No, he's coming up examples of it happening in real life. He's linking to stories about them that are on the Internet, but these aren't from somebody's blog.
If you're setting a standard of evidence that says "It has to happen to the speaker directly, or someone that the speaker has a direct personal relationship with", then you're setting a bar that's way too high for any reasonable person to take you seriously. The question is "Does it happen?", pretending it doesn't because some guy on the Internet you're conversing with doesn't know personally a victim (even though the "guy on the Internet" does, actually, know of specific victims) is just plain ridiculous.
There's no showdown. Sun supports Android and has said so publicly, just read Sun's CEO's response. Personally I thought the author of the story was an idiot, he could have made his article so much more interesting and just as likely and accurate!
So far as I know, the RIAA doesn't even own any copyright: the studios hold those
The case is Arista vs Does, not RIAA vs Does. In addition to generally being involved in the cases, RIAA is used by many P2P piracy advocates as a somewhat sloppy shorthand for "the recording industry", but this is ultimately a studio not the RIAA that's doing the suing.
You know, I do find it impressive that the "big, giant, scary group of corporations" is the one that's having difficulty communicating its message and the "plucky underdogs" do seem to be extremely good at putting out somewhat misleading propaganda that virtually everyone takes at face value. Part of the reason is I think the recording industry in general sees it in its best interests to allow it to happen - given the copyright holders are being smeared, it's better for their image if it's "teh RIAAs" that gets the mud thrown at it while "Universal" and "Sony" (well, the latter has enough problems of its own...) who aren't directly, in public, associated with the lawsuits.
Of course not! It's just spectrum isn't going to be the major issue affecting bandwidth use over the next few years; creating low power technologies capable of processing the information quickly enough is more likely to be the major factor. And yes, technologies improve, but operators also have to keep making cell sizes progressively smaller as they fill in coverage holes, effectively creating more bandwidth without increasing spectrum usage.
And I haven't even covered the huge increases in unlicensed wireless services available, as systems like FON make it easier to make your own wired bandwidth available wirelessly to third parties without the security and liability issues of open WAPs.
The bottom line is that there's currently more spectrum available than we have hardware to use it, and that trend is going to be true for many years to come as the FCC opens up more spectrum; as existing spectrum used by legacy systems is converted over to more modern technologies; and as operators roll out towers to fill in coverage holes and black spots. I'd say it's going to be at least a decade before we start feeling the pinch.
I think the opposite is true. You'd be amazed how much spectrum has been opened up and has been bought up cheaply because the big players are waiting for the lower frequency stuff to become available. We haven't heard that much about it because the technologies being deployed, WiMAX and UMTS-TDD, are still in their infancy, and because with the exception of Sprint (which is rolling back its WiMAX plans anyway) no big names with big budgets are involved.
We're going to see a spectrum glut over the next few years as far as spectrum able to provide mobile or fixed internet access goes. The 700MHz range will always be more valuable than the higher 2.5 and 3.5GHz frequencies that are currently being provided for internet services, but in a context in which virtually every wireless communications provider has moved over to UMTS rev. 8 (LTE) (AT&T, T-Mobile, and even Verizon are all committed to this), you're looking at nationwide wireless internet access using a commodity standard and commodity hardware available on the 700, 800, 1700/2100, and 1900MHz bands, and presumably some variant, in the long run, on 2.5 and 3.5GHz. That's a lot of spectrum. The real technological limits on bandwidth use are likely to be on creating mobile hardware that can process the information fast enough.
I seriously doubt 700MHz will ever be as valuable in five years time as it is today.
For the nightmare scenario the GGP was referring to, yes you need the combination of angry biologists and a design for an unbelievably successful virus or bacteria. Sure, you can cause some damage with a less potent biological agent, but you can do that today without the need for a genetic Lego set.
Biological warfare is not new. Besieged cities in the middle ages would have diseased animals thrown into them by the attacking armies. Doing this kind of relatively low impact stuff isn't rocket science. The kinds of scare the GGP was talking about are at a whole other level, and if the experience of other "nightmare scenario" technologies is anything to go by, we're really not going to see it happen, at least, not in any way with any substantial material impact.
