Seriously. Why can't the socialists let us have ONE COUNTRY in the entire world where the government is not expected to solve everyone's silly problems? I wish the only thing one could get "for free" from the American government was a one-way ticket to somewhere else (maybe Sweden: I hear you can get 100Mbps internet access for a few dozen kroner/month).
The government is not abridging freedom of speech. It is simply not going out of its way to create a red-light district on the internet. Don't be so sensational.
I am saying that they should teach evolution, the predominant scientific theory of human origins, but also comment on the scientific arguments questioning its plausability. That doesn't mean teach about Jesus, or karma, or Muhammad or anything else.
Thanks for saying my original point more clearly than I did. Exactly correct.
I also don't think faith should be taught in schools, and I also think that Intelligent Design is unprovable. However, I think you're making a leap of logic.
Intelligent Design is a collection of holes in evolutionary theory. It is very much scientific. It's not possible to prove that these holes add up to a Designer, but that doesn't mean they have no value. The rational response from those in the evolutionary camp is to poke around at the holes and see if they can't be resolved. Do science! In all likelihood, many of the holes will be filled by new discoveries and the better understanding of our world that comes with time.
Teach the critique of evolution. Teach that we don't know how some things work. In a science class, don't teach that these mean there must be a Designer. Is this unreasonable?
You make a good point, and choice is good, yadda yadda, but I wish the open source world could pick one toolkit. It makes sense to me that some people like Xfce and some people like GNOME. I love that Xfce gains from GNOME's improvements to the GTK+ toolkit. GNOME and KDE using different toolkits is unfortunate, though I don't know what could be done about it.
Rainstorm, besides the math error you've already acknowledged, I think you're making one other error. My internet access is $40/month also (for 4mbps down). Five years from now, I expect the private sector to provide much cheaper and faster internet access than that.
Let's say 10 years ago most people were on 56kbps dial-up for $20/month. By my calculations, that's about 36 times more expensive ($/bps) than my service today. Taking the square root of 36 (because we are projecting five years out instead of ten), and projecting a price-performance trajectory at the same rate, I expect that prices will be 6 times cheaper five years from now. By that, I mean that either you will be able to get 24mbps service for $40/month, or you will be able to 4mbps service for $6.67/month, or some other configuration that is just as cheap per bps.
$25/month five years from now does not appear to me to be the bargain you think it is when compared to the private sector. And this assumes a heavily regulated telecom industry! If we took the shackles off of the smaller players, we could see some stiff competition and genuine innovation that might push prices for consumers down even further.
IAAE. Ignoring the other tyrannies of the Chinese government (as you do)...
Your reasoning is based on numerous fallacies. The biggest is that you are calling the Chinese economy "top-down". The top-down approach impoverished the Soviet Union, and would do the same to China. China professes to being a Communist, top-down economy, but it's not true. There is quite a bit of free enterprise carried on in addition to the state-owned version. This is where the growth is coming from.
The Chinese economy is a hybrid. It's a "both directions" economy. The top-down part slows it down, and the bottom-up part generates the growth.
It's true that they have had much better growth in China than in the USA, but consider that they remain at a MUCH lower standard of living. If you travel to rural China today, you will see that poverty is widespread. In fact, measured by American standards, the median Chinese is well below the poverty line. GDP per capita in China is about 1/8 of that in the USA.
And then of course there is voting, to which you allude. It's true that in China, people do not vote based on how the candidates look; they vote for whom they are told to vote. I would not consider that an improvement.
Not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but why doesn't Apple open up Safari? I would love it if all the energy that goes into Safari modifications went into Safari development itself.
It would be cool if Apple made PPC motherboards that included an auxiliary x86 processor to allow Mac users to run Windows programs without virtualizing x86 hardware. They could create an environment like "Classic" and just run it off the x86 chip.
I'm not trying to advance an ideological position here, so I'm not going to argue with your reasoning. All I am trying to say is that liberals DO want to ban things. The only difference, it seems, is that you support banning things that liberals want to ban, for whatever reason (greater good, etc.), and you do not support banning the things that (some) conservatives want to ban.
You said that conservatives, and presumably not liberals, conspire "so that everyone must conform to their views of what is right and wrong." This is plainly nonsense. You are a self-described liberal ("I'll take the liberal way, thanks."), but your entire rebuttal to me attempts to demonstrate how the liberal logic for banning certain things is morally superior to the alternative.
