part of a kernel in mass use it means that it's easier for the new features to be stabilized. It means that if you really do need 2.6.8 you can get it by the time 2.6.10 is out, as opposed to if you needed a feature from 2.7.8 - you might have to wait till 2.8 is out, or until RedHat or someone else goes to probably no small ammount of work to backport it to the older kernel.
The only problem with this development model is that because new dev kernels are compatible with stable ones there's less of a technical barrier which means that average users try these kernels without understanding the consequences.
He can't make copies, but if he modifies the one copy that he owns, he can distribute it that way.
This is what confuses most people. They've got the idea that their copyright means they control all the copies. Really, all they control is the creation of the copies. Once the copy is created there are only a very few things that are prohibited.
Well, EULAs also confuse people who seem to think that you don't actually have to have been told about a contract beforehand for it to be binding... That's another post though.
I'm going to have to agree with the AC, though he went a bit overboard.
I've never found school to encourage you to learn, it always seems to be about agreeing with the teacher. I've had a few teachers who seem interested in expanding their horizons - by which I mean exploring outside of the book. They're notable because the other teachers weren't.
I think this is understandable because I also agree with the statement about most people being in school for the paper. If you want to learn there are a lot of ways to do it, university being one of the worst. It's expensive, it's very time consuming, and it's all geared towards getting people a degree. How often do you hear of someone taking a few university courses because they just happen to like some subject?
Everyone I see in school is doing it for the paper - the number of exceptions is countable on one hand. Those people may also want to learn, but the extra 30% wage and the increased demand is the primary reason. There's also the stigma in many circles from not having a degree.
With all the incentive to have a piece of paper, and the incentive to charge $40k a year for the paper, why wouldn't schools embrace standardized tests and simplistic courses? Why wouldn't people cheat, if what's on the line isn't their knowledge of the subject, but rather the future advancement the degree translates into?
The autonomy is fine, if you really have it. Really, they've got just as many arbitrary policies as grade school but they flunk you without warning and blame you. What would be refreshing is if schools recognized their place - as businesses providing a service, not someone you work for.
Yes.
Or rather, you should have to deal with the problem. If the highway was there first it makes sense that towns that spring up around it shouldn't interfere.
Build the town on one side of the highway, or build walkways over and sound-deadening berms around the highway. Whatever. Just deal with your problem yourself.
What good is a highway otherwise?
Examine it again. DeCSS is almost exactly like a receiver. It lets you receive with a homemade device a signal/data that a big company or the government wants you to receive in their way only. ("Licensed" viewing, holes poked into coverage range, remote disabling of certain device features...)
DeCSS is only different because is "breaks" what was assumed to be strong protection whereas radio receivers are being selectively disabled in order to provide what many mistakenly assume to be strong protection against evesdropping.
The argument of "but it's still available to those who can demonstrate a valid need" is just a rewording of "only those with something to hide want privacy." Neither are valid - they both place the burden on the individual to enforce his own rights. They make goverment crackdowns on users of these technologies easy by providing a handy list of registrants to start enforcing the rules on.
Actually, this is false. Most sleazy lawyers go out and search for people either sleazy, stupid, or merely clueless enough to be clients in high-dollar cases.
This is why sleazy lawyers chase ambulances. All they need to do is plant the hook of greed, or rightful-payback, in a "client" willing to let the lawyer run the show. But really, wouldn't most people be there if the lawyer showed us "proof" that our mother's car crash was really part of an ongoing pattern of negligence in the maker of the brakes?
This whole coddle the lawyers thing is bullshit. They know what they go to law school for.
I don't know about tort reform specifically, but I think two changes could go a long way to taking away a company (or rich person)'s ability to sue you bankrupt, while still allowing for large settlements that a company can't shrug off.
1) Scale damages between the parties. If A died because of B's negligence, B should be fined as much as B's life is worth. If B is a huge multi-national company, that may be a hundred million.
1.1) Don't actually give all that money to A. You don't deserve to be richer just because a millionarie hit your husband with his car than you would be if a poor person hit your husband. Give the rest of the money to some appropriate charity or research project.
2) Limit spending on court proceedings to what both parties can afford. I've heard a few suggestions on how to do this (both sides put in X% (they decide on this percentage) and then it's split, or whatever). In some way, make the court system fair by keeping on side from bringing in OJ's defense team against the other guy's public defender.
We should also do something to keep companies like DirecTV from suing everyone with the intention of costing them $20K (minimum) in legal fees unless they "admit" their guilt. Something like fining DirecTV the same percentage that $20K is, of their victims worth. But, limiting the legal expenses they're allowed to spend would prevent that scenario from happening. (Unfortunately, without the charming scene of a mega-corp like DirecTV being shut down and auctioned off because they tried to ruin someone's life - maybe I'm just bitter about this one because I know (indirectly) a few guys who got the letters about the smart-card programmers. They bought them for their robotics club, but DirecTV didn't care at all.)
I have to disagree. The maturity of the hobbits was well dealt with - nobody was left wondering if they were abel to handle anything. We already saw them voluntarily go forth into greater danger, even though they'd personally all had plenty of chances to back out where everyone would have understood.