Reminds me of the periodic scares that we got in the 1980s when the media would report on how a chemistry grad with some household chemicals could easily produce a chemical weapon capable of wiping out all life in a mile's radius from one drop.
It really hasn't happened very often. I think some Japanese terror group once killed people on the Tokyo subway using chemical weapons, but that was one of the few times such a thing happened. We certainly haven't seen humanity wiped out by angry chemistry graduates.
The human body has an immune system capable of learning about new threats and creating antibodies to tackle them. In cases where that system has failed on a dramatic level, such as the plague, there have been multiple factors at work, not just really special microbes or virusses. For a system to survive, it also cannot be ridiculously successful.
I'm not saying there's no threat, but we need a lethal combination of angry biologists and a design for an unbelievably successful virus. The success of conventional warfare as opposed to chemical on both the battlefield and the terrorist's cities suggests that few attempts would ever be made to use such a technique.
I wouldn't worry too much about that. While most of humanity would be wiped out, Bruce Willis would survive, enabling the scientists to send him back in time to find the origin of the virus. They'll then be able to create a vaccine and we'll be able to live on the surface again.
We should probably check with him that he didn't see anyone get shot dead at an airport when he was a kid though, as it might mean something tragic.
I'm pretty sure most Americans are more prosperous than they ever have been. Of course, the responsibilities and expectations of most have increased at the same time, which means it's easy to feel less free and more concerned about money.
You know, what's interesting about conservatives is that you hear the words "cream of the crop" and you immediately think "white people". Says a lot about you.
Actually you did. You claimed here that SP was a "bigot" based upon the assumption that his definition was false (and therefore that the alternative definition was true.)
If you'd not claimed he was a bigot, merely claiming that his definition was no better than anyone else's, then your protestations may have some validity. But you implied support for a "poor and white" definition of redneck by claiming he was a bigot. There is no other justification for using the term - by using it you automatically imply that the correct definition of redneck is such that opposition to rednecks is inherently bigotry.
You tried the plausible deniability route, but you didn't actually know what you were doing and screwed it up. While it's not direct evidence that smart people are generally liberal, it certainly supports the trend.
I don't think you even need to fabricate these kinds of definitions. Despite the GP's assertion that redneck means white, poor, and working class, I've met people in the past who are not white and can be considered rednecks. As for poor, Bill Clinton isn't poor or working class, and is widely considered to be redneck. Eric S. Raymond is (in)famously redneck and rich, and not working class. I've met many, many, people who are both white and poor who are not in any sense rednecks. The only people who appear to believe redneck means white and poor are right-wing nut-jobs making bogus assertions of racism. If criticizing someone for being a redneck is "racist" then so is criticizing them for being a Republican who gropes people in toilets.
The best definition I've heard is Bill Engvall's "A glorious lack of sophistication". Redneckism is ultimately a lifestyle, and a genuine lifestyle choice as opposed to most of the things wingnuts describe as "lifestyle choices". There's little reason to be automatically supportive or respectful of people who revel in rejecting the positive and the good, and who do so by choice. Insofar as it's bad to make fun of rednecks, it's that it's a bad thing to prejudge anyone. I've met good people who, for reasons I can't explain, have decided redneckism is a lifestyle they want.
Ultimately though, it's getting off the point. The point ultimately is that smart people tend to be liberals.
The brain stem does have some glands that would be good to keep for 'normal' development, but the isn't the part of the brain we're trying to leave out.
Well, actually, the "part of the brain" we're talking about leaving out is the whole thing, so yes we are and you're making my point for me. But even if we weren't, how easy is it going to be to remove most of the brain except the bits that control bodily development?
One point I meant to add earlier and forgot is that much of the body tends to atrophy if not used, so while the brain may not directly affect it, a conscious brain is required if you want to make a useful body at the end of the process.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with whether someone agrees with me or not, it's just fairly simple: smart people tend to be liberals. I'm not saying all liberals are smart, but the available evidence suggests that if you are smart, chances are you're a liberal. Or a psychopath, obviously.
