I completely disagree with your conclusions but well said and well argued. You raise a valid point and yet once again I find myself without mod points.
On the other side of the coin, however, is this. Most people here are concerned by the lockdown policies. The motive may be escaping you. Lockdown is a slippery slope. It inevitably ends up with one or two decision making PHBs making "risk management" decisions in a broad sweeping manner.
What that means is that while the receptionist, Sally "Like-Oh-My-God-He-Was-So-Cute!" Dimbulb probably does need to be locked out of all but the essential functions of her system, the development team does not need to be. The danger is that those risk management people will start axing capabilities willy nilly with little or no reguard for what people actualy need to do.
It's like the idea of a "managers chair." Does a manager have any more need for a leather arm chair than a coder? Does he have any more need for unrestricted access to his system? It'll work out that way eventualy. Company seniority is not the best way to gague system trust.
Thanks for the reply. It's nice to get a European prespective.
My reference to transport was largely in reference to Euro-Rail, which is (IIRC, it's been years since I've spent appreciable time in Europe) heavily subsidised.
Certainly I agree beaurocracy is a problem with a system like this. The US Medicare system is a perfect example of such beaurocracy.
What it comes down to is this. I think the US has it wrong. I think Germany probably has it wrong as well (certainly your experiances don't sound like fun).
Perhaps the best system is a government sponsored catestrophic health insurance program. In short, a medical disaster relife program wherein persons afflicted by unusual conditions (which typicaly cost a lot to treat) could be treated for free by the government. Similarly, an expansion of preventive care programs in the Medicare/Medicade program (US Govt health care for the elderly and poor) might cut costs in the long run.
Ultimately I think you'll agree that this is a measure of priorities. Of course the ideal isn't acheivable, but I think more progress can be made towards the ideal at a very reasonable price.
Excelent points, most of which lead to socilized health care. But what does such a system do? How does it work? The USA is still grapling with this idea.
There are of course two sides of the fence.
Pro -- All persons have the right to "life, liberty, and persuit of happiness." Included in "life" is the right to receive the best medical care available. A millionare is not more deserving of quality healthcare than a school teacher.
Con -- A system wherein state-of-the-art healthcare is provided at tax-payer expense rather than at personal expence is inherently inefficient. Hypocondriacs and others will take advantage of the system, constantly seeking medical care for irrelevant or non-existant problems, clogging the system and draining its funds.
Now I'll admit out front that I'm all for socialized health care. I'll also throw out in the open that I'm a childhood cancer survivor (and if I receive spam for hair growth products I'll hunt you down like the dog you are). I have seen too many children die because their families could not raise the money for a bone marrow transplant. I have seen children subjected to horrificly painfull procedures without anesthetic because private health insurance wouldn't pick it up. I have seen kids go without necessary tests and the diagnoses that would come from those tests for MONTHS because of financial pressure from HMOs to cut down on so called "non-essential procedures"
I know it's hard to show pity and mercy to those you've never met. But to those of you opposed to this I want you to ask yourself. What is the CASH VALUE of a child's life? How much money is it worth, to you personaly, to raise the survival rate on childhood cancer 10%? 20%? 30%?
Early diagnosis is THE KEY to curing nearly every single affliction that strikes the average american below the age of 75. Early diagnosis and preventitive care can halt simptoms of even the most horrific and uncurable diseases giving a patient decades of productive, happy, and (fairly) healthy, life. What are those decades worth? What is the cash value of a child having a father? A mother?
It is not uncommon in some european countries to pay 80%+ of your income in taxes. 80%!!! That's huge! On the other hand the government picks up transportation costs (for the most part), housing for anyone who can't afford it, food, healthcare, and thousands of other related expenses. There is little or nothing left to pay FOR.
I'm not advocating a system that radical. But there are some issues in this country that need to be looked at. We somehow belive that taxes are a black hole into which we throw money and get nothing back. $300+ a month is $3600 a year without co-pays etc for health insurance for ONE PERSON. A federal system could easily cut that cost in half, provide superior care, superior coverage, and still have money left over to fund research in new directions.
Sure, if you're making $500,000 a year the tax hike to pay for a system like this would suck for you. Would it hurt so much to do some good though?
Final point -- What it really comes down to is this. We've allready got this system in place. It's called private health care. The problem with this system is several fold however.
1 - It's out to make a buck, a socilized system just has to break even. 2 - It excludes the poor, who are the ones most in need of preventive care, and whos medical expenses drive up the cost for everyone else because they lack that care. 3 - It still doesn't cover you if something goes horribly wrong. The chances of this are pretty slim, but it all goes back to problem 1.
Step out of the political dogma we've all been fed. What would a system with 100% coverage for 100% of the population be worth to you? $100 a year? $200? How much would you pay? How about $3600 a year? That's about what you're paying for worse coverage now, and it's not like it's not a tax. Sure it's not levied by the government, but how much of a choice do you really have? Sure, you can opt out, but then when something goes wrong you're screwed. Natural selection will take care of the opt outs. It's doing a great job so far.
