The XO is actually using some higher-end parts than most low-cost laptops, though. It's designed to take some abuse, being for kids and being targeted at places with no climate controls.
It's entirely plausible that some small company could make very thin margins on a laptop similar to this using refurbished, old stock, or open-box parts if they had a big enough supply of such. Not likely, mind you, but it could maybe be done if it was someone's life dream to do it. $150 sounds a little low, but perhaps $200 would make sense. Look at what brand new bottom-of-the-line laptops go for at retail with the warehousing and markup.
$450 from Wal-Mart for a Celeron M 420 with 512M RAM, 80gig HD, 14.1" 1280X800 screen, combo optical drive, card reader, 802.11g, Vista, Norton Internet Security. This machine is half the RAM, half the hard drive capacity, it's the Celeren M 370, it's a no-cost OS, and there's no markup. Sure sounds like they might save some money to me, and if they were more interested in altruism than profit, they could pass a good chunk of that along.
I do think it's a scam. I just think it doesn't jump out at someone screaming "I am a scam" and running around spreading peanut butter all over its chest.
You've been given two fairly well qualified viewpoints, so I'll put in a layman's argument. I'm doing this both because it may be simpler to follow and because I am a layperson when it comes to materials work.
What matters isn't so much the range from theoretical possibility in he universe, but the ability of something to function where it's going to be used. From freezing to boiling of water is roughly what temperature range you'll see where computers might be useful to people, using that range as a baseline makes some sense.
Also, the range of the device itself could be an order of magnitude. If, say, this will operate from 20 C to 320 C (a 300 degree range) and some other device (like a current CPU) is only really stable between 20 C and 50 C (a 30 degree range), then one device has a thermal tolerance _range_ that is clearly much larger than the other.
To say that his beliefs were different from some other group is not to say he had no beliefs. He had no specific proof of his beliefs beyond what his physics could give him. Therefore, the man had faith.
I know it's a dirty word to some people, but that's pretty much what faith is: it's holding a belief you can't prove and despite any doubts you have about it.
I never said Einstein was a Christian, and to assume I mean he was a Christian when I say he had a personal faith is an assumption on someone else's part. I never made such a statement.
To say that because Christianity is common, and therefore the word "religious" denotes the Christian faith is a fallacy in itself. You engaging my last quote to prove he was not something I never said he was does little to prove anything.
In fact, engaging the quote where he specifically claims a belief in some concept of a God proves that he had a personal faith in a God. How can one argue the man had no belief in what he professed plainly to believe?
AAMOF, if I have a site and you know the URL, we can keep using the site without it being indexed on Google. If Google indexed it and the government found it, we'd be in shitloads of trouble if the government was using force to shut down sites like it.
While Google not indexing these things might keep word about pro-freedom sites from getting to the people so quickly, it's also going to make it harder for the government to find them in order to shut them down.
I'm not sure about "too grown up", but I'm sure lots of people who used to play will say, "I have too much going on and too many responsibilities to spend time doing that". Other hobbies might win out over gaming, or people, sadly, might have too little time for any hobbies at all.
It's not an ad-hominem argument. It's saying that you, alone, do not have the authority to decide the constitutionality of anything. That's a fact.
There does not have to be a process described in the order for someone to sue the government, or to defend oneself against criminal proceedings linked to the freezing of the assets. There are already provisions that exist for that, and they are in general use already.
The order does not have to grant a right to challenge anything. The people are not granted rights by executive order. The people have the right to write letters, sue the government, sue the secretaries of the departments by name, sue the President, to have an attorney defend them against the associated criminal case against them, and several other things, ACCORDING TO THE CONSTITUTION.
This order, once again, does not exist in a vacuum. It only grants those powers listed to those people listed. Everything about United States Constitutional, statutory, and common law persists.
I've been wondering this myself. If they're not quite as focused on the purists, but still deliver good games for gamers, then what's the problem?
They can make a lot more cash getting three casual games that everyone will play out the door rather than beating their brains out over what the gaming gurus want in one extra purist title.
As long as enough decent games with long playtimes are around for the Wii, there's nothing wrong with it having bunches of titles that are something else. "Enough" doesn't necessarily mean more than the older consoles, either. I'm not sure what the threshold is, but I'd bet that Nintendo's marketing department has a decent idea.
OS X is probably the finest desktop Unix there is. It's certainly the Unix which is most polished for the desktop.
Don't forget that many browser have the ability to change their User-Agent string, either. Opera, for one, will happily identify itself as IE 6 for XP when running on my Mandriva installation.
So as long as sites detect the User-Agent string and deny access to people not using IE on Windows according to that, the numbers for OS and browser will always be somewhat off.
I guess the issue is, since they say "predictably" instead of "always", that there's a decent probability when one takes automation of the exploit into account. Try this enough times, and eventually you get it to work. It only takes the one time to "pwn" the server.
