How come Americans don't mind government funded programs to build roads, schools, fund education, and many other worthwhile things, but don't think the government should be involved with healthcare?
The USA is the only rich country without government funded healthcare. Wouldn't it make more sense to have toll roads and public hospitals?
Salary works ok for some jobs, if you are not expected to regulary put in longer than normal hours.
I was once promoted to a salary position from an hourly. I then discovered this meant no overtime - so I quit working overtime. When asked why I wasn't willing to put in the hours any more by my boss I just told him that I don't work for free.
But I can see where labour laws are needed to prevent abuse of employees who really need that job (4 kids, mortgage, etc...).
You are all aware that you DX is backwards compatible. I wrote a wrapper for DirectDraw, and DirectSound that uses Dx8 features. It works fine under Dx9 because DX8 (and Dx7, 6,5,...) are all included. You have to add a few extra defines when compiling because the default DX headers assume you are using the latest version.
Old games using old version of DX should work just fine if they are not doing anything wierd. I have run ino a few old DX games that have glitches, but most run just fine.
Fighting can be very expensive. A local school board banned a very tame children's book that introduces the idea of a family with "two Dad's". The local school board spent hundreds of thousands trying to keep the book banned when challenged by a parents group. The ban was over turned. The parents group had free legal from a free speecg group. If I was a teacher in that position I would look into getting aid from a rights group.
I don't think you quite get "freedom of speech" if those are the only books that "really shouldn't be banned". NO BOOK should be banned for holding an unpopular opinion. Libel laws should handle most damaging factual errors in published works, but I don't think any fiction should be banned. Sure, not all books should be read by elementary school students, but that doesn't justify banning the book.
Univerisity is not supposed to be job training. If you just wanted job training you should have taken a two year diploma at a technical school. University is supposed to give you a well rounded education that teaches you think, and give the background knowledge to work in many different fields.
How is a 20 year old supposed to know what will be useful to know when he is 50? I have never used what I learned in phil 100 programming, but I still value what I learned in the course as much as any of my science courses.
I'm sorry, but you can't redfine the meaning of words and phrases to suit you own circumstances. I really, really, want to be an Olympic athlete. I think its unfair that only people who compete in the Olympics can be Olympic athletes. I think we should redefine "Olympic Athlete" to be "anyone who can run the hundred meter sprint in less than 30 seconds". This is no more absurd than your statement.
If you don't want to take part in civil disobedience, fine don't. If you want to take part in open rebellion then go ahead, but don't try to pretty up your actions by stealing the meaning of noble actions.
The problem is that the USA government changed the law to make the penalties for copyright infringement way too severe. The lobbiests for the music and movie industry have convinced or paid the USA government to pass these laws, and use the power of the USA government to try to push these same horrible laws on the rest of the world. If radio had been invented today it would never have become a commercial business - just look at what was done to web-radio in the States.
The RIAA is just gleefully using the legal tools given to it by a USA government that no longers cares about the average USA citizen (mainly because it doesn't have to care as most of them don't vote).
Regarding recognizing the number of objects in a group.
Three is the highest number most people can "count" instantly when the objects are in a random pattern. This is easy, and fun, to test at home. When you "count" higher groupings quickly you are either seeing known patterns (eg dots on a die), or quickly re-grouping as you stated.
Show me a right that can not be taken from me by a mob with guns and I'll admit it is natural.
Rights are purely artifical, man made constructs of society that are no more special than laws against theft and murder. Now, this does not mean that people should not work towards working towards a society and government that does support the most liberal rights possible while still supporting a civil society.
As others have pointed out, it is your responsability to actively work to protect your rights. Hopefully the USA population will be able to peacefully restore the rights they have been losing in the name of security. Hopefully the widespread apathy will be replaced by voting, protesting, and other peacful activities.
Your comments about cutting back perks is so true. I worked for a large companie's IT department for 10 years. The whole IT department was sold off in an outsourcing deal, and there were numerous layoffs (mainly management). There have been a number of cost cutting measures and now there is talk of reducing vaction time and other benefits. If this happens everyone with the skills to jump ship will. The current salaries are middle of the road but the benefits are great. If the benefits are cut there is no reason to stay when I can go work somehwere else that has the same crappy benefits but pays 30% to 40% more. Only the people who lack "in demand" skills will stay.
Like suicide terrorists are going to care that their pictures are taken. The terrorists will not be in any existing database, and they won't care if ther picture is taken.
Only thing these cameras will help with is identifing run of the mill protesters after the fact.
