I don't know what the majority of the LAPD is like, but certain members have been caught doing crap often enough that I don't think many folks still hold them in high regard. If you want to live in L.A., work with the system to get the folks in charge to purge the LAPD and come up with an oversight system, maybe even a civilian one, to ensure they've changed their ways. "Better to let ten guilty men go free than to wrongly convict one innocent."
Additionally, I don't live in California. I have little information on the local gov't there, but my opinion of what little I know if the state gov't is so low, I won't consider living there for any reason. - SK
everyone I know wipes down their entire pistol, inside and out, any time they come in contact with it. Generally speaking, the only time the dozen or so shooters I personally know, including myself, "wipe down" a firearm is to clean it. Even then, the "wipe down" isn't intended to remove fingerprints, it is to remove residue left from burnt powder and such. So, yes, it is possible to have a print-less firearm, but it is also very unusual.
Every time I clean any of my firearms, I wipe all prints off it. Did you buy any of those from any source other than a private individual who doesn't know your name, with cash? If not, then the gov't already knows who they belong to, or can find out in very short order (call manufacturer, call distributor, call dealer, read dealer's paperwork). No, I don't believe this is proper, but that is the situation at present.
Hell, if someone raped your wife, and you had a chance to kill him, wouldn't you? There are very few instances where someone (a civilian) can use lethal force against another: to stop a felony in progress, to prevent a felon from leaving the scene where he just committed a felony, and when the shooter or another "innocent" near the shooter is in danger of losing their life and/or suffering great bodily harm. There is no legal allowance for after-the-fact vengeance of any sort - you cannot legally hunt someone down and kill them no matter the crime. So, to answer your question, no - that's the police/jury/executioner's job.
I do not operate under the assumption that the entire local gov't is corrupt. I would hope that in areas where such may be the case that the matter is already known to the local populace and they are actively working to resolve the matter quickly and with appropriate measures. I am well aware that such corruption has happened in the past (and is likely to happen again in the future), but, as you can see, the populace worked it out. Therefore, I go about my business as a typical law-abiding citizen, who sees the police and associated gov't as generally and mostly honest, just as I assume most normal people I meet on the street to be. If given cause to think otherwise, I deal with that appropriately, and on a case-by-case basis.
... carrying a "throw away". They will have access to a confiscated firearm, if involved in "an unfortunate shooting when the perp made a threatening movement" they can stick the gun in his dead hands.
I don't have a lot of information on the rest of your claims, but I do know this one to be utter BS, at least where there is at least one honest forensic investigator. A "throw-down" gun will generally only have prints on the grip and trigger. A gun owned by a human will have prints all over the place: internal parts (put there when cleaning), magazine/cylinder, even each individual round of ammunition. It would be extremely obvious to investigators if a "throw-down" gun was used.
First off, I agree that the "health care provider/health insurance company" game is rigged to the point that if you're not in the insurance system, you're boned. I.e., you cannot save the money you and your company are spending on insurance costs and use that to pay for medical costs because the billed costs are hyperinflated beyond all belief. (The insurance companies "negoatiate" the costs back down to saner levels, something you aren't likely to do, alone.)
That said, bullcrap! Canada's health "care" system is so overburdened and inefficient that it takes months, MONTHS to get to a dentist for a painful tooth problem. Contrast that to my experience in the USA when I had a stupid tooth-colored filling pop out of one of my teeth (not in pain, mind you, just anxious to get it fixed), and I was in the dentists' office in three days! They even offered to do it the next day, except I told them it wasn't an emergency (no pain).
A Navy friend of mine ripped his Achilles tendon, and a civilian UK co-worker of his happened to have the same thing happen to him at roughly the same time. Admittedly, the Navy guy got fixed up courtesy of the USN, but his co-worker wasn't able to see a doc for weeks... enough time for the leg to heal improperly, making him a gimp for life.
Keep your stinkin' broken socialistic health "care" system out of my USA! (BTW, I am by no means "super rich".)
The difference, and this is key, is that the convoluted approach would be under the states' control, NOT the federal government. The Founders were very wary of a powerful federal government (although they were a little TOO wary with USA version1: the Articles of Confederation), and you should be, too. The federal government has ballooned exponentially since the early 1900s, far beyond what its designers' intended.
Also, if a state's citizens didn't want all their information in a gargantuan government database, it could opt out. See New Hampshire and the "Real ID" business.
