They should just let people do whatever they wish. If you can talk on your cellphone while driving OK, if you create an accident you should suffer the consequences and that's all
And what kind of crime is "attempted murder", anyway? Do they give a Nobel Prize for "Attempted Chemistry"?
Well, if you mean by actually torturing you? Well, depends on whether you believe your government does that to americans or not.
Torture isn't the only way of getting data out of people, which is fortunate because as Bush said, "We don't torture." What we do is called using "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", which aren't torture because they don't cause organ failure, except when they do and the organ was in a guy who wasn't going to live forever anyway.
I don't really wonder what was going on when three or four "well-placed sources" claimed that government tests had linked the anthrax to Saddam. Just toss the deceit on the pile; I think there's some space in between the "Smoking Gun Mushroom Cloud" and the "Mobile Biological Weapons Laboratories".
What I wonder about is:
Why hasn't ABC outed the people who lied to them?
Why is Glenn Greenwald the only person who seems to care that ABC is protecting government insiders who lied about anthrax attacks?
Actually, getting off could be easier on Mars. (minds out of the gutter, people!)
In situ propellant materials are definitely available on the moon, but in solid form, and even there the best alternatives look like aluminum with oxygen (hard to turn into a solid rocket) or hydrogen with oxygen (but in rare dirty ice form). So until we're ready to create a moon colony (i.e. with mining and manufacturing/refining equipment) rather than just a moon base, the only way to get off the rock is to do like Apollo did and bring all the rocket fuel you need all the way from Earth.
On Mars, on the other hand, carbon dioxide is most of the atmosphere - no need for mining equipment to bake O atoms out of rock, just an air filter to pull them in CO2 molecules out of the sky. We've already tested the sort of compact equipment that would let even a small mission turn that into carbon monoxide and oxygen. You can burn those together directly, or if you want higher performance you can bring your own H2 (which is only a small fraction of your total fuel+oxidizer needs by weight) and burn it directly against local oxygen or bulk it up into methane first using local carbon.
Your other points are all well taken, though. We've made enough flubs in Low Earth Orbit alone that it seems clear that we should practice walking before we run.
I am pretty those distributions prompt you for what desktop environment you want to use
If you were using KDE 3.5 in Fedora 8, upgrading to Fedora 9 will start you in KDE 4.0 without prompting.
Of course, you can use the menus at the login screen to start up Gnome instead, but somehow I don't think that's the sort of workaround that the KDE developers intended.
There's nothing wrong with rewriting even core features from scratch, or releasing early versions of the rewrite to attract testers for the bleeding edge. But if you want to do that you've got to get the name right. "KDE 4 Alpha" would have been much more professional and concise than "KDE 4.0 No Wait Ignore The.0 And Don't Upgrade Yet"
It seems to be in Feodora-9, though. Is there a stable/unstable or whatsoever?
Yes. Red Hat calls "stable" "Enterprise Linux", and calls "unstable" "Fedora".;-)
That's actually usually a good thing, even for Fedora users, but it requires a little wariness. After playing with Fedora 9 on my laptop I can say I won't be upgrading my desktop or my work network right away. KDE 4.0 is a big part of the reason why.
nVidia's binary drivers and X.org's Intel drivers have had XvMC support for well over a year.
I'm confused - what happened a year ago? nVidia's binary drivers have had XvMC support for their older cards for many years, whereas for the 8xxx series of cards their drivers lack XvMC support *still* (at least as of the version 173.14.05 I installed a couple months ago).
Once elected, Obama can enact REAL change and retroactively remove the immunity if it is even worth it.
Wow, it's as if the Republicans' fantasies about unlimited executive power and the Democrats' fantasies about Obama's goodness had a baby. A baby with fetal alcohol syndrome, who will never even be able to comprehend the SchoolHouse Rock version of "how a bill becomes a law"...
therefore Obama has made a shrewd political move insuring his electability.
Absolutely. He was against telecom immunity before he voted for it. There's no way the Republicans will ever be able to use that against him. He's nearly as electable as John Kerry, now!
The Republican propaganda machine THRIVES on perceived fears of terrorism; giving them prime ammunition like "Obama voted against finding terrists!"
That could have been awful. Instead they're now stuck with second-rate ammunition like "Obama voted against the Protect America Act for finding terrists, but caved after we courageous Republicans showed him who was boss!"
Idealist never achieve anything
The Bill of Rights looks pretty idealistic. Just because it'll be completely dismantled in the end doesn't mean it wasn't a very good achievement for a very long time.