A chaotic country may be militarily unthreatening.
One that's in constant turmoil, has ineffective police, is largely under the control of people wanting to kill US citizens on US soil, and gives those people the chance to hoard weapons and money by terrorizing the populace without a visible command and control structure the US can destroy is more dangerous to the US than Saddam ever was.
Sorry, I didn't realize you were Justice Whoever57. I'll try to remember from now on that you're the decider of what is constitutional.
The government does not print money for its own use. It prints it to circulate through the reserve system. The government gets its funds through the collection of taxes. The act of making a couple hundred thousand dollars in one suspect's account is not going to cause so much deflation that the government can buy noticeably more stuff with the same tax base. In fact, the government would probably get tax revenue through that money being spent, because it would become someone else's income and be subject to a taxable event.
This order does not intend to be the whole of US law. Any powers claimed in it are still subject to the Constitution. Therefore, due process exists whether or not it is specifically stated otherwise in the order. The only difference here is that it is claimed that the Executive branch can do this before notifying the courts instead of asking for permission first. That's a dangerous step, but it does not run counter entirely to the powers the Supreme Court has found the Executive branch to have on numerous other occasions. It's basically the same idea that if a city police officer believes he is curtailing an imminent threat to bystanders that he can take your car on the spot without so much as calling his superior back at the station. The car gets impounded, which is the same thing as freezing an account, and the government agencies involved argue against the defendant in court after the car is taken.
If you could get the thumb buttons to be used individually or together, you could have 2^6, or 64 combinations.
Of course, a data glove and some software that figures out what you're trying to type on a virtual QWERTY (perhaps including real-time typo correction) might just be easier for the user. Of course, the data glove would be a bitch to have to wear whenever you want to use the PDA. Maybe one of these days a really lightweight PDA can be built into a glove...
In fact, the victory over Saddam's forces and the effort to remove him from power was a cakewalk. It's keeping order in the aftermath that's proving difficult.
1. for up to 48 hours without being charged with a crime, and after that until the arraignment. after the arraignment unless you post bond for the period until the trial, and bond can be set prohibitively high or waived altogether if the prosecutor can convince a judge there's a high chance you'll flee prosecution or try to use violence to cover up your crime. During the trial, too, except the time at the courthouse, and if you're accused of something really heinous then some jurisdictions try you by 2-way video feed these days.
2. Blocking an account is not seizing the funds in it. If the intent was to be permanent, it would be a seizure of funds. All blocking means is that the account holder cannot withdraw or transfer funds from the account to any other account or into cash or a bearable instrument while the block is in place.
The account holder would know about it pretty much as soon as they tried to get at the funds for some reason and were not allowed to do so, or at least once they asked the bank why. Noone's accounts are going to be blocked indefinitely without their knowledge unless they are too damn rich to care about having the money in the first place.
If it's really meant to go to support terror or to destabilize a regime, then it would have to be liquidated at least in part for it to help do that. Just leaving it sitting in the account will not help fund anything but the bank, and I'm sure people laundering money for terror or for destabilizing Iraq count on making money faster than by compound interest savings.
Once the account holder knows about the block, they'll know they're wanted. That means either a) it's a freeze on an account held by someone outside the country, or b) that person will be trying to leave the country or will confront the government on why the funds were frozen. Freezing the account make sit that much more difficult for them to flee. If the block is in place, there's probably also arrangements made to keep the person from flying, crossing the borders, or otherwise fleeing as well.
So these people, once they know about the block, or if they are apprehended beforehand, will have the courts just like everyone else. The courts in the country today would not allow someone suspected of money laundering or material support of an enemy to be considered an "illegal enemy combatant", so the same rules concerning habeas corpus, speedy (heh, heh) trial, public defenders, and the rest that any criminal suspect in the US would get would apply.
Really, the only difference here from what the executive could do to you for any suspected crime is that since there's declared state of national emergency in regards to terrorism, they're claiming the rights to do this without a court order. It's already been possible with one. You can bet some judge somewhere is just sweating for his chance to bust the executive branch on using this power at all, and especially using outside the bounds for which it's been declared.
It's true this is going to suck for those it's used against, especially if it's used other than how its stated to be used, or if the person had no idea they could ever be suspected of anything. However, that's pretty true of any innocent person who gets nabbed for being in the wrong part of town when a crime is committed. The law, unfortunately, doesn't say anywhere that an innocent person won't be arrested, charged, held, and brought to trial. It only says they have certain rights to try to prove their innocence. They also have the right to sue for false arrest, violation of civil rights, and false imprisonment if they are detained and there's not reasonable evidence that they were to be suspected.
