So, if I don't watch the advertisements during commerical breaks of "30 Rock", I am essentially stealing the broadcast content of that program. Perhaps my analogy is off base...but still, this is ridiculous.
According to broadcast execs, yes, you are: Jamie Kellner, the head of Turner Broadcasting, was quoted as saying, 'People who watch TV without commercials are stealing from the entertainment producers'
I don't really mind sites doing what is being done in this case. They don't like one of the tools my browser is running, so they do not allow me to access the site. Calling people thieves is over the top. The person setting up the website needs to accept that his site is going to be displayed on the customer's computer in a fashion consistent with how that person has setup their computer. It's a personal computer, not a TV, the idea that consumers are hapless victims of whatever is pushed at them doesn't work anymore.
Moreover, this really is the fault of the advertisers. Ad blocking wasn't much of an issue 10 years ago. At that time most of the ads were either a static image or text, and end users just ignored them or looked at them as they desired. Then some advertiser got the brilliant idea to have the ads pop-up and interrupt the user with an ad. As intended these ads were much more intrusive and "in your face". However, unlike the TV idea, users have control of things at their end and took exception to this type of advertising. The users fired back with pop-up blocking, which is now nearly ubiquitous. Undeterred, the advertisers moved on to Flash and animated gifs in pages. Again, the point of them was to be as intrusive as possible to avoid people ignoring them, and it worked. And, since users still had control of their computer, it backfired. Now we have Ad Block Plus and any other number of ad blocking programs. The end result is that even the early forms of advertising, static images, now get blocked. The problem in all of this is that advertisers got greedy, they weren't content with just passive advertising and in the end brought the advertising to the attention of the users, now we've noticed it and we're not happy with it. Of course, there is the problem that the web site operators are caught in the middle, though one might argue that they are complicit in using the ads which created the backlash.
Personally, I see it all coming down to a social contract type issue. As a user consuming content I do have some obligation to help support the site through its advertising; the other side of that is that the ads need to be reasonable, and that is where the advertisers blew it. Now that they have broken their side of the contract, I no longer feel any obligation to uphold my end. Unlike many, I do not use pre-built lists for AB, I block based on intrusiveness of the ads. Flashing colors, Flash Animations, and anything with sound get blocked. If it's just an image, or a Flash animation which waits patiently for me to click on it, I just ignore it, unless its about something which I wish to see. Advertisers are going to have to back way off before I ever consider uninstalling my ad blocking software.
I always found an easy solution to this, when they start getting weird on you, tell them, "no." It creates a few problems up front, but that balances out pretty quick when everyone is having fun later on. Also, I had the distinct advantage that, in my group, several of us would trade off GM'ing; so, when one of us started munchinkining and the GM put the smack down on that player, everyone, including that player, sort of understood why. Heck, as a player in a campaign, I've help another as GM figure out how to get rid of a magic object which had seriously overpowered on character (illusions and spheres of destruction are wonderful things against characters who always win initiative, get half a dozen swings, and have ridiculous to-hit bonuses), granted the GM screwed up in ever letting that fall into player hands, but we all make mistakes.
As it is, I've pretty much told all of my players that they have to work out of the PHB and other books are on a "as approved by me" basis. WotC seems to have started following Palladium in the, "every sourcebook must up the player power by a factor of 100" methodology of adding content. So, usually we have a set of basic classes with aspirations of getting $overpowered_prestige_class.
Pretty much the exact same reason my parents bought one.
My parents are not gamers. The last console they bought was an NES for my brother's birthday one year. The last system that one of them actually picked up a controller for was the Atari 2600 (not counting the hours my father spent with me playing PC flight sims). My brother brought over his Wii during Christmas and we all proceeded to play Wii golf until the wee hours of the morning, several days in a row. After that, my parents ended up buying a new TV, and talked the Circuit City salesman into holding a Wii for them as well. Much to my chagrin, this enabled them to get one well before I could find one. They now play with it semi-regularly, mostly Wii-Sports bowling, golf, and Tiger Woods golf.
Nintendo isn't winning because of a lack of HD, they are winning because the Wii is a lot of fun and very accessible to non-gamers and I am sure that the price helps $300 for the system, a game and extra controller is cheap. People who would never even think about an XBox or PS3 are buying Wii's in droves. Hell, it's still hard to get one.
Support and TCO.