Re:This is scary, or is it just over-reaction?
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Jack-in-the-Box eh?
What if you test positive for e-coli?
Re:What's really outrageous
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What's even more outrageous is that someone would be enough of an asshole to post a reply to a legitimate comment just to point out a spelling error.
What's even more outrageous than that? The same person not knowing that the word "Masters" in Masters Degree isn't possessive.
In the early summer of 371 BC the two great armies of Ancient Greece met on the plain of Luctra.
The Spartan army that day numbered some 11,000 men, claiming a heritage stretching back hundreds of years. Glory upon glory enshrouded this fighting force, the decendents of the famous 300 and heirs to the legacy of Thermopylae.
Across the plain from them stood the Thebian army. Only 6,000 stong, the Thebians were acutely aware of the overwhelming numerical superiority of their enemy.
In the moments before the crucial clash of arms, Epaminandos, general of the Thebian Army, called "The Sacred Band" to hold a position usualy reserved for cannon fodder: face to face with the Spartan Elite. The Band consisted of 300 highly trained shock troops. Against them stood nearly 600 of Sparta's best.
But the Thebians held a key advantage. Hoplite warfare relies heavily on the defence of those on the flanks, as well as the defence of the individual, to maintain the integrity of the unit. Here the Thebian system was superior. The Sacred Band was comprised, not simply of 300 shock troops, but of 150 pairs of homosexual lovers. These men were willing to fight and die for each other, not only because it benefited the unit as a whole, but because of the deeper bonds between them.
When the sun set on Luctra that day it set upon the aftermath of the Thebian victory. The Spartan army had been crushed by a smaller force and forced to request a truce. In the years following Luctra, Spartan military power would be shattered forever.
While I don't argue that sexual tension in our military can be a problem, I object to the idea that is MUST be a problem. Speaking as a historian I belive the problems in our military associated with sex and sexuality do not derive from having people sexualy attracted serving together, but rather the way we deal with that circumstance. The Thebians turned it into an advantage. They were not the first, nor the last.
No, the 9th has had more verdicts overturned than any other court in the land.
Difference.
Look at a map of the Circuit Courts of Appeals and draw some conclusions.
The 9th Circuit Court is VAST. It includes more states than any other Circuit. These states represent a not insubstantial portion of the population of the US.
I'm not saying the 9th doesn't have problems. It is unquestionably the most liberal Circut in the country. Sandra Day O'Connor has, on more than one occasion, recomended that the 9th hear cases more often with its full 11 judge pannel in attendance instead of relying on the smaller pannels of 3 judges that handed down the Pledge of Alegiance decision that was so unpopular.
On a side note, the legal reasoning behind the Pledge case was rock solid. You don't have to agree with it moraly or religiously, but from a legal standpoint the 9th did an excelent job defending their position.
Parody is well and good, but when you parody someone for profit it's something different. Free Use does allow for parody, but the Courts have generaly heald that when you profit financialy from a parody you need to pay for the rights to what you're mocking.
I belive you missed my point. To take the sword example. I have a display Katana which is astheticly perfect in every reguard. It is not, however, desined for use at all. This is inferior in my mind to the weapon upon which it was based, a 6th Century peice to be exact, because the display model uses shortcuts to attain what the real thing does through pure craftmanship.
A utilitarian object, pefected to the point of becoming art is more pleasing to me because the medium is that much more challenging. In short the process that created it is genuine, its beauty a consequence of its purpose.
Further, there is no such thing as a sword that is/was only intended for display. Such a thing is not a sword, it is a shiny peice of metal that is shaped like a sword. The word "sword" convays a purpose and a utility.
Art and utilitarianism are not necessarily mutualy exclusive. One might argue, instead, that art that actualy does something useful is more deserving of the word than much of what traditional is attached to the word.
I've got some plot consistancy questions... I'll just throw them out there as food for thought. Unresolved issues if you will.
The Chick Terminator (whatever her model number is, I'll call her T-XX) has the same kind of "skinning" ability the T-1000 has (quick shot... watch carefully). But from the first trailer can also produce weapons internaly. What's the deal with that?
I thought T-XX was designed to kill other machines. If that's the case why is she disguised as a female. The psycology thing makes sence if she's an assassin like the T-1000... but not as a machine killer
Where do all the T-101s come from? I thought SkyNet just launched nukes... since when did it produce legions of super-troopers too?
And the big question -- Are all these events contiguous, or is the entire End of the World part of the movie a dream sequence or somesuch?
This isn't so much off topic as tangential. Moderators, read the parrent and grandparrent before burning me on this.
First recorded use of a Biological Device -- Seige of a Turkish fortification during the 1st Crusade. The turks catipulted plague infested bodies at the European invaders.