Also, I think there should be some sort of phrase that describes invoking Ron Paul, sort of like Godwin's Law.
In a discussion where you've just discovered that the mainstream "change" candidate is willing to break his filibuster promise, the Fourth Amendment, and the Rule of Law?
I think the applicable phrase is "I told you so."
We'll have to wait for someone less gullible than me to say it, though. I voted for Obama in the primary, because at that time I believed that he meant what he was saying about civil liberties, and I decided it would be better to vote against Clinton's fearmongering than to vote for a candidate like Paul who (at that point) couldn't win. I made a mistake, and I apologize.
Obama is being hammered for changing his views. Bush is hammered for NOT changing his views.
Why do you think that's inconsistent? Perhaps what matters isn't whether they change their views or not, but what those specific views are and whether or not new information warranted changing them.
The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any president or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court.
FISA's authority here was already exclusive, as was recently reiterated in a Federal court by a Bush Sr. appointed judge. Obama voted for a meaningless provision. "I'll help you get away with doing something illegal this time, if you'll let me make it double-illegal for next time!" is not a compromise, it is idiocy. The only remaining question is whether Obama was dumb enough to believe this argument himself or just dishonest enough to try to trick his supporters into believing it.
My sympathies for those of you voting in swing states. Helping choose between John "I'd like to shred the Fourth Amendment" McCain and Barack "I'll shred the Fourth Amendment, but I'll feel sad about it" Obama is probably still important, but it can't be very fun.
And since the only way to change it is in Congress and not the Executive branch, and they know this, you know they're doing it intentionally for publicity.
While I suppose it's possible that third party Presidential candidates are ignoring the implications of Duverger's Law because they're cynically campaigning as publicity stunts, I think a simpler explanation may be that third party Presidential candidates are ignoring the implications of Duverger's Law because they've never even heard of it.
Besides, so what if we did have a Congress willing to fix the problem? Would they succeed? Just trying to understand the game theory can be complicated. For example: you blame the electoral college? The electoral college isn't responsible for our two-party system in non-Presidential elections, and in the Presidential election it has just the opposite effect: people in non-swing states can afford to "throw their vote away" on third party candidates because their vote had no change of being more than symbolic anyway.
The way it's SUPPOSED to work is that the candidates are supposed to campaign hard, build supporters, negotiate concessions from the primary parties, then pledge their supporters to the candidate that agrees to support their interests.
This is absolutely right. Just because the voting system is broken doesn't mean that idealists should be ignoring opportunities to do good while working to fix it.
Obama will be heavily attacked this fall for any appearance of being 'soft' on terrorism.
Yup. And his two possible reactions include the moral and intelligent response:
"I'm willing to fight as hard as it takes to preserve our Bill of Rights against anyone who would try to use terror to take those rights away from you."
Or the immoral and stupid response:
"I'd kinda like to do the things I'm being accused of, but I must not have any good reasons for it since I'm willing to cave as long as I'm pushed hard enough."
The Republicans and Democrats often get stereotyped as the "Daddy party" and the "Mommy party"; perhaps the "Wife-beater party" and the "Co-dependent party" would be more accurate by this point? Would someone call Social Services already?
Which FA? One of the links just says "several thousand dollars", and the others don't mention price at all.
the TLDs will cost upwards of $100,000
No, at worst the TLDs will be priced upwards of $100,000. That breaks down to roughly $100 of hardware and administrative costs, and $99,900 of hookers and blow.
That should have read "conservative" justices in the Breyer case, but it's clear what you meant.
It's unbelievably sad that there's currently only one justice on the Supreme Court who supports our Constitution-guaranteed individual rights regardless of the swings of left/right politics.
If Obama takes the same position as McCain on this issue, it effectively removes it from the table.
No, it doesn't. Taking a position that your opponent is forced to accept later makes you a "leader" in people's eyes. Switching to your opponent's position makes you a "flip flopper". Even in situations where changing your mind is done for logical reasons it hurts you because people want to vote for a "leader" for President; changing your mind for political gain just makes you look even worse.
you'll have to choose based on other criteria.
No, I won't. Nearly half the country doesn't vote, even in Presidential elections; there's nothing stopping me from joining them, or from voting for a third party. I'm in Texas where my presidential vote won't count, but whether it goes to Obama or Barr has at least some symbolic value, and there will be practical value people in swing states think the same way.
it is a valid strategy.