In addition, you dropped two clues that contradicted your claim of being "smarter than" me. One of these was admitting that you aren't liberal, which increases the probability significantly that you're not all that smart. The other was responding to a point I didn't make, a difficult thing to do given the comment you were responding to had around 18 words, split between two sentences and a sentence fragment - essentially, a very simple comment that would have been astonishingly difficult to misread were you smarter than me.
I certainly didn't want you to have a misconception of what it was I was saying, let alone continue to make a fool of yourself on Slashdot because of those misconceptions. Alas, it appears I failed, and for that I must apologize.
I'm not going to get into a debate about him or his ideas. Suffice it to say, he has taken every single opportunity that he can to attack and insult the United States on the World stage and I lose respect for any American citizen that does anything to help him.
FWIW that's hyperbolic crap, but even insofar as it's true he's been very critical and insulting of the US (what are you? 9 years old? This country can take a little criticism you wimp. Grow the fuck up), it's worth remembering that one of George W Bush's first acts in office (before 9/11 was used to justify everything and anything) was to try to organize a coup against him.
If I were the leader of a sovereign government, I'd be a tad pissed about that too.
Actually, that's the conservative positions. Liberals tend to be atheists or of the opinion that religion is a personal thing. Liberals also do not hate women and homosexuals.
Here's what conservatives actually believe:
Jerry Falwell: What we saw on (September 11th, 2001) as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.
Pat Robertson: Well, Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror, we haven't begun to see what they can do to the major population.
Falwell: The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I'll hear from them for this, but throwing God...successfully with the help of the federal court system...throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad...I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen.
Robertson: I totally concur, and the problem is we've adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government, and so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do, and the top people, of course, is the court system.
Falwell: Pat, did you notice yesterday that the ACLU and all the Christ-haters, the People for the American Way, NOW, etc., were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress, as they went out on the steps and and called out to God in prayer and sang 'God bless America' and said, let the ACLU be hanged. In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time, calling on God.
There's one group of people trying to turn the country into a theocracy to stop us being attacked by terrorists. And they're not liberals. If you see such crap in Kos, you'll also see it condemned by the majority of liberal posters, and you're (by definition really) not seeing it said by a liberal.
Well, yeah, some are born brainless (after living in the womb with the mother's life support mechanism in operation, and with most growth designed to run without brain oversight), but how many continue to live and grow outside of the womb? Even if we were to, as an experiment, put such a baby on a life support system, how likely is it that the body would develop? I assume that the body's growth outside of the womb is in large part due to mechanisms controlled by the brain.
Given the brain manages the body, it seems improbable that you can get away with creating a brainless clone.
(Unless you're talking about creating Republicans! Arf arf!)
No, but seriously I think the technical challenges created by somehow genetically modifying a human to have no brain or a significantly modified zero-consciousness brain are far, far, greater than those that were up against cloning. I suspect that cloning helps us create brainless organ-donors in the same way that the wheel helped us create space rockets.
Concession is nothing more than congratulating your opponent on his or her win. It has no legal standing, if you want to withdraw from an election, you have to do more than call your opponent and wish them luck.
Al Gore conceded to GWB a few hours after counting had begun in 2000, based upon initial reports that showed Bush winning in Florida, amongst other places. When it became clear that Florida was still up for grabs, he called Bush again withdrawing the concession, leading to Bush saying something that lead Gore to famously reply "Well, there's no need to get all snippy over it."
Theoretically a candidate could ask his or her electors to vote for his or her opponent, but given the electors meet weeks after the election, it's improbable the candidate would not know what the outcome of the election was by that time. I believe some states would even penalize electors who follow such instructions anyway.
It's PL/I, which is actually a fairly established, if old, language. Ye olde CP/M (including Atari's TOS and DR's GEM windowing system) is written in a subset called PL/M. I seriously doubt there'll be a problem finding a PL/I compiler.
Because the consumer electronics industry seems to be settling on DivX-on-DVD as the poor-man's HD format. If you walk into any electronics store, you'll find around half the DVD players are "DivX certified".
In that context, it's as silly to talk about refusing to support it in the face of superior codecs as it is to talk about MPEG2 in the same way.
Please tell me which economic policies that Clinton was able to pass after the Republican takeover.