Grow up. The whole world does not speak english. The juvenile english speakers should just start their own thread and get over it. The english speakers (and I bet most of the whiners are USA'ians) are just getting a SMALL taste of what the USA has forced on the rest of the world: shipping, flight control, and most business speach is in english due to the Americans unwillingness to learn other languages - backed up by their economic might.
What they should be doing is making sure the voting machines are NEVER able to remotely connect to anything. Once voting is done for the night election officials should have to PHYSICALY connect or transfer votes from the machines to a device that sends the tally to the central counting.
Once a voting machine is "certified" it should be LOCKED, taped, and completely inaccesible to remote or phyical tampering.
You are completely missing the point. The complaint with "loud" cd's is NOT that people play them too loud on their stereos or at concerts. The point is that the CD is being recorded at a level too high to allow for full dynamic range. That is, soft sounds are too loud, and loud sounds are 'clipped'.
I use to record from vinyl (and CD) to high quality casette decks (way back before there were CD burners). The first step to make a good tape is to listen to the whole song, and watch the db level meteres, and adjust them so that the LOUDEST sound in the song is less than zero db (or whatever level your tape deck uses). This way when you play the music back it sounds correct. Soft parts are soft, loud parts are loud, and all those transients come across loud and clear.
What they are complaining about is that about is that newer CD's are recorded so even the softest sound is LOUD which means the loud parts of the song CAN'T get louder which makes the whole thing sound terrible. They just 'clip' the loud parts reducing their volume. Apparently this is done because 'loud sound better' and big music compaies think if their CD is 'louder' on the radio it will sound better. Of course, most music played on radio stations is not played directly off CD's! It gets recorded, 'normalized' and played from big digital jukeboxes.
What these audiophiles want (and most classical music CD's are still fine) is for the producers to let the large dynamic range that CD's support actually be USED to make good sounding music. If the CD is well recorded you can turn up your amp to "11" and still have great sounding music (as long as your amp has the head room to punch up those loud bits).
Bullshit. Private companies should not have a monopoly on information that was collected and processed using taxpayers money. The only thing these private 'weather' companies do is re-distribute publicly funded information.
Now that technology makes is very cheap for the government to distribute this information the NATURAL free market result is that the private weather companies die. They no longer have a valuable service to provide.
If these private weather companies had been the ones investing in weather stations, satelites and super-computers and then the government decided to move in and do the same you might have an argument. But this is not the case. These private weather companies are NOT weather forecasters - they are simply restributing information YOU paid your government to collect.
Well, we better stop farming then as it is obvious that the Earth wasn't meant to support so many people. A lets get rid of cars, plans, and trains - people were not meant to travel so fast or far. And refridgerators - the Earth wasn't meant to store fresh food more than a day in the summer.
Get real. We will terraform Mars someday - just because we can.
Why isn't this thread which is actually discussing the issue at hand not being modded up?
Genetic engineering someone to live on Mars would entail radical changes that would create a being almost unrecongnizable as human. I don't think that is somehting you can impose on a person before they are old enough to give informed consent.
Frederick Pohl's story "Manplus" covered this exact situation.
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The USA is the only rich country without government funded healthcare. Wouldn't it make more sense to have toll roads and public hospitals?
If you want the fence to be a deterent make sure it is:
Having the double locks is a nuisance, but it is very important if you want the fence to deter thieves.
I was once promoted to a salary position from an hourly. I then discovered this meant no overtime - so I quit working overtime. When asked why I wasn't willing to put in the hours any more by my boss I just told him that I don't work for free.
But I can see where labour laws are needed to prevent abuse of employees who really need that job (4 kids, mortgage, etc...).
Old games using old version of DX should work just fine if they are not doing anything wierd. I have run ino a few old DX games that have glitches, but most run just fine.
Fighting can be very expensive. A local school board banned a very tame children's book that introduces the idea of a family with "two Dad's". The local school board spent hundreds of thousands trying to keep the book banned when challenged by a parents group. The ban was over turned. The parents group had free legal from a free speecg group. If I was a teacher in that position I would look into getting aid from a rights group.
I don't think you quite get "freedom of speech" if those are the only books that "really shouldn't be banned". NO BOOK should be banned for holding an unpopular opinion. Libel laws should handle most damaging factual errors in published works, but I don't think any fiction should be banned. Sure, not all books should be read by elementary school students, but that doesn't justify banning the book.
How is a 20 year old supposed to know what will be useful to know when he is 50? I have never used what I learned in phil 100 programming, but I still value what I learned in the course as much as any of my science courses.
