I can lobby, pray, or jump up and down on a street corner, but none of that gives me any legal right to interfere with someone's life. I have the right to speak, but they don't have to listen, and they certainly don't legally have to change their lives because I'm doing so. So just because I might want a kid to adopt, I can't legally force someone to carry a child to term. That would be an invasion of their rights.
As for the difference between an unborn fetus and a live child, you're starting to get into those moral grounds where we probably shouldn't venture because no one's going to change their morals based on a/. argument. But the most obvious difference between the two are that a live child is not physically dependent on its mother. You can certainly say that it's economically dependent, but from a biological point of view, its life is now separate. A fetus (specificially an early stage fetus anyway) does not have that same classification. It is physically dependent on its mother and without her it cannot live (at least not/w the current state of technology), therefore the rights it has are solely attached to its mother.
Honestly, for me it boils down to laws of morality, and as a Liberterian leaning person, I don't think the government should be poking its nose into people's morals. If a woman gets pregnant (even by accident), it's her morals that tell her what to do. Certainly if she's a very religious person, her morals are going to tell her that an abortion is the wrong thing to do. But it shouldn't be the government's job to make that moral decision.
I know your initial comment was meant to be simplistic. I was just illustrating how quickly simple issues start to build.
As to your new abortion idea. You're giving the government an awful lot of control here. The woman in question hasn't done anything wrong that the government gets to punish her for (getting pregnant is not illegal). So therefore, why can it impose its will upon her body?
I can see #1 of course and *maybe* #2...the issue there is that it's still her body, not his.
#3 & #4 are silly. I get no say about how any other citizen runs their life, so therefore I can't force a woman to give birth. And #4 is just scary from the 'evil clone army' point of view so to speak.
Not to get into a giant political debate, but here are some problems with your ideas after about 2 minutes of thought...
Abortion - The Supreme Court ruled that women have a right to their body, one that supercedes the potential life growing inside them. The reason abortion is legal is because of this right. Under your plan, you'd basically be forcing women who didn't want to be pregnant to carry a child to term. While you may believe this to be the moral thing, under the current interpretation of the constitution, it would be illegal for you to do so. I won't even get into your financial liability issue beyond asking, what would you do with women who couldn't afford the "state sponsored education" you propose? And then, even if you did pull all of that off, how do you prevent coat-hanger abortions and people leaving the country to perform them? You're essentially creating even larger health problems there.
Social Security - You're right, the retirement age is set a bit low given today's life expectancy. I'm not going to pass judgement on your proposal, but do consider that the current US population is getting quite old as the baby boomers start to reach retirement age. If you were to try to change all of those rules now, you'd be out of officer faster than Gray Davis.
Overtime - Cleary a clever idea to prevent 80 hour weeks, but it'd just create economic hardship. Either labor would be outsourced to other countries (which already happens w/o your proposed rules) or you'd have a huge illegal immigrant workforce (which already is the case in some places) or if everyone were to abide by the 20 hour/week rule, then the US would become one of the most unproductive countries in the world. I know we tend to look at Europe and say "wow, look, 6 week vacations and 35 hour weeks!", but the fact of the matter is that those countries are not as productive as the US is. And right now, that productivity is one of the few things keeping us out of a serious recession.
I'm not saying I have the answers to these problems, but it's amazing how 3 "small" issues can start all sorts of consequences. And we haven't even gotten to the technilogical issues facing society that/. likes to focus on.
Ah, didn't realize you were keying on a trademark issue. I understand that sentiment, but then the "bad guys" would just change the installed names of their apps to things like "Internet Connector" or "Web Site Accelerator" or whatever. That'd get them around MS and they'd sound just as important to the average user.
Yeah, you're right...in fact, if the app isn't signed by MS, then they should remove it, because you never know, it might be doing something "bad".
Problem is, you'd be screaming just as much about this "solution" as you are right now about the popups, etc. And you'd be perfectly justified in doing so.
