The Libertarian position is, protect the individual.
Unfortunately, that term has been hijacked as well, and carries very little meaning today. In fact, most Libertarians today are simply oligarchical states-rights activists (including Ron Paul).
Also, the "protection of the individual" argument actually forms the basis for classical liberalism, which does not necessarily advocate for a small government. (For instance, a government formed under this philosophy would ban smoking in public, and hand out tickets to drivers who aren't wearing seat belts. Taxation wouldn't be particularly redistributive, but the estate tax would need to approach 100%).
SCOTUSBlog posted a nice, hysteria-free overview of Kagan's career a few days ago. It's well worth a read, and the authors seem to know a thing or two about the courts (unlike most reporters and pundits who have been covering the story).
If you read up on her career, you'll see that she has a great deal of respect for existing precedent, and doesn't seem to have allowed her own personal opinions to interfere with her past jobs.
Out of curiosity, what didn't you like about Chrome? I found that it takes a bit of time to get used to, but ultimately has a few rather nice perks, with only a few minor drawbacks.
I like the minimalist window frame -- it makes good use of screen real estate, and tucks away elements that rarely (if ever) get used. I also understand the "floating" status bar, which is a great idea for casual users. However, I do miss having one-click access to Firebug (although Chrome's web developer tools are top-notch, and even better than Firebug in a few cases)
I'm also presuming that Firefox will continue its recent tradition of maintaining very different themes for Vista/7, XP, Mac, and Linux to match the UI paradigms of each OS.
The problem is that you're essentially trying to catch bullets with a piece of flypaper that happens to be traveling just as fast as the bullet, but in the opposite direction.
You'd either need a really big gob of something, or a way of matching the velocity of each speck of debris that you're trying to catch.
You'd also need to make your space katamari indestructible so that it doesn't get smashed into a million bits.
A big blob of aerogel might work -- it wouldn't bring anything to a screeching halt, but it would (very slightly) reduce the orbital velocity of whatever passes through it, contributing to the orbital decay of the debris. As an added benefit, the flying chunks of aerogel would remain harmless to any functioning spacecraft.
Still, you'd need a lot of it. Remember that the "surface area" of geosynchronous orbit is much, much greater than the surface area of the Earth.
Although they ultimately come out in her favor, the writers make a great presentation of their evidence, and certainly know a thing or two about the Supreme Court.
It's definitely worth a read before sounding off on your initial gut reactions to the nomination. It's also your right and prerogative to research the case against Kagan, although you really need to comprehend and understand the context of her job as Solicitor General before jumping to any conclusions.
Personally, despite my initial unease, I'm growing to like her, and would welcome a persuasive, non-activist judge on the court.
That'd be prohibitively expensive. Makes more sense to do it with robotics, and give them a nudge back into the atmosphere. You could probably send up dozens of these robots up on one rocket, or deploy them from the ISS.
Besides, it's the tiny, hard-to-track pieces that you have to worry about. I honestly don't know if we have a remotely workable solution to deal with these.
No, you're right. The rising cost of Intel's high-end chips is killing Apple at the moment, primarily in their lower-end machines. The 13" MacBook Pro is no longer the alluring machine it once was, as it's got a seriously underpowered processor (by "New Computer" standards and comparison to the bigger machines). For the past several years, part of Apple's shtick has been that their tiny laptops are just as powerful as their big ones (I still love my 12" PowerBook).
The current generation Mac Mini is pathetic, even by low-end computer standards, and seems like a prime candidate for an AMD chip (even a 4-core model, although that risks competing directly with Apple's higher-end products). I've got a Core Duo Mini as my primary machine, and would love to replace it with a more modern equivalent, although the current models are barely an improvement over my 4-year-old machine.
You missed my point -- the best guesses are that he either didn't want the bomb to explode, he's being framed, or had some sort of psychotic breakdown.
b) it was CCTV that helped capture the man behind the recent bomb attempt in New York by catching pictures of him, don't you? Guns wouldn't have helped in either of those situations.
Ummm, no the VIN is what helped catch the guy in New York. And his own stupidity.