If I have a Dell provided chip on a Dell motherboard which goes out, they will fix it. If I have a Mickey-Mouse setup with a USB flash device, you can bet they are going to try and blame that for my woes first. And, guess who is on the hook for fixing it if it goes south? Moreover, the difference in cost is going to be slight. This chip will probably raise the overall price of the motherboard by a couple hundred, at most. The time I spend futzing around with getting an external solution running is going to cost more in the long run, my employer is paying me good money for that time, and any time spent fixing it. Take a quick look at what even a tech is going to cost:
Say they get paid $17/hour as full-time staff. Then you're paying workman's comp, taxes, health care, etc. Overall it's probably costing the employer around $30/hour for that tech. So, if he spends a day on that solution your spending about $240 for it. Just eat the up front cost from Dell, and make them fix the damn thing, that tech has better things to do with his time.
#2 is the most important, I find. Dell's non-Gold support is worthless. On the other hand, their Gold support is pretty darn good. Needless to say, every system we buy (which are mostly laptops) are bought with the Gold support and Complete-Care. The former gets me to techs who speak some form of English (a southern accent is the worst I get) and the later covers the occasional, "I spilled soda on my keyboard" errors. Which, considering the nature of the users I support, happen with alarming frequency.
One tip I would have for anyone calling Dell. Before calling, run the diagnostics they have bundled with the system (usually <F12> at POST), or go grab them from the Dell site and run them from a floppy/CD. When the tech comes on, explain your problem, and tell them the error code from the diagnostic program. 9 times out of 10, that has saved me the joys of running through the script, which incidentally enough, usually includes running that diagnostic tool. It's the difference between a 5 minute, "I'm having weird Windows errors, and your diagnostic program claims that DIMM B is bad. <insert usual memory swapping tests here>" And a much longer time for them dinking around in Windows trying to troubleshoot a hosed DIMM. Also, when you are having oddball errors with no obvious reason (malware, bad drivers, etc), that little tool is actually a good way to check if it's a hardware problem.
Simple answer:
Use FTP and quit abusing email. If you are working in an environment where you are coding for a living, my guess is that you can harass the IT folks into setting up an FTP server and access for you.
I think anyone looking critically at humans as a species, or even other social animals, would realize that society provides a great evolutionary advantage. It wasn't until pre-humans began organizing in tribes and working together that we began to have spare time. That spare time lead us to invent better was to do things, creating more spare time and starting a cycle which led us to be very advanced tool users and ultimately to land homo sapien as the top species on the planet.
The other side of this is that looking at human history, we are a violent lot and usually the dominant culture is the one which becomes so via force. For example, in Europe and the middle east, the culture was initially dominated by the Babylonians until other cultures gained enough military might to resist. After that we have other empires like the Romans, who spread their culture through force. In Asia, the Chin state solidified their rule early on and unified the country and culture to create China, and heavily influencing Mongolia and Japan, even though the former resisted domination for a long time and the latter resisted it completely. In the Americas, the Aztecs spread their culture through war right up until the Spanish came over and smashed the Aztec culture under the reconquista.
Today, the spread of culture has slowed considerably. The British managed to force their culture on areas around the world for quite some time, and even today many former colonies have a high rate of English literacy. Which is a good thing, as the current dominant power, the US, primarily uses the English language, and it has become a de facto trade language because of those two factors. The US has been a bit more insidious in spreading its culture, doing so mostly via trade and exporting it in movies and media. However, part of the reason it has been able to do so, is that it holds a dominant military position in the world, and has a vast array of natural resources at its disposal. Having gone so far in the past to defend those resources and access to those resources, when not under direct control, through violence; or impose access as the case may be.
In the end, there are not many cultures which long survive without either isolation, which is becoming increasingly hard to maintain, or threat of force. I can see no reason why this would change. We are lucky to be living in a time where war is not very widespread. Yes, there are problems in our world (see Darfur, Iraq, etc); this hardly compares to a world where it was generally expected that most able bodied men would be off on a campaign for their king through most of the summer. This relative peace has allowed varied cultures to maintain their identities, without resorting to violence; however, this peace has less to do with everyone getting along than the now ever present threat of mutual annihilation. While the idea of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) is quite aptly named; it does prevent any one nation from deploying nuclear weapons lightly.
No. I'm saying I shouldn't have to.