Your thoughts on efficiency do not coincide with mine. Your viewpoint appears to promote that life has arrived at this point due to sheer chance and beneficial mutations. I do not share this viewpoint. Hence, trying to use an argument for my viewpoint as a contradiction against yours is... confusing.
Very well: an incomplete system would perhaps be a biological component of an organism which has limited usefulness, but with the potential to be extremely useful if another arbitrary change was made to the system in question. Given that we've had billions of years to develop on this planet, one would expect to find *many* such systems in almost all forms of life, instead of what we find in that most organisms are extremely specialized. There is no "finish line" for evolution.
I don't recall you mentioning the airway/esophagus issue before. Regardless, it is an extremely common design, found in the vast majority of land animals - in fact, the only exceptions I can think of off-hand involve critters which live in water. A lot of things are dangerous to an organism, but do we need to teach a human baby to stop breathing in order to drink? Since another hole in the head would mean an approximate ~14% increase in infection vectors, would be of any great benefit to have an alternate opening dedicated to eating/drinking? I don't have any good figures for this, nor know of any decent studies off-hand; can't really comment much on that.
As for the ocellus in adult insects, is it in debate that they are simply just another sense organ to detect possible predators? Human hairs serve a similar function, albeit with the size scales reversed.
As for the flagellum, you'd pointed to a paper which appears to claim that the flagellum was assembled in a particular manner over a period of time, but still appears to either depend on multiple beneficial mutations happening at the same time, or else providing no useful purpose in the meantime. There's still that problem of natural selection.
The cost for a mutation, as small at is might seem in today's era (my own mutated eyeballs, for example, sadly not beneficial), does indeed have a cost. That genetic code was produced to serve a purpose, a purpose which it no longer fulfills. It is now using resources to live and replicate, resources oft best used by working, complete code. So, unless it provides a useful benefit, it is a detriment. This is much easier to see in simpler organisms, but still applies to all.
Male nipples: a trait arising from the use of "common code" for both male and female. Fairly simple, minor point.
You're implying that insect larvae undergo evolution, benefitial mutations, within a single organism's lifespan, and more vexingly, so does every other organism of the same type, with the same results! Lunacy! The examples you cited were of developing systems in the same way that a human baby develops systems in utero. They are not and have not ever been examples of beneficial mutations ala evolution/natural selection.
I stated the following point before: any mutation which does not provide some sort of immediate benefit to outweigh its additional biological cost to the host organism is, by definition, harmful to the organism's chance for suvival in a contentious environment. A "neutral" mutation is one where the benefits just ofset the disadvantages, but it *must* provide a direct benefit. It's easy to see this logic when you deal with simpler organisms, but still holds true in complex ones.
Unless you want to rig up some sort of convoluted Rube Goldberg machine (and also assuming a cheaply available auto-feeding scanner isn't, err, available), just sit down and start scanning, boy! I turned a couple bleach boxes full of 1.44MB floppies into a CD - they all take up 216MB on my drive now. O.o Took about six months of on-again, off-again work, but now I have a half-dozen of relatively reliable pieces of media floating around with that data, all easily reproducable. Do it now, before it's too late.
... let me be the first to say that this is one of the most trouble-free games I have ever used out-of-the-box. (The sole exception to that was due to an old *.ax codec file on my PC, which caused crashes very often, but was not the developers' fault, and was quickly addressed in a FAQ.) The only bug that I'm aware of is that shopkeepers' gold on-hand doesn't decrease when you sell them things. Whoops!
I'm aware the parent post was just a quick blurt out to get a comment up, but Oblivion has been a great example of what a PC game should be.
Additionally, good luck getting all the free, fan-made content on your XBOX!:) I use a tweak which speeds up magical projectiles to provide a bit more of a challenge, and a mod to make the zero-mana cost Night Eye "power" available to the Khajit an on/off item rather than a free "spell" with a set duration.
Hm, from the references you cite regarding the stemma and ocellus, I don't think they could be considered incomplete systems nor complete systems, but developing systems. Note that they are specific to insect larvae, an early stage in an insect's life-cycle.
I'll have to look over that paper on the flagellum in detail, but frankly, it still seems to overreach on a quick skim - parts such as the "u-joint" and rings are claimed as having developed separately... with the problem of natural selection's "non-useful traits don't survive" coming back to poke holes in that angle.
No evolutionist claims that systems such as the (easy examples, again) eye and flagellum came about from a single beneficial mutation, which is what you seem to be implying by saying there never were any incomplete systems?