First recorded use of a Chemical Device -- The Battle of Ypres II between German and Canadian forces. The Germans relesed Chlorine gas from hundreds of massive canisters burried in the ground. Luckily for them the winds stayed steady. The Canadians had a bad day.
First recorded use of a Nuclear Device -- August 6, 1945. The Enola Gay drops a 15 Kiloton Uranium Fission device on the Japanese port city of Hiroshima. A subsequent bombing of Nagasaki with a plutonium fission device is the last recorded use of Nuclear weapons in combat.
Interestingly enough chemical weapons were first conceived by Leonardo Di Vinci for use against ships at sea. He reasoned that a gas attack on a ship would be fairly easy to pull off and would allow the boarding and capture of naval assets rather than their wastefull sinking.
I wish I could mod you up, unfortunately I never have mod points when I want them, and always have them when I don't.
Your analysis of the case is dead on. It's key to realize that the Virginia statute says that ANY form of crossburing IS intimidation. It is this provision of the law that the Court had a problem with.
They remanded it to the lower court on orders that they either prove or fail to prove the intent to intimidate.
Coming full circle, this DIRECTLY applies to the topic at hand. What is the INTENT, not the consequence, of this proposed discussion. If the INTENT is to incite a rash of fraud and theivery then this is not protected speach. The Government must prove what is called "A compelling state interest" in cases of free speech. In this case it would be very difficult to prove that there is a compelling interest to regulate this speach, particularly if the intent is to FIX the problem not make it worse.
The DMCA has not yet seen a serious constitutional challenge. I know we have a lot of conservitives on/., but those of you caught up in this issue might consider sending a check to those crazy ACLU treehuging dirt-worshipers (my Father-in-law's phrase, makes me chuckle). I'm a bit of a leftist myself, but even those more inclined to the right should know that the ACLU is likly biding its time and waiting for a strong case to take to the top on this one.
So the clear and obvious solution is to set up a running process that queries the sight every 5 mins or so. When it gets back a 404 error it changes the href tags to point to an internal/. cashe.
That way the site owner isn't denied any ad revenues (his site was a smoking hole) and interested parties can still read the content./. continues querying the server once every 5 mins until it gets a responce back other than 404. After 24 hours of consistant responces the mirror is yanked.
Seriously folks, Google seems to get away with this, and many people use the cashe INSTEAD OF the actual page. A system like this would only use the cashed versions in the event that the main site was allready wallowing in GET requests.
Now wait a second. I'm all for the enlightened individual, and I think I put in my dues in the public school system. Homework is well and fine for certain things, but aren't we asking a bit much of our children?
Consider this. By your own numbers a college student will put in about 45 hours a week in total school work. That same student will have the remainder of the week to him/her self.
The highschool student, one year YOUNGER than the college student has 5 eight hour school days plus, lets say 30 mins of homework per class, or 3.5 hours a night. That comes out to 11.5 x 5 = 57.5 hours a week.
More importantly, the majority of that is in giant eight hour blocks, usualy in schools with poor lighting, horrid ventilation, and a stifiling intelectual environment spent teaching to the lowest common demoninator.
Is it any wonder that your average college student is THRILLED to be where he is and your average HS student considers his life to be an endless tedium of pointless drudgery punctuated by periods of abject misery?
The maturity levels here are close, one year. The academics is where it differs. There was a/. artical on this not to long ago. Re-read it. Remember why High School is so mindnumbing?. Honestly, this kid reads slashdot... which means he's probably not a total moron. I remember my highschool homework. It wasn't that it was difficult, it was time consuming and rather pointless. Maybe if his teachers assigned less homework that challenged him and made him think more, this wouldn't be a problem.
Note - I learned many things in school. Spelling was not one of them.
What about equil protection under the law? IANAL, but behavior such as actualy banning material and preformances due to association with a group, particularly if those bans are instituted by a state university, flies the face of "freedom of assembly." Basicly you have a state organization censoring people based on what organization they belong to.
I don't know the legalistics behind it, but I wouldn't want to be defending that case.
If I were MS and I were looking into this, here's what I'd do. I'd use Passport to track what you search for and cross reference that data with pretty much anything else I could gleen.
Can you say targeted spam? Of course, many of us are guilty of a few searches we don't want showing up in our inbox.
But of course it's going to use Passport! Free registration required(*) etc etc. Integration into IE would be standard. Anytime IE sees the user goto or type www.google.com (lycos, yahoo, hotbot, infoseek, etc etc) pop up a little windows that says "MSN search is more efficient, try it now!." Stick two buttons at the bottom "Try MSN Search" and "No Thanks." Of course, Try MSN Search is default and, of course, there's a little check box in small print at the bottom that says "redirect all requests for $url to MSN Search"
My father in law expressed this argument to me. "Guns are protected by the constitution so that we can defend ourselves from the government should it become tyrannical"
He went on to say that this was why he opposed firearms registration, bullet fingerprinting, and the like. Namely that he didn't want the government to know what he had in his basement if it ever came to that.