Nope. We still haven't found the guy they caught on camera, and the guy we caught was an Engineer with a graduate degree that had no idea of how to build a bomb or avoid detection at even the most basic level.
I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I find it incredibly hard to accept the "he's stupid" hypothesis.
BP also has a track record of cutting every corner, which obviously led to the current problem,
Um, no. We still have no idea what happened, or why none of the several failsafes on the blowout preventer worked.
While BP are legally liable, it's entirely possible that Halliburton (who were pouring a concrete casing around the well at the time of the accident) could be to blame.
Although BP deserve to be dragged over the coals for the failure of the platform, and perhaps for not responding in a timely manner, pointing blame for the failure of the BOP is a much more complicated issue, given that such a complete failure shouldn't have been possible. We simply need more facts.
If there's one thing that the founding fathers certainly would balk at, it's the God-like reverence with which they and their document are treated with today.
Although I support the rule of law, the constitution was written almost 225 years ago, for a union of 13 states. Much has changed since then, and the constitution provides an amendment process for this very purpose.
The filibuster rule made sense when there were only 26 senators -- as the number climbed to 100, it became increasingly obvious that it was no longer suitable, as a grandstanding politician could effectively block any piece of legislation, which was increasingly probable as the size of the Senate grew.
Similarly, advances in communications and transportation have made state lines increasingly irrelevant (your rant is a "states rights" thing, right?). It's no surprise that, as people traveled and traded from state-to-state that the federal government would grow in size and importance. The states have also done few favors to themselves, as their governments have proven time and time again to be corrupt and ineffective over the past several decades.
Javascript's gotten fast/mature enough to be taken seriously as a real programming language. Google in particular have made some truly impressive progress with Chrome.
Although the server-side Java applet seems annoying to have, and indeed hack-y, it's awesome that we're starting to see "real" applications in the browser.
We'll hopefully start seeing lots more of this sort of thing, thanks to Apple's "war on flash."
Is this because of specific gripes you have with existing PDF plugins, or on a more general level?
Although I despise Adobe Reader, I find Safari's PDF implementation to be quite good on Macs (although this could be because OSX's treatment of PDF in general is top-notch, lightning-fast, and very deeply integrated into the windowing system)
I think a lot of people are very interested to learn why the Blowout Preventer failed, given that they have multiple failsafes, and are built to account for this exact sort of incident, including two "shear rams" that should have been able to cut through anything stuck in the valve to seal it.
BP's got a poor track record, and should be sued into oblivion if we find out that they tampered with or disabled safety measures on the BOP.
However, there's no evidence of this just yet, and several companies were involved with this particular rig at the time of the incident.
From what I've been reading, the BOP failure could either be narrowed down to a complete, colossal screw-up by BP, or a Rube Goldberg series of events that prevented the BOP from working.
Obviously, we'll be seeing many new safety measures installed on all current and future BOPs, as well as ROVs that can supply sufficient hydraulic power to close the shear rams in the event of a multiple system failure.
as long as Outlook continues to encourage top-posting and HTML formatted content, and discourage quoted reply trimming, it will still suck.
Jesus Christ. 10 years later, and we're still having this argument?
Give it up, dude. Usenet is dead, top-posting is the norm, and everything supports HTML. Only a select few chose to trim their bottom-posts, which usually just meant lots of scrolling.
(In any event, threaded conversations a la GMail are clearly the way forward)
I've used Ubuntu as my primary desktop OS since 8.10, and I can say without reservation that [MOST RECENT VERSION] is the worst of the bunch. Why? They broke everything!
Seems like we hear this with every Ubuntu release... especially in the immediate days following the release. Ubuntu seems to jump the gun with releases.
I don't necessarily take the view that quality's slipped -- the OS as a whole has markedly improved. However, they might want to do a bit more QA before pushing out releases.
Also, isn't the "I'll never consider X again" reaction a bit impulsive?
(PS. Did you install VirtualBox from repositories? The packages should have a DKMS trigger that fires whenever the kernel is updated. The kernel module requirement has always been there, and DKMS usually automagically takes care of any compatibility issues.)