Having to deal with living by the rule of law at all sucks, but it's better than not having your neighbors live by it. There is at all times and everywhere a balance to be struck between enforcing the laws and upholding the rights of the people. There's a good chance that this falls too far on the side of enforcing the law, but it is not that e
Einstein's own words have been quoted time and again about a Creator, a God, and a higher purpose. It's notable that he didn't say "Jesus", or "Buddah", or make any dogmatic professions about certain prophets.
To say he didn't believe in some version of a God is foolery.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish."
"I want to know all Gods thoughts... all the rest are just details."
"I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe."
"I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."
"God is subtle but he is not malicious."
"God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically."
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."
"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."
It sure seems clear the man believed in something. Simply by assuming he's not got the same idea of a God or gods as some group with which you're associating those words does not mean he doesn't have some faith in something.
The last of those listed quotes pretty much says he believes in an all-encompassing pantheistic God that is everywhere, part of everything, and of which everything is part. It does so in his own words and the allusion to Spinoza's substantive pantheism.
If you find your SO that way, one of you is going to have to change those coordinates at least temporarily in order to see one another in meat space, neh? And there's no "cyber" in the type of sex we're talking about here, unless you've responded to those "be thicker now" implant spams.
Don't worry, Slashdot and sex rarely do mix. For that matter, I understand that a fair number of Slashdotters and sex never mix.
Good for me I know how to find women who love geeks and nerds. I even married one. She has a pair of socks that say, "I [heart] nerdy boys", and she bought me a "beware of attack computer whiz" sign for our home office. That r0x0rs!
Of course, in order to meet women, even ones who love geeks and nerds, one does have to get dressed and go outside once in a while. So that could be a challenge, and a real drag, for some.
I used to buy my groceries at Kroger when it was local. They updated their prices once a week. For the customer willing to catch out of a cart full of items that they had mislabeled something, the customer service manager would give them the item free and immediately fix that particular item's price in the computer.
It was great customer service. The customer with the free item was happy, the store didn't have to worry about additional customers being bit by the same problem, and it just saved a bunch of headaches.
Of course, there's the chance that the ad or the shelf price was the part that was wrong, but I don't remember that ever being an excuse. I always got my item free if there was a mislabeling or a computer pricing issue. They may have gone and changed the signs later, but I didn't care at that point.
Well, I consider myself conservative on most points, but a real one who thinks that the government meddling in personal affairs is just as bad or worse than the government meddling with business.
I'm pro business within reason, but I think bigger companies do need some regulation sometimes.
I'm pro gun ownership, and I think schools should teach gun safety rather than teach that they are bad and evil.
I think most drugs should be legally sold, the purity and dosage regulated, and the sales taxed pretty heavily.
I think the government should no more stop a Buddhist from saying things than a Christian, but should no more support the Christian than the Jainist. Followers of all faiths should be free to speak their minds inside or outside any public place, but noone speaking on behalf of the government should mention his or her faith within the context of the government. If a Senator wants to say he's a Muslim or a Jew, he can say that at his Mosque, or at his synagogue, or he can say something like "I am X, but that is my belief. While it does, in all honesty, color my perception and goals for the government, I do not wish to use the government as a tool to proselytize". I don't care if you're Zoroastrian, Hindu, Rastafarian, Confucian, Wiccan, agnostic, or atheist. As long as your principles resemble mine and you can run the government well and within a reasonable budget, I'll vote for you.
I don't expect everyone to actually play fair. I only expect the field to be level so the other guy has a chance. I still fully expect that some people and most corporations will fight tooth and nail for every specific advantage. Until a law is broken, I think it should be allowed and the distastefulness should be openly aired. I just don't think we should codify it and have the government play a part in giving advantages to whole classes or groups of people.
I think tort reform is mandatory for the survival of the American way of life, because being sued into oblivion when one has done nothing wrong is abhorrent.
I think there should be a personal income tax with a set maximum deduction per person in your household. Say, $4,000 per person. If you and your wife have two kids, your deduction is $16,000. Everyone gets taxed exactly 15% on everything above that, and it's one simple form per household.
Most important to this thread, I think that anyone who wants to come to the US, work hard, speak English passably, and who is not a convicted criminal or current crime suspect here or in their home country should be allowed in as a guest. Most of the more qualified ones should be allowed to stay as long as they like and apply for permanent status or for naturalization if they wish.
It's something lots of us can't imagine on our own, so it helps to hear it from you.
I, for one, am all for both cracking down hard on illegal immigrants while simultaneously making it much easier for people to come into the US legally. I especially think the H1 program should be expanded.
An American, before all else, should be known as a person who is fair, competitive on a level playing field, and glad to have other people becoming hard-working, excellence-minded Americans. This is whether people consider themselves "just American" or Indian-American, Chinese-American, German-American, or whatever. This is not how we're known right now, and it's because too many people in this country would rather slide by on the accomplishments of our ancestors than contribute to keeping America the shining beacon for hard-working, honest people worldwide that it should be.