No.
Liberals don't have disastrous economic policies. (Really?)
No, your point was that they do. You didn't come up with examples shoring up such a claim.
In the mean time, I studied the last four Presidents of the US. Reagan's policies were, by common consent, only bearable because the economy was already recovering after OPEC's relaxation of the embargoes. See how many economists will dare to advocate monetarism today, and ask yourself how sane, rational, and positive Reagan's policies were. Does the phrase "Voodoo economics" ring a bell?
The economy tanked under Bush Sr.
The economy recovered under Clinton. By the end of his term in office, we were even able to balance the budget.
The economy is tanking under Bush Jr. Badly.
So the argument "Liberals have disastrous economic policies" isn't matched by the evidence. You see, this is why smart people are generally liberal, they base their conclusions on facts, not rhetoric. They don't throw out assertions, and then when people call them out, pointing out facts that contradict the assertions, simply insult them and fail to come up with a counter argument.
Liberals are defined as smart. Therefore, they are.
No, that's not a point I've ever made. What I've said is that most smart people are liberals. That's true. It's not self-evident, it's just the way things are.
I can't comment upon why you're not a liberal, but as you appear to be unable to understand written English, or draw conclusions from facts, or make assertions and stand behind them, I don't think there's any reason to believe you would be more likely to be liberal than anything else.
Yes, Reagan's ability to become President after the OPEC crisis ended shows true mastery of the economy. What a genius! I also like the way Eisenhower managed to bring peace to Europe by becoming President after Hitler died.
That said, if you "progressives" really are so smart, then how in the hell do you defend your disastrous economic policies and strident failure to understand economics? In that regard, I don't see you people as "smart" at all. In fact, you're 100% head-in-the-sand dumbshits.
We don't need to defend our economic policies because they're not disastrous. Compare Clinton to both Bushes and even Reagan, whose economic mismanagement had the good fortune to occur just after the country stopped being boycotted by OPEC.
Smart people are usually liberal, that's just how it goes. You're going against the tide of history and the overwhelming might of the available evidence in pretending otherwise.
(Notice I don't need to resort to silly insults to get my point across. Also I'm capable of responding to your comment without pretending it means something else, which is an attribute of yours I'd consider something of a failure.)
I'm pretty sure I'm much, MUCH smarter than you are, and I tend to vote republican.
Well, I'm pretty sure you're not. The overwhelming evidence is that smarter people don't vote republican. As we can see, indeed, from Google's employee demographic: very smart people (some of the smartest in the country), mostly liberal.
Sorry to disappoint you, but the evidence isn't supporting your conclusion. Also you don't appear to understand the English language, based upon the rest of your comment, which doesn't have much to do with anything I wrote. Don't worry too much about that, Loundry - the GGP - is afflicted with a similar comprehension problem.
Slashdot Mirror
No, he's coming up examples of it happening in real life. He's linking to stories about them that are on the Internet, but these aren't from somebody's blog.
If you're setting a standard of evidence that says "It has to happen to the speaker directly, or someone that the speaker has a direct personal relationship with", then you're setting a bar that's way too high for any reasonable person to take you seriously. The question is "Does it happen?", pretending it doesn't because some guy on the Internet you're conversing with doesn't know personally a victim (even though the "guy on the Internet" does, actually, know of specific victims) is just plain ridiculous.
There's no showdown. Sun supports Android and has said so publicly, just read Sun's CEO's response. Personally I thought the author of the story was an idiot, he could have made his article so much more interesting and just as likely and accurate!
The case is Arista vs Does, not RIAA vs Does. In addition to generally being involved in the cases, RIAA is used by many P2P piracy advocates as a somewhat sloppy shorthand for "the recording industry", but this is ultimately a studio not the RIAA that's doing the suing.
You know, I do find it impressive that the "big, giant, scary group of corporations" is the one that's having difficulty communicating its message and the "plucky underdogs" do seem to be extremely good at putting out somewhat misleading propaganda that virtually everyone takes at face value. Part of the reason is I think the recording industry in general sees it in its best interests to allow it to happen - given the copyright holders are being smeared, it's better for their image if it's "teh RIAAs" that gets the mud thrown at it while "Universal" and "Sony" (well, the latter has enough problems of its own...) who aren't directly, in public, associated with the lawsuits.