Yes, but it's not necessarily a good strategy. One of the most interesting things about the primaries, even when the Republican race was still close, was the larger Democratic turnout, particularly among younger demographics who haven't been as likely to vote in the past. Having an enthused base willing to get to the polls in larger numbers could be a big advantage for Obama if he doesn't blow it trying to peel away a few authoritarian "moderates".
Simply put, it's an election year and none of the Democrats want to appear "soft on terrorism/defense/insert-the-buzzword-of-the-day-here", out of fear of losing their jobs.
A fear which is sadlyconfused; how do you appear "strong" by doing exactly what your opponent wants but less enthusiastically? The Democrats are never going to be perceived as more zealously hard-on-terrorism than the Republicans, so their only hope is to try to motivate people who want them to be zealously strong-on-liberty instead. Weakling decisions like "I voted against the Fourth Amendment, but I felt really bad about it" aren't going to win them any voters from any part of the political spectrum.
Most Democrats did vote against the bill, 128-105, with only one Republican voting against and ten not voting. It's fair to point out that nearly half the Democrats in Congress, including many of their leaders, are also involved in this attempt to subvert the rule of law and the Bill of Rights, but to try and pretend that the Republicans aren't the greater offenders here is just wrong.
Attention moderators: if reading facts that contradict your opinion makes you want to flame someone, that doesn't mean he's writing flamebait, it just means you should be less flammable.
Don't get me wrong, it's obvious that on average the Democrats are doing a lot better than the Republicans lately. But you can't just say "a [party I like] President" wouldn't have done such bad things; that kind of tribalism valuing affiliation over actions is at the root of how the Republican Party self-destructed, and the Democrats aren't immune from the same human impulses.
To get down to specific examples, I think it's pretty clear by now that Gore wouldn't have made most of the mistakes Bush did, but I don't think it's clear that the privacy issues we're discussing right now aren't an exception.
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And what kind of crime is "attempted murder", anyway? Do they give a Nobel Prize for "Attempted Chemistry"?
Well, if you mean by actually torturing you? Well, depends on whether you believe your government does that to americans or not.
Torture isn't the only way of getting data out of people, which is fortunate because as Bush said, "We don't torture." What we do is called using "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", which aren't torture because they don't cause organ failure, except when they do and the organ was in a guy who wasn't going to live forever anyway.
I don't really wonder what was going on when three or four "well-placed sources" claimed that government tests had linked the anthrax to Saddam. Just toss the deceit on the pile; I think there's some space in between the "Smoking Gun Mushroom Cloud" and the "Mobile Biological Weapons Laboratories".
What I wonder about is:
Why hasn't ABC outed the people who lied to them?
Why is Glenn Greenwald the only person who seems to care that ABC is protecting government insiders who lied about anthrax attacks?
They flew an AIRCRAFT CARRIER on the back of a 747?
You're thinking about a different Enterprise. The one we're talking about was an Aircraft CARRIEE.
Getting off is the hard part.
Actually, getting off could be easier on Mars. (minds out of the gutter, people!)
In situ propellant materials are definitely available on the moon, but in solid form, and even there the best alternatives look like aluminum with oxygen (hard to turn into a solid rocket) or hydrogen with oxygen (but in rare dirty ice form). So until we're ready to create a moon colony (i.e. with mining and manufacturing/refining equipment) rather than just a moon base, the only way to get off the rock is to do like Apollo did and bring all the rocket fuel you need all the way from Earth.
On Mars, on the other hand, carbon dioxide is most of the atmosphere - no need for mining equipment to bake O atoms out of rock, just an air filter to pull them in CO2 molecules out of the sky. We've already tested the sort of compact equipment that would let even a small mission turn that into carbon monoxide and oxygen. You can burn those together directly, or if you want higher performance you can bring your own H2 (which is only a small fraction of your total fuel+oxidizer needs by weight) and burn it directly against local oxygen or bulk it up into methane first using local carbon.
Your other points are all well taken, though. We've made enough flubs in Low Earth Orbit alone that it seems clear that we should practice walking before we run.
You also need the "One cool thing". For apple this was of course the iPod and now the iPhone.
Wow, I feel old now. I'm not the only one left here who remembers when the iMac was Apple's one cool thing, right?
Soon you'll have recreated the functionality of a late 80's usenet client.
Sadly this will still put them years ahead of most web discussion boards, whose hack designers have yet to figure out "threading".
I am pretty those distributions prompt you for what desktop environment you want to use
If you were using KDE 3.5 in Fedora 8, upgrading to Fedora 9 will start you in KDE 4.0 without prompting.
Of course, you can use the menus at the login screen to start up Gnome instead, but somehow I don't think that's the sort of workaround that the KDE developers intended.
