President Bush didn't ban embryonic stem cell research. In fact, it was the Bush administration that provided the first federal dollars towards such research. Now, hid administration certainly added a lot of conditions for those dollars to deal with the moral issues involved, but there has been no federal ban and in fact there have been federal dollars instead.
Harvard is going to spend good money and time running around after this new alleged holy grail when huge advances and actual treatments have been made using Adult Stem Cells. The more we look the more sources of adult stem cells we find.
Maybe Embryonic Stem Cells will one day be useful but I seriously doubt we're talking in the 10-50 year time frame. They're only just starting to deal with issues about creating these cells and have to deal with the whole cloning issue if they're going to avoid the rejection problems that face the current Embryonic Stem Cells from alternative sources. Once they tackle cloning then they still have to deal with implanting this cells and triggering them and then controlling them after that.
So let's tackle the issues of triger and control with the already available Adult Stem Cells and leave cloning alone.
While the AN purchase could have raised flags this was part of an ongoing investigation (years long in fact) or do you think they just happened to suddenly coordinate international arrests because someone bought too many bags at the local Agway?
Before one of those nosy governments goes and stops the next batch of lunatics who buy 3 tons of ammonium nitrate.
If you really want to get a picture of the average American's concern about privacy during a phone conversation just stop and listen for a few minutes at the supermarket or mall to all of the cell phone conversations that are going on so loud that it is hard to ignore them.
If google is making an editorial decision because of "hate speech" then wouldn't the decision be to simply remove the speech? (Which they haven't by the way as it is indexed from other sources that they still consider news.)
Silencing an entire source because of a few articles deemed "hate speech" seems worse. 'You're not news because this article isn't news.' would tend to disqualify every paper because of the opinion sections and some of the odious things that get printed in them.
Should google go and exclude every "news source" that linked to Jesse MacBeth's video diatribe? (Especially ones that haven't printed retractions? Current search results)
Obviously Google News isn't perfect, and never will be, but if they're going to claim a lack of bias but shut some sites down for things like "hate speech" then they're going to either have to start really cracking down, stop delisting sites, or drop the no-bias claim.
Google News is a highly unusual news service in that our results are compiled solely by computer algorithms, without human intervention. As a result, news sources are selected without regard to political viewpoint or ideology, enabling you to see how different organizations are reporting the same story.
The point raised is that Google had in fact chosen these particular sources as news and then rescinded that choice because of alleged "hate speech". This is an editorial decision based on content. One of those things that if say it happened to silence a site that was promoting direct action to stop global warming would have people here screaming CENSORSHIP!!! so fast your head would spin.
Google news sold itself as being the first truely machine-based news aggregator. The whole idea was that they were unbiased because they just polled the sites and made their lists based on things like PageRank (and other super-secret factors).
Well, now we see that's not the case. There are actually editorial decisions being made as to what is and is not considered news. There is also some criticism that those decisions are not being applied in a uniform manner. Those may be unfair criticisms mainly because blogs definitely blur the line between news and opinion but many people have seen a lot of major news outlets also willfully blur those lines of late.
So, yes Google has the right to list whatever and whoever they want and it's not a First Ammendment issue as they're not the government. Just if they are going to start filtering then they need to acknowledge it and drop any claims to a pure unbiased machine created news source.
1) Should the government be allowed to keep any secrets? If so, what are they allowed to do to enforce those secrets and punish people who reveal them?
2) Should ANY group be allowed to keep secrets from the public? If not, then why do we happily accept our news coming from "anonymous sources" that we cannot evaluate for bias or accuracy?
Symantec CAN get a Temporary Restraining Order at the start of the trial if they can demonstrate that they will probably succeed on the merits of their case.
A move to Java, Spring, and Hibernate would point towards a change in focus to web-based applications. Are you going from Windows-based C++ applications to web-based solutions?
If so, then a change in architecture is probably warranted as you can take advantage of tool sets geared towards this new development environment. However, this doesn't mean you should throw the baby out with the bath water. Java works well as an intermediate/coordination layer and you could leave large portions of your legacy development in C++ with shims to access them from Java rather than re-engineering everything.
Beyond that though, without an answer to that first question it's hard to analyze things any deeper.
Mind that leaping to conclusions, you may strain something.
Why would the NSA even be involved in an investigation of leaks of classified information? That is completely outside their purview. Instead all we have right now is another "leak" that claims this is happening.
Shouldn't we demand that the leak be confirmed before we jump up and down and yell about "where are the warrants?!?" before we even know if there is any bloody investigation being carried out?
You do realize that phone records of reporters could be legally subpoenaed as part of a leak investigation being performed by the DoJ instead of some nefarious link to the NSA program don't you?