BTW, "Bumfuckistan" is just damn funny. I don't mean to disrespect the countries in central Asia by saying that it's funny, but it just is. From someone in a smallish city in a "fly-over state", it's much the same egotism I see that you are seeing. But both terms I find humorous.
Receptionists, shipping clerks, call center reps, cashiers, nurses, and most day-to-day office workers don't need the portability and form factor of a laptop. Furthermore, it's a lot more likely that a company will let a new hire or someone who has dealing with the public at the system use a desktop that's cumbersome to unhook and carry out the door than a machine designed for that purpose. People might not be any more likely to steal a laptop than a desktop in principle, but making it easier for, say, the guys who visit the Public Aid office to get in and out with them isn't necessarily a good idea.
Desktops are a lot cheaper to design and build for the budget role, and are more easily customizable for all the myriad business machines out there that require computer control. USB and Firewire are great, but they're still not as flexible as PCI and PCI Express. Extra drive bays make it much easier for IT to add storage or unusual hardware (ZIP, HD-DVD, some new memory card reader) that would have to be a separately inventoried if it was an external add-on for a laptop.
A desktop can easily be expanded into a cheap, low-end server. Most laptops don't meet this criterion very well. Memory limits asre often lower, the memory is more expensive, and you only get one hard drive in 99.8% of models out there. Lots of small businesses or working groups in larger ones tend to turn an old PC into an impromptu server for a while until the budget allows a proper server.
There might be some split into laptops for the masses, workstations for high-end work, and servers for rack-mount applications, but you can be sure lots of businesses will the just buy workstation or server machines as desktops. As long as the business world demands the mini tower, it'll be available for you to buy from Dell and HP. The enthusiast sites will probably still offer them long after that.
Besides, when has "lower growth" ever meant "decline in number"? Last I checked, growth meant more units sold, period. Less of an increase than last year, maybe, but still an increase. What if one day the market saturates and everyone only buys replacement systems? Will all the suppliers of hardware close and not bother?
and then the public will lose all faith in science that they have left.
When scientists, as you say, scramble to win the public over, then fail again to deliver what the article worded not as interesting trivia but as a promise of a brighter future, they hurt their own credibility.
Here's an example of what we've been told should be possible by now: Here, take my flying car over to the wristwatch computer store and ave the robotic sales assistant help you pick out a model with a 4x8' screen projector on it that will last 20 years and be powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. Then hop on a commercial charter to Mars and deliver it to me in my office atop Olympus Mons.
Now, obviously, it's sometimes understandable to be overly optimistic about research, but when people consistently over-promise and under-deliver, you lose faith in them. Call it the Popular Science effect, if you like.
Chiropractic can be good. Massage and spinal adjustment are performed by DO and MD type doctors sometimes too, you know. A good chiropractor will tell you need a medical doctor, and a good medical doctor will tell you when you need massage and adjustment.
As for fluoride, while I' fairly sure it's been proven reasonably safe in toothpaste, mouth rinses, and such, I'm not convinced it may not have harmful side effects when ingested. I think the jury's still out on that one. But hey, it doesn't seem to cause enough harm that it's easily found, and the benefits seem to outweigh the risks until we know more. We j=might jsut hate ourselves for it later.
Bad vaccines can potentially cause all kinds of problems. If there's a general feeling that there's a correlation, then the statistics should be gone over. If there's actually a correlation, then figuring out which vaccines with which ingredients might contribute would be nice. I doubt the dead or ineffective virii or bits of virii in vaccines are what causes any problems if there are any. It'd more likely be some chemical meant to carry, preserve, or buffer the solution. But that's just my gut feeling. As in many issues, we don't know enough to dismiss it outright, but for now there's not enough evidence of problems to outweigh the benefits. I know a lot of people fear autism, but I personally would rather have an autistic child than to lose that child to disease. If we can find a way to be sure of protecting from the diseases without any chance of causing harmful side effects, that'd be better.
As for the naturalistic fallacy, I'm a big proponent of debunking that one. Many people, for example, hate "artificial strawberry flavor" or "artificial red food coloring". The red food coloring of many years ago was a carcinogen, but I think things are better now. The "natural strawberry flavor" alternative isn't from strawberries, or it would say "strawberries", "strawberry juice", or "strawberry extract" or something similar. One source of "natural strawberry flavor" is from the bark of some tree, IIRC, while others come from combinations of other fruits. And "natural red food coloring" is often from the shell of a red-colored insect.
While debunking the natural fallacy often starts with things like strychnine and arsenic, which are very natural and potentially very harmful, I like to point out that "artificial flavor" is usually very close, chemically, to the source you expect the flavor to come from. If it's cheaper and easier to make fake strawberry extract than to extract it, lots of companies will do that. The "natural strawberry flavor", though, may be chemically very little like the mimicked flavor and from surprising and sometimes disturbing sources.