So, by that same logic, you would expect to be able to turn on the Hardcore Porn channel and not have anything offensive on it. You are responsible for choosing what you watch and what you don't; and by extension what your children watch or don't. If you don't like what a show is about, change the channel, that is what choice is about. Trying to force everything to be kid friendly is limiting choice.
Are you too incompetent to change the channel to Showtime when you want porn?
Are you too incompetent to change the channel when you don't want to see it? That ad hominem fallacy works both ways, but what you are pushing for is going to take away that choice from me. As it is, the FCC is looking to extend it's censorship on to cable. It won't be too long before I can't change the channel to porn. On the other hand, kid friendly content will always be around. The Disney channel isn't going to suddenly start showing Snow White getting it on with the seven dwarves.
Holy shit! I didn't realize that wanting some channels to be free of "indecency" was so indecent!
It's not, but wanting all channels free of indecency is. And allowing a bunch of bureaucrats to arbitrarily make up rules about what is indecent and what is not, is asking for exactly that.
What's wrong with letting you have your channels and my child having hers?
Again, there is no problem with this, but this is not what the FCC is trying to do. The FCC wants to foist it's ideas of decency on every channel. On the other hand, without the FCC, yes there would be channels with hardcore porn; however, children's programming wouldn't disappear. For a good example, look at the internet. I can find just about any type of pornography to titillate me, and you can find plenty of children's content. Lack of regulation did not turn it into some adult content ridden hell-hole.
Do you think that ALL channels should be free of any form of decency standards?
Sort of. I think they should be free from government mandated standards; however, they should at least be honest about what their content is (which could be mandated, TV ratings are a good idea). Additionally, channels will self-censor. Disney Channel is not going to show Princesses Gone Wild, just because the government is no longer breathing down their necks. They know what their customer base is, and will continue to pander to it.
Do you want to see Big-Bird's balls?
Might be a funny parody, but not really my thing, thanks.
Having actually read the PDF, it is short. The author touches on a lot of ideas, and it is quite obvious that there could be some rather lengthy discussion on some of them. What is in the PDF is very concise and well written, and worth reading; especially if you've ever been in a discussion where the "Nothing to Hide" argument was trotted out.
I thought the same thing. If the law is that broken, a few high profile people need to get nailed with it. Sometimes, the best way to get a law changed, is to enforce it.
I do realize that a lot of people use the internet for erm...interesting research; but one should not lust after their computer. It's just an image, and you feel good about it because of your hand. And, for goodness sake, do not try to interface with the floppy drive.
I'll agree that having GPS is nice on vacation, especially to be able to map your hiking routes before hand, and see where you actually went afterwards. But the cell phone, not so much. I do carry it on vacation, especially when out hiking or camping. It's rather amazing how many out of the way places get good signal. And in an emergency, that phone could be a life saver. Still, I don't exactly cry (or notice even) when I'm in a place without signal. I just turn it off, and throw is somewhere (lakes are especially tempting).
And the rest of the gadgets? Leave 'em at home. Now, part of this is that most of my vacations involve camping (drive up camping, I'm too fat and lazy to backpack anymore, and the only one of the people I go with who would consider doing it); and the last thing I need, when I am trying to get away from civilization, is some idiot blaring a reminder of that crap a few hundred feet away. The forest/desert have very nice and interesting sounds if you just stop and listen to them. And anyone bringing a laptop/TV/DVD player deserves a beating with a stick. I enjoy sitting around a camp fire watching the flames and hearing the sounds of the sap popping and good conversation with friends, music detracts from that.
Lastly: teenagers would rather give up SEX than their phone for a month
Either they aren't getting it anyway, so it's not a loss for them; or they only asked prudes. If my choice in High School had been talking on the phone or sex, I'd have been pants-less before they finished asking the question.
I'm going to assume you are not from the US (which is seeming like a better and better thing these days) or, at least, not very familiar with the workings of its government (which is normal for most of the US population); so, please forgive me if I bore you with detail.
Districts serve two purposes, both of which are essentially the same just at different levels of government. For the Federal Government, each State is broken up into smaller districts based, ostensibly, on population. Each district elects one of the State's representatives in the House of Representatives (The House). Ideally, this means that local populations are represented by someone local (e.g. a district which includes Los Angeles will be represented by someone from Los Angeles). The number of seats a State has in The House varies based on population (now relative population as the number is fixed at 435 [1]) This is why you will hear US residents talk about "their" representative; they are referring to the fact that the Representative was elected by the district to which the person talking belongs.