There's nothing wrong with rewriting even core features from scratch, or releasing early versions of the rewrite to attract testers for the bleeding edge. But if you want to do that you've got to get the name right. "KDE 4 Alpha" would have been much more professional and concise than "KDE 4.0 No Wait Ignore The .0 And Don't Upgrade Yet"
It seems to be in Feodora-9, though. Is there a stable/unstable or whatsoever?
Yes. Red Hat calls "stable" "Enterprise Linux", and calls "unstable" "Fedora". ;-)
That's actually usually a good thing, even for Fedora users, but it requires a little wariness. After playing with Fedora 9 on my laptop I can say I won't be upgrading my desktop or my work network right away. KDE 4.0 is a big part of the reason why.
I'm confused - what happened a year ago? nVidia's binary drivers have had XvMC support for their older cards for many years, whereas for the 8xxx series of cards their drivers lack XvMC support *still* (at least as of the version 173.14.05 I installed a couple months ago).
It's not a no vote. But isn't it almost as good as one, if passing a bill requires a vote of 50%+1 or more "yes" votes, not 50%-1 or fewer "no" votes?
In any case, you can read his statement about the missed vote here:
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2008/cr062008h.htm
Once elected, Obama can enact REAL change and retroactively remove the immunity if it is even worth it.
Wow, it's as if the Republicans' fantasies about unlimited executive power and the Democrats' fantasies about Obama's goodness had a baby. A baby with fetal alcohol syndrome, who will never even be able to comprehend the SchoolHouse Rock version of "how a bill becomes a law"...
therefore Obama has made a shrewd political move insuring his electability.
Absolutely. He was against telecom immunity before he voted for it. There's no way the Republicans will ever be able to use that against him. He's nearly as electable as John Kerry, now!
The Republican propaganda machine THRIVES on perceived fears of terrorism; giving them prime ammunition like "Obama voted against finding terrists!"
That could have been awful. Instead they're now stuck with second-rate ammunition like "Obama voted against the Protect America Act for finding terrists, but caved after we courageous Republicans showed him who was boss!"
Idealist never achieve anything
The Bill of Rights looks pretty idealistic. Just because it'll be completely dismantled in the end doesn't mean it wasn't a very good achievement for a very long time.
Also, I think there should be some sort of phrase that describes invoking Ron Paul, sort of like Godwin's Law.
In a discussion where you've just discovered that the mainstream "change" candidate is willing to break his filibuster promise, the Fourth Amendment, and the Rule of Law?
I think the applicable phrase is "I told you so."
We'll have to wait for someone less gullible than me to say it, though. I voted for Obama in the primary, because at that time I believed that he meant what he was saying about civil liberties, and I decided it would be better to vote against Clinton's fearmongering than to vote for a candidate like Paul who (at that point) couldn't win. I made a mistake, and I apologize.
Obama is being hammered for changing his views. Bush is hammered for NOT changing his views.
Why do you think that's inconsistent? Perhaps what matters isn't whether they change their views or not, but what those specific views are and whether or not new information warranted changing them.
The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any president or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court.
FISA's authority here was already exclusive, as was recently reiterated in a Federal court by a Bush Sr. appointed judge. Obama voted for a meaningless provision. "I'll help you get away with doing something illegal this time, if you'll let me make it double-illegal for next time!" is not a compromise, it is idiocy. The only remaining question is whether Obama was dumb enough to believe this argument himself or just dishonest enough to try to trick his supporters into believing it.
My sympathies for those of you voting in swing states. Helping choose between John "I'd like to shred the Fourth Amendment" McCain and Barack "I'll shred the Fourth Amendment, but I'll feel sad about it" Obama is probably still important, but it can't be very fun.
And since the only way to change it is in Congress and not the Executive branch, and they know this, you know they're doing it intentionally for publicity.
While I suppose it's possible that third party Presidential candidates are ignoring the implications of Duverger's Law because they're cynically campaigning as publicity stunts, I think a simpler explanation may be that third party Presidential candidates are ignoring the implications of Duverger's Law because they've never even heard of it.
Besides, so what if we did have a Congress willing to fix the problem? Would they succeed? Just trying to understand the game theory can be complicated. For example: you blame the electoral college? The electoral college isn't responsible for our two-party system in non-Presidential elections, and in the Presidential election it has just the opposite effect: people in non-swing states can afford to "throw their vote away" on third party candidates because their vote had no change of being more than symbolic anyway.