That's what freezing is. It's a temporary block on access to the assets while legal action is taken. If it was to be permanent, it'd be called seizure or confiscation.
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The XO is actually using some higher-end parts than most low-cost laptops, though. It's designed to take some abuse, being for kids and being targeted at places with no climate controls.
It's entirely plausible that some small company could make very thin margins on a laptop similar to this using refurbished, old stock, or open-box parts if they had a big enough supply of such. Not likely, mind you, but it could maybe be done if it was someone's life dream to do it. $150 sounds a little low, but perhaps $200 would make sense. Look at what brand new bottom-of-the-line laptops go for at retail with the warehousing and markup.
$450 from Wal-Mart for a Celeron M 420 with 512M RAM, 80gig HD, 14.1" 1280X800 screen, combo optical drive, card reader, 802.11g, Vista, Norton Internet Security. This machine is half the RAM, half the hard drive capacity, it's the Celeren M 370, it's a no-cost OS, and there's no markup. Sure sounds like they might save some money to me, and if they were more interested in altruism than profit, they could pass a good chunk of that along.
I do think it's a scam. I just think it doesn't jump out at someone screaming "I am a scam" and running around spreading peanut butter all over its chest.
You've been given two fairly well qualified viewpoints, so I'll put in a layman's argument. I'm doing this both because it may be simpler to follow and because I am a layperson when it comes to materials work.
What matters isn't so much the range from theoretical possibility in he universe, but the ability of something to function where it's going to be used. From freezing to boiling of water is roughly what temperature range you'll see where computers might be useful to people, using that range as a baseline makes some sense.
Also, the range of the device itself could be an order of magnitude. If, say, this will operate from 20 C to 320 C (a 300 degree range) and some other device (like a current CPU) is only really stable between 20 C and 50 C (a 30 degree range), then one device has a thermal tolerance _range_ that is clearly much larger than the other.
To say that his beliefs were different from some other group is not to say he had no beliefs. He had no specific proof of his beliefs beyond what his physics could give him. Therefore, the man had faith.
I know it's a dirty word to some people, but that's pretty much what faith is: it's holding a belief you can't prove and despite any doubts you have about it.
I never said Einstein was a Christian, and to assume I mean he was a Christian when I say he had a personal faith is an assumption on someone else's part. I never made such a statement.
To say that because Christianity is common, and therefore the word "religious" denotes the Christian faith is a fallacy in itself. You engaging my last quote to prove he was not something I never said he was does little to prove anything.
In fact, engaging the quote where he specifically claims a belief in some concept of a God proves that he had a personal faith in a God. How can one argue the man had no belief in what he professed plainly to believe?
AAMOF, if I have a site and you know the URL, we can keep using the site without it being indexed on Google. If Google indexed it and the government found it, we'd be in shitloads of trouble if the government was using force to shut down sites like it.
While Google not indexing these things might keep word about pro-freedom sites from getting to the people so quickly, it's also going to make it harder for the government to find them in order to shut them down.
I'm not sure about "too grown up", but I'm sure lots of people who used to play will say, "I have too much going on and too many responsibilities to spend time doing that". Other hobbies might win out over gaming, or people, sadly, might have too little time for any hobbies at all.
It's not an ad-hominem argument. It's saying that you, alone, do not have the authority to decide the constitutionality of anything. That's a fact.
There does not have to be a process described in the order for someone to sue the government, or to defend oneself against criminal proceedings linked to the freezing of the assets. There are already provisions that exist for that, and they are in general use already.
The order does not have to grant a right to challenge anything. The people are not granted rights by executive order. The people have the right to write letters, sue the government, sue the secretaries of the departments by name, sue the President, to have an attorney defend them against the associated criminal case against them, and several other things, ACCORDING TO THE CONSTITUTION.
This order, once again, does not exist in a vacuum. It only grants those powers listed to those people listed. Everything about United States Constitutional, statutory, and common law persists.
I've been wondering this myself. If they're not quite as focused on the purists, but still deliver good games for gamers, then what's the problem?
They can make a lot more cash getting three casual games that everyone will play out the door rather than beating their brains out over what the gaming gurus want in one extra purist title.
As long as enough decent games with long playtimes are around for the Wii, there's nothing wrong with it having bunches of titles that are something else. "Enough" doesn't necessarily mean more than the older consoles, either. I'm not sure what the threshold is, but I'd bet that Nintendo's marketing department has a decent idea.
OS X is probably the finest desktop Unix there is. It's certainly the Unix which is most polished for the desktop.
Don't forget that many browser have the ability to change their User-Agent string, either. Opera, for one, will happily identify itself as IE 6 for XP when running on my Mandriva installation.
So as long as sites detect the User-Agent string and deny access to people not using IE on Windows according to that, the numbers for OS and browser will always be somewhat off.