I told him that when the UN storm troopers started going door to door rounding up the disenters they'd just call in surgical airstrikes on whatever locations offered resistance. Told him his.306 wouldn't do diddly squat to a lazer guided 2000lb chunk of steel and high explosives and that his entire gun collection would be scattered across a four state area before he managed to take out more than four of whatever government force was bothering to invade his rural county home.
This is what I don't understand. Yes, -=maybe=- in 1784 or whatever firearm ownership by the populace was sufficient to overthrow the government. A bunch of people tried this around 1862 however, and it didn't go so well. You might remember it, we call it the American Civil War.
So at least since 1862 I think we've had a pretty clear demonstration that guns are used primarily for killing other citizens, not for overthrowing the government. More to the point, anyone who tries to use them to overthrow the government, or even resist the government tends to find themselves facing progressively larger guns until the government wins.
The US government spends close to 100 Billion dollars a year on guns (and gun related supplies, such as soliders, battleships, and hydrogen bombs). What can you spend? Do the math.
Not sure who to reply to, so I'll reply up at the top.
Are Saddam Husein and Iraq a threat to the United States or US interests?
Economicly? Certainly. Iraq controls a not insubstantial portion of the world oil reserve. Militarily? Possibly. Certainly not in conventional terms. The Iraqi military has been reduced to a runnning joke by 12 years of sanctions and continued US bombing after the Gulf War of 1991. Non-conventionaly? I'd bet on it. Granted the inspectors have not found evidence of WOMD in Iraq, however it is logicaly consistant, both with the actions of the regime in the past and with the strategic situation sanctions have placed Iraq in, to develop WOMD. Placed in Saddam's shoes WOMD would be my first move.
Does that mean that Saddam threatens the US? Probably not. Since 1945 WOMD have played only one roll in major war, namely that of a deterant. It's easy to use chemical weapons on ethnic minorities, and it's easy to call those people war criminals. Lets not forget that the United States uses an WWI era WOMD to execute condemed fellons in some states. Hydrogen Cyianide (spelling?) gas.
Should the US turn it's back on the UN in time of international crisis?
This doesn't strike me as a very good idea. The message we send is that if you have a huge military and can bomb the UN into the stone age you don't have to listen to them. This of course motivates people to develop weapons to bomb the UN into the stone age, because who really wants to have to listen to the French?
Are US actions in the Mid East fueling terrorism? Will this come back to bite us in the proverbial ass?
Quite possibly. Lets look at this objectively.
Assumption A - Iraq has WOMD.
If so, those weapons were out of the country the DAY troops started amassing on the boarder. They probably left the country with teams of suicide oporitives under one instruction. In the event of the capture of Baghdad, set these off in a major US urban center. Again, this is what I'd do in Saddam's shoes.
Assumption B - Iraq does NOT have WOMD.
THEN WHY THE HELL ARE WE BOMBING THEM? All this does is create more resentment for the US. Resentment equates to terrorist recruitment drives. We should be droping girl scouts selling cookies on Iraq, not bombs. Fill the world with warm fuzzies. No one flies planes into buildings because they dislike warm fuzzies
I'll reply to you because you're the most recent reply but the same argument is advanced by everyone who read the Grand Parent.
Fart in the Space Suit is an excelent analogy. Unfortunately the Space Suit is flawed. Earth is a rather self sustaining system.
I'll go after CO2 because it's the easiest, but scrubbing exists for other contaminants as well.
As C02 concentrations increase so also does temperature (C02 is a greenhouse gas). This increases evaporation rates over the 2/3 of the earth that's water, resulting in higher concentrations of water vapor in the air... I.E. more cloud cover and more rain.
Cloud cover being white, it reflects the suns rays more than 99% of earths surface (I'd have to check with reguards to snow) thus lowering the Total Watage In Tera (T.W.I.T. - No, I did not make that up) and the overall temperature.
At the same time, increased rainfall scrubs the C02 from the atmosphere depositing it back into the oceans where it settles. Eventualy subduction zones internalize the C02 and earth recycles it.
I've seen the argument floating around the net that Mt. Saint Hellens produced more C02 and Sulpher Di-Oxide than the entire history of human industrial development. I have no idea if that's true or not. Suffice it to say, however, that Earth is a fairly resiliant system. Temperate shifts far more severe than human kind is capable of causing (with non-nuclear methods) have been absorbed by the system before.
Lets just say I'm not buying up property in Atlanta to build docks and peirs.
SUVs aren't bad for the environment. Neither is central air, speed boats, or countless other energy hungry luxuries.
Why?
Because there is a finite amount of fossil fuel on this little rock we all live on. We're going to burn it until it's gone. We all know that.
Once you realize that you realize that how FAST you burn it doesn't really matter that much. It just means you need to develop an alterntive energy source in 25 years instead of 50.
