And legally, wouldn't fall under something similar to "willful blindness"?
i.e. deliberate failure to make a reasonable inquiry of wrongdoing (as drug dealing in one's house) despite suspicion or an awareness of the high probability of its existence Willful blindness involves conscious avoidance of the truth and gives rise to an inference of knowledge of the crime in question./not sure
IANAL, but wouldn't it fall under contempt of court? The willful blindness analogy would hold up if it were a case of someone else committing a crime in the White House and the people being prosecuted had looked the other way, but this is a case of the defendants losing the case and simply ignoring the verdict by ignoring the EPA.
It's like if I refused to pay my house payment, and then the mortgage company sued me, won the case, with the judge saying "you bill him and he had better pay that bill", and I tried to weasel out by immediately throwing away any mail that came from my mortgage company. How would that NOT be contempt of court?
Considering that it was slipped in by a Democrat (Dodd) and the person blowing the whistle is a Republican (Armey) you might want to warn people about not purchasing the equivalent "Obama Is Evil" book.
You know how you can tell the party affiliations on a Slashdot story? If its negative about a Republican the summary almost always mentions it. If its negative about a Democrat they usually just say "Senator" or 'Congressman" with no party affiliation.
The White House is planning on vetoing it. I was very confused for a moment. The President defending privacy? Then I read your link.
In a statement, the White House strongly objected to provisions of the bill that would send $4 billion in aid to communities hard-hit by foreclosures, faulted other spending plans and changes in how regulators oversee housing programs.
"The federal government must not prolong necessary corrections in the housing market, bail out lenders, or subsidize irresponsible borrowing and lending," the White House said in a statement.
Whew...For a second, there, I was in danger of having my preconceived notions being shattered. What a relief!
And just like divorce, the one you switch to is lighter weight, less nag-y, and easier to use. In this case it is older but it also has more experience. So you're moving back in with your mother?
It's been established for a helluva long time that the Constitution does apply to foreigners on American soil. The police are still bound by due process, even if the suspect is an Englishman or from North Korea. The Gitmo trick (and the unknown number of secret prisons) was to claim that the foreign detainees were not on American soil, so any Constitutional obligation was removed. SCOTUS has dispensed with that pathetic notion and finally stated that where there's smoke there's fire; in other words, if a detention center on foreign soil is still run by the United States, the detainees should have the same right to habeus corpus as if they were within US borders. This is a victory for liberty. It seems to me that the standard should be, that, if we have jurisdiction, then our laws apply...All of them. That sounds overly simplistic, but it seems like anything else is an attempt to have our cake and eat it too. (I'm not talking about legal precedent. I'm just talking about what the law SHOULD be)
Here's a little thought experiment. The British (or Germans, or Japanese,...) sieze an American. They say that for, national security reasons, they can't reveal why they are imprisoning him, or provide any evidence that this person deserved to be imprisoned. I seem to remember hearing that the Soviet Union did that once...
The most troubling thing is that we have dismissed torture, and revoking of due process, and unchecked government surveillance, all under the assumption that it's ok, because "we're the good guys". Before we caught Saddam, anything we did in Iraq was justified because "we're better than Saddam".
Maybe I'm getting off on a rant, but it seems to me that, when you believe that you are incapable of doing wrong, then that is when you are most likely to do the worst things you are capable of. And, I would never trust someone who said "we're better than Saddam Hussein", because, with a country that truly cares about human rights, you would never need to make that comparison. If you were Jewish, would you stay at a motel that advertises "we're better than Auschwitz and that's an acceptable goal", or would you expect more than that? We should be competing to be the best, but we're now happy to not be the worst.
I tire of people parroting this "rights are only for US citizens" line. Where in the Constitution does it say that it only applies to American citizens? From everything I've read.. including the Constitution.. there are very very few places. The President must be native-born, hence a citizen. That's about it. ESPECIALLY the limits on governmental power enumerated in the Bill of Rights.. no mention of "citizen vs non-citizen" or any such.