I guess the issue is, since they say "predictably" instead of "always", that there's a decent probability when one takes automation of the exploit into account. Try this enough times, and eventually you get it to work. It only takes the one time to "pwn" the server.
A chaotic country may be militarily unthreatening.
One that's in constant turmoil, has ineffective police, is largely under the control of people wanting to kill US citizens on US soil, and gives those people the chance to hoard weapons and money by terrorizing the populace without a visible command and control structure the US can destroy is more dangerous to the US than Saddam ever was.
Sorry, I didn't realize you were Justice Whoever57. I'll try to remember from now on that you're the decider of what is constitutional.
The government does not print money for its own use. It prints it to circulate through the reserve system. The government gets its funds through the collection of taxes. The act of making a couple hundred thousand dollars in one suspect's account is not going to cause so much deflation that the government can buy noticeably more stuff with the same tax base. In fact, the government would probably get tax revenue through that money being spent, because it would become someone else's income and be subject to a taxable event.
This order does not intend to be the whole of US law. Any powers claimed in it are still subject to the Constitution. Therefore, due process exists whether or not it is specifically stated otherwise in the order. The only difference here is that it is claimed that the Executive branch can do this before notifying the courts instead of asking for permission first. That's a dangerous step, but it does not run counter entirely to the powers the Supreme Court has found the Executive branch to have on numerous other occasions. It's basically the same idea that if a city police officer believes he is curtailing an imminent threat to bystanders that he can take your car on the spot without so much as calling his superior back at the station. The car gets impounded, which is the same thing as freezing an account, and the government agencies involved argue against the defendant in court after the car is taken.
If you could get the thumb buttons to be used individually or together, you could have 2^6, or 64 combinations.
Of course, a data glove and some software that figures out what you're trying to type on a virtual QWERTY (perhaps including real-time typo correction) might just be easier for the user. Of course, the data glove would be a bitch to have to wear whenever you want to use the PDA. Maybe one of these days a really lightweight PDA can be built into a glove...
In fact, the victory over Saddam's forces and the effort to remove him from power was a cakewalk. It's keeping order in the aftermath that's proving difficult.
1. for up to 48 hours without being charged with a crime, and after that until the arraignment. after the arraignment unless you post bond for the period until the trial, and bond can be set prohibitively high or waived altogether if the prosecutor can convince a judge there's a high chance you'll flee prosecution or try to use violence to cover up your crime. During the trial, too, except the time at the courthouse, and if you're accused of something really heinous then some jurisdictions try you by 2-way video feed these days.
2. Blocking an account is not seizing the funds in it. If the intent was to be permanent, it would be a seizure of funds. All blocking means is that the account holder cannot withdraw or transfer funds from the account to any other account or into cash or a bearable instrument while the block is in place.
The account holder would know about it pretty much as soon as they tried to get at the funds for some reason and were not allowed to do so, or at least once they asked the bank why. Noone's accounts are going to be blocked indefinitely without their knowledge unless they are too damn rich to care about having the money in the first place.
If it's really meant to go to support terror or to destabilize a regime, then it would have to be liquidated at least in part for it to help do that. Just leaving it sitting in the account will not help fund anything but the bank, and I'm sure people laundering money for terror or for destabilizing Iraq count on making money faster than by compound interest savings.
Once the account holder knows about the block, they'll know they're wanted. That means either a) it's a freeze on an account held by someone outside the country, or b) that person will be trying to leave the country or will confront the government on why the funds were frozen. Freezing the account make sit that much more difficult for them to flee. If the block is in place, there's probably also arrangements made to keep the person from flying, crossing the borders, or otherwise fleeing as well.
So these people, once they know about the block, or if they are apprehended beforehand, will have the courts just like everyone else. The courts in the country today would not allow someone suspected of money laundering or material support of an enemy to be considered an "illegal enemy combatant", so the same rules concerning habeas corpus, speedy (heh, heh) trial, public defenders, and the rest that any criminal suspect in the US would get would apply.
Really, the only difference here from what the executive could do to you for any suspected crime is that since there's declared state of national emergency in regards to terrorism, they're claiming the rights to do this without a court order. It's already been possible with one. You can bet some judge somewhere is just sweating for his chance to bust the executive branch on using this power at all, and especially using outside the bounds for which it's been declared.
It's true this is going to suck for those it's used against, especially if it's used other than how its stated to be used, or if the person had no idea they could ever be suspected of anything. However, that's pretty true of any innocent person who gets nabbed for being in the wrong part of town when a crime is committed. The law, unfortunately, doesn't say anywhere that an innocent person won't be arrested, charged, held, and brought to trial. It only says they have certain rights to try to prove their innocence. They also have the right to sue for false arrest, violation of civil rights, and false imprisonment if they are detained and there's not reasonable evidence that they were to be suspected.