Slashdot Mirror
I completely disagree with your conclusions but well said and well argued. You raise a valid point and yet once again I find myself without mod points.
On the other side of the coin, however, is this. Most people here are concerned by the lockdown policies. The motive may be escaping you. Lockdown is a slippery slope. It inevitably ends up with one or two decision making PHBs making "risk management" decisions in a broad sweeping manner.
What that means is that while the receptionist, Sally "Like-Oh-My-God-He-Was-So-Cute!" Dimbulb probably does need to be locked out of all but the essential functions of her system, the development team does not need to be. The danger is that those risk management people will start axing capabilities willy nilly with little or no reguard for what people actualy need to do.
It's like the idea of a "managers chair." Does a manager have any more need for a leather arm chair than a coder? Does he have any more need for unrestricted access to his system? It'll work out that way eventualy. Company seniority is not the best way to gague system trust.
Thanks for the reply. It's nice to get a European prespective.
My reference to transport was largely in reference to Euro-Rail, which is (IIRC, it's been years since I've spent appreciable time in Europe) heavily subsidised.
Certainly I agree beaurocracy is a problem with a system like this. The US Medicare system is a perfect example of such beaurocracy.
What it comes down to is this. I think the US has it wrong. I think Germany probably has it wrong as well (certainly your experiances don't sound like fun).
Perhaps the best system is a government sponsored catestrophic health insurance program. In short, a medical disaster relife program wherein persons afflicted by unusual conditions (which typicaly cost a lot to treat) could be treated for free by the government. Similarly, an expansion of preventive care programs in the Medicare/Medicade program (US Govt health care for the elderly and poor) might cut costs in the long run.
Ultimately I think you'll agree that this is a measure of priorities. Of course the ideal isn't acheivable, but I think more progress can be made towards the ideal at a very reasonable price.
Excelent points, most of which lead to socilized health care. But what does such a system do? How does it work? The USA is still grapling with this idea.
There are of course two sides of the fence.
Pro -- All persons have the right to "life, liberty, and persuit of happiness." Included in "life" is the right to receive the best medical care available. A millionare is not more deserving of quality healthcare than a school teacher.
Con -- A system wherein state-of-the-art healthcare is provided at tax-payer expense rather than at personal expence is inherently inefficient. Hypocondriacs and others will take advantage of the system, constantly seeking medical care for irrelevant or non-existant problems, clogging the system and draining its funds.
Now I'll admit out front that I'm all for socialized health care. I'll also throw out in the open that I'm a childhood cancer survivor (and if I receive spam for hair growth products I'll hunt you down like the dog you are). I have seen too many children die because their families could not raise the money for a bone marrow transplant. I have seen children subjected to horrificly painfull procedures without anesthetic because private health insurance wouldn't pick it up. I have seen kids go without necessary tests and the diagnoses that would come from those tests for MONTHS because of financial pressure from HMOs to cut down on so called "non-essential procedures"
I know it's hard to show pity and mercy to those you've never met. But to those of you opposed to this I want you to ask yourself. What is the CASH VALUE of a child's life? How much money is it worth, to you personaly, to raise the survival rate on childhood cancer 10%? 20%? 30%?
Early diagnosis is THE KEY to curing nearly every single affliction that strikes the average american below the age of 75. Early diagnosis and preventitive care can halt simptoms of even the most horrific and uncurable diseases giving a patient decades of productive, happy, and (fairly) healthy, life. What are those decades worth? What is the cash value of a child having a father? A mother?
It is not uncommon in some european countries to pay 80%+ of your income in taxes. 80%!!! That's huge! On the other hand the government picks up transportation costs (for the most part), housing for anyone who can't afford it, food, healthcare, and thousands of other related expenses. There is little or nothing left to pay FOR.
I'm not advocating a system that radical. But there are some issues in this country that need to be looked at. We somehow belive that taxes are a black hole into which we throw money and get nothing back. $300+ a month is $3600 a year without co-pays etc for health insurance for ONE PERSON. A federal system could easily cut that cost in half, provide superior care, superior coverage, and still have money left over to fund research in new directions.
Sure, if you're making $500,000 a year the tax hike to pay for a system like this would suck for you. Would it hurt so much to do some good though?
Final point -- What it really comes down to is this. We've allready got this system in place. It's called private health care. The problem with this system is several fold however.
1 - It's out to make a buck, a socilized system just has to break even.
2 - It excludes the poor, who are the ones most in need of preventive care, and whos medical expenses drive up the cost for everyone else because they lack that care.
3 - It still doesn't cover you if something goes horribly wrong. The chances of this are pretty slim, but it all goes back to problem 1.
Step out of the political dogma we've all been fed. What would a system with 100% coverage for 100% of the population be worth to you? $100 a year? $200? How much would you pay? How about $3600 a year? That's about what you're paying for worse coverage now, and it's not like it's not a tax. Sure it's not levied by the government, but how much of a choice do you really have? Sure, you can opt out, but then when something goes wrong you're screwed. Natural selection will take care of the opt outs. It's doing a great job so far.
