Wait, didn't that happen last Tuesday, right after the rapture?
Back on topic: I suppose Usenet had to die at some point, just like Gopher/Archie/Veronica. It is kind of sad, but as OP said, there are various other tools that do the same job (albeit not as decently), and are easier to access. Thus its time was sort of inevitable.
Seriously, how many people use Usenet anymore? Mostly aging hardcore geeks, I'm guessing. Which isn't market enough to keep it living.
Sadly, I stopped using it when it became a huge pain to use. My ISP's support is VERY spotty, and doesn't offer access to vast amounts of areas (bin and alt, mostly), and really doesn't offer any easy information as towards how to access it. Last time I set up a connect, I had to call the ISP, and listen to some Indian support guy act confused about the whole idea of this "internet" feature thing, repeatedly asking me the URL for usenet.
I'm not stating that any moron could have done it, the guy obviously had good skills, reflexes, and conditioning (though we could argue pilot error contributed to him having to land in the Hudson in the first place). He deserves an "atta boy", but we, and not just the media, heaped the praise on a little thick. There are tons of people very good at their jobs, who save lives, who are not heroes.
Its like the Firefighters on 9/11. They deserve a lot of respect, especially because they died in the line of duty, or at least risked their lives. But not as much as we heaped on them. I bet 90% of the firefighters in 90% of the cities in the US would have done the same. Its their job.
As for military accommodations... I'm feeling overly philosophical today, so I have no clue. Not that, again, they don't deserve respect (well most of them), but they enlisted for this reason. I suppose there is a gap here, since they're dealing with something, in combat, much worse and harder to cope with than most airline pilots deal with.
Personally, I'd skip the praise, and pay people with such important jobs, and huge amounts of training, more money. They deserve it, they keep things running for all of us plebes, and most of us plebes would probably lie quaking on the ground facing some of what they do.
My step-brother is a commercial pilot (mostly small hop, but working his way up to big jets), he never was a military pilot (though he was military), but he also didn't hop into piloting a jet straight from a sim either. He had to have a huge amount of actual flight hours before they even let him into a cockpit of a commercial jet. And another largish number of hours before they'd let him co-pilot. Etc..
People flying large passenger jets are skilled and experienced, military or not.
Actually, when everyone was worshiping that guy who crash-landed a jet into a river (Tully? Sully?), I was wondering what the hell the big deal was. I find it odd that our expectations are so low that we merely brand competence and doing your job well as heroism. I would expect most pilots of large passenger jets to be up to similar feats. If they aren't, I'm very scared.
But last time I checked, most commercial airline crashes were due to technical problems, and not pilot error.
Try Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, its one of his earlier works, and is before he got so political. It is an attempt to generally rectify Contintental with Analytical philosophy (basically trying to meld Heidegger to James' Pragmatism, Wittgenstein and some modern epistemology...).
Be warned, he is one of those modern philosophers who seems to enjoy running around proclaiming "philosophy is dead", which is a pet peeve of mine.
Plant a seed, watch it grow. There's many people with messed up soil, but without the seed they probably won't turn into murders/rapists/thieves/etc.
So we should ban anything that a potential, mentally ill, minority might use as an excuse for their behavior?
If someone becomes a murderer, and blames drinking 6 cups of coffee before hand (I'm sure its happened), then we can feel righteous in banning coffee? What happens when people get crazy for their religious texts and say that god told them to do something terrible to another human being? Can we then ban religion?
I suppose my two issues with this is your punishing the masses because there might be a VERY small minority of people who have mental problems, and might use this as a catalyst for acting out their innate problems. And... we have no way in knowing that they won't just find something different to use as an excuse.
If GTA wasn't around, people would use professional wrestling as an excuse. If that wasn't around they'd use God, our own wars, etc...
So fantasizing about rape is bad, but wishing it on others isn't?
Personally I find violence simulators to be equally distasteful, but our glorious society has decided that shooting each other in the face is pretty much the most awesome thing to do. Rape and violence are about on the same page in my book. Neither of then should be glorified.
That said, I'm not a big fan of censoring things I don't like, much less wishing bodily harm on people for mere "thought crimes".
But then again I'm a social libertarian (not an economic one), so I think society can go jump off a cliff. Society has the right to instill a government to keep order, and keep my rights from infringing on those of others. But has no right to regulate morality.
If you don't like people playing game that glorify rape, sex, violence, atheism, or the international communist party, that is fine. But at no time should you have the right to tell anyone else that they may not. Unless they are your under-18 children.
It isn't. It is a hypothesis based on available facts, and one that I have used tons of hedge words, and equivocal phrases while presenting. Please go back and reread everything I said while not looking for bias or strong opossition to get indignant at, never did I utter an ontic phrase sans an "if" or a "might".
Truth be told, I'm not sure if she was picked for these reasons or not. I think I've uttered this before, for some reason.
Why do I believe that she might be picked for these reasons? The way Barak Obama introduced her. I don't care about her little gaffes, I've dismissed people picking on those as partisan idiocy.
even then, what exactly is wrong with wanting a court that looks like the United States when the candidate is highly qualified?