I'm not trying to convert you from liberalism to conservatism. I don't really care what your ideology (or lack thereof) is. I'm just trying to demonstrate that your simplistic explanation of the difference between liberals and conservatives--especially since you are using it to justify being a liberal--is unpersuasive.
My friend, I am not trying to flame you, nor did I say that conservatives don't ban things. All I am saying is that liberals ban things too. A lot. If you don't think so, then that's fine, you're free to disagree with me. I, in turn, am free to believe that you've been brainwashed by your ideology.
Your hypothesis, as I understand it, is that conservatives ban things, and liberals let people make up their own minds.
Should people then be allowed to make up their own minds on the following issues?
1. Whether or not to discriminate on the basis of race when hiring. 2. Whether or not to pray in schools. 3. Child labor.
I'm not a racist, I favor a secular state, and I generally think kids are better off in school rather than at work. However, maybe people should be able to make up their own minds on these issues.
As I understand it, it's the liberal parts of the country that are banning smoking in bars. It's liberals who oppose FDA reform that would allow patients with serious diseases to use drugs that have not yet been approved. Liberals certainly don't support changing OSHA's mandate to informing workers about workplace safety conditions rather than shutting down "unsafe" establishments. I think you might want to rethink your hypothesis.
The mistake that everyone seems to be making is conflating the telecom giants with the free market. This is absurd. The reason telecom giants exist is because the telecom industry is heavily regulated. As the industry deregulates, we will see more competition. For instance, isn't it great that Vonage and Skype are now competing with AT&T and Verizon? If we saw increased regulation of VOIP, these nimble, innovative companies might die out and AT&T and Verizon would become further entrenched.
It is apparent that many people here are disappointed with the quality of ISP services provided by market at this time. They think the government could provide better service. That may be true. But I am certain that government could not provide better service than a truly free, dynamic market in telecommunications, and that is what we geeks and nerds should push for.
I don't know if you actually know any rednecks on welfare, but I can assure you they all have satellite TV with 500+ channels. They won't care about the over-the-air change.
Uh, even "real" journalists can be subpoenaed and required to divulge sources. If they refuse, it's contempt of court. Journalists aren't "special" in any legal sense.
Yes. Now would be a good time to (re-)read Scalia's dissent in McConnell v. FEC.
From the beginning of the opinion:
This is a sad day for the freedom of speech. Who could have imagined that the same Court which, within the past four years, has sternly disapproved of restrictions upon such inconsequential forms of expression as virtual child pornography, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002), tobacco advertising, Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, 533 U.S. 525 (2001), dissemination of illegally intercepted communications, Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514 (2001), and sexually explicit cable programming, United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc., 529 U.S. 803 (2000), would smile with favor upon a law that cuts to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government. For that is what the most offensive provisions of this legislation are all about. We are governed by Congress, and this legislation prohibits the criticism of Members of Congress by those entities most capable of giving such criticism loud voice: national political parties and corporations, both of the commercial and the not-for-profit sort. It forbids pre-election criticism of incumbents by corporations, even not-for-profit corporations, by use of their general funds; and forbids national-party use of "soft" money to fund "issue ads" that incumbents find so offensive.
You're confusing your terms. I know you're not a legal geek yourself, so I'm not flaming. Just for educational purposes...
Why are civil suits allowed to proceed at all without any evidence from the prosecutor?
Civil suits don't have prosecutors, they have plaintiffs.
[A]t no point did SCO provide any evidence what so ever of there charges.
They did not provide evidence for their claims.
By definition those are not frivolous lawsuits because the people were actually found guilty!
They would be found liable, not guilty.
With regard to your rant, no one is proposing to cap damages. The Administration has proposed capping non-economic damages, which is just one type of award. This would mean that if you were injured, and you were forever unable to return to work, you would still be able to claim damages for your salary for the number of years you had left before retirement, plus any medical bills you incurred, plus extra for legal fees. It would just cap awards beyond those economic damages.
With regard to your original question, I think the sibling has it right--the Judge doesn't want this case to be reopened on appeal.
Canada is uniquely situated. They could have had French cuisine, British culture, and American Technology. Instead, they ended up with British cuisine, American culture, and French technology.
