Now you say the constitution doesn't give us rights. Which is it? If it doesn't give us rights, how can we say you can't take away rights the constitution gives us?
The Constitution specifically outlines the powers of government. All other rights, express or implicit, belong to the states, or to the people. In the case of the Bill of Rights, even the states can't yank those away.
Don't believe me? Check out the 9th Amendment:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
And the 10th Amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
I've seen this quote more or less thrown around this thread many times....can someone give the citations of studies that prove this? Is it broken down by type of offense?
It depends on what you mean by "sex offender". Banging a 17-year-old girl who consents is radically different than molesting a 10-year-old kid. The first is a result of a lapse in judgement (in some states; in others it's perfectly legal), the second is a sign of severe pathology.
If you're talking about actual chld molestors, i.e., people who prey on pre-pubescents, the recidivism rate in untreated individuals is around 90%. Yes, that's right; once out of prison they have a 9 in 10 chance of molesting again, and no amount of therapy will ever change that. Therapy is entirely ineffective where these folks are concerned.
However, certain chemical treatments are close to 100% effective at preventing repeat offenses so long as the molestor doesn't try to buck the system. Chemical castration, for example, works very well with pathological molestors and rapists (including the frat boy "she was drunk and asking for it" rapists). Therapy won't help these twisted fucks, but the wonderful world of chemistry will drastically reduce the danger they present to others.
True sexual predators have different brain chemistries and morphologies than the rest of us. Just like sociopaths we can see these differences in, say, PET scans and recognize them for what they are. Since the ability to reconstruct the brain or permanently correct chemical imbalances is decades, if not centuries, away, there is no effective way to 'treat' the condition just as you can't 'talk' a broken bone into healing. The best you can do is to try and prevent the offender from offending again, usually by short-circuiting their sex drive or making them incapable of consumation.
As for cites, forget the internet and stick with empirical studies published in accredited, peer-reviewed journals. While the internet is a great place to look up answers to questions on hard science, the softer sciences like psychology and sociology are buried under the clap that cranks, wankers, and losers pass off as fact. Even when someone tries to paraphrase an actual study they often get most of it wrong simply because they don't understand what the hell is going on in the study but refuse to admit it's beyond their ability to grasp. People don't have this problem when it comes to, say, physics, but everyone's an expert in psychology - by virtue, it seems, of the fact that they happen to be breathing.
General Relativity postulates that time is such a universal property
It does no such thing. In fact, time is strictly relative to the observer, hence the whole 'relativity' thing. The experience of time is entirely subjective and wholly depends on your point of view. Einstein went to great pains to explain this to the rest of the world and it's one of the reasons so many found it hard to accept his theories.
but my God was resurrected and has already defeated yours.
Yeah, that book in your bible where God whipped Thor's ass just keeps you on the edge of your seat! And afterwards, when he goes to take out the Fenris Wolf single-handedly - what a stud!
However, if this is true for us in the "present", why would time function differently for those in our past?
"Time" doesn't function at all in the past, by definition. The past isn't 'happening' for anyone; it's already occurred.
You might be able to view it by some means, but injecting yourself into it would impossible.
Both things are impossible.
The only other option is that the timeline can branch and loop back on itself.
This assumes that time is a sort of force or universal property that can be manipulated. To the best of our knowledge time is a subjective referent for a series of observed events which cannot be reversed. The idea of 'time' is merely a convenient way of marking these events, e.g., the rising and setting of the sun.
There is no evidence whatsoever that time exists as an actual property of any kind in the observed universe.
Not only is this the imposition of religion on government - definitely unconstitutional - it's the imposition of ONE religion upon government. All other religions are ignored as being irrelevent because they don't have a majority following in the country.
As I recall, this is precisely what many of our ancestors were trying to escape when they fled from Europe. Instead it seems they brought that evil with them.
Although if I claim to be a servant of god I can pretty much get away with anything I like, as it would be a sin to question my qualifications or to express skepticism about my mission. All hail Koresh and Jones!