I don't care if it does, or not. I don't care if its 100% white men, 100% black, lesbian women, 100% Muslim, I don't care. As long as those people are the highest qualified people. The supreme court (or any other bit of government that has any effect on anyone) should NOT be selected to say a positive message about how progressive we are, or how all of our ethnically diverse population can now grow up and be a successful politician or lawyer.
I suppose the diverity thing worked too well on me, since I really don't care what race you are, what gender, what culture you identify with, etc... I couldn't give a damn. I'm in favor of removing the bit for race and gender from job and college applications, and solely picking on merit. That would be teaching a much better lesson than picking artificially to "match society".
I'm really sick of all racial gobbledygook. Especially now that Obama has resurrected it (not intentionally, probably), and the media decided having a Black guy as president was really awesome. Hillary's followers helped too, by deciding democrats who voted against her are sexist. Framing things in a racial way is the best way to kill rationality.
And yes, I can say she was picked for the wrong reasons (perhaps), and is nevertheless a fit pick for the job (probably). Which I have said before. If you notice, when this whole brouhaha started, I was defending her, and trying to dismiss some right-wing paranoia.
No, it sounds like you've fallen for empty concern trolling.
No, it sounds like your being a partisan troll, looking for things to get angry at.
I stated multiple times in this thread that I have nothing against her, and she SEEMS to be a decent Justice material. She also seems damn smart, both from her record, and from what little we (the public) has heard from her.
I would have a hard time being too indignant if she actually got selected by congress for the the Supreme Court.
My one problem is the possibility that Obama picked her for the wrong reasons. Yes, you can pick good people for the wrong reasons, this is completely possible. Just because she was selected for the wrong reasons (if she was), I still have nothing against her, and she seems, on the surface, to be a good person for the job (though not liberal enough for my tastes).
I stuck all the hedge words in there because I am not a legal wonk. I don't know her full history, and am pretty ignorant of the law. Basically, to restate, I am not fit to judge her, nor is most of the people on/.
I, actually, would prefer that we somehow get Sandra Day O'Conner out of retirement, and force her to serve again.
My main beef with the whole issue is the "diversity for the sake of diversity" thing. Which really has nothing to do with Sotomayor as a person.
Maybe I've just been unlucky, but Firefox, even in its basic installation has always felt sloooow on my machine - not the javascript or rendering, but the UI itself (3 gigs of RAM, so that's not the problem). Once I add extensions for some the functionality I've become used to with Opera, it's just crawling. Also, even with extensions, there are still some interface adjustments that I use constantly that just aren't possible in Firefox (e.g. single-key shortcuts for back/forward and switching tabs). While I'll admit that there are some Firefox extensions I'd love in opera, such as GPG integration with mail, in my opinion, the drawbacks outweigh the benefits.
Truth be told, sometimes I think I'm just lucky. A lot of people have problems with Firefox, especially pre-3.0. As stated, it REALLY sucked on a Mac for some reason, and still did as of the 3.0 beta (stopped using the Mac before 3.0 final, so who knows). The Mac, oddly is the only place I've found the dreaded memory hole, as well, with it soaring to 1.2GB at times. Oddly, this only happened on an Intel Mac, and not my old iBook, even for the same release.
Though it ran great on my girlfriends Macs (both PPC and Intel) of roughly the same specs, just fine.
My copy on of 3.5b on Ubuntu also sucks pretty bad right now, but not nearly as bad as on the Mac. Which is odd since I'm using far less extentions than I am on my Windows box.
This, if you ask me is a weakness of Firefox. Admittedly, I never had a problem with Opera (I've tried every major release since it became free) on any OS I installed it on. If I had the same problems you say you've had, I'd probably hop over to something else, and learn to cope without adblock and the native look (in the end I prefer functionality over aesthetics, though aesthetics is a plus).
Firefox is very heavy for some strange reason. I'm not quite sure why, since it is pretty slim in features. I'm pretty sure it isn't Gecko either, since I seem to remember it being MUCH lighter in footprint a while ago.
At this rate it will be the bottom of the heap again, I fear. Which is kind of sad, since I feel invested in it. It being like my ugly open source child who I got to watch grow up into a slightly less ugly popular adolescent.
I worry because this isn't why you should pick anyone, ever. I'm not arguing that she isn't qualified. Though just being smart and experienced isn't enough to be a Justice, there are TONS of smart and experienced judges out there, but only a handful can rise to the top.
That said, I still have no clue if she is qualified, I'm not the one to judge that, and don't know enough to claim that I even could. I personally have nothing against her.
I don't know if she was picked because of her race or gender (well, more specifically whether they played a roll in her being selected), but Obama's speech introducing her seemed to point towards this as a possibility.
An when you start with all that firefox extension bloatware to make it really useful - it starts like in 3-4 minutes.
On what, a TRS-80? And what makes it useful? The only "essential" extension I use is ad-block, the rest are mostly visual tweaks (stylish, tree style tabs), that I probably could live without. I don't know how your defining essential here, and I'm not sure you've ever actually used Firefox, since even in the Phoenix alpha it never took 3 minutes to load.
Okay, I realize RAM is cheap and plentiful.. but... Saying that Opera is better because uses 10x the RAM another browser uses is silly.