I could also point out that pen register information (phone numbers dialed) is not considerred protected by the Fourth Ammendment either. There are other laws that may or may not protect these records depending on the circumstances but it's not a Fourth Ammendment issue.
I reserve the right to call someone who says this country is a "police state" a complete, utter, idiot who doesn't understand what a police state is.
Do you actually understand what a "police state" consists of? Are you currently in fear for your life because of your enlightened posting? Do you think you're going to be hauled off to jail or executed in the middle of the night with your body dumped on your front door step and your family billed for the bullet they used to kill you?
The point of the original poster wasn't that he was "glad to live in a police state" it was that he understood that we in fact are not a police state and thus he risks more of getting signed up for stupid email lists and snail mail spam by posting his address here on SlashDot than he does from any black helicopters or orbital mind control lasers.
The fact that you missed all of that and could only see that he was 18 and thus "kinda stupid" is what makes your whole diatribe so laughable.
The courts looked at and ruled on this issue. So, barring a trial that overturned said ruling the current law of the land is "Pen-based registers don't require search warrants". So anyone screaming "They broke the law!" is currently wrong.
Of course if you were to actually delve into the link you'd find right near the top:
The installation and use of the pen register was not a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and hence no warrant was required. Pp. 739-746.
Translated out of legaleze: No court order was necessary for said action.
You realize that the phone companies are already collecting all of this information in order to produce your phone bill?
Do you further realize that the phone companies share this information with their business partners and use it internally to try to upsell you phone and related services?
So is it worse that the NSA does this or that big business does it?
I'm glad you're so damned concerned about conditions here in the US. Since you in fact don't live here I'm amazed at how you can be so conversant about said conditions. Also, what country do you reside in? I'm sure you'll find that almost all of them have much more restrictive speech laws and more permissive search laws than the "fascistic" US.
US society is NOT fascist. This is self-evident in that you can claim that it is fascist without any worry at all of being dragged off in the middle of the night and being detained, tortured, and/or killed.
Second: Fascism is always descending on the US but it keeps landing on Europe.
Fighting out of uniform, in your country or someone else's is a violation of the Convention.
The whole idea behind the Geneva Conventions was to reduce civilian casualties. If one side refuses to identify themselves and actively use the civilian population as shields then they're in violation and thus not given its protections.
I also find it quite funny that we're sitting here agonizing over our treatment of enemy combatants that goes above and beyond what we're required to do while the other side is busy sawing off heads of both combatants AND civilians with wanton disregard.
Obviously Marvel doesn't see any financial risk in this based on their large PR push for the series in question. They fact that they go to the "we're not trying to take any sides..." weasel words means that they don't have much courage behind those convictions.
Any work takes a financial risk, controversial or not. Your example only goes towards the fact that Hollywood is risk averse even when there's no political element in things, not that some artist is "gutsy" or taking a risk.
No, the media had a recent chance to show how gutsy they are and they blew it horribly. This "Civil Wars" thing is not gutsy at all.
I mean really, does criticizing the US really require such moral fortitude and personal risk?
The last actual gutsy cartoon we had was the Norwegian political cartoons of Mohammed. Just about the entire US media horribly failed their "guts check" after that one came out and people were threatened.
I suppose next we'll all be regaled with the old "speaking truth to power" line.
If they're fighting out of uniform then they're illegal combatants.
The Geneva Convention is actually quite specific in which people enjoy the protection of the Convention. The main reason for this was to try to minimize casualties in the civilian population. If people choose to ignore the restrictions of the Conventions then they don't get the protection of the Conventions.
By those Conventions, summary execustion of non-uniformed combatants and spies is perfectly legal.
Well excuse me for making the "classic mistake". Of course, I wasn't making any such mistake. My point with the signing statement example was to show that this isn't some new routine created by the current administration.
I not that you're getting further and further from the point and wandering further and further afield. This whole debate began with an accusation of Bush breaking the law on the NSA surveillance program so I said "be specific, what law did he break?"
Well, there has been no specificity, there's been a shout of "FISA!" and I pointed out that much more learned legal minds have stated that there is no prima-facie case for a violation of FISA and that there is in fact a strong case for the Executive branch's Consitutional powers superseding legislation with regards to prosecuting a war.
Since then we've now wandered off into the fever swamps with rants about signing statements and how the President is making an unwarranted power grab with them. Well, first off he's not the first one to attempt to invalidate laws with signing statements and also these statements do not have the force of law. At best they can be considered by judges when interpretting issues related to said laws.
Your ending "example" is worthless. A court HAS ruled that murder is illegal. There is no established case law in this area. Well, actually there is, and it supports the President's position. "The Truong court [United States v. Truong Dinh Hung, 4th Cir. 1980], as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. *** We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."