Oh, why do I hate America so? Because loving America is a right only given to American citizens
whatcouldpossiblygowrong sometimes seems to be a knee jerk reaction when the story involves food or anything biological, or significantly large. For the sake of fairness, skepticism is asking far more than that one question.
Case in point: Nuclear Power. We know what could go wrong. Now, what is the probability, and the expected damage? Can we know by looking at our existing safety records, and those of more recent factories built in other countries? Which would result in more deaths; nuclear power, or coal power, once you take into account things such as possible meltdowns, nuclear waste, global warming, coal-mine collapses, etc...
Now, a true skeptic may be asking "what about solar/wind/water". My point is, that you have to keep asking questions, and do not confuse cynicism or denial for skepticism.
....But, in nature, we have DNA that never gets used....
In any given code system, there can be lots of code that never gets executed. How much code is there in an operating systems such as Windows that is just there but is never called? What is so remarkable about that? It contradicts your original comment that similarity is simply because of God's "code reuse". It appears that you are trying to make belief in god into an unfalsifiable opinion: God is a sloppy designer who created bad hardware that, for some unknown reason, creates products that appear to be the work of a natural process.
That is not the issue anyway. The issue is whether the code just happened by statistical, mindless, processes, or whether there is a programmer. a). That is a false dichotomy. You are assuming that, if a God exists, then he must have used magic at several very specific points in the process. To continue with the analogy, God wasn't competent to create an elegant system. His program constantly crashes, and he must intervene to get it back into a valid state. Many people, inside and outside of science can accept the idea that a God created the laws of nature and watched the universe unfold from there. So this is not about whether there is evolution or God. It is about whether there is evolution. b). And, if there is a programmer, or a process, then we can learn much about it worked by examining the product.
Evolutionists believe the code came into being by a mindless statistical process and creationists say that just as in human written programs, the code of life was written by a programmer. Just as in human programs, if there is a hardware error of some sort, the program may get corrupted. This is not the fault of the programmer is it now? If the programmer built the hardware, then, yes it is. Why did the fall of man happen? Was it because god made a faulty product and then got mad at his faulty product and then damaged it further in a divine tantrum?
(..The octopus evolved its brain and eyes independently, whereas most other species are believed to have inherited their brain and their eyes from a past ancestor...)
God created the octopus' brain and eyes independently, whereas most other species received their brain and their eyes from the creator immediately. If he exists, then, yes. So God reuses code sometimes, and sometimes he doesn't. This appears to be more inline with a natural process than with a supreme being.
Can you see, that just by changing a few words of your sentence, the creationists view fits the data just as well? You also are using the word "believed". You are certainly right about that, because in both cases is it simply a belief. The data we have is the existence of the octopus. Evolutionists and creationists simply interpret that data differently depending on their core beliefs. Oh. Post-Modernism, now...Funny how the data lead most scientists, who 150 years ago were predominantly creationists to support evolution in massive numbers. If, as you say, it is just a matter of hammering the evidence into your existing assumptions, then the evidence wouldn't change so many minds, now would it? But, evolution is the basis of modern biology. So much so that even creationists are splintering into different groups, with some who cling to a very literal interpretation and an entire spectrum of people who accept science to varying degrees.
The difference is that the scientific view is supported by evidence and the creationist view is supported by an after-the-fact attempt to rationalize the evidence. They are by no means equal.
No. The similarities exist among functional as well as non-functional DNA. It may make sense, if it were a cut-and-paste job for the non-functional DNA to be an exact replica, to be completely random, or to be non-existent. But, in nature, we have DNA that never gets used. It does not code for any protein, and it is similar to other species.
Then, there are remnants of broken genes. For example, most animals have a gene that allows them to generate vitamin C without having to eat citrus fruit. Humans and primates have that gene as well, but in humans and primates, the gene is broken. And, as with most non-functional DNA, our defective vitamin C gene is most similar to that of the chimpanzee, and less similar to that of primates further away.
And then there's the octopus. The octopus evolved its brain and eyes independently, whereas most other species are believed to have inherited their brain and their eyes from a past ancestor. In some ways the octopus eyes are better than human eyes. So, to use your reuse of code argument, God was reinventing the wheel on this one.