Jack-in-the-Box eh?
What if you test positive for e-coli?
What's even more outrageous is that someone would be enough of an asshole to post a reply to a legitimate comment just to point out a spelling error.
What's even more outrageous than that? The same person not knowing that the word "Masters" in Masters Degree isn't possessive.
In the early summer of 371 BC the two great armies of Ancient Greece met on the plain of Luctra.
The Spartan army that day numbered some 11,000 men, claiming a heritage stretching back hundreds of years. Glory upon glory enshrouded this fighting force, the decendents of the famous 300 and heirs to the legacy of Thermopylae.
Across the plain from them stood the Thebian army. Only 6,000 stong, the Thebians were acutely aware of the overwhelming numerical superiority of their enemy.
In the moments before the crucial clash of arms, Epaminandos, general of the Thebian Army, called "The Sacred Band" to hold a position usualy reserved for cannon fodder: face to face with the Spartan Elite. The Band consisted of 300 highly trained shock troops. Against them stood nearly 600 of Sparta's best.
But the Thebians held a key advantage. Hoplite warfare relies heavily on the defence of those on the flanks, as well as the defence of the individual, to maintain the integrity of the unit. Here the Thebian system was superior. The Sacred Band was comprised, not simply of 300 shock troops, but of 150 pairs of homosexual lovers. These men were willing to fight and die for each other, not only because it benefited the unit as a whole, but because of the deeper bonds between them.
When the sun set on Luctra that day it set upon the aftermath of the Thebian victory. The Spartan army had been crushed by a smaller force and forced to request a truce. In the years following Luctra, Spartan military power would be shattered forever.
While I don't argue that sexual tension in our military can be a problem, I object to the idea that is MUST be a problem. Speaking as a historian I belive the problems in our military associated with sex and sexuality do not derive from having people sexualy attracted serving together, but rather the way we deal with that circumstance. The Thebians turned it into an advantage. They were not the first, nor the last.
No, the 9th has had more verdicts overturned than any other court in the land.
Difference.
Look at a map of the Circuit Courts of Appeals and draw some conclusions.
The 9th Circuit Court is VAST. It includes more states than any other Circuit. These states represent a not insubstantial portion of the population of the US.
I'm not saying the 9th doesn't have problems. It is unquestionably the most liberal Circut in the country. Sandra Day O'Connor has, on more than one occasion, recomended that the 9th hear cases more often with its full 11 judge pannel in attendance instead of relying on the smaller pannels of 3 judges that handed down the Pledge of Alegiance decision that was so unpopular.
On a side note, the legal reasoning behind the Pledge case was rock solid. You don't have to agree with it moraly or religiously, but from a legal standpoint the 9th did an excelent job defending their position.
Parody is well and good, but when you parody someone for profit it's something different. Free Use does allow for parody, but the Courts have generaly heald that when you profit financialy from a parody you need to pay for the rights to what you're mocking.
Corporations get watched closely on this one.
I belive you missed my point. To take the sword example. I have a display Katana which is astheticly perfect in every reguard. It is not, however, desined for use at all. This is inferior in my mind to the weapon upon which it was based, a 6th Century peice to be exact, because the display model uses shortcuts to attain what the real thing does through pure craftmanship.
A utilitarian object, pefected to the point of becoming art is more pleasing to me because the medium is that much more challenging. In short the process that created it is genuine, its beauty a consequence of its purpose.
Further, there is no such thing as a sword that is/was only intended for display. Such a thing is not a sword, it is a shiny peice of metal that is shaped like a sword. The word "sword" convays a purpose and a utility.
Art and utilitarianism are not necessarily mutualy exclusive. One might argue, instead, that art that actualy does something useful is more deserving of the word than much of what traditional is attached to the word.
No, it's a harsh mistress.
Someone had to say it.
This isn't so much off topic as tangential. Moderators, read the parrent and grandparrent before burning me on this.
First recorded use of a Biological Device -- Seige of a Turkish fortification during the 1st Crusade. The turks catipulted plague infested bodies at the European invaders.
First recorded use of a Chemical Device -- The Battle of Ypres II between German and Canadian forces. The Germans relesed Chlorine gas from hundreds of massive canisters burried in the ground. Luckily for them the winds stayed steady. The Canadians had a bad day.
First recorded use of a Nuclear Device -- August 6, 1945. The Enola Gay drops a 15 Kiloton Uranium Fission device on the Japanese port city of Hiroshima. A subsequent bombing of Nagasaki with a plutonium fission device is the last recorded use of Nuclear weapons in combat.
Interestingly enough chemical weapons were first conceived by Leonardo Di Vinci for use against ships at sea. He reasoned that a gas attack on a ship would be fairly easy to pull off and would allow the boarding and capture of naval assets rather than their wastefull sinking.