You're right - defining life is tricky. The grey zone is fairly narrow, though.
The problem is that, while folks are always in pursuit of that (forgive me) magical JELL-O(tm) creature, the "living blob", every single new thing we've learned about life builds on the idea that it is all incredibly complicated. Self-replicating molecules and viruses are neat (or at least when my immune system can easily subdue the latter), but one is obviously not alive (any more than any other chemical reaction) while the latter is only present when a complicated living form (with the requisite DNA) is also present. All that is to say that getting from point A to point B is, by far, far from being a solved problem when using evolution to explain it.
Yes, being able to build self-replicating molecules is neat, and the progress we've made (and are making!) is fascinating... but evolution has a long way to go before it can even be called a scientific hypothesis, let alone "proven".
I'm well aware of the argument that the eye began as a wad of light-sensitive cells, but the problem is that such cells would not survive exposure to the environment as-is. The lastest word I'd heard on that was that the cells formed inside the creature, with varying degrees of success. One major problem with your argument, though, is that you try to classify "the eye" as an identical system that all forms of life are working to perfect. Conversely, the different types of eyes seen today are all highly specialized. You can't very well expect much of a benefit for a prairie dog to have supreme distance vision any more than you'd expect an eagle to have much use for highly sensitive yet short-distance vision. This also holds true for deep-sea creatures - not much chance of getting a tan down there. Insect eyes are even crazier.
The arguments for the flagellum as a weapon don't make sense, either, as I explicitly mentioned: the additional *multiple* parts needed to make it function as a propultion device are specialized and useless on their own, extremely strong arguments against its usefulness as an incomplete system. I've also wondered where that poison injection system was supposed to have gone, as well as what they did with it before they had the "needle".
By the way, I wasn't expecting to find incomplete systems in the the fossil record - I was referring to creatures existing now. Humans are a good start, whereas the only good "useless" body part that I have not ever found a good answer for is the bit of tissue at the inside corner of each eye (can't recall the name at the moment). Every other system, even the appendix (a sort of immunological booster) serves a specific purpose... or shows signs of design efficiency (male nipples).
I'll drop the bit about abiogenesis and evolution - just a pet peeve of mine. Evolution attempts to explain how life we know of started at the same point and drew on chaos and chance to form all the diverse and fascinating forms we see... while implicitly suggesting that life, itself, started in that same way, even if that angle, when presented, is explicitly denied.
There are a fewlists which strive to detail all games released with Starforce so you don't have to guess.
Ubisoft actually released an official patch to remove Starforce from their older game, X2. I can't tell you how eager I am to see a trend like that spread.
www.gamecopyworld.com had a fixed no-CD executable for Oblivion shortly after release. While I agree that people should be leery of installing "exes I downloaded off the Internet", I have yet to have an issue with any I've personally downloaded from GCW. In this case, the no-CD works great, and after removing an old *.ax file a codec pack had installed, the game is almost completely stable. I average maybe one crash ever 12 hours.
Yes, I paid for my copy. I even pre-ordered it, something I "never" do.:P
"Applying a crack to a legally purchased game is not illegal."
Unfortunately, if you live in the USA, this logical argument is actually incorrect. Thanks to a nice piece of legislation entitled the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, it is a federal crime to circumvent a copy-prevention scheme. That's right, when you forked over $50 for a copy of Morrowind, and after a few days of near-constant crashes, found out that much stability could be regained by installing a simple no-CD patch (and did so)... yep, you technically belong in Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. Nice, eh?
In case it wasn't crystal clear, it may be *illegal*, but that in and of itself does not make it *wrong*.
Replace your leadership with worthy individuals. The rest will follow.
I agree. The whole of the House and Senate need booting out and replacement with people who actually 1. read what they sign and 2. don't ignore the limits imposed on them by the US Constitution. Unanimous 'yes' votes for the "PATRIOT" Act (with one abstention, probably on vacation), my rear end.
One problem though: we'll have nothing but more dirty rats lined up to replace them.
Again, this pathetically fake cocky attitude is part of of the problem. We know you live in fear, we watch your news sometimes too. That's no way to live.
Actually, you are incorrect. There is a big difference from "living in fear" and being aware of the nature of humans. Now, I can't speak for all Americans, but a sizable portion of us know full well that the mainstream media likes to ladle things out of its crock-of-poo constantly.