The problem with stuff like this is that it's properly used to point out flaws in theories, such as with the wormhole example. It's *improperly* used by crackpots and marginally educated geeks to show 'why time travel could work'.
Time travel is a logical fallacy. If a theory allows us to posit a possible time travel scenario that doesn't mean that time travel is possible; it means that our theory is fucked up in some fashion and needs to be improved.
Well if you think that it is impossible to change the past, then you have to conclude that it is impossible to change the future too because your future is somebody else's past.
That doesn't logically follow. You assume because there is a singular past there must also be a singular future, and therefore the universe is deterministic. False reasoning at it's finest.
They're tired of Rick "everything I touch turns to shit" Berman fucking up the series beyond redemption. Not only does Trek need a rest but Berman should be banned from doing anything remotely Star Trek for the rest of his life.
Dvorak's sweeping generalizations are a load of crap, to be sure, but the game industry does an amazingly good job of falling flat on its face with most releases. Let's face it: the vast majority of games that hit the market aren't worth the bargain bin price, much less $50. Hell, most of them aren't worth playing even if they're *free*.
I don't think the problem has anything to do with new ideas, since most of the 'old' ideas are so poorly implemented. I think the real problem with most of these games is that the designers are often programmers despite the fact that there's absolutely no correlation between being able to design a game and being able to translate the design into code. In my opinion most coders are terrible game designers - but try telling that to someone who's convinced that since he can code he must also be able to design, even though there's no logic whatsoever in that belief.
There are exceptions, of course, but for every Fallout or Planescape: Torment or Thief there are dozens of games that're so awful they never should have seen the light of day. And even these games aren't "10's"; they're "6's" or "7's", but we're so used to being exposed to shit that when a 6 or a 7 comes around we go ballistic and proclaim the game to be one of the best things since sliced bread. In fact, they aren't anywhere close to a best effort, just markedly better than most of the trash on the market; and because of that we tend to put the game on a pedestal and ignore all of its faults, or the things that could've been done to improve it.
As an example, take Morrowind. This game is not only buggier than 3-month-old road kill, but it also has lousy gameplay and doesn't even bother to try infusing any sort of balance into the experience. Even so it's head and shoulders above most of the RPGs out there, so players deliberately ignore the games faults (and even attack those who dare to point them out). But is this game anywhere close to the original Betrayal at Krondor in terms of story, or gameplay, or balance, or game system implementation? Nope, not at all. It does have much better graphics, but you'd expect that since BAK came more than a decade before Morrowind. For everything but graphics BAK takes Morrowind to town. And it' a pretty sad state of affairs when one of the games that defined CRPG is *still* one of the best CRPGs out there.
What to do? Perhaps if companies were to hire some actual game designers to design the game, and the coders stuck to implementing the design, we'd get better games. For example, if we want good strategy or tactics games maybe companies should think about hiring the designers who used to make games at SPI or GDW (assuming they're even still alive). If we want a decent RPG then maybe the guy who made RuneQuest would be a good choice for that sort of game. And so on. Coders do what they do best - code - and game designers who've proven themselves design the games.
Sounds like a decent plan to me. The result certainly couldn't be any worse than what we're getting right now.
There are still more people running Win98/Win2000 than WinXP, especially in business environments. Anecdotally, the folks I know aren't at all interested in 'upgrading' to Longhorn as they don't see any pressing need to spend yet more money and time on another round minor improvements (the same reasoning that deterred them from upgrading to WinXP). The only places I can see Longhorn making any dents are a) with new computer buyers where it comes pre-installed, and b) the MS worshippers who immediately jump on anything and everything that MS puts out.
Note that these aren't businesses, the people who put out the vast majority of PDF documents. I don't think Adobe has anything to worry about in the near future.
I'd say "fuck anyone who gets their panties in a wad over an added special effect". Really, if you're that uptight about 'sound in space' then you need to get your priorities straight. Or perhaps a life.
But the question still stands. What exactly do you mean by your sig?
It's a joke, and a demonstration of how people are more than willing to laugh at others, but get self-righteously pissed when the tables are turned on them.
I'm beginning to think you get far more pleasure out of your perceived self-importance than a mere chuckle...