Slashdot Mirror
President Bush didn't ban embryonic stem cell research. In fact, it was the Bush administration that provided the first federal dollars towards such research. Now, hid administration certainly added a lot of conditions for those dollars to deal with the moral issues involved, but there has been no federal ban and in fact there have been federal dollars instead.
Harvard is going to spend good money and time running around after this new alleged holy grail when huge advances and actual treatments have been made using Adult Stem Cells. The more we look the more sources of adult stem cells we find.
Maybe Embryonic Stem Cells will one day be useful but I seriously doubt we're talking in the 10-50 year time frame. They're only just starting to deal with issues about creating these cells and have to deal with the whole cloning issue if they're going to avoid the rejection problems that face the current Embryonic Stem Cells from alternative sources. Once they tackle cloning then they still have to deal with implanting this cells and triggering them and then controlling them after that.
So let's tackle the issues of triger and control with the already available Adult Stem Cells and leave cloning alone.
While the AN purchase could have raised flags this was part of an ongoing investigation (years long in fact) or do you think they just happened to suddenly coordinate international arrests because someone bought too many bags at the local Agway?
Before one of those nosy governments goes and stops the next batch of lunatics who buy 3 tons of ammonium nitrate.
If you really want to get a picture of the average American's concern about privacy during a phone conversation just stop and listen for a few minutes at the supermarket or mall to all of the cell phone conversations that are going on so loud that it is hard to ignore them.
If google is making an editorial decision because of "hate speech" then wouldn't the decision be to simply remove the speech? (Which they haven't by the way as it is indexed from other sources that they still consider news.)
Silencing an entire source because of a few articles deemed "hate speech" seems worse. 'You're not news because this article isn't news.' would tend to disqualify every paper because of the opinion sections and some of the odious things that get printed in them.
Should google go and exclude every "news source" that linked to Jesse MacBeth's video diatribe? (Especially ones that haven't printed retractions? Current search results)
Obviously Google News isn't perfect, and never will be, but if they're going to claim a lack of bias but shut some sites down for things like "hate speech" then they're going to either have to start really cracking down, stop delisting sites, or drop the no-bias claim.
The point raised is that Google had in fact chosen these particular sources as news and then rescinded that choice because of alleged "hate speech". This is an editorial decision based on content. One of those things that if say it happened to silence a site that was promoting direct action to stop global warming would have people here screaming CENSORSHIP!!! so fast your head would spin.
Google news sold itself as being the first truely machine-based news aggregator. The whole idea was that they were unbiased because they just polled the sites and made their lists based on things like PageRank (and other super-secret factors).
Well, now we see that's not the case. There are actually editorial decisions being made as to what is and is not considered news. There is also some criticism that those decisions are not being applied in a uniform manner. Those may be unfair criticisms mainly because blogs definitely blur the line between news and opinion but many people have seen a lot of major news outlets also willfully blur those lines of late.
So, yes Google has the right to list whatever and whoever they want and it's not a First Ammendment issue as they're not the government. Just if they are going to start filtering then they need to acknowledge it and drop any claims to a pure unbiased machine created news source.
Two question for people:
1) Should the government be allowed to keep any secrets? If so, what are they allowed to do to enforce those secrets and punish people who reveal them?
2) Should ANY group be allowed to keep secrets from the public? If not, then why do we happily accept our news coming from "anonymous sources" that we cannot evaluate for bias or accuracy?
Symantec CAN get a Temporary Restraining Order at the start of the trial if they can demonstrate that they will probably succeed on the merits of their case.
The Permanent Injunction comes along at the end.
A move to Java, Spring, and Hibernate would point towards a change in focus to web-based applications. Are you going from Windows-based C++ applications to web-based solutions?
If so, then a change in architecture is probably warranted as you can take advantage of tool sets geared towards this new development environment. However, this doesn't mean you should throw the baby out with the bath water. Java works well as an intermediate/coordination layer and you could leave large portions of your legacy development in C++ with shims to access them from Java rather than re-engineering everything.
Beyond that though, without an answer to that first question it's hard to analyze things any deeper.
Mind that leaping to conclusions, you may strain something.
Why would the NSA even be involved in an investigation of leaks of classified information? That is completely outside their purview. Instead all we have right now is another "leak" that claims this is happening.
Shouldn't we demand that the leak be confirmed before we jump up and down and yell about "where are the warrants?!?" before we even know if there is any bloody investigation being carried out?
Yeah, yeah, way too late for that.
You do realize that phone records of reporters could be legally subpoenaed as part of a leak investigation being performed by the DoJ instead of some nefarious link to the NSA program don't you?
I could also point out that pen register information (phone numbers dialed) is not considerred protected by the Fourth Ammendment either. There are other laws that may or may not protect these records depending on the circumstances but it's not a Fourth Ammendment issue.