You aren't alone on this planet. You share it with many other people. You have to learn that your actions affect others and that how you are seen by others does matter. That's personal responsibility.
You're overlooking the disconnect between the American people and its government. There are quite a few things that the American government is doing, and I don't just mean right now with the current President and his administration, that many of the American people do not agree with. One of the major problems is that nearly all the politicians here are dirty rats, so voting the rats out is a slow, painful process. Part of the peoblem is that an organization can do quite a few things with 2.4 trillion-ish dollars forcibly collected from its populace... and that doesn't include the legit state taxes.
You're correct. The Iraqi surrender apparently resulted in a cease-fire agreement, not a peace treaty.
What is in dispute here? That Iraq surrendered and agreedtoacease-fire? That Iraq subsequently violated the cease-fire? (Note that the coalition commanders claimed that the squashing of the Kurdish uprising was also a violation of the cease-fire agreements.) It's a pity I'm not easily finding any good, detailed reports of Iraq's actions against US/UK aircraft patrolling the designated "no fly" zones, but I highly doubt that was ever in question.
Or is it the fact that the US grabbed the UK and went off to clean up its mess without the agreement of the toothless UN (reminds me of the League of Nations, honestly)? I'll admit that could be an issue for the lawyers - I don't know.
If anything, the real item the disgruntled folks should be focussing on is the reason the war was sold to the general public: that Iraq had or was going to have nukes/WMD, and we need to do something now-now-now! Then again, since "intelligence" is, by nature, uncertain, that ultimately wouldn't get you very far, either.
you don't care that you have a completely insane attitude to firearms (everybody should have one (which the rest of the world sees as ludicrous))
"America" really doesn't much care about what the rest of the world thinks. We have our culture, and it suits us just fine, thank you. Some of us still remember that the average Joe at the time of our country's founding owned the modern-day equivalent of a.50 caliber BMG sniper rifle inasmuch as long-barreled rifled muskets were top-of-the-line firearm technology of that time. Yes, even though there has been much infringing of it going on, the second amendment to the US Constitution states that "the people", individuals, which are all members of the militia (even still, according to current-day US law) have a God-given right to own and carry any and all arms without restriction. For clarification, an "arm" is a term meaning "man-portable weapon", so this does not appear to give individuals the right for howitzers or Abrams tanks, but does mean they can own a fully automatic M-16, AK-47, 40mm grenade launcher, etc. Don't like it? Don't worry - you don't live here.
Sadly, many of your other points are fairly accurate. It all stems from the decline of personal responsibility, in my opinion.
Whatever else the invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan were, they were undeniably not illegal.
I'm less clear on the Afghanistan front, but the gov't there was officially harboring the group which killed ~3,000 civilians on our soil, etc.
As for Iraq, that is easy. The USA has been in the region since '91-ish, which if you recall, was when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and was making eyes at Saudi Arabia next. Iraq was the military powerhouse in that section of the world, and no one there had the military might to stop Iraq. That's where the USA came in. Saddam surrendered and signed a peace treaty, the violation of which legally allows the USA to continue the previous war as though it had never ended. If you watched the news during the early '90s, you most assuredly saw near-constant reports of missiles fired at our patrolling planes, etc., in violation of said treaty. Sure, maybe the given reasons for the Iraq invasion were a mistake, intelligence failure, lie, whatever... but whatever else the Iraq invasion is, it is most certainly not illegal.
"Covered entities that use the Internet for communications regarding their programs, goods, or services must be prepared to offer those communications through accessible means as well."
... accessible means such as a storefront with wheelchair ramps, or a telephone number to call, or an address to write to for a printed catalog. Just because they have to offer "accessible means" doesn't mean they have to magically allow everyone to use the same venue.
The ADA applies to physical premises only. Web sites which need to comply with section 508 are government sites *only*. No law mandates that private entities, such as Target, needs to provide blind people with access to its web sites. This lawsuit is a civil suit - the same type which would be filed if someone didn't want Target using the color red in its logo.
AFAIK, at this point, RFID tags are WORM. Trying to wirelessly *overwrite* an RFID chip would, as I understand it, do nothing other than potentially fry the chip, due to the way the chips are made - they don't have any write capability, so it would be akin to trying to re-write a pressed CD with a sooped-up laser.