A similar function exists at the State level. As most State Governments are patterend after the US Federal Government, their structure is much the same, with a House and Senate. As such, States are further broken down into districts for electing representatives to the State's "House" (Names vary). Again, this is based on the argument of local representation.
The other side of all this is that, contrary to your statement that "If 100 people vote, 51 for x and 49 for y. It shouldn't matter who voted where." location does indeed matter. As a resident of a particular district, I only vote for the representative for my district, State and Federal. The exception here is that for Senatorial races, I vote for my State's two Senators. Though, this is the same thing on a larger scale. A resident of New York cannot vote for Florida's Senators.
I liked Schwarzenegger's plan, except for one fatal flaw: The panel was chosen by the State Legislature. How hard would it really be for them to find 3 retired judges who will gerrymander the districts for the incumbents? In the end, it would have just given the appearance of fairness, while still being just as broken as before.
Really, the only good solution (assuming our current voting method) was in a response just above yours. Use a computer program (open source only) to assign the districts by population and zip code. There will need to be algorithms for ensuring the "minority-majority" districts (again, assuming status-quo here); however, this should be possible without having too many safe districts (there will always be some, some people really like their current parasite...er, representative).
First Assistant District Attorney Jaime Keating said case law is in flux as to whether police can expect not to be recorded while performing their duties.
Fuck that shit
Anyone who seriously thinks that a police office performing his or her duty should be exempt from recording needs to be shot, now. This shouldn't ever be a question, the police are accountable to the people, we have the right and responsibility to make sure that they are not abusing the authority that has been granted to them. They have accepted a job with some special caveats, one of those is that they get to work under a public microscope, either deal with it or quit.
Why don't states just then make the federal income take unconstitutional in their state.
Because it would take 2/3 of them to get a Constitutional Convention called. And then the herding of cats would begin. Of the two methods for constitutional amendment, only the proposal from Congress method has been used, ever. A single State cannot make something unconstitutional.
Put in a "succession clause" if the fed tries to subvert the state constitution and see what happens.
The Confederate States of America ring any bells? Several states tried secession, they failed. Granted, if meaningful change is going to happen, it's going to have to come from the bottom up; the State governments are not the bottom and are not going to be the source of change. The same political parties which control the Federal Government control the State Governments; and they like a heavily centralized power structure, it makes graft and corruption easier and more profitable (conservativism be damned).
At a guess, the plastic molecule will probably end up being collected like dead blood cells and other foreign bodies in the blood stream eventually. And then eliminated in urine. Maybe it is a bit naive, but the people working on this stuff are much smarter than most of us on/. when it comes to biology, I'm sure they have thought of this.
Doubtful. Being on HBO certainly hasn't hurt the popularity of "The Sopranos".
Another fact which seems to be overlooked a lot on this thread:
Stargate started out on Showtime. If anything Sci-Fi has just been responsible for stringing it along well past the "use by" date.
I think you've got it. Sci-fi has a nerd stigma to it, which is tough to overcome. I had been watching BSG since it first aired in the US, my wife started when she caught an episode by accident, and got hooked. She had just assumed that she wouldn't like it.
Actually, I can see this as a possibility with the show already.
BSG finds Earth, realizes that the 13th colony has fallen way behind in technology. Realizing that Earth would get raped by the Cylons, they decide instead to lead them off on a wild, and ultimately suicidal, goose chase. Series ends with BSG and all hands dying in a losing fight.
Not quite the touchy-feely happy ending, but a fitting end for the crew.
Better question:
Political parties are private organizations. What the fuck is the state doing dictating to a private organization when they have their primaries??
This is a private selection by a private group, the state should not be involved (providing election equipment included. Maybe it could be rented...)
And that war in Iraq, with the largest, best trained army in the world fighting a bunch of disorganized people with old Soviet hardware and cobbled together explosives, how's that working out? And that little Vietnam thing a while back, how did that go?
Never underestimate the arrogance of governments. They will pass this because they don't like people pointing out their incompetence, it will go to court and the judges will uphold it because, "it's needed to protect Amurica from turrists!" And us poor peons will just have to get used to it. Welcome to the US, police state of the future!