Many new sound boards run some sort of embedded OS -- some of them are incredibly complex. A free RT kernel would be very attractive to the manufacturers of these devices, given that the software on them is already 100% proprietary.
This is true of iPhone SDK. This is not true of Apple in general. Darwin, CUPS, and WebKit are all open source. Apple also distributes for free the other open source code it uses like their version of bash, BIND, etc.
Don't forget LLVM, which is quickly becoming the best damn compiler out there.
Hell, if I wrote something as brilliant as LLVM, I'd want to keep it as close to my chest as possible, and attempt to make a fortune off of it. (Of course, LLVM didn't originate at Apple, but you get my point...)
I was impressed until I read the rest of the list, particularly this love letter to Glenn Beck........ written by none other than Sarah Palin herself.
Really, Time? Sure, he's pretty influential, and a demagogue to be certain. But casting him as an intellectual and a history buff? Have they ever even watched his program?
Jon Stewart had a great point last week: The Daily Show is as absurd and farcical as it's been since Day 1. However, the "real news" media are slowly inching their way toward the realm of absurdist comedy and entertainment.
The competitive market for corporate-friendly smartphones is virtually nonexistent, and BlackBerry's product line is outright sad, especially compared to the wonderphones coming out of HTC, Palm, and Apple. However, they continue to dominate the market because nobody has been willing to directly compete.
HP have a large base of loyal corporate customers, and the experience to sell products to these customers. They could conceivably take down Blackberry with a decent product and good marketing.
Which is why Firefox users will continue to be served videos in a.FLV container until their organization rationalizes its politics or supports H264 through an external plugin (much like how Ubuntu supports mp3 playback and non-free video drivers).
Slashdot Mirror
The Libertarian position is, protect the individual.
Unfortunately, that term has been hijacked as well, and carries very little meaning today. In fact, most Libertarians today are simply oligarchical states-rights activists (including Ron Paul).
Also, the "protection of the individual" argument actually forms the basis for classical liberalism, which does not necessarily advocate for a small government. (For instance, a government formed under this philosophy would ban smoking in public, and hand out tickets to drivers who aren't wearing seat belts. Taxation wouldn't be particularly redistributive, but the estate tax would need to approach 100%).
SCOTUSBlog posted a nice, hysteria-free overview of Kagan's career a few days ago. It's well worth a read, and the authors seem to know a thing or two about the courts (unlike most reporters and pundits who have been covering the story).
If you read up on her career, you'll see that she has a great deal of respect for existing precedent, and doesn't seem to have allowed her own personal opinions to interfere with her past jobs.
Out of curiosity, what didn't you like about Chrome? I found that it takes a bit of time to get used to, but ultimately has a few rather nice perks, with only a few minor drawbacks.
I like the minimalist window frame -- it makes good use of screen real estate, and tucks away elements that rarely (if ever) get used. I also understand the "floating" status bar, which is a great idea for casual users. However, I do miss having one-click access to Firebug (although Chrome's web developer tools are top-notch, and even better than Firebug in a few cases)
I'm also presuming that Firefox will continue its recent tradition of maintaining very different themes for Vista/7, XP, Mac, and Linux to match the UI paradigms of each OS.
The problem is that you're essentially trying to catch bullets with a piece of flypaper that happens to be traveling just as fast as the bullet, but in the opposite direction.
You'd either need a really big gob of something, or a way of matching the velocity of each speck of debris that you're trying to catch.
You'd also need to make your space katamari indestructible so that it doesn't get smashed into a million bits.
A big blob of aerogel might work -- it wouldn't bring anything to a screeching halt, but it would (very slightly) reduce the orbital velocity of whatever passes through it, contributing to the orbital decay of the debris. As an added benefit, the flying chunks of aerogel would remain harmless to any functioning spacecraft.
Still, you'd need a lot of it. Remember that the "surface area" of geosynchronous orbit is much, much greater than the surface area of the Earth.
SCOTUSblog has a great writeup on Kagan.