If a MS OS is going to have the ability to run arbitrary executables (arguably the OS's most important job), then it can't be responsbile for what those apps do.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but one possibility might be to create two (or more) different versions of Windows. There could be:
WinXP for Business - Only runs MS signed apps...anything else will refuse to install (maybe overridable by someone with administration ability?). - Will actively search for "bad" apps like you described and remove them if they get installed somehow.
WinXP for Home - Will run whatever you damn well chose, but it's your own fault when something goes wrong.
Actually maybe these are the same OS, just with different settings. Perhaps MS could make different default install configs depending on your setup.
Actually my credit union requires photo ID for everything, even deposits. Only started about a year ago, but I'd guess other banks are headed that way too.
If you've got dynamic output, and don't want to buffer then entire content so you can generate a Content-Length header, then chunked encoding is for you. There's no reason for a server to be buffering up a potentially huge reply if the client can accept it piece-meal instead.
Eating pasta everyday is not a healthy lifestyle. Most of these posts I see seem to refer to vegeterian or vegan lifestyles. Which is fine if that's what you believe in.
However, if you eat like a person has evolved to eat (sorry, but it's true...don't get made, just an observation)...a good portion of cost is taken up by meat. Even chicken tends to cost around $5/pound (cheaper on sale sometimes).
So yes, a diet of pure pasta might be $1/day, but boy that's a lot of carbs.
Ah yes, so it seems. I discovered this after posting. Sorry about that...the Panasonic site doesn't make it clear, and the BestBuy site doesn't show the entire back image and thus cuts off the coax input. Whoops.
I don't understand the Panasonic devices. Why don't they have a coaxial cable input and a tuner? If they're meant to replace a VCR, then they need tuning capability.
At around $300-$400 I would gladly trade a VCR for a DVD-R solution (no HD needed as I have TiVo as my primary recording source), but as they are now they only work as archival devices instead of true replacements.
I'm a little sick of all of the "I buy my laptop online because it's $125 cheaper without taxes" argument.
Yes, you're right, it's cheaper to do that, but that's primarily because you're breaking the law. Just because you don't pay taxes at the time of purchase does not mean that your laptop is tax exempt. You should be filling out the appropriate "use tax" form for your state and sending the money to them.
I realize that hardly anyone actually obeys the use tax laws, but that doesn't make your argument any more valid. It's basically the equivilent of saying "Laptops would cost more if they stopped letting me steal money from banks!"
So, would this tax enforcement at the time of purchase hurt online sales? Maybe. But, please realize it's not a new tax, it's just forcing you to pay one you're already supposed to be paying.
The tax form explicitly states *OUT OF STATE* purchases. If you bought it from a website that was in state, they already charged you tax (as stated on your receipt). Crucial.com is a good example of this. These count as instate purchases, and hence you're not charged a second time.
Yes, but either way, you owe North Carolina for this, not the place where you bought it from. Hence why it's on the state tax form.
The tax is *NOT* 1% of the gross income as the previous poster stated. I don't recall the exact #, but it's on the order of 0.1% based on what TurboTax has calculated for me over the last few years.
There is also a separate field where you're supposed to pay 10% of purchases over $1000, but I doubt anyone really fills that in (and besides, computer equipment isn't that expensive anymore).
They don't exist anymore because there's no money in it for the manufacturers. The costs to create a 40GB drive (not to mention packaging and shipping) is likely only a few $$$ less than producing a 120GB drive. Since the 120 sells for twice as much, it obviously makes sense to promote those.
With that said, you can still get 20, 30 & 40 GB drives w/o much of a problem, just not at $1/GB.
You, sir, rock my world. That is indeed the game I was referring to, and trust me the music/effects rocked (for the time) if you had the right card. Thanks for all the help.
Raptor was nice, but that's a scroller (and it came out later I think)
In this game, your ship was on the bottom of the screen and big gray "blast doors" would open to reveal the enemies upcoming. It was also purely set in space, no ground scenery.
Silpheed did indeed rock. But it was produced by Sierra and only had Adlib & Roland MT-32 support (albeit beautiful sound...used on the MT-32 demo tape even), but no...
The game I'm remembering came out a while later and had better graphics and I *think* was a shareware game by one of the bigger players at the time.