Slashdot Mirror
So, if I don't watch the advertisements during commerical breaks of "30 Rock", I am essentially stealing the broadcast content of that program. Perhaps my analogy is off base...but still, this is ridiculous.
According to broadcast execs, yes, you are:
Jamie Kellner, the head of Turner Broadcasting, was quoted as saying, 'People who watch TV without commercials are stealing from the entertainment producers'
I don't really mind sites doing what is being done in this case. They don't like one of the tools my browser is running, so they do not allow me to access the site. Calling people thieves is over the top. The person setting up the website needs to accept that his site is going to be displayed on the customer's computer in a fashion consistent with how that person has setup their computer. It's a personal computer, not a TV, the idea that consumers are hapless victims of whatever is pushed at them doesn't work anymore.
Moreover, this really is the fault of the advertisers. Ad blocking wasn't much of an issue 10 years ago. At that time most of the ads were either a static image or text, and end users just ignored them or looked at them as they desired. Then some advertiser got the brilliant idea to have the ads pop-up and interrupt the user with an ad. As intended these ads were much more intrusive and "in your face". However, unlike the TV idea, users have control of things at their end and took exception to this type of advertising. The users fired back with pop-up blocking, which is now nearly ubiquitous. Undeterred, the advertisers moved on to Flash and animated gifs in pages. Again, the point of them was to be as intrusive as possible to avoid people ignoring them, and it worked. And, since users still had control of their computer, it backfired. Now we have Ad Block Plus and any other number of ad blocking programs. The end result is that even the early forms of advertising, static images, now get blocked. The problem in all of this is that advertisers got greedy, they weren't content with just passive advertising and in the end brought the advertising to the attention of the users, now we've noticed it and we're not happy with it. Of course, there is the problem that the web site operators are caught in the middle, though one might argue that they are complicit in using the ads which created the backlash.
Personally, I see it all coming down to a social contract type issue. As a user consuming content I do have some obligation to help support the site through its advertising; the other side of that is that the ads need to be reasonable, and that is where the advertisers blew it. Now that they have broken their side of the contract, I no longer feel any obligation to uphold my end. Unlike many, I do not use pre-built lists for AB, I block based on intrusiveness of the ads. Flashing colors, Flash Animations, and anything with sound get blocked. If it's just an image, or a Flash animation which waits patiently for me to click on it, I just ignore it, unless its about something which I wish to see. Advertisers are going to have to back way off before I ever consider uninstalling my ad blocking software.
I always found an easy solution to this, when they start getting weird on you, tell them, "no." It creates a few problems up front, but that balances out pretty quick when everyone is having fun later on. Also, I had the distinct advantage that, in my group, several of us would trade off GM'ing; so, when one of us started munchinkining and the GM put the smack down on that player, everyone, including that player, sort of understood why. Heck, as a player in a campaign, I've help another as GM figure out how to get rid of a magic object which had seriously overpowered on character (illusions and spheres of destruction are wonderful things against characters who always win initiative, get half a dozen swings, and have ridiculous to-hit bonuses), granted the GM screwed up in ever letting that fall into player hands, but we all make mistakes.
As it is, I've pretty much told all of my players that they have to work out of the PHB and other books are on a "as approved by me" basis. WotC seems to have started following Palladium in the, "every sourcebook must up the player power by a factor of 100" methodology of adding content. So, usually we have a set of basic classes with aspirations of getting $overpowered_prestige_class.
Pretty much the exact same reason my parents bought one.
My parents are not gamers. The last console they bought was an NES for my brother's birthday one year. The last system that one of them actually picked up a controller for was the Atari 2600 (not counting the hours my father spent with me playing PC flight sims). My brother brought over his Wii during Christmas and we all proceeded to play Wii golf until the wee hours of the morning, several days in a row. After that, my parents ended up buying a new TV, and talked the Circuit City salesman into holding a Wii for them as well. Much to my chagrin, this enabled them to get one well before I could find one. They now play with it semi-regularly, mostly Wii-Sports bowling, golf, and Tiger Woods golf.
Nintendo isn't winning because of a lack of HD, they are winning because the Wii is a lot of fun and very accessible to non-gamers and I am sure that the price helps $300 for the system, a game and extra controller is cheap. People who would never even think about an XBox or PS3 are buying Wii's in droves. Hell, it's still hard to get one.
Support and TCO.