So, to use the programmer analogy, God is applying existing code, misapplying existing code (as in the vitamin C example), reusing code that has been commented out, and that he had no intention of using, and in the case of the octopus, reinventing the wheel for some cases. My point is that if there is a god, he isn't a very good programmer.
At best, it's a behavioural disadvantage, but not giving your children antibiotics didn't stop the human species from surviving to the early 20th century, so clearly it won't stop these people from surviving either. Actually, when coupled with the tendency of religious folks to breed like rabbits, it could prove to be an advantage. The genetically stronger genes will survive and predominate.
Ironically, when applied to humans, natural selection favors those who don't believe it. The elightened modern fashion for having few children and expending great resources to keep the weaklings alive is a very poor reproductive strategy from a Darwinian POV. And that is why people who believe in evolution do not worship it or base their values upon it.
The newly skilled bacteria are still e-coli and not some other species, such as coccus or spirochete. So therefore, as usual, this is not a case of macro-evolution at all, but as always, only another example of the amazing adaptability of living things. Applying the word "evolution" to such adaptation doesn't justify the leap to claiming that birds came from reptiles or monkeys are the ancestors of people. I think you've got the question backward.
There is no clear boundary between one species and a separate, but similar, species
For any quality that is often used to distinguish those species, there are exceptions
Most, if not all, of which have been observed, occuring as the result of evolution
The genetic similarities between species seem to imply that the more complex species are often derived from the simpler ones
So, what do you use to justify your claim that there is an invisible barrier between species? Name a line that cannot be crossed, and fifty other people will provide examples of situations in which that line has been crossed before. Of course, it took 20,000 generations for this to occur, so you can easily come up with examples that would take thousands of years to carry out, but can you name one valid reason to dismiss 150 years of evidence?
Actually it sucks. Now the lime won't kill the bacteria on the beer bottle. Yeah, you'll have to put something else in your beer to kill them. Alcohol, maybe. But it's American Beer. Alcohol would ruin the flavor!
Lighter cars use less gas? What's next? Telling people that they shouldn't live 200 miles from where they work? I heard a kind of a funny fact this morning on BBC, average energy consumption per capita in North America is double that in Europe. It's not like the standard of living or climate is that much different, it's all about the culture. It's also about the options. Do British citizen choose to have a high population density, or are they stuck with it? I doubt if any country would choose to cram themselves into tiny apartments, while leaving 50% of the land untouched.
It might be helpful. I misread that as "What about 10% savings in the passenger seat". I thought you were saying to get rid of those extra passengers, because they're weighing you down.
And then kiddy Geek gets a bullet in the head. What's the solution to that one? One of his even geekier friends will build a robotic brain with dictator-seeking laser assault cannon, and an onion-routed bit torrent client.
Personally I'm very wary of installing random non-open-source apps on my desktop. I feel a lot better about something that is in the main Debian repository and more or less gpl compatible.
Hell, check out that daemon tools page you linked:
"Dear DAEMON Community,
it come to our attention that someone released a fake DT PRO version that is contaminated with trojans and viruses, among the fact it is only a DT Lite and not a PRO version!
We cant underscore enough how important it is that you always download from our official sites and affiliates!
Nowadays, and with the popularity of DAEMON Tools, it is not unusual to see such attempts to harm others (and, after all, also our reputation). Rest assured: we double-check all uploads to our official sites and frequently check them further to make sure you get no harmfull viruses/trojans!"
Frankly just googling and then downloading stuff that looks like it could help is bound to lead to a malware infested computer. One of the very clear things that good Linux distros have over Windows is the use of a centralized software repository.
So what measures are the open source community taking to ensure that nobody host bad versions of their software?
The Daemon tools problem was caused by people avoiding the trusted repository, in favor of some other site.
We had one vendor who refused to accept a signature on a scanned and e-mailed document - They insisted that it be faxed. We even pointed out that we were just going to print out the scanned document and drop it in the fax machine because the physical document had already been handed off to somebody else and we suggested that they just print it themselves. They still wanted the fax, so we printed and faxed the document we'd already delivered and that satisfied them. Bizarre.