There was a game out around 1993/4-ish that was one of the best of its time. It was a top-down scrolling space shooter where you'd compete in various levels.
Each level began by a big set of "doors" opening across the screen and they'd close again at the end of the level. It was highly addictive and had a great SoundBlaster (and Gravis) soundtrack of techno music.
Since 1984, we've gotten: * SRS systems (airbags specifically, but those auto-shoulder belts at one point) * Safer body designs that can withstand impacts better * Other minor safety features like the 3rd brake light (1986)
Sure there's a reason. You're talking 10 times the bandwidth. 1mb per minute saves a heck of a lot over 10mb per minute. Not to mention that they'd lose their non-broadband.
Yes I know you can use lossless compression, but the average consumer out there isn't going to know how to deal with that. They understand.mp3 and the like.
I think you're confusing the OS/w the specific designs of a given OEM. There's nothing in OS/5 that would prevent an OEM from coming out with a Palm V-like device (although they'd likely use an ARM chip for better performance).
You're not likely to see one, of course, since OEMs seem to believe that people want all the stuff that's packed into PocketPC (which is color, hi-res, MP3, etc).
But don't blame PalmSource for creating an OS that the majority of PDA OEMs want. Instead, lobby Palm Inc. (which is a separate company) or Sony or Handera to create a device like you want.
For reference, the hi-res support in OS/5 is not limited to 320x320 per say. Though it's likely that is what many devices will come out with, the choice is actually up to the OEM, but the API is reasonably generic so that it abstracts real screen pixels away from internal pixels.
As was clearly stated at the PalmSource conference back in February, the OS is equally suited to a 640x640 display or even the odd resolutions like 320x480 (like the NR70).
Thank you, I'll give these a shot and apprecaite the informative reply instead of some of the other "You must have done something wrong, Mozilla is not responsbile" replies.
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I can lobby, pray, or jump up and down on a street corner, but none of that gives me any legal right to interfere with someone's life. I have the right to speak, but they don't have to listen, and they certainly don't legally have to change their lives because I'm doing so. So just because I might want a kid to adopt, I can't legally force someone to carry a child to term. That would be an invasion of their rights.
/. argument. But the most obvious difference between the two are that a live child is not physically dependent on its mother. You can certainly say that it's economically dependent, but from a biological point of view, its life is now separate. A fetus (specificially an early stage fetus anyway) does not have that same classification. It is physically dependent on its mother and without her it cannot live (at least not /w the current state of technology), therefore the rights it has are solely attached to its mother.
As for the difference between an unborn fetus and a live child, you're starting to get into those moral grounds where we probably shouldn't venture because no one's going to change their morals based on a
Honestly, for me it boils down to laws of morality, and as a Liberterian leaning person, I don't think the government should be poking its nose into people's morals. If a woman gets pregnant (even by accident), it's her morals that tell her what to do. Certainly if she's a very religious person, her morals are going to tell her that an abortion is the wrong thing to do. But it shouldn't be the government's job to make that moral decision.
I know your initial comment was meant to be simplistic. I was just illustrating how quickly simple issues start to build.
As to your new abortion idea. You're giving the government an awful lot of control here. The woman in question hasn't done anything wrong that the government gets to punish her for (getting pregnant is not illegal). So therefore, why can it impose its will upon her body?
I can see #1 of course and *maybe* #2...the issue there is that it's still her body, not his.
#3 & #4 are silly. I get no say about how any other citizen runs their life, so therefore I can't force a woman to give birth. And #4 is just scary from the 'evil clone army' point of view so to speak.
Not to get into a giant political debate, but here are some problems with your ideas after about 2 minutes of thought...
/. likes to focus on.
Abortion - The Supreme Court ruled that women have a right to their body, one that supercedes the potential life growing inside them. The reason abortion is legal is because of this right. Under your plan, you'd basically be forcing women who didn't want to be pregnant to carry a child to term. While you may believe this to be the moral thing, under the current interpretation of the constitution, it would be illegal for you to do so. I won't even get into your financial liability issue beyond asking, what would you do with women who couldn't afford the "state sponsored education" you propose? And then, even if you did pull all of that off, how do you prevent coat-hanger abortions and people leaving the country to perform them? You're essentially creating even larger health problems there.