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Shhhhhh! Don't tell them that! I'm trying to get the socialists to move there!
Seriously. Why can't the socialists let us have ONE COUNTRY in the entire world where the government is not expected to solve everyone's silly problems? I wish the only thing one could get "for free" from the American government was a one-way ticket to somewhere else (maybe Sweden: I hear you can get 100Mbps internet access for a few dozen kroner/month).
The government is not abridging freedom of speech. It is simply not going out of its way to create a red-light district on the internet. Don't be so sensational.
Freedom of Speech means anyone can say what they want (minus the exceptions I listed).
I can give one more exception: campaigning. I can't air campaign ads close to an election without getting them approved. Is that censorship?
I am saying that they should teach evolution, the predominant scientific theory of human origins, but also comment on the scientific arguments questioning its plausability. That doesn't mean teach about Jesus, or karma, or Muhammad or anything else.
Thanks for saying my original point more clearly than I did. Exactly correct.
I also don't think faith should be taught in schools, and I also think that Intelligent Design is unprovable. However, I think you're making a leap of logic.
Intelligent Design is a collection of holes in evolutionary theory. It is very much scientific. It's not possible to prove that these holes add up to a Designer, but that doesn't mean they have no value. The rational response from those in the evolutionary camp is to poke around at the holes and see if they can't be resolved. Do science! In all likelihood, many of the holes will be filled by new discoveries and the better understanding of our world that comes with time.
Teach the critique of evolution. Teach that we don't know how some things work. In a science class, don't teach that these mean there must be a Designer. Is this unreasonable?
You make a good point, and choice is good, yadda yadda, but I wish the open source world could pick one toolkit. It makes sense to me that some people like Xfce and some people like GNOME. I love that Xfce gains from GNOME's improvements to the GTK+ toolkit. GNOME and KDE using different toolkits is unfortunate, though I don't know what could be done about it.
Rainstorm, besides the math error you've already acknowledged, I think you're making one other error. My internet access is $40/month also (for 4mbps down). Five years from now, I expect the private sector to provide much cheaper and faster internet access than that.
Let's say 10 years ago most people were on 56kbps dial-up for $20/month. By my calculations, that's about 36 times more expensive ($/bps) than my service today. Taking the square root of 36 (because we are projecting five years out instead of ten), and projecting a price-performance trajectory at the same rate, I expect that prices will be 6 times cheaper five years from now. By that, I mean that either you will be able to get 24mbps service for $40/month, or you will be able to 4mbps service for $6.67/month, or some other configuration that is just as cheap per bps.
$25/month five years from now does not appear to me to be the bargain you think it is when compared to the private sector. And this assumes a heavily regulated telecom industry! If we took the shackles off of the smaller players, we could see some stiff competition and genuine innovation that might push prices for consumers down even further.
That's rediculous!
IAAE. Ignoring the other tyrannies of the Chinese government (as you do)...
Your reasoning is based on numerous fallacies. The biggest is that you are calling the Chinese economy "top-down". The top-down approach impoverished the Soviet Union, and would do the same to China. China professes to being a Communist, top-down economy, but it's not true. There is quite a bit of free enterprise carried on in addition to the state-owned version. This is where the growth is coming from.
The Chinese economy is a hybrid. It's a "both directions" economy. The top-down part slows it down, and the bottom-up part generates the growth.
It's true that they have had much better growth in China than in the USA, but consider that they remain at a MUCH lower standard of living. If you travel to rural China today, you will see that poverty is widespread. In fact, measured by American standards, the median Chinese is well below the poverty line. GDP per capita in China is about 1/8 of that in the USA.
And then of course there is voting, to which you allude. It's true that in China, people do not vote based on how the candidates look; they vote for whom they are told to vote. I would not consider that an improvement.
Here, I'll help you maintain your record. No need to thank me.
jef@mail.acme.com
jef@mail.acme.com
jef@mail.acme.com
jef@mail.acme.com
jef@mail.acme.com
jef@mail.acme.com
jef@mail.acme.com
jef@mail.acme.com
Not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but why doesn't Apple open up Safari? I would love it if all the energy that goes into Safari modifications went into Safari development itself.
This is great. I'm really looking forward to building webkit myself and dropping the new version into Safari.