Of course not! It's just spectrum isn't going to be the major issue affecting bandwidth use over the next few years; creating low power technologies capable of processing the information quickly enough is more likely to be the major factor. And yes, technologies improve, but operators also have to keep making cell sizes progressively smaller as they fill in coverage holes, effectively creating more bandwidth without increasing spectrum usage.
And I haven't even covered the huge increases in unlicensed wireless services available, as systems like FON make it easier to make your own wired bandwidth available wirelessly to third parties without the security and liability issues of open WAPs.
The bottom line is that there's currently more spectrum available than we have hardware to use it, and that trend is going to be true for many years to come as the FCC opens up more spectrum; as existing spectrum used by legacy systems is converted over to more modern technologies; and as operators roll out towers to fill in coverage holes and black spots. I'd say it's going to be at least a decade before we start feeling the pinch.
I think the opposite is true. You'd be amazed how much spectrum has been opened up and has been bought up cheaply because the big players are waiting for the lower frequency stuff to become available. We haven't heard that much about it because the technologies being deployed, WiMAX and UMTS-TDD, are still in their infancy, and because with the exception of Sprint (which is rolling back its WiMAX plans anyway) no big names with big budgets are involved.
We're going to see a spectrum glut over the next few years as far as spectrum able to provide mobile or fixed internet access goes. The 700MHz range will always be more valuable than the higher 2.5 and 3.5GHz frequencies that are currently being provided for internet services, but in a context in which virtually every wireless communications provider has moved over to UMTS rev. 8 (LTE) (AT&T, T-Mobile, and even Verizon are all committed to this), you're looking at nationwide wireless internet access using a commodity standard and commodity hardware available on the 700, 800, 1700/2100, and 1900MHz bands, and presumably some variant, in the long run, on 2.5 and 3.5GHz. That's a lot of spectrum. The real technological limits on bandwidth use are likely to be on creating mobile hardware that can process the information fast enough.
I seriously doubt 700MHz will ever be as valuable in five years time as it is today.
For the nightmare scenario the GGP was referring to, yes you need the combination of angry biologists and a design for an unbelievably successful virus or bacteria. Sure, you can cause some damage with a less potent biological agent, but you can do that today without the need for a genetic Lego set.
Biological warfare is not new. Besieged cities in the middle ages would have diseased animals thrown into them by the attacking armies. Doing this kind of relatively low impact stuff isn't rocket science. The kinds of scare the GGP was talking about are at a whole other level, and if the experience of other "nightmare scenario" technologies is anything to go by, we're really not going to see it happen, at least, not in any way with any substantial material impact.
Reminds me of the periodic scares that we got in the 1980s when the media would report on how a chemistry grad with some household chemicals could easily produce a chemical weapon capable of wiping out all life in a mile's radius from one drop.
It really hasn't happened very often. I think some Japanese terror group once killed people on the Tokyo subway using chemical weapons, but that was one of the few times such a thing happened. We certainly haven't seen humanity wiped out by angry chemistry graduates.
The human body has an immune system capable of learning about new threats and creating antibodies to tackle them. In cases where that system has failed on a dramatic level, such as the plague, there have been multiple factors at work, not just really special microbes or virusses. For a system to survive, it also cannot be ridiculously successful.
I'm not saying there's no threat, but we need a lethal combination of angry biologists and a design for an unbelievably successful virus. The success of conventional warfare as opposed to chemical on both the battlefield and the terrorist's cities suggests that few attempts would ever be made to use such a technique.
I wouldn't worry too much about that. While most of humanity would be wiped out, Bruce Willis would survive, enabling the scientists to send him back in time to find the origin of the virus. They'll then be able to create a vaccine and we'll be able to live on the surface again.
We should probably check with him that he didn't see anyone get shot dead at an airport when he was a kid though, as it might mean something tragic.
I'm pretty sure most Americans are more prosperous than they ever have been. Of course, the responsibilities and expectations of most have increased at the same time, which means it's easy to feel less free and more concerned about money.