The problems with scouring is that it was ridiculous. "Sharky"? Doesn't it just seem corny? Besides, by even letting Sauruman live everyone is making a terrible mistake that I don't think they'd make. He's gone to the dark side and yet everyone thinks it makes sense to let him live. These are supposed to be mature people fighting a war to save their world - are they going to let one of the major generals in the enemy's war (not really, but for all intents and purposes) live while his forces are still roaming the countryside? They had mostly defeated him, but he still had a ton of orcs (obviously from the sacking of shire) with which to cause trouble.
By leaving out this tired scene, Jackson just sidesteps this plot hole.
So yes, I question Tolkein in putting that scene in. I like LOTR, but it's not some kind of bible, above any criticism. Tolkein had a lot of motivations that were higher priority than telling the best single story. He was religious and wanted to tell a good tale, and he wanted to build a whole mythology for a culture that he felt lacked one. These are the kinds of motivations that lead you to let the story suffer in order to get a message into it - something I feel he did in a few places.
Besides, I find flaws in books written by people I see as great authors all the time. You'd have to be near godlike to write a 1500-page or longer series and not have a single issue that an editor could help with. Why is Tolkein different?
I doubt a kidnapper arrested while the rest of their gang remained at large with the hostage would be allowed a phone call. They simply need to show evidence of a potential danger.
Sigma makes a 12-24 full-frame for most mounts. It's actually quite nice. There are some bad ones out there, but nobody I know has gotten one and Sigma has a nice return policy.
In this case, to me that means getting the state out of the marriage business.
The only marriage benefits gays want are secular - that means getting the churches out of the equation.
Wow! The arogrance in that statement is incredible! Do you realize that you are talking about half the population being disenfranchised by your beliefs?
Was it arrogance to proclaim that the sun did not revolve around the earth? Was it less right just because millions of people violently disagreed?
Those 120M people aren't disenfranchised by having gays marry. Male/Female marriage would still remain legal.
they lose a capability to be clear in doctrine.
Bullshit. There's no consensus on what marriage actually means between the christian sects, let alone between religions. This hasn't killed anyone yet - when it's important to distinguish you specify "catholic marriage" and people can understand the difference.
You may not see that as an issue, but 120,000,000 others do.
And the KKK is upset about blacks integrating into white society, that doesn't mean we care what they think. Bigots will always try to control what others can do.
What you seem to lack is the ability to see that this isn't happy playtime and the teacher isn't protecting your feelings. Often in "real" life, both sides can't be right.
Gays aren't hurting anyone, regardless of the word they use to describe their union. They can't sully a word except in the mind of a bigot. If you think you must keep gays from "marrying" secularly, you are a homophobe.
Sorry, but the other point of view here isn't valid. If 120M people believe it, it simply means that 120M people are wrong. They be wrong if they said 2+2 is 6, or that the sun revolved around the earth. This is just another case where they're saying something that doesn't make any sense - as such, they're wrong.
Look, replace gay with black and try the argument... "We don't mind what they do, but we don't want blacks to 'marry', that would destroy the meaning of the word and the sanctity of a true (white and religious) union." It's obviously racist. But the problem in it is the incorrect statements (that what someone else calls their marriage has any effect on yours) not the target (blacks, gays, etc).
That's not the real reason and you know it.
The law can't force churches to accept same-sex marriages so a catholic/etc marriage will always be male-female.
Civil-unions also aren't intended to offer the same benefits and restrictions as a current marriage.
Gays aren't being offered a real alternative and people are obviously stuck on a lot more than a word whose moralistic meanings are church-defined and in no danger.
Even if the whole issue with these people is not wanting a shift in the vernacular, it's a pretty pathetic way to justify voting against a very imporant right for gays.
Simply use lights in the IR range - then use a half-silvered mirror design to pick up the flickering IR light (different frequency and flicker rate for each spotlight) and record the cues separately from the visible image. This way you wouldn't ruin the main image just to be able to make it 3D.
Sorry, but trying to run someone's life according to your religion seems ignorant. If over half the population tries to do this (to be fair, a large number of Bush supporters weren't voting the gay issue) then it seems that they are all being ignorant. Behavior doesn't become reasonable just because a lot of people do it.
It may not be polite to point this out, but they're the ones who made an issue of their religion. Keep it behind closed doors and I won't mention it.
I don't want a dictatorship, anymore than people who wanted racial equality to be made part of the constitution wanted a dictatorship.
And no, the issue *is* that simple. What two consenting adults people do between themselves is none of your concern. I assume you'd complain if I tried to get a law passed that forbid religious ceremonies between consenting adults...
How long do I have to listen to the same religion-based arguments before I can dismiss them?
No. Not unless he ordered the army to fight an unpopular, pointless, and mishandled war like Vietnam or Iraq v2.
The issue is that Bush specifically did everything possible to avoid being sent into battle and then orders troops to do what he was afraid of. Clinton was a weenie as well, but at least he let the troops use cruise missiles for the most part.
Lest you think I'm just a democrat, I think Bush Sr. paid his dues - there's no question he was in WW2. Junior's just a hypocritical coward.
You're just upset because I'm right. There's *no* reason why some gay guys getting married is going to disrupt your little atomic family. People who vote against gay marriage are doing it because of religion - by definition, an irrational decision.
I personally don't give a flying fuck about gay marriage, it's not my issue. But I can see that there are two classes voting for it, gays and people who believe the state shouldn't regulate sexuality, and one class of people voting for it, the conservative religious right-wing. I see the right of gays to do what they want *FAR* outweighing the "right" of religious people to make everyone else follow their religion.