At that point, I'd be more afraid of the EM emissions than any RFID dastardliness.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what the majority of the LAPD is like, but certain members have been caught doing crap often enough that I don't think many folks still hold them in high regard. If you want to live in L.A., work with the system to get the folks in charge to purge the LAPD and come up with an oversight system, maybe even a civilian one, to ensure they've changed their ways. "Better to let ten guilty men go free than to wrongly convict one innocent."
Additionally, I don't live in California. I have little information on the local gov't there, but my opinion of what little I know if the state gov't is so low, I won't consider living there for any reason.
-
SK
everyone I know wipes down their entire pistol, inside and out, any time they come in contact with it.
Generally speaking, the only time the dozen or so shooters I personally know, including myself, "wipe down" a firearm is to clean it. Even then, the "wipe down" isn't intended to remove fingerprints, it is to remove residue left from burnt powder and such. So, yes, it is possible to have a print-less firearm, but it is also very unusual.
Every time I clean any of my firearms, I wipe all prints off it.
Did you buy any of those from any source other than a private individual who doesn't know your name, with cash? If not, then the gov't already knows who they belong to, or can find out in very short order (call manufacturer, call distributor, call dealer, read dealer's paperwork). No, I don't believe this is proper, but that is the situation at present.
Hell, if someone raped your wife, and you had a chance to kill him, wouldn't you?
There are very few instances where someone (a civilian) can use lethal force against another: to stop a felony in progress, to prevent a felon from leaving the scene where he just committed a felony, and when the shooter or another "innocent" near the shooter is in danger of losing their life and/or suffering great bodily harm. There is no legal allowance for after-the-fact vengeance of any sort - you cannot legally hunt someone down and kill them no matter the crime. So, to answer your question, no - that's the police/jury/executioner's job.
I do not operate under the assumption that the entire local gov't is corrupt. I would hope that in areas where such may be the case that the matter is already known to the local populace and they are actively working to resolve the matter quickly and with appropriate measures. I am well aware that such corruption has happened in the past (and is likely to happen again in the future), but, as you can see, the populace worked it out.
Therefore, I go about my business as a typical law-abiding citizen, who sees the police and associated gov't as generally and mostly honest, just as I assume most normal people I meet on the street to be. If given cause to think otherwise, I deal with that appropriately, and on a case-by-case basis.
... carrying a "throw away". They will have access to a confiscated firearm, if involved in "an unfortunate shooting when the perp made a threatening movement" they can stick the gun in his dead hands.
I don't have a lot of information on the rest of your claims, but I do know this one to be utter BS, at least where there is at least one honest forensic investigator.
A "throw-down" gun will generally only have prints on the grip and trigger. A gun owned by a human will have prints all over the place: internal parts (put there when cleaning), magazine/cylinder, even each individual round of ammunition. It would be extremely obvious to investigators if a "throw-down" gun was used.
First off, I agree that the "health care provider/health insurance company" game is rigged to the point that if you're not in the insurance system, you're boned. I.e., you cannot save the money you and your company are spending on insurance costs and use that to pay for medical costs because the billed costs are hyperinflated beyond all belief. (The insurance companies "negoatiate" the costs back down to saner levels, something you aren't likely to do, alone.)
That said, bullcrap! Canada's health "care" system is so overburdened and inefficient that it takes months, MONTHS to get to a dentist for a painful tooth problem. Contrast that to my experience in the USA when I had a stupid tooth-colored filling pop out of one of my teeth (not in pain, mind you, just anxious to get it fixed), and I was in the dentists' office in three days! They even offered to do it the next day, except I told them it wasn't an emergency (no pain).
A Navy friend of mine ripped his Achilles tendon, and a civilian UK co-worker of his happened to have the same thing happen to him at roughly the same time. Admittedly, the Navy guy got fixed up courtesy of the USN, but his co-worker wasn't able to see a doc for weeks... enough time for the leg to heal improperly, making him a gimp for life.
Keep your stinkin' broken socialistic health "care" system out of my USA!
(BTW, I am by no means "super rich".)
The difference, and this is key, is that the convoluted approach would be under the states' control, NOT the federal government. The Founders were very wary of a powerful federal government (although they were a little TOO wary with USA version1: the Articles of Confederation), and you should be, too. The federal government has ballooned exponentially since the early 1900s, far beyond what its designers' intended.
Also, if a state's citizens didn't want all their information in a gargantuan government database, it could opt out. See New Hampshire and the "Real ID" business.