If I have a Dell provided chip on a Dell motherboard which goes out, they will fix it. If I have a Mickey-Mouse setup with a USB flash device, you can bet they are going to try and blame that for my woes first. And, guess who is on the hook for fixing it if it goes south? Moreover, the difference in cost is going to be slight. This chip will probably raise the overall price of the motherboard by a couple hundred, at most. The time I spend futzing around with getting an external solution running is going to cost more in the long run, my employer is paying me good money for that time, and any time spent fixing it. Take a quick look at what even a tech is going to cost:
Say they get paid $17/hour as full-time staff. Then you're paying workman's comp, taxes, health care, etc. Overall it's probably costing the employer around $30/hour for that tech. So, if he spends a day on that solution your spending about $240 for it. Just eat the up front cost from Dell, and make them fix the damn thing, that tech has better things to do with his time.
#2 is the most important, I find. Dell's non-Gold support is worthless. On the other hand, their Gold support is pretty darn good. Needless to say, every system we buy (which are mostly laptops) are bought with the Gold support and Complete-Care. The former gets me to techs who speak some form of English (a southern accent is the worst I get) and the later covers the occasional, "I spilled soda on my keyboard" errors. Which, considering the nature of the users I support, happen with alarming frequency.
One tip I would have for anyone calling Dell. Before calling, run the diagnostics they have bundled with the system (usually <F12> at POST), or go grab them from the Dell site and run them from a floppy/CD. When the tech comes on, explain your problem, and tell them the error code from the diagnostic program. 9 times out of 10, that has saved me the joys of running through the script, which incidentally enough, usually includes running that diagnostic tool. It's the difference between a 5 minute, "I'm having weird Windows errors, and your diagnostic program claims that DIMM B is bad. <insert usual memory swapping tests here>" And a much longer time for them dinking around in Windows trying to troubleshoot a hosed DIMM. Also, when you are having oddball errors with no obvious reason (malware, bad drivers, etc), that little tool is actually a good way to check if it's a hardware problem.
Simple answer:
Use FTP and quit abusing email. If you are working in an environment where you are coding for a living, my guess is that you can harass the IT folks into setting up an FTP server and access for you.
I think anyone looking critically at humans as a species, or even other social animals, would realize that society provides a great evolutionary advantage. It wasn't until pre-humans began organizing in tribes and working together that we began to have spare time. That spare time lead us to invent better was to do things, creating more spare time and starting a cycle which led us to be very advanced tool users and ultimately to land homo sapien as the top species on the planet.
The other side of this is that looking at human history, we are a violent lot and usually the dominant culture is the one which becomes so via force. For example, in Europe and the middle east, the culture was initially dominated by the Babylonians until other cultures gained enough military might to resist. After that we have other empires like the Romans, who spread their culture through force. In Asia, the Chin state solidified their rule early on and unified the country and culture to create China, and heavily influencing Mongolia and Japan, even though the former resisted domination for a long time and the latter resisted it completely. In the Americas, the Aztecs spread their culture through war right up until the Spanish came over and smashed the Aztec culture under the reconquista.
Today, the spread of culture has slowed considerably. The British managed to force their culture on areas around the world for quite some time, and even today many former colonies have a high rate of English literacy. Which is a good thing, as the current dominant power, the US, primarily uses the English language, and it has become a de facto trade language because of those two factors. The US has been a bit more insidious in spreading its culture, doing so mostly via trade and exporting it in movies and media. However, part of the reason it has been able to do so, is that it holds a dominant military position in the world, and has a vast array of natural resources at its disposal. Having gone so far in the past to defend those resources and access to those resources, when not under direct control, through violence; or impose access as the case may be.
In the end, there are not many cultures which long survive without either isolation, which is becoming increasingly hard to maintain, or threat of force. I can see no reason why this would change. We are lucky to be living in a time where war is not very widespread. Yes, there are problems in our world (see Darfur, Iraq, etc); this hardly compares to a world where it was generally expected that most able bodied men would be off on a campaign for their king through most of the summer. This relative peace has allowed varied cultures to maintain their identities, without resorting to violence; however, this peace has less to do with everyone getting along than the now ever present threat of mutual annihilation. While the idea of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) is quite aptly named; it does prevent any one nation from deploying nuclear weapons lightly.
No. I'm saying I shouldn't have to.