Social Security - You're right, the retirement age is set a bit low given today's life expectancy. I'm not going to pass judgement on your proposal, but do consider that the current US population is getting quite old as the baby boomers start to reach retirement age. If you were to try to change all of those rules now, you'd be out of officer faster than Gray Davis.
Overtime - Cleary a clever idea to prevent 80 hour weeks, but it'd just create economic hardship. Either labor would be outsourced to other countries (which already happens w/o your proposed rules) or you'd have a huge illegal immigrant workforce (which already is the case in some places) or if everyone were to abide by the 20 hour/week rule, then the US would become one of the most unproductive countries in the world. I know we tend to look at Europe and say "wow, look, 6 week vacations and 35 hour weeks!", but the fact of the matter is that those countries are not as productive as the US is. And right now, that productivity is one of the few things keeping us out of a serious recession.
I'm not saying I have the answers to these problems, but it's amazing how 3 "small" issues can start all sorts of consequences. And we haven't even gotten to the technilogical issues facing society that
Ah, didn't realize you were keying on a trademark issue. I understand that sentiment, but then the "bad guys" would just change the installed names of their apps to things like "Internet Connector" or "Web Site Accelerator" or whatever. That'd get them around MS and they'd sound just as important to the average user.
Yeah, you're right...in fact, if the app isn't signed by MS, then they should remove it, because you never know, it might be doing something "bad".
Problem is, you'd be screaming just as much about this "solution" as you are right now about the popups, etc. And you'd be perfectly justified in doing so.
If a MS OS is going to have the ability to run arbitrary executables (arguably the OS's most important job), then it can't be responsbile for what those apps do.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but one possibility might be to create two (or more) different versions of Windows. There could be:
WinXP for Business
- Only runs MS signed apps...anything else will refuse to install (maybe overridable by someone with administration ability?).
- Will actively search for "bad" apps like you described and remove them if they get installed somehow.
WinXP for Home
- Will run whatever you damn well chose, but it's your own fault when something goes wrong.
Actually maybe these are the same OS, just with different settings. Perhaps MS could make different default install configs depending on your setup.
Actually my credit union requires photo ID for everything, even deposits. Only started about a year ago, but I'd guess other banks are headed that way too.
Um...chunked encoding is not useless.
If you've got dynamic output, and don't want to buffer then entire content so you can generate a Content-Length header, then chunked encoding is for you. There's no reason for a server to be buffering up a potentially huge reply if the client can accept it piece-meal instead.
Eating pasta everyday is not a healthy lifestyle. Most of these posts I see seem to refer to vegeterian or vegan lifestyles. Which is fine if that's what you believe in.
However, if you eat like a person has evolved to eat (sorry, but it's true...don't get made, just an observation)...a good portion of cost is taken up by meat. Even chicken tends to cost around $5/pound (cheaper on sale sometimes).
So yes, a diet of pure pasta might be $1/day, but boy that's a lot of carbs.
Ah yes, so it seems. I discovered this after posting. Sorry about that...the Panasonic site doesn't make it clear, and the BestBuy site doesn't show the entire back image and thus cuts off the coax input. Whoops.
But why don't they support DVD-RW?
I don't understand the Panasonic devices. Why don't they have a coaxial cable input and a tuner? If they're meant to replace a VCR, then they need tuning capability.
At around $300-$400 I would gladly trade a VCR for a DVD-R solution (no HD needed as I have TiVo as my primary recording source), but as they are now they only work as archival devices instead of true replacements.
Boo.
That's fine. If your state has no use or sales tax, then it won't have any online sales tax either.
I'm a little sick of all of the "I buy my laptop online because it's $125 cheaper without taxes" argument.
Yes, you're right, it's cheaper to do that, but that's primarily because you're breaking the law. Just because you don't pay taxes at the time of purchase does not mean that your laptop is tax exempt. You should be filling out the appropriate "use tax" form for your state and sending the money to them.