Your thoughts on efficiency do not coincide with mine. Your viewpoint appears to promote that life has arrived at this point due to sheer chance and beneficial mutations. I do not share this viewpoint. Hence, trying to use an argument for my viewpoint as a contradiction against yours is ... confusing.
Very well: an incomplete system would perhaps be a biological component of an organism which has limited usefulness, but with the potential to be extremely useful if another arbitrary change was made to the system in question.
Given that we've had billions of years to develop on this planet, one would expect to find *many* such systems in almost all forms of life, instead of what we find in that most organisms are extremely specialized. There is no "finish line" for evolution.
I don't recall you mentioning the airway/esophagus issue before. Regardless, it is an extremely common design, found in the vast majority of land animals - in fact, the only exceptions I can think of off-hand involve critters which live in water. A lot of things are dangerous to an organism, but do we need to teach a human baby to stop breathing in order to drink? Since another hole in the head would mean an approximate ~14% increase in infection vectors, would be of any great benefit to have an alternate opening dedicated to eating/drinking?
I don't have any good figures for this, nor know of any decent studies off-hand; can't really comment much on that.
As for the ocellus in adult insects, is it in debate that they are simply just another sense organ to detect possible predators? Human hairs serve a similar function, albeit with the size scales reversed.
As for the flagellum, you'd pointed to a paper which appears to claim that the flagellum was assembled in a particular manner over a period of time, but still appears to either depend on multiple beneficial mutations happening at the same time, or else providing no useful purpose in the meantime. There's still that problem of natural selection.
The cost for a mutation, as small at is might seem in today's era (my own mutated eyeballs, for example, sadly not beneficial), does indeed have a cost. That genetic code was produced to serve a purpose, a purpose which it no longer fulfills. It is now using resources to live and replicate, resources oft best used by working, complete code. So, unless it provides a useful benefit, it is a detriment. This is much easier to see in simpler organisms, but still applies to all.
Male nipples: a trait arising from the use of "common code" for both male and female. Fairly simple, minor point.
You're implying that insect larvae undergo evolution, benefitial mutations, within a single organism's lifespan, and more vexingly, so does every other organism of the same type, with the same results! Lunacy! The examples you cited were of developing systems in the same way that a human baby develops systems in utero. They are not and have not ever been examples of beneficial mutations ala evolution/natural selection.
I stated the following point before: any mutation which does not provide some sort of immediate benefit to outweigh its additional biological cost to the host organism is, by definition, harmful to the organism's chance for suvival in a contentious environment. A "neutral" mutation is one where the benefits just ofset the disadvantages, but it *must* provide a direct benefit. It's easy to see this logic when you deal with simpler organisms, but still holds true in complex ones.
Unless you want to rig up some sort of convoluted Rube Goldberg machine (and also assuming a cheaply available auto-feeding scanner isn't, err, available), just sit down and start scanning, boy! I turned a couple bleach boxes full of 1.44MB floppies into a CD - they all take up 216MB on my drive now. O.o Took about six months of on-again, off-again work, but now I have a half-dozen of relatively reliable pieces of media floating around with that data, all easily reproducable.
Do it now, before it's too late.
... let me be the first to say that this is one of the most trouble-free games I have ever used out-of-the-box. (The sole exception to that was due to an old *.ax codec file on my PC, which caused crashes very often, but was not the developers' fault, and was quickly addressed in a FAQ.) The only bug that I'm aware of is that shopkeepers' gold on-hand doesn't decrease when you sell them things. Whoops!
:) I use a tweak which speeds up magical projectiles to provide a bit more of a challenge, and a mod to make the zero-mana cost Night Eye "power" available to the Khajit an on/off item rather than a free "spell" with a set duration.
I'm aware the parent post was just a quick blurt out to get a comment up, but Oblivion has been a great example of what a PC game should be.
Additionally, good luck getting all the free, fan-made content on your XBOX!
Hm, from the references you cite regarding the stemma and ocellus, I don't think they could be considered incomplete systems nor complete systems, but developing systems. Note that they are specific to insect larvae, an early stage in an insect's life-cycle.
I'll have to look over that paper on the flagellum in detail, but frankly, it still seems to overreach on a quick skim - parts such as the "u-joint" and rings are claimed as having developed separately... with the problem of natural selection's "non-useful traits don't survive" coming back to poke holes in that angle.
No evolutionist claims that systems such as the (easy examples, again) eye and flagellum came about from a single beneficial mutation, which is what you seem to be implying by saying there never were any incomplete systems?