Although they ultimately come out in her favor, the writers make a great presentation of their evidence, and certainly know a thing or two about the Supreme Court.
It's definitely worth a read before sounding off on your initial gut reactions to the nomination. It's also your right and prerogative to research the case against Kagan, although you really need to comprehend and understand the context of her job as Solicitor General before jumping to any conclusions.
Personally, despite my initial unease, I'm growing to like her, and would welcome a persuasive, non-activist judge on the court.
That'd be prohibitively expensive. Makes more sense to do it with robotics, and give them a nudge back into the atmosphere. You could probably send up dozens of these robots up on one rocket, or deploy them from the ISS.
Besides, it's the tiny, hard-to-track pieces that you have to worry about. I honestly don't know if we have a remotely workable solution to deal with these.
No, you're right. The rising cost of Intel's high-end chips is killing Apple at the moment, primarily in their lower-end machines. The 13" MacBook Pro is no longer the alluring machine it once was, as it's got a seriously underpowered processor (by "New Computer" standards and comparison to the bigger machines). For the past several years, part of Apple's shtick has been that their tiny laptops are just as powerful as their big ones (I still love my 12" PowerBook).
The current generation Mac Mini is pathetic, even by low-end computer standards, and seems like a prime candidate for an AMD chip (even a 4-core model, although that risks competing directly with Apple's higher-end products). I've got a Core Duo Mini as my primary machine, and would love to replace it with a more modern equivalent, although the current models are barely an improvement over my 4-year-old machine.
You missed my point -- the best guesses are that he either didn't want the bomb to explode, he's being framed, or had some sort of psychotic breakdown.
b) it was CCTV that helped capture the man behind the recent bomb attempt in New York by catching pictures of him, don't you? Guns wouldn't have helped in either of those situations.
Ummm, no the VIN is what helped catch the guy in New York. And his own stupidity.
Nope. We still haven't found the guy they caught on camera, and the guy we caught was an Engineer with a graduate degree that had no idea of how to build a bomb or avoid detection at even the most basic level.
I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I find it incredibly hard to accept the "he's stupid" hypothesis.
BP also has a track record of cutting every corner, which obviously led to the current problem,
Um, no. We still have no idea what happened, or why none of the several failsafes on the blowout preventer worked.
While BP are legally liable, it's entirely possible that Halliburton (who were pouring a concrete casing around the well at the time of the accident) could be to blame.
Although BP deserve to be dragged over the coals for the failure of the platform, and perhaps for not responding in a timely manner, pointing blame for the failure of the BOP is a much more complicated issue, given that such a complete failure shouldn't have been possible. We simply need more facts.
If there's one thing that the founding fathers certainly would balk at, it's the God-like reverence with which they and their document are treated with today.
Although I support the rule of law, the constitution was written almost 225 years ago, for a union of 13 states. Much has changed since then, and the constitution provides an amendment process for this very purpose.
The filibuster rule made sense when there were only 26 senators -- as the number climbed to 100, it became increasingly obvious that it was no longer suitable, as a grandstanding politician could effectively block any piece of legislation, which was increasingly probable as the size of the Senate grew.
Similarly, advances in communications and transportation have made state lines increasingly irrelevant (your rant is a "states rights" thing, right?). It's no surprise that, as people traveled and traded from state-to-state that the federal government would grow in size and importance. The states have also done few favors to themselves, as their governments have proven time and time again to be corrupt and ineffective over the past several decades.
Javascript's gotten fast/mature enough to be taken seriously as a real programming language. Google in particular have made some truly impressive progress with Chrome.
Although the server-side Java applet seems annoying to have, and indeed hack-y, it's awesome that we're starting to see "real" applications in the browser.
We'll hopefully start seeing lots more of this sort of thing, thanks to Apple's "war on flash."
Is this because of specific gripes you have with existing PDF plugins, or on a more general level?
Although I despise Adobe Reader, I find Safari's PDF implementation to be quite good on Macs (although this could be because OSX's treatment of PDF in general is top-notch, lightning-fast, and very deeply integrated into the windowing system)
You can also get similar functionality for Firefox on mac.