I wish I could mod you up, unfortunately I never have mod points when I want them, and always have them when I don't.
/., but those of you caught up in this issue might consider sending a check to those crazy ACLU treehuging dirt-worshipers (my Father-in-law's phrase, makes me chuckle). I'm a bit of a leftist myself, but even those more inclined to the right should know that the ACLU is likly biding its time and waiting for a strong case to take to the top on this one.
Your analysis of the case is dead on. It's key to realize that the Virginia statute says that ANY form of crossburing IS intimidation. It is this provision of the law that the Court had a problem with.
They remanded it to the lower court on orders that they either prove or fail to prove the intent to intimidate.
Coming full circle, this DIRECTLY applies to the topic at hand. What is the INTENT, not the consequence, of this proposed discussion. If the INTENT is to incite a rash of fraud and theivery then this is not protected speach. The Government must prove what is called "A compelling state interest" in cases of free speech. In this case it would be very difficult to prove that there is a compelling interest to regulate this speach, particularly if the intent is to FIX the problem not make it worse.
The DMCA has not yet seen a serious constitutional challenge. I know we have a lot of conservitives on
So the clear and obvious solution is to set up a running process that queries the sight every 5 mins or so. When it gets back a 404 error it changes the href tags to point to an internal /. cashe.
/. continues querying the server once every 5 mins until it gets a responce back other than 404. After 24 hours of consistant responces the mirror is yanked.
That way the site owner isn't denied any ad revenues (his site was a smoking hole) and interested parties can still read the content.
Seriously folks, Google seems to get away with this, and many people use the cashe INSTEAD OF the actual page. A system like this would only use the cashed versions in the event that the main site was allready wallowing in GET requests.
While standing in line for Titanic:
Person Behind Me: "I know it's a love story with Lenonardo De Caprio and Kate someone. I wonder how it ends."
Me: "Dude, the boat sinks, how do you think it ends?"
Person Behind Me: "What the hell? Why'd you ruin the movie for me? Asshole!"
Me: -=bitter hatred for the state of the public school system=-
Now wait a second. I'm all for the enlightened individual, and I think I put in my dues in the public school system. Homework is well and fine for certain things, but aren't we asking a bit much of our children?
/. artical on this not to long ago. Re-read it. Remember why High School is so mindnumbing?. Honestly, this kid reads slashdot... which means he's probably not a total moron. I remember my highschool homework. It wasn't that it was difficult, it was time consuming and rather pointless. Maybe if his teachers assigned less homework that challenged him and made him think more, this wouldn't be a problem.
Consider this. By your own numbers a college student will put in about 45 hours a week in total school work. That same student will have the remainder of the week to him/her self.
The highschool student, one year YOUNGER than the college student has 5 eight hour school days plus, lets say 30 mins of homework per class, or 3.5 hours a night. That comes out to 11.5 x 5 = 57.5 hours a week.
More importantly, the majority of that is in giant eight hour blocks, usualy in schools with poor lighting, horrid ventilation, and a stifiling intelectual environment spent teaching to the lowest common demoninator.
Is it any wonder that your average college student is THRILLED to be where he is and your average HS student considers his life to be an endless tedium of pointless drudgery punctuated by periods of abject misery?
The maturity levels here are close, one year. The academics is where it differs. There was a
Note - I learned many things in school. Spelling was not one of them.
What about equil protection under the law? IANAL, but behavior such as actualy banning material and preformances due to association with a group, particularly if those bans are instituted by a state university, flies the face of "freedom of assembly." Basicly you have a state organization censoring people based on what organization they belong to.
I don't know the legalistics behind it, but I wouldn't want to be defending that case.
The the Soviet Union stamp out capitalism?
Maybe it's time to re-evaluate your decision. Acheiving ones goals is not the only measure of power.
Passport especially.
If I were MS and I were looking into this, here's what I'd do. I'd use Passport to track what you search for and cross reference that data with pretty much anything else I could gleen.
Can you say targeted spam? Of course, many of us are guilty of a few searches we don't want showing up in our inbox.
But of course it's going to use Passport! Free registration required(*) etc etc. Integration into IE would be standard. Anytime IE sees the user goto or type www.google.com (lycos, yahoo, hotbot, infoseek, etc etc) pop up a little windows that says "MSN search is more efficient, try it now!." Stick two buttons at the bottom "Try MSN Search" and "No Thanks." Of course, Try MSN Search is default and, of course, there's a little check box in small print at the bottom that says "redirect all requests for $url to MSN Search"
My father in law expressed this argument to me. "Guns are protected by the constitution so that we can defend ourselves from the government should it become tyrannical"
.306 wouldn't do diddly squat to a lazer guided 2000lb chunk of steel and high explosives and that his entire gun collection would be scattered across a four state area before he managed to take out more than four of whatever government force was bothering to invade his rural county home.