You're right - defining life is tricky. The grey zone is fairly narrow, though.
The problem is that, while folks are always in pursuit of that (forgive me) magical JELL-O(tm) creature, the "living blob", every single new thing we've learned about life builds on the idea that it is all incredibly complicated. Self-replicating molecules and viruses are neat (or at least when my immune system can easily subdue the latter), but one is obviously not alive (any more than any other chemical reaction) while the latter is only present when a complicated living form (with the requisite DNA) is also present.
All that is to say that getting from point A to point B is, by far, far from being a solved problem when using evolution to explain it.
Yes, being able to build self-replicating molecules is neat, and the progress we've made (and are making!) is fascinating... but evolution has a long way to go before it can even be called a scientific hypothesis, let alone "proven".
I'm well aware of the argument that the eye began as a wad of light-sensitive cells, but the problem is that such cells would not survive exposure to the environment as-is. The lastest word I'd heard on that was that the cells formed inside the creature, with varying degrees of success.
One major problem with your argument, though, is that you try to classify "the eye" as an identical system that all forms of life are working to perfect. Conversely, the different types of eyes seen today are all highly specialized. You can't very well expect much of a benefit for a prairie dog to have supreme distance vision any more than you'd expect an eagle to have much use for highly sensitive yet short-distance vision. This also holds true for deep-sea creatures - not much chance of getting a tan down there. Insect eyes are even crazier.
The arguments for the flagellum as a weapon don't make sense, either, as I explicitly mentioned: the additional *multiple* parts needed to make it function as a propultion device are specialized and useless on their own, extremely strong arguments against its usefulness as an incomplete system. I've also wondered where that poison injection system was supposed to have gone, as well as what they did with it before they had the "needle".
By the way, I wasn't expecting to find incomplete systems in the the fossil record - I was referring to creatures existing now. Humans are a good start, whereas the only good "useless" body part that I have not ever found a good answer for is the bit of tissue at the inside corner of each eye (can't recall the name at the moment). Every other system, even the appendix (a sort of immunological booster) serves a specific purpose... or shows signs of design efficiency (male nipples).
I'll drop the bit about abiogenesis and evolution - just a pet peeve of mine. Evolution attempts to explain how life we know of started at the same point and drew on chaos and chance to form all the diverse and fascinating forms we see... while implicitly suggesting that life, itself, started in that same way, even if that angle, when presented, is explicitly denied.
A few solutions for problem #1:
There are a few lists which strive to detail all games released with Starforce so you don't have to guess.
Ubisoft actually released an official patch to remove Starforce from their older game, X2. I can't tell you how eager I am to see a trend like that spread.
www.gamecopyworld.com had a fixed no-CD executable for Oblivion shortly after release. While I agree that people should be leery of installing "exes I downloaded off the Internet", I have yet to have an issue with any I've personally downloaded from GCW. In this case, the no-CD works great, and after removing an old *.ax file a codec pack had installed, the game is almost completely stable. I average maybe one crash ever 12 hours.
:P
Yes, I paid for my copy. I even pre-ordered it, something I "never" do.
"Applying a crack to a legally purchased game is not illegal."
Unfortunately, if you live in the USA, this logical argument is actually incorrect. Thanks to a nice piece of legislation entitled the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, it is a federal crime to circumvent a copy-prevention scheme. That's right, when you forked over $50 for a copy of Morrowind, and after a few days of near-constant crashes, found out that much stability could be regained by installing a simple no-CD patch (and did so)... yep, you technically belong in Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. Nice, eh?
In case it wasn't crystal clear, it may be *illegal*, but that in and of itself does not make it *wrong*.
Replace your leadership with worthy individuals. The rest will follow.
I agree. The whole of the House and Senate need booting out and replacement with people who actually 1. read what they sign and 2. don't ignore the limits imposed on them by the US Constitution. Unanimous 'yes' votes for the "PATRIOT" Act (with one abstention, probably on vacation), my rear end.
One problem though: we'll have nothing but more dirty rats lined up to replace them.
If you can look at (online) porn at work while holding for tech support, it isn't likely you need tech support.
Now, what's your username? >clickety<>click<
Again, this pathetically fake cocky attitude is part of of the problem. We know you live in fear, we watch your news sometimes too. That's no way to live.
Actually, you are incorrect. There is a big difference from "living in fear" and being aware of the nature of humans. Now, I can't speak for all Americans, but a sizable portion of us know full well that the mainstream media likes to ladle things out of its crock-of-poo constantly.