You're just ticked that losing four points of karma didn't upset me, but instead amused me. If you can't see the humor in such a, well, pathetic display of childish rage then the joke is lost on you.
Even funnier is that one of the folks who got offended at my sig was gifted with mod points today, and decided to 'punish' me by marking all of my posts as 'Flamebait'. Which is a damned waste because my karma is always maxed out.
Still, it gives me a chuckle to think that something like my sig could infuriate a zealot so.
What exactly is the problem here? People subscribe to blacklists because they think the folks maintaining the blacklist are doing a good job; if they aren't the subscribers will stop using that blacklist. End of story.
As for all the whiners complaining about being blacklisted, you don't have a 'right' not to be blacklisted. You don't have a 'right' to send your email to people who've decided they don't want it - and they have decided this, because they're using the blacklist. If they *do* want your email they'll stop using the blacklist that blocks you.
Time to get over yourself. You have no right to send email to anyone you please. Anyone can block you at any time, for any reason, and there's nothing you can do about it. Hell, I use a whitelist for my home network and that means that unless I know you your mail will NEVER get through. Are you going to tell me that I don't have a right to reject your mail out of hand?
This is *your* major problem and it's up to you to solve it. For example, by securing your servers and ip-banning the folks making the malicious attacks. Why are you insisting that others do your work for you?
Why put the burden on ISPs? If Windows ships with the services shut down and without the capability of remotely activating them then the problem is solved.
If you think the whole of the U.S. army would slaughter American citizens without question then you are a fool. If you're willing to entrust your liberty to the kind-heartedness of the people already in power then you're a damned fool.
Slashdot Mirror
Now you say the constitution doesn't give us rights. Which is it? If it doesn't give us rights, how can we say you can't take away rights the constitution gives us?
The Constitution specifically outlines the powers of government. All other rights, express or implicit, belong to the states, or to the people. In the case of the Bill of Rights, even the states can't yank those away.
Don't believe me? Check out the 9th Amendment:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
And the 10th Amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Max
I've seen this quote more or less thrown around this thread many times....can someone give the citations of studies that prove this? Is it broken down by type of offense?
It depends on what you mean by "sex offender". Banging a 17-year-old girl who consents is radically different than molesting a 10-year-old kid. The first is a result of a lapse in judgement (in some states; in others it's perfectly legal), the second is a sign of severe pathology.
If you're talking about actual chld molestors, i.e., people who prey on pre-pubescents, the recidivism rate in untreated individuals is around 90%. Yes, that's right; once out of prison they have a 9 in 10 chance of molesting again, and no amount of therapy will ever change that. Therapy is entirely ineffective where these folks are concerned.
However, certain chemical treatments are close to 100% effective at preventing repeat offenses so long as the molestor doesn't try to buck the system. Chemical castration, for example, works very well with pathological molestors and rapists (including the frat boy "she was drunk and asking for it" rapists). Therapy won't help these twisted fucks, but the wonderful world of chemistry will drastically reduce the danger they present to others.
True sexual predators have different brain chemistries and morphologies than the rest of us. Just like sociopaths we can see these differences in, say, PET scans and recognize them for what they are. Since the ability to reconstruct the brain or permanently correct chemical imbalances is decades, if not centuries, away, there is no effective way to 'treat' the condition just as you can't 'talk' a broken bone into healing. The best you can do is to try and prevent the offender from offending again, usually by short-circuiting their sex drive or making them incapable of consumation.
As for cites, forget the internet and stick with empirical studies published in accredited, peer-reviewed journals. While the internet is a great place to look up answers to questions on hard science, the softer sciences like psychology and sociology are buried under the clap that cranks, wankers, and losers pass off as fact. Even when someone tries to paraphrase an actual study they often get most of it wrong simply because they don't understand what the hell is going on in the study but refuse to admit it's beyond their ability to grasp. People don't have this problem when it comes to, say, physics, but everyone's an expert in psychology - by virtue, it seems, of the fact that they happen to be breathing.