I think a lot of people are very interested to learn why the Blowout Preventer failed, given that they have multiple failsafes, and are built to account for this exact sort of incident, including two "shear rams" that should have been able to cut through anything stuck in the valve to seal it.
BP's got a poor track record, and should be sued into oblivion if we find out that they tampered with or disabled safety measures on the BOP.
However, there's no evidence of this just yet, and several companies were involved with this particular rig at the time of the incident.
From what I've been reading, the BOP failure could either be narrowed down to a complete, colossal screw-up by BP, or a Rube Goldberg series of events that prevented the BOP from working.
Obviously, we'll be seeing many new safety measures installed on all current and future BOPs, as well as ROVs that can supply sufficient hydraulic power to close the shear rams in the event of a multiple system failure.
as long as Outlook continues to encourage top-posting and HTML formatted content, and discourage quoted reply trimming, it will still suck.
Jesus Christ. 10 years later, and we're still having this argument?
Give it up, dude. Usenet is dead, top-posting is the norm, and everything supports HTML. Only a select few chose to trim their bottom-posts, which usually just meant lots of scrolling.
(In any event, threaded conversations a la GMail are clearly the way forward)
I've used Ubuntu as my primary desktop OS since 8.10, and I can say without reservation that [MOST RECENT VERSION] is the worst of the bunch. Why? They broke everything!
Seems like we hear this with every Ubuntu release... especially in the immediate days following the release. Ubuntu seems to jump the gun with releases.
I don't necessarily take the view that quality's slipped -- the OS as a whole has markedly improved. However, they might want to do a bit more QA before pushing out releases.
Also, isn't the "I'll never consider X again" reaction a bit impulsive?
(PS. Did you install VirtualBox from repositories? The packages should have a DKMS trigger that fires whenever the kernel is updated. The kernel module requirement has always been there, and DKMS usually automagically takes care of any compatibility issues.)
He's also the asshole that told all the public universities in Virginia they could no longer have policies of non-discrimination towards gays.
Stay classy.
Virginia's public universities were not amused.
He could very well be an intellectual and history buff, who happens to become an emotional demagogue once he's in front of the camera.
In that case, he's a pathological liar.
Many new sound boards run some sort of embedded OS -- some of them are incredibly complex. A free RT kernel would be very attractive to the manufacturers of these devices, given that the software on them is already 100% proprietary.
This is true of iPhone SDK. This is not true of Apple in general. Darwin, CUPS, and WebKit are all open source. Apple also distributes for free the other open source code it uses like their version of bash, BIND, etc.
Don't forget LLVM, which is quickly becoming the best damn compiler out there.
Hell, if I wrote something as brilliant as LLVM, I'd want to keep it as close to my chest as possible, and attempt to make a fortune off of it. (Of course, LLVM didn't originate at Apple, but you get my point...)
I was impressed until I read the rest of the list, particularly this love letter to Glenn Beck........ written by none other than Sarah Palin herself.
Really, Time? Sure, he's pretty influential, and a demagogue to be certain. But casting him as an intellectual and a history buff? Have they ever even watched his program?
Jon Stewart had a great point last week: The Daily Show is as absurd and farcical as it's been since Day 1. However, the "real news" media are slowly inching their way toward the realm of absurdist comedy and entertainment.
Wait. What was NASA doing in Australia??
My bet? HP is going after BlackBerry.
The competitive market for corporate-friendly smartphones is virtually nonexistent, and BlackBerry's product line is outright sad, especially compared to the wonderphones coming out of HTC, Palm, and Apple. However, they continue to dominate the market because nobody has been willing to directly compete.
HP have a large base of loyal corporate customers, and the experience to sell products to these customers. They could conceivably take down Blackberry with a decent product and good marketing.
Which is why Firefox users will continue to be served videos in a .FLV container until their organization rationalizes its politics or supports H264 through an external plugin (much like how Ubuntu supports mp3 playback and non-free video drivers).
If you've got an IDE header, why not use a CF card? They're pin-for-pin compatible with IDE.