You aren't alone on this planet. You share it with many other people. You have to learn that your actions affect others and that how you are seen by others does matter. That's personal responsibility.
You're overlooking the disconnect between the American people and its government. There are quite a few things that the American government is doing, and I don't just mean right now with the current President and his administration, that many of the American people do not agree with. One of the major problems is that nearly all the politicians here are dirty rats, so voting the rats out is a slow, painful process. Part of the peoblem is that an organization can do quite a few things with 2.4 trillion-ish dollars forcibly collected from its populace... and that doesn't include the legit state taxes.
You're correct. The Iraqi surrender apparently resulted in a cease-fire agreement, not a peace treaty.
What is in dispute here? That Iraq surrendered and agreed to a cease-fire?
That Iraq subsequently violated the cease-fire? (Note that the coalition commanders claimed that the squashing of the Kurdish uprising was also a violation of the cease-fire agreements.)
It's a pity I'm not easily finding any good, detailed reports of Iraq's actions against US/UK aircraft patrolling the designated "no fly" zones, but I highly doubt that was ever in question.
Or is it the fact that the US grabbed the UK and went off to clean up its mess without the agreement of the toothless UN (reminds me of the League of Nations, honestly)? I'll admit that could be an issue for the lawyers - I don't know.
If anything, the real item the disgruntled folks should be focussing on is the reason the war was sold to the general public: that Iraq had or was going to have nukes/WMD, and we need to do something now-now-now! Then again, since "intelligence" is, by nature, uncertain, that ultimately wouldn't get you very far, either.
you don't care that you have a completely insane attitude to firearms (everybody should have one (which the rest of the world sees as ludicrous))
.50 caliber BMG sniper rifle inasmuch as long-barreled rifled muskets were top-of-the-line firearm technology of that time. Yes, even though there has been much infringing of it going on, the second amendment to the US Constitution states that "the people", individuals, which are all members of the militia (even still, according to current-day US law) have a God-given right to own and carry any and all arms without restriction. For clarification, an "arm" is a term meaning "man-portable weapon", so this does not appear to give individuals the right for howitzers or Abrams tanks, but does mean they can own a fully automatic M-16, AK-47, 40mm grenade launcher, etc. Don't like it? Don't worry - you don't live here.
"America" really doesn't much care about what the rest of the world thinks. We have our culture, and it suits us just fine, thank you. Some of us still remember that the average Joe at the time of our country's founding owned the modern-day equivalent of a
Sadly, many of your other points are fairly accurate. It all stems from the decline of personal responsibility, in my opinion.
Whatever else the invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan were, they were undeniably not illegal.
I'm less clear on the Afghanistan front, but the gov't there was officially harboring the group which killed ~3,000 civilians on our soil, etc.
As for Iraq, that is easy. The USA has been in the region since '91-ish, which if you recall, was when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and was making eyes at Saudi Arabia next. Iraq was the military powerhouse in that section of the world, and no one there had the military might to stop Iraq. That's where the USA came in. Saddam surrendered and signed a peace treaty, the violation of which legally allows the USA to continue the previous war as though it had never ended. If you watched the news during the early '90s, you most assuredly saw near-constant reports of missiles fired at our patrolling planes, etc., in violation of said treaty.
Sure, maybe the given reasons for the Iraq invasion were a mistake, intelligence failure, lie, whatever... but whatever else the Iraq invasion is, it is most certainly not illegal.
"Covered entities that use the Internet for communications regarding their programs, goods, or services must be prepared to offer those communications through accessible means as well."
... accessible means such as a storefront with wheelchair ramps, or a telephone number to call, or an address to write to for a printed catalog. Just because they have to offer "accessible means" doesn't mean they have to magically allow everyone to use the same venue.
The ADA applies to physical premises only. Web sites which need to comply with section 508 are government sites *only*. No law mandates that private entities, such as Target, needs to provide blind people with access to its web sites. This lawsuit is a civil suit - the same type which would be filed if someone didn't want Target using the color red in its logo.
AFAIK, at this point, RFID tags are WORM. Trying to wirelessly *overwrite* an RFID chip would, as I understand it, do nothing other than potentially fry the chip, due to the way the chips are made - they don't have any write capability, so it would be akin to trying to re-write a pressed CD with a sooped-up laser.
At that point, I'd be more afraid of the EM emissions than any RFID dastardliness.