Max
General Relativity postulates that time is such a universal property
It does no such thing. In fact, time is strictly relative to the observer, hence the whole 'relativity' thing. The experience of time is entirely subjective and wholly depends on your point of view. Einstein went to great pains to explain this to the rest of the world and it's one of the reasons so many found it hard to accept his theories.
Max
but my God was resurrected and has already defeated yours.
Yeah, that book in your bible where God whipped Thor's ass just keeps you on the edge of your seat! And afterwards, when he goes to take out the Fenris Wolf single-handedly - what a stud!
Max
However, if this is true for us in the "present", why would time function differently for those in our past?
"Time" doesn't function at all in the past, by definition. The past isn't 'happening' for anyone; it's already occurred.
You might be able to view it by some means, but injecting yourself into it would impossible.
Both things are impossible.
The only other option is that the timeline can branch and loop back on itself.
This assumes that time is a sort of force or universal property that can be manipulated. To the best of our knowledge time is a subjective referent for a series of observed events which cannot be reversed. The idea of 'time' is merely a convenient way of marking these events, e.g., the rising and setting of the sun.
There is no evidence whatsoever that time exists as an actual property of any kind in the observed universe.
Max
Not only is this the imposition of religion on government - definitely unconstitutional - it's the imposition of ONE religion upon government. All other religions are ignored as being irrelevent because they don't have a majority following in the country.
As I recall, this is precisely what many of our ancestors were trying to escape when they fled from Europe. Instead it seems they brought that evil with them.
Max
God clearly doesn't believe in free speech.
Although if I claim to be a servant of god I can pretty much get away with anything I like, as it would be a sin to question my qualifications or to express skepticism about my mission. All hail Koresh and Jones!
Max
The problem with stuff like this is that it's properly used to point out flaws in theories, such as with the wormhole example. It's *improperly* used by crackpots and marginally educated geeks to show 'why time travel could work'.
Time travel is a logical fallacy. If a theory allows us to posit a possible time travel scenario that doesn't mean that time travel is possible; it means that our theory is fucked up in some fashion and needs to be improved.
Max
Relativity doesn't speak to time travel. Time travel is nothing more than fodder for bad science fiction novels, and even worse pseudoscience.
Max
Well if you think that it is impossible to change the past, then you have to conclude that it is impossible to change the future too because your future is somebody else's past.
That doesn't logically follow. You assume because there is a singular past there must also be a singular future, and therefore the universe is deterministic. False reasoning at it's finest.
Max
They're tired of Rick "everything I touch turns to shit" Berman fucking up the series beyond redemption. Not only does Trek need a rest but Berman should be banned from doing anything remotely Star Trek for the rest of his life.
Max
Dvorak's sweeping generalizations are a load of crap, to be sure, but the game industry does an amazingly good job of falling flat on its face with most releases. Let's face it: the vast majority of games that hit the market aren't worth the bargain bin price, much less $50. Hell, most of them aren't worth playing even if they're *free*.
I don't think the problem has anything to do with new ideas, since most of the 'old' ideas are so poorly implemented. I think the real problem with most of these games is that the designers are often programmers despite the fact that there's absolutely no correlation between being able to design a game and being able to translate the design into code. In my opinion most coders are terrible game designers - but try telling that to someone who's convinced that since he can code he must also be able to design, even though there's no logic whatsoever in that belief.
There are exceptions, of course, but for every Fallout or Planescape: Torment or Thief there are dozens of games that're so awful they never should have seen the light of day. And even these games aren't "10's"; they're "6's" or "7's", but we're so used to being exposed to shit that when a 6 or a 7 comes around we go ballistic and proclaim the game to be one of the best things since sliced bread. In fact, they aren't anywhere close to a best effort, just markedly better than most of the trash on the market; and because of that we tend to put the game on a pedestal and ignore all of its faults, or the things that could've been done to improve it.