The way it's SUPPOSED to work is that the candidates are supposed to campaign hard, build supporters, negotiate concessions from the primary parties, then pledge their supporters to the candidate that agrees to support their interests.
This is absolutely right. Just because the voting system is broken doesn't mean that idealists should be ignoring opportunities to do good while working to fix it.
Obama will be heavily attacked this fall for any appearance of being 'soft' on terrorism.
Yup. And his two possible reactions include the moral and intelligent response:
"I'm willing to fight as hard as it takes to preserve our Bill of Rights against anyone who would try to use terror to take those rights away from you."
Or the immoral and stupid response:
"I'd kinda like to do the things I'm being accused of, but I must not have any good reasons for it since I'm willing to cave as long as I'm pushed hard enough."
The Republicans and Democrats often get stereotyped as the "Daddy party" and the "Mommy party"; perhaps the "Wife-beater party" and the "Co-dependent party" would be more accurate by this point? Would someone call Social Services already?
If you read TFA
Which FA? One of the links just says "several thousand dollars", and the others don't mention price at all.
the TLDs will cost upwards of $100,000
No, at worst the TLDs will be priced upwards of $100,000. That breaks down to roughly $100 of hardware and administrative costs, and $99,900 of hookers and blow.
Lack of natural light = blindingly white skin.
We prefer the term "radiant", thank you very much.
That should have read "conservative" justices in the Breyer case, but it's clear what you meant.
It's unbelievably sad that there's currently only one justice on the Supreme Court who supports our Constitution-guaranteed individual rights regardless of the swings of left/right politics.
Instead of the staid, sober "Mr. Wizard,"
So there was no flashy Science As Entertainment there? You did notice that the guy's real last name was "Herbert", right?
If Obama takes the same position as McCain on this issue, it effectively removes it from the table.
No, it doesn't. Taking a position that your opponent is forced to accept later makes you a "leader" in people's eyes. Switching to your opponent's position makes you a "flip flopper". Even in situations where changing your mind is done for logical reasons it hurts you because people want to vote for a "leader" for President; changing your mind for political gain just makes you look even worse.
you'll have to choose based on other criteria.
No, I won't. Nearly half the country doesn't vote, even in Presidential elections; there's nothing stopping me from joining them, or from voting for a third party. I'm in Texas where my presidential vote won't count, but whether it goes to Obama or Barr has at least some symbolic value, and there will be practical value people in swing states think the same way.
it is a valid strategy.
Yes, but it's not necessarily a good strategy. One of the most interesting things about the primaries, even when the Republican race was still close, was the larger Democratic turnout, particularly among younger demographics who haven't been as likely to vote in the past. Having an enthused base willing to get to the polls in larger numbers could be a big advantage for Obama if he doesn't blow it trying to peel away a few authoritarian "moderates".
Simply put, it's an election year and none of the Democrats want to appear "soft on terrorism/defense/insert-the-buzzword-of-the-day-here", out of fear of losing their jobs.
A fear which is sadly confused; how do you appear "strong" by doing exactly what your opponent wants but less enthusiastically? The Democrats are never going to be perceived as more zealously hard-on-terrorism than the Republicans, so their only hope is to try to motivate people who want them to be zealously strong-on-liberty instead. Weakling decisions like "I voted against the Fourth Amendment, but I felt really bad about it" aren't going to win them any voters from any part of the political spectrum.
Most Democrats did vote against the bill, 128-105, with only one Republican voting against and ten not voting. It's fair to point out that nearly half the Democrats in Congress, including many of their leaders, are also involved in this attempt to subvert the rule of law and the Bill of Rights, but to try and pretend that the Republicans aren't the greater offenders here is just wrong.
Attention moderators: if reading facts that contradict your opinion makes you want to flame someone, that doesn't mean he's writing flamebait, it just means you should be less flammable.
You think that the a Democratic president would have invaded Iraq?
Something like that is conceivable.
Imprisoned and tortured innocent people?
It's happened before.
Pushed for telecom immunity in the first place?
Who do you think is pushing for it now?
Undermined the military?
There's a reason why even Bush used to be against nation-building before he was for it.
Don't get me wrong, it's obvious that on average the Democrats are doing a lot better than the Republicans lately. But you can't just say "a [party I like] President" wouldn't have done such bad things; that kind of tribalism valuing affiliation over actions is at the root of how the Republican Party self-destructed, and the Democrats aren't immune from the same human impulses.
To get down to specific examples, I think it's pretty clear by now that Gore wouldn't have made most of the mistakes Bush did, but I don't think it's clear that the privacy issues we're discussing right now aren't an exception.