I realize that hardly anyone actually obeys the use tax laws, but that doesn't make your argument any more valid. It's basically the equivilent of saying "Laptops would cost more if they stopped letting me steal money from banks!"
So, would this tax enforcement at the time of purchase hurt online sales? Maybe. But, please realize it's not a new tax, it's just forcing you to pay one you're already supposed to be paying.
No.
The tax form explicitly states *OUT OF STATE* purchases. If you bought it from a website that was in state, they already charged you tax (as stated on your receipt). Crucial.com is a good example of this. These count as instate purchases, and hence you're not charged a second time.
Yes, but either way, you owe North Carolina for this, not the place where you bought it from. Hence why it's on the state tax form.
The tax is *NOT* 1% of the gross income as the previous poster stated. I don't recall the exact #, but it's on the order of 0.1% based on what TurboTax has calculated for me over the last few years.
There is also a separate field where you're supposed to pay 10% of purchases over $1000, but I doubt anyone really fills that in (and besides, computer equipment isn't that expensive anymore).
Anyway, TANSTAAFL.
They don't exist anymore because there's no money in it for the manufacturers. The costs to create a 40GB drive (not to mention packaging and shipping) is likely only a few $$$ less than producing a 120GB drive. Since the 120 sells for twice as much, it obviously makes sense to promote those.
With that said, you can still get 20, 30 & 40 GB drives w/o much of a problem, just not at $1/GB.
You, sir, rock my world. That is indeed the game I was referring to, and trust me the music/effects rocked (for the time) if you had the right card. Thanks for all the help.
Nope, but looks interesting. Same idea, but there were no ground targets, etc.
Raptor was nice, but that's a scroller (and it came out later I think)
In this game, your ship was on the bottom of the screen and big gray "blast doors" would open to reveal the enemies upcoming. It was also purely set in space, no ground scenery.
Silpheed did indeed rock. But it was produced by Sierra and only had Adlib & Roland MT-32 support (albeit beautiful sound...used on the MT-32 demo tape even), but no...
The game I'm remembering came out a while later and had better graphics and I *think* was a shareware game by one of the bigger players at the time.
There was a game out around 1993/4-ish that was one of the best of its time. It was a top-down scrolling space shooter where you'd compete in various levels.
Each level began by a big set of "doors" opening across the screen and they'd close again at the end of the level. It was highly addictive and had a great SoundBlaster (and Gravis) soundtrack of techno music.
Anyone remember the name?
Bad example...
Since 1984, we've gotten:
* SRS systems (airbags specifically, but those auto-shoulder belts at one point)
* Safer body designs that can withstand impacts better
* Other minor safety features like the 3rd brake light (1986)
Sure there's a reason. You're talking 10 times the bandwidth. 1mb per minute saves a heck of a lot over 10mb per minute. Not to mention that they'd lose their non-broadband.
.mp3 and the like.
Yes I know you can use lossless compression, but the average consumer out there isn't going to know how to deal with that. They understand
I think you're confusing the OS /w the specific designs of a given OEM. There's nothing in OS/5 that would prevent an OEM from coming out with a Palm V-like device (although they'd likely use an ARM chip for better performance).
You're not likely to see one, of course, since OEMs seem to believe that people want all the stuff that's packed into PocketPC (which is color, hi-res, MP3, etc).
But don't blame PalmSource for creating an OS that the majority of PDA OEMs want. Instead, lobby Palm Inc. (which is a separate company) or Sony or Handera to create a device like you want.
For reference, the hi-res support in OS/5 is not limited to 320x320 per say. Though it's likely that is what many devices will come out with, the choice is actually up to the OEM, but the API is reasonably generic so that it abstracts real screen pixels away from internal pixels.
As was clearly stated at the PalmSource conference back in February, the OS is equally suited to a 640x640 display or even the odd resolutions like 320x480 (like the NR70).
Thank you, I'll give these a shot and apprecaite the informative reply instead of some of the other "You must have done something wrong, Mozilla is not responsbile" replies.