I reserve the right to call someone who says this country is a "police state" a complete, utter, idiot who doesn't understand what a police state is.
Do you actually understand what a "police state" consists of? Are you currently in fear for your life because of your enlightened posting? Do you think you're going to be hauled off to jail or executed in the middle of the night with your body dumped on your front door step and your family billed for the bullet they used to kill you?
The point of the original poster wasn't that he was "glad to live in a police state" it was that he understood that we in fact are not a police state and thus he risks more of getting signed up for stupid email lists and snail mail spam by posting his address here on SlashDot than he does from any black helicopters or orbital mind control lasers.
The fact that you missed all of that and could only see that he was 18 and thus "kinda stupid" is what makes your whole diatribe so laughable.
You've gone from "kinda stupid" to "condescending idiot".
Your parents would be so proud.
...as those who refuse to read.
The courts looked at and ruled on this issue. So, barring a trial that overturned said ruling the current law of the land is "Pen-based registers don't require search warrants". So anyone screaming "They broke the law!" is currently wrong.
Translated out of legaleze: No court order was necessary for said action.
You realize that the phone companies are already collecting all of this information in order to produce your phone bill?
Do you further realize that the phone companies share this information with their business partners and use it internally to try to upsell you phone and related services?
So is it worse that the NSA does this or that big business does it?
I'm glad you're so damned concerned about conditions here in the US. Since you in fact don't live here I'm amazed at how you can be so conversant about said conditions. Also, what country do you reside in? I'm sure you'll find that almost all of them have much more restrictive speech laws and more permissive search laws than the "fascistic" US.
US society is NOT fascist. This is self-evident in that you can claim that it is fascist without any worry at all of being dragged off in the middle of the night and being detained, tortured, and/or killed.
Second: Fascism is always descending on the US but it keeps landing on Europe.
Whoops. Norway, Denmark, they're the same thing right? :-D
Well we do have to thank those courageous people who are responsible for making the Eggo waffle after all...
Fighting out of uniform, in your country or someone else's is a violation of the Convention.
The whole idea behind the Geneva Conventions was to reduce civilian casualties. If one side refuses to identify themselves and actively use the civilian population as shields then they're in violation and thus not given its protections.
I also find it quite funny that we're sitting here agonizing over our treatment of enemy combatants that goes above and beyond what we're required to do while the other side is busy sawing off heads of both combatants AND civilians with wanton disregard.
Obviously Marvel doesn't see any financial risk in this based on their large PR push for the series in question. They fact that they go to the "we're not trying to take any sides..." weasel words means that they don't have much courage behind those convictions.
Any work takes a financial risk, controversial or not. Your example only goes towards the fact that Hollywood is risk averse even when there's no political element in things, not that some artist is "gutsy" or taking a risk.
No, the media had a recent chance to show how gutsy they are and they blew it horribly. This "Civil Wars" thing is not gutsy at all.
I mean really, does criticizing the US really require such moral fortitude and personal risk?
The last actual gutsy cartoon we had was the Norwegian political cartoons of Mohammed. Just about the entire US media horribly failed their "guts check" after that one came out and people were threatened.
I suppose next we'll all be regaled with the old "speaking truth to power" line.
If they're fighting out of uniform then they're illegal combatants.
The Geneva Convention is actually quite specific in which people enjoy the protection of the Convention. The main reason for this was to try to minimize casualties in the civilian population. If people choose to ignore the restrictions of the Conventions then they don't get the protection of the Conventions.
By those Conventions, summary execustion of non-uniformed combatants and spies is perfectly legal.
Well excuse me for making the "classic mistake". Of course, I wasn't making any such mistake. My point with the signing statement example was to show that this isn't some new routine created by the current administration.
I not that you're getting further and further from the point and wandering further and further afield. This whole debate began with an accusation of Bush breaking the law on the NSA surveillance program so I said "be specific, what law did he break?"
Well, there has been no specificity, there's been a shout of "FISA!" and I pointed out that much more learned legal minds have stated that there is no prima-facie case for a violation of FISA and that there is in fact a strong case for the Executive branch's Consitutional powers superseding legislation with regards to prosecuting a war.
Since then we've now wandered off into the fever swamps with rants about signing statements and how the President is making an unwarranted power grab with them. Well, first off he's not the first one to attempt to invalidate laws with signing statements and also these statements do not have the force of law. At best they can be considered by judges when interpretting issues related to said laws.
Your ending "example" is worthless. A court HAS ruled that murder is illegal. There is no established case law in this area. Well, actually there is, and it supports the President's position.
"The Truong court [United States v. Truong Dinh Hung, 4th Cir. 1980], as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. *** We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."