Having to deal with living by the rule of law at all sucks, but it's better than not having your neighbors live by it. There is at all times and everywhere a balance to be struck between enforcing the laws and upholding the rights of the people. There's a good chance that this falls too far on the side of enforcing the law, but it is not that e
To say he didn't believe in some version of a God is foolery.
It sure seems clear the man believed in something. Simply by assuming he's not got the same idea of a God or gods as some group with which you're associating those words does not mean he doesn't have some faith in something.
The last of those listed quotes pretty much says he believes in an all-encompassing pantheistic God that is everywhere, part of everything, and of which everything is part. It does so in his own words and the allusion to Spinoza's substantive pantheism.
If you find your SO that way, one of you is going to have to change those coordinates at least temporarily in order to see one another in meat space, neh? And there's no "cyber" in the type of sex we're talking about here, unless you've responded to those "be thicker now" implant spams.
Don't worry, Slashdot and sex rarely do mix. For that matter, I understand that a fair number of Slashdotters and sex never mix.
Good for me I know how to find women who love geeks and nerds. I even married one. She has a pair of socks that say, "I [heart] nerdy boys", and she bought me a "beware of attack computer whiz" sign for our home office. That r0x0rs!
Of course, in order to meet women, even ones who love geeks and nerds, one does have to get dressed and go outside once in a while. So that could be a challenge, and a real drag, for some.
I used to buy my groceries at Kroger when it was local. They updated their prices once a week. For the customer willing to catch out of a cart full of items that they had mislabeled something, the customer service manager would give them the item free and immediately fix that particular item's price in the computer.
It was great customer service. The customer with the free item was happy, the store didn't have to worry about additional customers being bit by the same problem, and it just saved a bunch of headaches.
Of course, there's the chance that the ad or the shelf price was the part that was wrong, but I don't remember that ever being an excuse. I always got my item free if there was a mislabeling or a computer pricing issue. They may have gone and changed the signs later, but I didn't care at that point.
Well, I consider myself conservative on most points, but a real one who thinks that the government meddling in personal affairs is just as bad or worse than the government meddling with business.
I'm pro business within reason, but I think bigger companies do need some regulation sometimes.
I'm pro gun ownership, and I think schools should teach gun safety rather than teach that they are bad and evil.
I think most drugs should be legally sold, the purity and dosage regulated, and the sales taxed pretty heavily.
I think the government should no more stop a Buddhist from saying things than a Christian, but should no more support the Christian than the Jainist. Followers of all faiths should be free to speak their minds inside or outside any public place, but noone speaking on behalf of the government should mention his or her faith within the context of the government. If a Senator wants to say he's a Muslim or a Jew, he can say that at his Mosque, or at his synagogue, or he can say something like "I am X, but that is my belief. While it does, in all honesty, color my perception and goals for the government, I do not wish to use the government as a tool to proselytize". I don't care if you're Zoroastrian, Hindu, Rastafarian, Confucian, Wiccan, agnostic, or atheist. As long as your principles resemble mine and you can run the government well and within a reasonable budget, I'll vote for you.
I don't expect everyone to actually play fair. I only expect the field to be level so the other guy has a chance. I still fully expect that some people and most corporations will fight tooth and nail for every specific advantage. Until a law is broken, I think it should be allowed and the distastefulness should be openly aired. I just don't think we should codify it and have the government play a part in giving advantages to whole classes or groups of people.
I think tort reform is mandatory for the survival of the American way of life, because being sued into oblivion when one has done nothing wrong is abhorrent.
I think there should be a personal income tax with a set maximum deduction per person in your household. Say, $4,000 per person. If you and your wife have two kids, your deduction is $16,000. Everyone gets taxed exactly 15% on everything above that, and it's one simple form per household.
Most important to this thread, I think that anyone who wants to come to the US, work hard, speak English passably, and who is not a convicted criminal or current crime suspect here or in their home country should be allowed in as a guest. Most of the more qualified ones should be allowed to stay as long as they like and apply for permanent status or for naturalization if they wish.
It's something lots of us can't imagine on our own, so it helps to hear it from you.
I, for one, am all for both cracking down hard on illegal immigrants while simultaneously making it much easier for people to come into the US legally. I especially think the H1 program should be expanded.
An American, before all else, should be known as a person who is fair, competitive on a level playing field, and glad to have other people becoming hard-working, excellence-minded Americans. This is whether people consider themselves "just American" or Indian-American, Chinese-American, German-American, or whatever. This is not how we're known right now, and it's because too many people in this country would rather slide by on the accomplishments of our ancestors than contribute to keeping America the shining beacon for hard-working, honest people worldwide that it should be.
BTW, "Bumfuckistan" is just damn funny. I don't mean to disrespect the countries in central Asia by saying that it's funny, but it just is. From someone in a smallish city in a "fly-over state", it's much the same egotism I see that you are seeing. But both terms I find humorous.
I call bullshit.