It would be cool if Apple made PPC motherboards that included an auxiliary x86 processor to allow Mac users to run Windows programs without virtualizing x86 hardware. They could create an environment like "Classic" and just run it off the x86 chip.
I'm not trying to advance an ideological position here, so I'm not going to argue with your reasoning. All I am trying to say is that liberals DO want to ban things. The only difference, it seems, is that you support banning things that liberals want to ban, for whatever reason (greater good, etc.), and you do not support banning the things that (some) conservatives want to ban.
You said that conservatives, and presumably not liberals, conspire "so that everyone must conform to their views of what is right and wrong." This is plainly nonsense. You are a self-described liberal ("I'll take the liberal way, thanks."), but your entire rebuttal to me attempts to demonstrate how the liberal logic for banning certain things is morally superior to the alternative.
I'm not trying to convert you from liberalism to conservatism. I don't really care what your ideology (or lack thereof) is. I'm just trying to demonstrate that your simplistic explanation of the difference between liberals and conservatives--especially since you are using it to justify being a liberal--is unpersuasive.
My friend, I am not trying to flame you, nor did I say that conservatives don't ban things. All I am saying is that liberals ban things too. A lot. If you don't think so, then that's fine, you're free to disagree with me. I, in turn, am free to believe that you've been brainwashed by your ideology.
Your hypothesis, as I understand it, is that conservatives ban things, and liberals let people make up their own minds.
Should people then be allowed to make up their own minds on the following issues?
1. Whether or not to discriminate on the basis of race when hiring.
2. Whether or not to pray in schools.
3. Child labor.
I'm not a racist, I favor a secular state, and I generally think kids are better off in school rather than at work. However, maybe people should be able to make up their own minds on these issues.
What is the liberal position?
As I understand it, it's the liberal parts of the country that are banning smoking in bars. It's liberals who oppose FDA reform that would allow patients with serious diseases to use drugs that have not yet been approved. Liberals certainly don't support changing OSHA's mandate to informing workers about workplace safety conditions rather than shutting down "unsafe" establishments. I think you might want to rethink your hypothesis.
The mistake that everyone seems to be making is conflating the telecom giants with the free market. This is absurd. The reason telecom giants exist is because the telecom industry is heavily regulated. As the industry deregulates, we will see more competition. For instance, isn't it great that Vonage and Skype are now competing with AT&T and Verizon? If we saw increased regulation of VOIP, these nimble, innovative companies might die out and AT&T and Verizon would become further entrenched.
It is apparent that many people here are disappointed with the quality of ISP services provided by market at this time. They think the government could provide better service. That may be true. But I am certain that government could not provide better service than a truly free, dynamic market in telecommunications, and that is what we geeks and nerds should push for.
I don't know if you actually know any rednecks on welfare, but I can assure you they all have satellite TV with 500+ channels. They won't care about the over-the-air change.
Can't you map F14-F16 to mouse buttons 4, 5, and 6, and then just set expose to use those mouse buttons?
Yes, but you never did learn to cook.
Uh, even "real" journalists can be subpoenaed and required to divulge sources. If they refuse, it's contempt of court. Journalists aren't "special" in any legal sense.
From the beginning of the opinion:
You're confusing your terms. I know you're not a legal geek yourself, so I'm not flaming. Just for educational purposes...
Why are civil suits allowed to proceed at all without any evidence from the prosecutor?
Civil suits don't have prosecutors, they have plaintiffs.
[A]t no point did SCO provide any evidence what so ever of there charges.
They did not provide evidence for their claims.
By definition those are not frivolous lawsuits because the people were actually found guilty!
They would be found liable, not guilty.
With regard to your rant, no one is proposing to cap damages. The Administration has proposed capping non-economic damages, which is just one type of award. This would mean that if you were injured, and you were forever unable to return to work, you would still be able to claim damages for your salary for the number of years you had left before retirement, plus any medical bills you incurred, plus extra for legal fees. It would just cap awards beyond those economic damages.
With regard to your original question, I think the sibling has it right--the Judge doesn't want this case to be reopened on appeal.
Oh yeah, IANALBIAMTO.
Canada is uniquely situated. They could have had French cuisine, British culture, and American Technology. Instead, they ended up with British cuisine, American culture, and French technology.