This may be off-topic, but it reminds me of how my mother-in-law gave me money for a down payment on a house. Because the money was in cash, the bank required us to go to a bank, and have her get the money changed over to a cashiers check, which I then had to photocopy, deposit into my account, and keep into that account, until the day of the closing (when it had to be transferred to another cashiers check). All this to prove that the cash was given by her (which it didn't), and to create a paper trail (which was created in a process that could probably be described as "money laundering").
But they DID accept high-res scans in lieu of photocopies or faxes.
A better analogy would be "if you get in a car and press the pedal to the floor, but the car runs out of gas before it gets above the speed limit, can you be arrested for 'attempted speeding'?"
Actually, Mythtv is pretty easy to set up now, if you use one of the distro versions (knoppmyth, mythdora or mythbuntu). I add a nice pchdtv video card, which does not detect the broadcast flag, and I have nothing to worry about. Plus, I can burn dvd's of my recordings, and many other things. I wanted to give mythTV a try on my media center pc, but had a time trying to get an EPG to work with American networks, such as comedy central (I think the guide that came with myth-TV pretty much said, "find a web page and write your own html to XML converter"). Is there anything really convenient for newbies/casual users in the guide listing area?
Lawsuits and common sense should get rid of these devices. They are going to accuse people of horrible crimes with all the accuracy, security and correctness of Microsoft Windows.
I could imagine the political controversy that would ensue.
Plaintiff: That device keeps falsely accusing me of pedophilia.
Hannity: Why should we believe you. You're a pedophile!
Plaintiff: But I didn't do it.
Hannity: How could you! They're children and you robbed them of their...
Plaintiff: But I didn't do it.
Hannity: with the groping and the touching and...
If the Supreme Court doesn't stop it, then it will be controversial for a week and then be trusted unquestioningly.
More to the point, other countries (like mine) should look to England's failed example and refuse to follow it. Nah. They'll look to England's failed example and say "ours will work because we're gonna privatize it"
Slashdot Mirror
i.e. deliberate failure to make a reasonable inquiry of wrongdoing (as drug dealing in one's house) despite suspicion or an awareness of the high probability of its existence Willful blindness involves conscious avoidance of the truth and gives rise to an inference of knowledge of the crime in question. /not sure
IANAL, but wouldn't it fall under contempt of court? The willful blindness analogy would hold up if it were a case of someone else committing a crime in the White House and the people being prosecuted had looked the other way, but this is a case of the defendants losing the case and simply ignoring the verdict by ignoring the EPA.
It's like if I refused to pay my house payment, and then the mortgage company sued me, won the case, with the judge saying "you bill him and he had better pay that bill", and I tried to weasel out by immediately throwing away any mail that came from my mortgage company. How would that NOT be contempt of court?
Um, I think you mean. May his body decay into the earth as nicely as fucking possible.
Anyone who mentions "up there", "god", or "soul" in this article should be modded down.
Hey, George Carlin has a bit about that phrase. GP's reference is not disrespectful.Considering that it was slipped in by a Democrat (Dodd) and the person blowing the whistle is a Republican (Armey) you might want to warn people about not purchasing the equivalent "Obama Is Evil" book.
You know how you can tell the party affiliations on a Slashdot story? If its negative about a Republican the summary almost always mentions it. If its negative about a Democrat they usually just say "Senator" or 'Congressman" with no party affiliation.
The republican who said that is wrong!"The federal government must not prolong necessary corrections in the housing market, bail out lenders, or subsidize irresponsible borrowing and lending," the White House said in a statement.
Whew...For a second, there, I was in danger of having my preconceived notions being shattered. What a relief!(I'm not talking about legal precedent. I'm just talking about what the law SHOULD be)
The most troubling thing is that we have dismissed torture, and revoking of due process, and unchecked government surveillance, all under the assumption that it's ok, because "we're the good guys". Before we caught Saddam, anything we did in Iraq was justified because "we're better than Saddam".