You know, what's interesting about conservatives is that you hear the words "cream of the crop" and you immediately think "white people". Says a lot about you.
Actually you did. You claimed here that SP was a "bigot" based upon the assumption that his definition was false (and therefore that the alternative definition was true.)
If you'd not claimed he was a bigot, merely claiming that his definition was no better than anyone else's, then your protestations may have some validity. But you implied support for a "poor and white" definition of redneck by claiming he was a bigot. There is no other justification for using the term - by using it you automatically imply that the correct definition of redneck is such that opposition to rednecks is inherently bigotry.
You tried the plausible deniability route, but you didn't actually know what you were doing and screwed it up. While it's not direct evidence that smart people are generally liberal, it certainly supports the trend.
I don't think you even need to fabricate these kinds of definitions. Despite the GP's assertion that redneck means white, poor, and working class, I've met people in the past who are not white and can be considered rednecks. As for poor, Bill Clinton isn't poor or working class, and is widely considered to be redneck. Eric S. Raymond is (in)famously redneck and rich, and not working class. I've met many, many, people who are both white and poor who are not in any sense rednecks. The only people who appear to believe redneck means white and poor are right-wing nut-jobs making bogus assertions of racism. If criticizing someone for being a redneck is "racist" then so is criticizing them for being a Republican who gropes people in toilets.
The best definition I've heard is Bill Engvall's "A glorious lack of sophistication". Redneckism is ultimately a lifestyle, and a genuine lifestyle choice as opposed to most of the things wingnuts describe as "lifestyle choices". There's little reason to be automatically supportive or respectful of people who revel in rejecting the positive and the good, and who do so by choice. Insofar as it's bad to make fun of rednecks, it's that it's a bad thing to prejudge anyone. I've met good people who, for reasons I can't explain, have decided redneckism is a lifestyle they want.
Ultimately though, it's getting off the point. The point ultimately is that smart people tend to be liberals.
Well, actually, the "part of the brain" we're talking about leaving out is the whole thing, so yes we are and you're making my point for me. But even if we weren't, how easy is it going to be to remove most of the brain except the bits that control bodily development?
One point I meant to add earlier and forgot is that much of the body tends to atrophy if not used, so while the brain may not directly affect it, a conscious brain is required if you want to make a useful body at the end of the process.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with whether someone agrees with me or not, it's just fairly simple: smart people tend to be liberals. I'm not saying all liberals are smart, but the available evidence suggests that if you are smart, chances are you're a liberal. Or a psychopath, obviously.
In addition, you dropped two clues that contradicted your claim of being "smarter than" me. One of these was admitting that you aren't liberal, which increases the probability significantly that you're not all that smart. The other was responding to a point I didn't make, a difficult thing to do given the comment you were responding to had around 18 words, split between two sentences and a sentence fragment - essentially, a very simple comment that would have been astonishingly difficult to misread were you smarter than me.
I certainly didn't want you to have a misconception of what it was I was saying, let alone continue to make a fool of yourself on Slashdot because of those misconceptions. Alas, it appears I failed, and for that I must apologize.
FWIW that's hyperbolic crap, but even insofar as it's true he's been very critical and insulting of the US (what are you? 9 years old? This country can take a little criticism you wimp. Grow the fuck up), it's worth remembering that one of George W Bush's first acts in office (before 9/11 was used to justify everything and anything) was to try to organize a coup against him.
If I were the leader of a sovereign government, I'd be a tad pissed about that too.
Actually, that's the conservative positions. Liberals tend to be atheists or of the opinion that religion is a personal thing. Liberals also do not hate women and homosexuals.
Here's what conservatives actually believe:
There's one group of people trying to turn the country into a theocracy to stop us being attacked by terrorists. And they're not liberals. If you see such crap in Kos, you'll also see it condemned by the majority of liberal posters, and you're (by definition really) not seeing it said by a liberal.
Well, yeah, some are born brainless (after living in the womb with the mother's life support mechanism in operation, and with most growth designed to run without brain oversight), but how many continue to live and grow outside of the womb? Even if we were to, as an experiment, put such a baby on a life support system, how likely is it that the body would develop? I assume that the body's growth outside of the womb is in large part due to mechanisms controlled by the brain.