So, by that same logic, you would expect to be able to turn on the Hardcore Porn channel and not have anything offensive on it. You are responsible for choosing what you watch and what you don't; and by extension what your children watch or don't. If you don't like what a show is about, change the channel, that is what choice is about. Trying to force everything to be kid friendly is limiting choice.
Are you too incompetent to change the channel to Showtime when you want porn?
Are you too incompetent to change the channel when you don't want to see it? That ad hominem fallacy works both ways, but what you are pushing for is going to take away that choice from me. As it is, the FCC is looking to extend it's censorship on to cable. It won't be too long before I can't change the channel to porn. On the other hand, kid friendly content will always be around. The Disney channel isn't going to suddenly start showing Snow White getting it on with the seven dwarves.
Holy shit! I didn't realize that wanting some channels to be free of "indecency" was so indecent!
It's not, but wanting all channels free of indecency is. And allowing a bunch of bureaucrats to arbitrarily make up rules about what is indecent and what is not, is asking for exactly that.
What's wrong with letting you have your channels and my child having hers?
Again, there is no problem with this, but this is not what the FCC is trying to do. The FCC wants to foist it's ideas of decency on every channel. On the other hand, without the FCC, yes there would be channels with hardcore porn; however, children's programming wouldn't disappear. For a good example, look at the internet. I can find just about any type of pornography to titillate me, and you can find plenty of children's content. Lack of regulation did not turn it into some adult content ridden hell-hole.
Do you think that ALL channels should be free of any form of decency standards?
Sort of. I think they should be free from government mandated standards; however, they should at least be honest about what their content is (which could be mandated, TV ratings are a good idea). Additionally, channels will self-censor. Disney Channel is not going to show Princesses Gone Wild, just because the government is no longer breathing down their necks. They know what their customer base is, and will continue to pander to it.
Do you want to see Big-Bird's balls?
Might be a funny parody, but not really my thing, thanks.
Having actually read the PDF, it is short. The author touches on a lot of ideas, and it is quite obvious that there could be some rather lengthy discussion on some of them. What is in the PDF is very concise and well written, and worth reading; especially if you've ever been in a discussion where the "Nothing to Hide" argument was trotted out.
I thought the same thing. If the law is that broken, a few high profile people need to get nailed with it. Sometimes, the best way to get a law changed, is to enforce it.
I do realize that a lot of people use the internet for erm...interesting research; but one should not lust after their computer. It's just an image, and you feel good about it because of your hand. And, for goodness sake, do not try to interface with the floppy drive.
I'll agree that having GPS is nice on vacation, especially to be able to map your hiking routes before hand, and see where you actually went afterwards. But the cell phone, not so much. I do carry it on vacation, especially when out hiking or camping. It's rather amazing how many out of the way places get good signal. And in an emergency, that phone could be a life saver. Still, I don't exactly cry (or notice even) when I'm in a place without signal. I just turn it off, and throw is somewhere (lakes are especially tempting).
And the rest of the gadgets? Leave 'em at home. Now, part of this is that most of my vacations involve camping (drive up camping, I'm too fat and lazy to backpack anymore, and the only one of the people I go with who would consider doing it); and the last thing I need, when I am trying to get away from civilization, is some idiot blaring a reminder of that crap a few hundred feet away. The forest/desert have very nice and interesting sounds if you just stop and listen to them. And anyone bringing a laptop/TV/DVD player deserves a beating with a stick. I enjoy sitting around a camp fire watching the flames and hearing the sounds of the sap popping and good conversation with friends, music detracts from that.
Lastly: teenagers would rather give up SEX than their phone for a month
Either they aren't getting it anyway, so it's not a loss for them; or they only asked prudes. If my choice in High School had been talking on the phone or sex, I'd have been pants-less before they finished asking the question.
I'm going to assume you are not from the US (which is seeming like a better and better thing these days) or, at least, not very familiar with the workings of its government (which is normal for most of the US population); so, please forgive me if I bore you with detail.
Districts serve two purposes, both of which are essentially the same just at different levels of government. For the Federal Government, each State is broken up into smaller districts based, ostensibly, on population. Each district elects one of the State's representatives in the House of Representatives (The House). Ideally, this means that local populations are represented by someone local (e.g. a district which includes Los Angeles will be represented by someone from Los Angeles). The number of seats a State has in The House varies based on population (now relative population as the number is fixed at 435 [1]) This is why you will hear US residents talk about "their" representative; they are referring to the fact that the Representative was elected by the district to which the person talking belongs.