Maybe I'm getting off on a rant, but it seems to me that, when you believe that you are incapable of doing wrong, then that is when you are most likely to do the worst things you are capable of. And, I would never trust someone who said "we're better than Saddam Hussein", because, with a country that truly cares about human rights, you would never need to make that comparison. If you were Jewish, would you stay at a motel that advertises "we're better than Auschwitz and that's an acceptable goal", or would you expect more than that? We should be competing to be the best, but we're now happy to not be the worst.
Oh, why do I hate America so? Because loving America is a right only given to American citizens
whatcouldpossiblygowrong sometimes seems to be a knee jerk reaction when the story involves food or anything biological, or significantly large. For the sake of fairness, skepticism is asking far more than that one question.
Case in point: Nuclear Power. We know what could go wrong. Now, what is the probability, and the expected damage? Can we know by looking at our existing safety records, and those of more recent factories built in other countries? Which would result in more deaths; nuclear power, or coal power, once you take into account things such as possible meltdowns, nuclear waste, global warming, coal-mine collapses, etc...
Now, a true skeptic may be asking "what about solar/wind/water". My point is, that you have to keep asking questions, and do not confuse cynicism or denial for skepticism.
....But, in nature, we have DNA that never gets used....In any given code system, there can be lots of code that never gets executed. How much code is there in an operating systems such as Windows that is just there but is never called? What is so remarkable about that? It contradicts your original comment that similarity is simply because of God's "code reuse". It appears that you are trying to make belief in god into an unfalsifiable opinion: God is a sloppy designer who created bad hardware that, for some unknown reason, creates products that appear to be the work of a natural process. That is not the issue anyway. The issue is whether the code just happened by statistical, mindless, processes, or whether there is a programmer. a). That is a false dichotomy. You are assuming that, if a God exists, then he must have used magic at several very specific points in the process. To continue with the analogy, God wasn't competent to create an elegant system. His program constantly crashes, and he must intervene to get it back into a valid state. Many people, inside and outside of science can accept the idea that a God created the laws of nature and watched the universe unfold from there. So this is not about whether there is evolution or God. It is about whether there is evolution.
b). And, if there is a programmer, or a process, then we can learn much about it worked by examining the product. Evolutionists believe the code came into being by a mindless statistical process and creationists say that just as in human written programs, the code of life was written by a programmer. Just as in human programs, if there is a hardware error of some sort, the program may get corrupted. This is not the fault of the programmer is it now? If the programmer built the hardware, then, yes it is. Why did the fall of man happen? Was it because god made a faulty product and then got mad at his faulty product and then damaged it further in a divine tantrum? (..The octopus evolved its brain and eyes independently, whereas most other species are believed to have inherited their brain and their eyes from a past ancestor...)
God created the octopus' brain and eyes independently, whereas most other species received their brain and their eyes from the creator immediately. If he exists, then, yes. So God reuses code sometimes, and sometimes he doesn't. This appears to be more inline with a natural process than with a supreme being. Can you see, that just by changing a few words of your sentence, the creationists view fits the data just as well? You also are using the word "believed". You are certainly right about that, because in both cases is it simply a belief. The data we have is the existence of the octopus. Evolutionists and creationists simply interpret that data differently depending on their core beliefs. Oh. Post-Modernism, now...Funny how the data lead most scientists, who 150 years ago were predominantly creationists to support evolution in massive numbers. If, as you say, it is just a matter of hammering the evidence into your existing assumptions, then the evidence wouldn't change so many minds, now would it? But, evolution is the basis of modern biology. So much so that even creationists are splintering into different groups, with some who cling to a very literal interpretation and an entire spectrum of people who accept science to varying degrees.
The difference is that the scientific view is supported by evidence and the creationist view is supported by an after-the-fact attempt to rationalize the evidence. They are by no means equal.
No. The similarities exist among functional as well as non-functional DNA. It may make sense, if it were a cut-and-paste job for the non-functional DNA to be an exact replica, to be completely random, or to be non-existent. But, in nature, we have DNA that never gets used. It does not code for any protein, and it is similar to other species.