He went on to say that this was why he opposed firearms registration, bullet fingerprinting, and the like. Namely that he didn't want the government to know what he had in his basement if it ever came to that.
I told him that when the UN storm troopers started going door to door rounding up the disenters they'd just call in surgical airstrikes on whatever locations offered resistance. Told him his
This is what I don't understand. Yes, -=maybe=- in 1784 or whatever firearm ownership by the populace was sufficient to overthrow the government. A bunch of people tried this around 1862 however, and it didn't go so well. You might remember it, we call it the American Civil War.
So at least since 1862 I think we've had a pretty clear demonstration that guns are used primarily for killing other citizens, not for overthrowing the government. More to the point, anyone who tries to use them to overthrow the government, or even resist the government tends to find themselves facing progressively larger guns until the government wins.
The US government spends close to 100 Billion dollars a year on guns (and gun related supplies, such as soliders, battleships, and hydrogen bombs). What can you spend? Do the math.
In SOVIET RUSSIA the market frees.... wait... no... I guess it doesn't.
Nevermind.
Not sure who to reply to, so I'll reply up at the top.
Are Saddam Husein and Iraq a threat to the United States or US interests?
Economicly? Certainly. Iraq controls a not insubstantial portion of the world oil reserve. Militarily? Possibly. Certainly not in conventional terms. The Iraqi military has been reduced to a runnning joke by 12 years of sanctions and continued US bombing after the Gulf War of 1991. Non-conventionaly? I'd bet on it. Granted the inspectors have not found evidence of WOMD in Iraq, however it is logicaly consistant, both with the actions of the regime in the past and with the strategic situation sanctions have placed Iraq in, to develop WOMD. Placed in Saddam's shoes WOMD would be my first move.
Does that mean that Saddam threatens the US? Probably not. Since 1945 WOMD have played only one roll in major war, namely that of a deterant. It's easy to use chemical weapons on ethnic minorities, and it's easy to call those people war criminals. Lets not forget that the United States uses an WWI era WOMD to execute condemed fellons in some states. Hydrogen Cyianide (spelling?) gas.
Should the US turn it's back on the UN in time of international crisis?
This doesn't strike me as a very good idea. The message we send is that if you have a huge military and can bomb the UN into the stone age you don't have to listen to them. This of course motivates people to develop weapons to bomb the UN into the stone age, because who really wants to have to listen to the French?
Are US actions in the Mid East fueling terrorism? Will this come back to bite us in the proverbial ass?
Quite possibly. Lets look at this objectively.
Assumption A - Iraq has WOMD.
If so, those weapons were out of the country the DAY troops started amassing on the boarder. They probably left the country with teams of suicide oporitives under one instruction. In the event of the capture of Baghdad, set these off in a major US urban center. Again, this is what I'd do in Saddam's shoes.
Assumption B - Iraq does NOT have WOMD.
THEN WHY THE HELL ARE WE BOMBING THEM? All this does is create more resentment for the US. Resentment equates to terrorist recruitment drives. We should be droping girl scouts selling cookies on Iraq, not bombs. Fill the world with warm fuzzies. No one flies planes into buildings because they dislike warm fuzzies
I'll reply to you because you're the most recent reply but the same argument is advanced by everyone who read the Grand Parent.
Fart in the Space Suit is an excelent analogy. Unfortunately the Space Suit is flawed. Earth is a rather self sustaining system.
I'll go after CO2 because it's the easiest, but scrubbing exists for other contaminants as well.
As C02 concentrations increase so also does temperature (C02 is a greenhouse gas). This increases evaporation rates over the 2/3 of the earth that's water, resulting in higher concentrations of water vapor in the air... I.E. more cloud cover and more rain.
Cloud cover being white, it reflects the suns rays more than 99% of earths surface (I'd have to check with reguards to snow) thus lowering the Total Watage In Tera (T.W.I.T. - No, I did not make that up) and the overall temperature.
At the same time, increased rainfall scrubs the C02 from the atmosphere depositing it back into the oceans where it settles. Eventualy subduction zones internalize the C02 and earth recycles it.
I've seen the argument floating around the net that Mt. Saint Hellens produced more C02 and Sulpher Di-Oxide than the entire history of human industrial development. I have no idea if that's true or not. Suffice it to say, however, that Earth is a fairly resiliant system. Temperate shifts far more severe than human kind is capable of causing (with non-nuclear methods) have been absorbed by the system before.
Lets just say I'm not buying up property in Atlanta to build docks and peirs.
My wife raised an excelent point a while ago.
SUVs aren't bad for the environment. Neither is central air, speed boats, or countless other energy hungry luxuries.
Why?
Because there is a finite amount of fossil fuel on this little rock we all live on. We're going to burn it until it's gone. We all know that.
Once you realize that you realize that how FAST you burn it doesn't really matter that much. It just means you need to develop an alterntive energy source in 25 years instead of 50.