Given the brain manages the body, it seems improbable that you can get away with creating a brainless clone.
(Unless you're talking about creating Republicans! Arf arf!)
No, but seriously I think the technical challenges created by somehow genetically modifying a human to have no brain or a significantly modified zero-consciousness brain are far, far, greater than those that were up against cloning. I suspect that cloning helps us create brainless organ-donors in the same way that the wheel helped us create space rockets.
Concession is nothing more than congratulating your opponent on his or her win. It has no legal standing, if you want to withdraw from an election, you have to do more than call your opponent and wish them luck.
Al Gore conceded to GWB a few hours after counting had begun in 2000, based upon initial reports that showed Bush winning in Florida, amongst other places. When it became clear that Florida was still up for grabs, he called Bush again withdrawing the concession, leading to Bush saying something that lead Gore to famously reply "Well, there's no need to get all snippy over it."
Theoretically a candidate could ask his or her electors to vote for his or her opponent, but given the electors meet weeks after the election, it's improbable the candidate would not know what the outcome of the election was by that time. I believe some states would even penalize electors who follow such instructions anyway.
It's PL/I, which is actually a fairly established, if old, language. Ye olde CP/M (including Atari's TOS and DR's GEM windowing system) is written in a subset called PL/M. I seriously doubt there'll be a problem finding a PL/I compiler.
Because the consumer electronics industry seems to be settling on DivX-on-DVD as the poor-man's HD format. If you walk into any electronics store, you'll find around half the DVD players are "DivX certified".
In that context, it's as silly to talk about refusing to support it in the face of superior codecs as it is to talk about MPEG2 in the same way.
No.
No, your point was that they do. You didn't come up with examples shoring up such a claim.
In the mean time, I studied the last four Presidents of the US. Reagan's policies were, by common consent, only bearable because the economy was already recovering after OPEC's relaxation of the embargoes. See how many economists will dare to advocate monetarism today, and ask yourself how sane, rational, and positive Reagan's policies were. Does the phrase "Voodoo economics" ring a bell?
The economy tanked under Bush Sr.
The economy recovered under Clinton. By the end of his term in office, we were even able to balance the budget.
The economy is tanking under Bush Jr. Badly.
So the argument "Liberals have disastrous economic policies" isn't matched by the evidence. You see, this is why smart people are generally liberal, they base their conclusions on facts, not rhetoric. They don't throw out assertions, and then when people call them out, pointing out facts that contradict the assertions, simply insult them and fail to come up with a counter argument.
No, that's not a point I've ever made. What I've said is that most smart people are liberals. That's true. It's not self-evident, it's just the way things are.
I can't comment upon why you're not a liberal, but as you appear to be unable to understand written English, or draw conclusions from facts, or make assertions and stand behind them, I don't think there's any reason to believe you would be more likely to be liberal than anything else.
Fact: Most smart people are liberals.
Yes, Reagan's ability to become President after the OPEC crisis ended shows true mastery of the economy. What a genius! I also like the way Eisenhower managed to bring peace to Europe by becoming President after Hitler died.
We don't need to defend our economic policies because they're not disastrous. Compare Clinton to both Bushes and even Reagan, whose economic mismanagement had the good fortune to occur just after the country stopped being boycotted by OPEC.
Smart people are usually liberal, that's just how it goes. You're going against the tide of history and the overwhelming might of the available evidence in pretending otherwise.
(Notice I don't need to resort to silly insults to get my point across. Also I'm capable of responding to your comment without pretending it means something else, which is an attribute of yours I'd consider something of a failure.)
Well, I'm pretty sure you're not. The overwhelming evidence is that smarter people don't vote republican. As we can see, indeed, from Google's employee demographic: very smart people (some of the smartest in the country), mostly liberal.
Sorry to disappoint you, but the evidence isn't supporting your conclusion. Also you don't appear to understand the English language, based upon the rest of your comment, which doesn't have much to do with anything I wrote. Don't worry too much about that, Loundry - the GGP - is afflicted with a similar comprehension problem.