A similar function exists at the State level. As most State Governments are patterend after the US Federal Government, their structure is much the same, with a House and Senate. As such, States are further broken down into districts for electing representatives to the State's "House" (Names vary). Again, this is based on the argument of local representation.
The other side of all this is that, contrary to your statement that "If 100 people vote, 51 for x and 49 for y. It shouldn't matter who voted where." location does indeed matter. As a resident of a particular district, I only vote for the representative for my district, State and Federal. The exception here is that for Senatorial races, I vote for my State's two Senators. Though, this is the same thing on a larger scale. A resident of New York cannot vote for Florida's Senators.
I liked Schwarzenegger's plan, except for one fatal flaw: The panel was chosen by the State Legislature. How hard would it really be for them to find 3 retired judges who will gerrymander the districts for the incumbents? In the end, it would have just given the appearance of fairness, while still being just as broken as before.
Really, the only good solution (assuming our current voting method) was in a response just above yours. Use a computer program (open source only) to assign the districts by population and zip code. There will need to be algorithms for ensuring the "minority-majority" districts (again, assuming status-quo here); however, this should be possible without having too many safe districts (there will always be some, some people really like their current parasite...er, representative).
First Assistant District Attorney Jaime Keating said case law is in flux as to whether police can expect not to be recorded while performing their duties.
Fuck that shit
Anyone who seriously thinks that a police office performing his or her duty should be exempt from recording needs to be shot, now. This shouldn't ever be a question, the police are accountable to the people, we have the right and responsibility to make sure that they are not abusing the authority that has been granted to them. They have accepted a job with some special caveats, one of those is that they get to work under a public microscope, either deal with it or quit.
Why don't states just then make the federal income take unconstitutional in their state.
Because it would take 2/3 of them to get a Constitutional Convention called. And then the herding of cats would begin. Of the two methods for constitutional amendment, only the proposal from Congress method has been used, ever. A single State cannot make something unconstitutional.
Put in a "succession clause" if the fed tries to subvert the state constitution and see what happens.
The Confederate States of America ring any bells? Several states tried secession, they failed. Granted, if meaningful change is going to happen, it's going to have to come from the bottom up; the State governments are not the bottom and are not going to be the source of change. The same political parties which control the Federal Government control the State Governments; and they like a heavily centralized power structure, it makes graft and corruption easier and more profitable (conservativism be damned).
Good thing I'm not a doctor either. ;-)
At a guess, the plastic molecule will probably end up being collected like dead blood cells and other foreign bodies in the blood stream eventually. And then eliminated in urine. Maybe it is a bit naive, but the people working on this stuff are much smarter than most of us on /. when it comes to biology, I'm sure they have thought of this.
Doubtful. Being on HBO certainly hasn't hurt the popularity of "The Sopranos".
Another fact which seems to be overlooked a lot on this thread:
Stargate started out on Showtime. If anything Sci-Fi has just been responsible for stringing it along well past the "use by" date.
I think you've got it. Sci-fi has a nerd stigma to it, which is tough to overcome. I had been watching BSG since it first aired in the US, my wife started when she caught an episode by accident, and got hooked. She had just assumed that she wouldn't like it.
Actually, I can see this as a possibility with the show already.
BSG finds Earth, realizes that the 13th colony has fallen way behind in technology. Realizing that Earth would get raped by the Cylons, they decide instead to lead them off on a wild, and ultimately suicidal, goose chase. Series ends with BSG and all hands dying in a losing fight.
Not quite the touchy-feely happy ending, but a fitting end for the crew.
Better question:
Political parties are private organizations. What the fuck is the state doing dictating to a private organization when they have their primaries??
This is a private selection by a private group, the state should not be involved (providing election equipment included. Maybe it could be rented...)
And that war in Iraq, with the largest, best trained army in the world fighting a bunch of disorganized people with old Soviet hardware and cobbled together explosives, how's that working out? And that little Vietnam thing a while back, how did that go?
Never underestimate the arrogance of governments. They will pass this because they don't like people pointing out their incompetence, it will go to court and the judges will uphold it because, "it's needed to protect Amurica from turrists!" And us poor peons will just have to get used to it. Welcome to the US, police state of the future!