If you don't want to take part in civil disobedience, fine don't. If you want to take part in open rebellion then go ahead, but don't try to pretty up your actions by stealing the meaning of noble actions.
The RIAA is just gleefully using the legal tools given to it by a USA government that no longers cares about the average USA citizen (mainly because it doesn't have to care as most of them don't vote).
You forget that the US Patent office has defined obvious as "not yet patented".
Three is the highest number most people can "count" instantly when the objects are in a random pattern. This is easy, and fun, to test at home. When you "count" higher groupings quickly you are either seeing known patterns (eg dots on a die), or quickly re-grouping as you stated.
I'm strongly in favour of effective gun control, but gun registries do not help keep guns away from criminals and hot heads.
Show me a right that can not be taken from me by a mob with guns and I'll admit it is natural.
Rights are purely artifical, man made constructs of society that are no more special than laws against theft and murder. Now, this does not mean that people should not work towards working towards a society and government that does support the most liberal rights possible while still supporting a civil society.
As others have pointed out, it is your responsability to actively work to protect your rights. Hopefully the USA population will be able to peacefully restore the rights they have been losing in the name of security. Hopefully the widespread apathy will be replaced by voting, protesting, and other peacful activities.
Your comments about cutting back perks is so true. I worked for a large companie's IT department for 10 years. The whole IT department was sold off in an outsourcing deal, and there were numerous layoffs (mainly management). There have been a number of cost cutting measures and now there is talk of reducing vaction time and other benefits. If this happens everyone with the skills to jump ship will. The current salaries are middle of the road but the benefits are great. If the benefits are cut there is no reason to stay when I can go work somehwere else that has the same crappy benefits but pays 30% to 40% more. Only the people who lack "in demand" skills will stay.
Because then they are lawbreakers, and can be arrested if they become annyong to the government.
Only thing these cameras will help with is identifing run of the mill protesters after the fact.
Old way, stake out particular person who you already have evidence that they are a "bad guy".
New way, watch EVERYONE and go fishing for violations.
Grow up. The whole world does not speak english. The juvenile english speakers should just start their own thread and get over it. The english speakers (and I bet most of the whiners are USA'ians) are just getting a SMALL taste of what the USA has forced on the rest of the world: shipping, flight control, and most business speach is in english due to the Americans unwillingness to learn other languages - backed up by their economic might.
What they should be doing is making sure the voting machines are NEVER able to remotely connect to anything. Once voting is done for the night election officials should have to PHYSICALY connect or transfer votes from the machines to a device that sends the tally to the central counting.
Once a voting machine is "certified" it should be LOCKED, taped, and completely inaccesible to remote or phyical tampering.
This excellent article at the Register explains what a good voting system needs.
I use to record from vinyl (and CD) to high quality casette decks (way back before there were CD burners). The first step to make a good tape is to listen to the whole song, and watch the db level meteres, and adjust them so that the LOUDEST sound in the song is less than zero db (or whatever level your tape deck uses). This way when you play the music back it sounds correct. Soft parts are soft, loud parts are loud, and all those transients come across loud and clear.
What they are complaining about is that about is that newer CD's are recorded so even the softest sound is LOUD which means the loud parts of the song CAN'T get louder which makes the whole thing sound terrible. They just 'clip' the loud parts reducing their volume. Apparently this is done because 'loud sound better' and big music compaies think if their CD is 'louder' on the radio it will sound better. Of course, most music played on radio stations is not played directly off CD's! It gets recorded, 'normalized' and played from big digital jukeboxes.
What these audiophiles want (and most classical music CD's are still fine) is for the producers to let the large dynamic range that CD's support actually be USED to make good sounding music. If the CD is well recorded you can turn up your amp to "11" and still have great sounding music (as long as your amp has the head room to punch up those loud bits).
Moore may have other messages to get out in the future. Profits from this message will fiance the next few messages.
It is very simple to determine the sponsoring country: the USA doesn't like them.
Now that technology makes is very cheap for the government to distribute this information the NATURAL free market result is that the private weather companies die. They no longer have a valuable service to provide.
If these private weather companies had been the ones investing in weather stations, satelites and super-computers and then the government decided to move in and do the same you might have an argument. But this is not the case. These private weather companies are NOT weather forecasters - they are simply restributing information YOU paid your government to collect.
Get real. We will terraform Mars someday - just because we can.
Genetic engineering someone to live on Mars would entail radical changes that would create a being almost unrecongnizable as human. I don't think that is somehting you can impose on a person before they are old enough to give informed consent.
Frederick Pohl's story "Manplus" covered this exact situation.