Receptionists, shipping clerks, call center reps, cashiers, nurses, and most day-to-day office workers don't need the portability and form factor of a laptop. Furthermore, it's a lot more likely that a company will let a new hire or someone who has dealing with the public at the system use a desktop that's cumbersome to unhook and carry out the door than a machine designed for that purpose. People might not be any more likely to steal a laptop than a desktop in principle, but making it easier for, say, the guys who visit the Public Aid office to get in and out with them isn't necessarily a good idea.
Desktops are a lot cheaper to design and build for the budget role, and are more easily customizable for all the myriad business machines out there that require computer control. USB and Firewire are great, but they're still not as flexible as PCI and PCI Express. Extra drive bays make it much easier for IT to add storage or unusual hardware (ZIP, HD-DVD, some new memory card reader) that would have to be a separately inventoried if it was an external add-on for a laptop.
A desktop can easily be expanded into a cheap, low-end server. Most laptops don't meet this criterion very well. Memory limits asre often lower, the memory is more expensive, and you only get one hard drive in 99.8% of models out there. Lots of small businesses or working groups in larger ones tend to turn an old PC into an impromptu server for a while until the budget allows a proper server.
There might be some split into laptops for the masses, workstations for high-end work, and servers for rack-mount applications, but you can be sure lots of businesses will the just buy workstation or server machines as desktops. As long as the business world demands the mini tower, it'll be available for you to buy from Dell and HP. The enthusiast sites will probably still offer them long after that.
Besides, when has "lower growth" ever meant "decline in number"? Last I checked, growth meant more units sold, period. Less of an increase than last year, maybe, but still an increase. What if one day the market saturates and everyone only buys replacement systems? Will all the suppliers of hardware close and not bother?
No, not at all. Given average conception rates, you'd probably have to sleep with at least a different one each day.
and then the public will lose all faith in science that they have left.
When scientists, as you say, scramble to win the public over, then fail again to deliver what the article worded not as interesting trivia but as a promise of a brighter future, they hurt their own credibility.
Here's an example of what we've been told should be possible by now: Here, take my flying car over to the wristwatch computer store and ave the robotic sales assistant help you pick out a model with a 4x8' screen projector on it that will last 20 years and be powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. Then hop on a commercial charter to Mars and deliver it to me in my office atop Olympus Mons.
Now, obviously, it's sometimes understandable to be overly optimistic about research, but when people consistently over-promise and under-deliver, you lose faith in them. Call it the Popular Science effect, if you like.
Chiropractic can be good. Massage and spinal adjustment are performed by DO and MD type doctors sometimes too, you know. A good chiropractor will tell you need a medical doctor, and a good medical doctor will tell you when you need massage and adjustment.
As for fluoride, while I' fairly sure it's been proven reasonably safe in toothpaste, mouth rinses, and such, I'm not convinced it may not have harmful side effects when ingested. I think the jury's still out on that one. But hey, it doesn't seem to cause enough harm that it's easily found, and the benefits seem to outweigh the risks until we know more. We j=might jsut hate ourselves for it later.
Bad vaccines can potentially cause all kinds of problems. If there's a general feeling that there's a correlation, then the statistics should be gone over. If there's actually a correlation, then figuring out which vaccines with which ingredients might contribute would be nice. I doubt the dead or ineffective virii or bits of virii in vaccines are what causes any problems if there are any. It'd more likely be some chemical meant to carry, preserve, or buffer the solution. But that's just my gut feeling. As in many issues, we don't know enough to dismiss it outright, but for now there's not enough evidence of problems to outweigh the benefits. I know a lot of people fear autism, but I personally would rather have an autistic child than to lose that child to disease. If we can find a way to be sure of protecting from the diseases without any chance of causing harmful side effects, that'd be better.
As for the naturalistic fallacy, I'm a big proponent of debunking that one. Many people, for example, hate "artificial strawberry flavor" or "artificial red food coloring". The red food coloring of many years ago was a carcinogen, but I think things are better now. The "natural strawberry flavor" alternative isn't from strawberries, or it would say "strawberries", "strawberry juice", or "strawberry extract" or something similar. One source of "natural strawberry flavor" is from the bark of some tree, IIRC, while others come from combinations of other fruits. And "natural red food coloring" is often from the shell of a red-colored insect.
While debunking the natural fallacy often starts with things like strychnine and arsenic, which are very natural and potentially very harmful, I like to point out that "artificial flavor" is usually very close, chemically, to the source you expect the flavor to come from. If it's cheaper and easier to make fake strawberry extract than to extract it, lots of companies will do that. The "natural strawberry flavor", though, may be chemically very little like the mimicked flavor and from surprising and sometimes disturbing sources.
That's what freezing is. It's a temporary block on access to the assets while legal action is taken. If it was to be permanent, it'd be called seizure or confiscation.