As an example, take Morrowind. This game is not only buggier than 3-month-old road kill, but it also has lousy gameplay and doesn't even bother to try infusing any sort of balance into the experience. Even so it's head and shoulders above most of the RPGs out there, so players deliberately ignore the games faults (and even attack those who dare to point them out). But is this game anywhere close to the original Betrayal at Krondor in terms of story, or gameplay, or balance, or game system implementation? Nope, not at all. It does have much better graphics, but you'd expect that since BAK came more than a decade before Morrowind. For everything but graphics BAK takes Morrowind to town. And it' a pretty sad state of affairs when one of the games that defined CRPG is *still* one of the best CRPGs out there.
What to do? Perhaps if companies were to hire some actual game designers to design the game, and the coders stuck to implementing the design, we'd get better games. For example, if we want good strategy or tactics games maybe companies should think about hiring the designers who used to make games at SPI or GDW (assuming they're even still alive). If we want a decent RPG then maybe the guy who made RuneQuest would be a good choice for that sort of game. And so on. Coders do what they do best - code - and game designers who've proven themselves design the games.
Sounds like a decent plan to me. The result certainly couldn't be any worse than what we're getting right now.
Max
There are still more people running Win98/Win2000 than WinXP, especially in business environments. Anecdotally, the folks I know aren't at all interested in 'upgrading' to Longhorn as they don't see any pressing need to spend yet more money and time on another round minor improvements (the same reasoning that deterred them from upgrading to WinXP). The only places I can see Longhorn making any dents are a) with new computer buyers where it comes pre-installed, and b) the MS worshippers who immediately jump on anything and everything that MS puts out.
Note that these aren't businesses, the people who put out the vast majority of PDF documents. I don't think Adobe has anything to worry about in the near future.
Max
"Steve Jobs is a dick." Yeah, we already knew that. Why did the childish reaction surprise Wiley?
Max
I'd say "fuck anyone who gets their panties in a wad over an added special effect". Really, if you're that uptight about 'sound in space' then you need to get your priorities straight. Or perhaps a life.
Max
But the question still stands. What exactly do you mean by your sig?
It's a joke, and a demonstration of how people are more than willing to laugh at others, but get self-righteously pissed when the tables are turned on them.
Max
I'm beginning to think you get far more pleasure out of your perceived self-importance than a mere chuckle...
You're just ticked that losing four points of karma didn't upset me, but instead amused me. If you can't see the humor in such a, well, pathetic display of childish rage then the joke is lost on you.
Max
Even funnier is that one of the folks who got offended at my sig was gifted with mod points today, and decided to 'punish' me by marking all of my posts as 'Flamebait'. Which is a damned waste because my karma is always maxed out.
Still, it gives me a chuckle to think that something like my sig could infuriate a zealot so.
Max
Maybe he should reinvent himself as 'retired'.
Max
What exactly is the problem here? People subscribe to blacklists because they think the folks maintaining the blacklist are doing a good job; if they aren't the subscribers will stop using that blacklist. End of story.
As for all the whiners complaining about being blacklisted, you don't have a 'right' not to be blacklisted. You don't have a 'right' to send your email to people who've decided they don't want it - and they have decided this, because they're using the blacklist. If they *do* want your email they'll stop using the blacklist that blocks you.
Time to get over yourself. You have no right to send email to anyone you please. Anyone can block you at any time, for any reason, and there's nothing you can do about it. Hell, I use a whitelist for my home network and that means that unless I know you your mail will NEVER get through. Are you going to tell me that I don't have a right to reject your mail out of hand?
Max
This is a major problem.
This is *your* major problem and it's up to you to solve it. For example, by securing your servers and ip-banning the folks making the malicious attacks. Why are you insisting that others do your work for you?
Max
Why put the burden on ISPs? If Windows ships with the services shut down and without the capability of remotely activating them then the problem is solved.
Max
Whether or not he actually believes it or just thinks it's funny is hard to say.
It's funny either way, if you think about it.
Max
Same coward, different day.
Although it's good to know that something as insignificant as my sig can get your panties in such a wad. Puts a smile on my face just thinking about.
Max
If you think the whole of the U.S. army would slaughter American citizens without question then you are a fool. If you're willing to entrust your liberty to the kind-heartedness of the people already in power then you're a damned fool.
Just don't damn the rest of us along with you.
Max