Then, there are remnants of broken genes. For example, most animals have a gene that allows them to generate vitamin C without having to eat citrus fruit. Humans and primates have that gene as well, but in humans and primates, the gene is broken. And, as with most non-functional DNA, our defective vitamin C gene is most similar to that of the chimpanzee, and less similar to that of primates further away.
And then there's the octopus. The octopus evolved its brain and eyes independently, whereas most other species are believed to have inherited their brain and their eyes from a past ancestor. In some ways the octopus eyes are better than human eyes. So, to use your reuse of code argument, God was reinventing the wheel on this one.
So, to use the programmer analogy, God is applying existing code, misapplying existing code (as in the vitamin C example), reusing code that has been commented out, and that he had no intention of using, and in the case of the octopus, reinventing the wheel for some cases. My point is that if there is a god, he isn't a very good programmer.
Ironically, when applied to humans, natural selection favors those who don't believe it. The elightened modern fashion for having few children and expending great resources to keep the weaklings alive is a very poor reproductive strategy from a Darwinian POV. And that is why people who believe in evolution do not worship it or base their values upon it.
So, what do you use to justify your claim that there is an invisible barrier between species? Name a line that cannot be crossed, and fifty other people will provide examples of situations in which that line has been crossed before. Of course, it took 20,000 generations for this to occur, so you can easily come up with examples that would take thousands of years to carry out, but can you name one valid reason to dismiss 150 years of evidence?
It might be helpful. I misread that as "What about 10% savings in the passenger seat". I thought you were saying to get rid of those extra passengers, because they're weighing you down.
Nature always finds a way.
Hell, check out that daemon tools page you linked:
"Dear DAEMON Community,
it come to our attention that someone released a fake DT PRO version that is
contaminated with trojans and viruses, among the fact it is only a DT Lite and
not a PRO version!
We cant underscore enough how important it is that you always download from our
official sites and affiliates!
Nowadays, and with the popularity of DAEMON Tools, it is not unusual to see such
attempts to harm others (and, after all, also our reputation).
Rest assured: we double-check all uploads to our official sites and frequently check
them further to make sure you get no harmfull viruses/trojans!"
Frankly just googling and then downloading stuff that looks like it could help is bound to lead to a malware infested computer. One of the very clear things that good Linux distros have over Windows is the use of a centralized software repository.
So what measures are the open source community taking to ensure that nobody host bad versions of their software?
The Daemon tools problem was caused by people avoiding the trusted repository, in favor of some other site.
This may be off-topic, but it reminds me of how my mother-in-law gave me money for a down payment on a house. Because the money was in cash, the bank required us to go to a bank, and have her get the money changed over to a cashiers check, which I then had to photocopy, deposit into my account, and keep into that account, until the day of the closing (when it had to be transferred to another cashiers check). All this to prove that the cash was given by her (which it didn't), and to create a paper trail (which was created in a process that could probably be described as "money laundering").
But they DID accept high-res scans in lieu of photocopies or faxes.
A better analogy would be "if you get in a car and press the pedal to the floor, but the car runs out of gas before it gets above the speed limit, can you be arrested for 'attempted speeding'?"
I add a nice pchdtv video card, which does not detect the broadcast flag, and I have nothing to worry about. Plus, I can burn dvd's of my recordings, and many other things. I wanted to give mythTV a try on my media center pc, but had a time trying to get an EPG to work with American networks, such as comedy central (I think the guide that came with myth-TV pretty much said, "find a web page and write your own html to XML converter"). Is there anything really convenient for newbies/casual users in the guide listing area?
With "heroes" they set the "not until September" flag
Lawsuits and common sense should get rid of these devices. They are going to accuse people of horrible crimes with all the accuracy, security and correctness of Microsoft Windows.
I could imagine the political controversy that would ensue.
Plaintiff: That device keeps falsely accusing me of pedophilia.
Hannity: Why should we believe you. You're a pedophile!
Plaintiff: But I didn't do it.
Hannity: How could you! They're children and you robbed them of their...
Plaintiff: But I didn't do it.
Hannity: with the groping and the touching and...
If the Supreme Court doesn't stop it, then it will be controversial for a week and then be trusted unquestioningly.