Firefox 3.5b4 with 5 tabs open, and has been running for around 5 hours, I'm sitting at around 200 meg, this is with around 5 extensions as well. Last time I had a couple dozen tabs open, it was still well short of 1GB, if I remember right, I think it hit around 700MB.
A simple web-browser using 1GB is stretching things a bit there. I rarely can even get Photoshop to hog that much memory. I think even running Fallout3 uses less than that. Hell, I've got Firefox, Digsby, iTiunes, some TSRs, and WoW open right now, and I've barely over 2GBs used. And I'm even using Vista currently, with its basically 700mb overhead automatically on boot.
t has an integrated email/RSS client, content (ad) blocker, user scripting, an IRC client, a Bittorrent client, a real widget engine, browser synchronization (via Opera Link), mouse gestures, voice recognition and face gestures built in.
Outside of ad blocking, none of this sounds essential, much less useful to me. It does sound a lot like bloat. But then I'm of the anti-jack-of-all-trades school. The Opera torrent client, for example, isn't as fast or useful as stand alone options, so why would I use it, when I can just have my torrent client pop open when needed? It does a better job, and doesn't use any resources whatsoever until I actually NEED it. Same thing with mail clients, IRC clients, and RSS readers (though I can see a use for integrated RSS, though I just use Google Reader).
I prefer the Firefox model. Out of the proverbial box it's only good for one thing, and one thing only; browsing the web. But its extensible to do whatever I want, or I can just keep it how it is. With Firefox I could add any of those features, if I had a need for them. Or not.
That said, I find browser fan-boys to be much sillier (not in the good way) than OS fan boys, or *nix editor fan boys. Its odd how fanatical Opera folk can be every time there is an article on it her. They seem worse than the other fan boys since they are completely incapable, it seems, of finding ANY fault whatsoever with Opera. They also talk about Opera like its the Jesus Christ of the browser kingdom.
I like Opera, I'd use it over Chrome, and obviously over IE. I can't quantify why I prefer it over Chrome though. I use Firefox though, I've been using Firefox since Phoenix point-something-alpha, so I'm used to it. That's the main reason I prefer it, to be honest, I've grown accustomed to its way of doing things. I've also become addicted to extensions, and adblock+ has become my killer app, once Opera or Chrome becomes as good at blocking as that one extension (with easylist), I'll probably hop over. Well maybe not to Chrome, its GUI kind of sucks. Though it will be a hard transition, because Firefox and IE are the only browsers that hold to OS specific GUI conventions on Windows, at least (it sucks on OS X still, though not as bad as it used to). Opera is nasty since its arrogant, and insists on doing things its own way, and having its own look, which annoys me.
I never had a problem with the infamous (and somewhat mythic) Firefox memory hole (except for a few point releases on OS X). Yes, Firefox is heavier, but I don't notice it with my appearently obscene amounts of ram. I say appearently, since judging from the conversations of memory use, everyone on Slashdot only has 512k still. Yes, Chrome/Opera handles Java better and might be a bit more zippy, but were still taking about a few hundred ms of difference (especially with the firefox 3.5 beta), so I honestly don't even notice it. Opera, due to the way it visually loads pages actually seems slower to me, for some reason.
This all is my subjective opinion. You can disagree, and thats fine, but ultimately it doesn't matter. People use what fits them, and because its what their used to, thats fine as well. Its just a bloody browser, they all do the same thing, and roughly just as well.
But then again people who pick the underdog are generally more fully emotionally engaged in their choices.
I'd say in a broad (very very broad) sense your characterizations are correct. Though your quick portrait of Derrida is... overly generous, in my opinion.
I don't know where Heidegger and Foucault, come in. I'm a general fan of them both, but they both strike me as somewhat fatalistic (there is no escape really, only acceptance). And you, of course, run into the problem of asserting that there is no Truth, when you obviously want this to be, and the reasoning behind it, to be accepted as such. This is especially a bugbear in Foucault, he too must represent some power, and thus his works are to some extent not his own.
Yes, I'm being simple.
I haven't touched much on Levinas, outside of his impact on modern social sciences. Perhaps I should go back and read some of his work (it is sitting around gathering dust on my shelves).
Truth, it seems, is indeed a slippery thing. Drawing the line between "hard" truths, like math, physics, and logical deductions, and "softer" truths, like those dealt with by the Continentals.
You wouldn't have to grow hydro in my closet, though if legal, you could if you really wanted to.
I have friends who have some wild plants in their backyards from discarded seeds, amusingly enough, the local bus depot has a smallish pot plant growing in a planter from the kids who smoke at night, and discard their seeds there. Sure the quality probably isn't as good as someone who wants to throw down a ton of money for it, but it still is marijuana. I know people who grow some small cooking herbs in window boxes, and perhaps a small garden plot in their backyard that they mess with twice a month. And then I know people who are serious about their gardens, who make it full time job. Legal growing of marijuana would be no different.
Heck, I still have some friends (into their 30's) who have small grow rooms set up, but other than that are completely "respectable'. I doubt that their weed is really all that good, but I'm sure it's a nice treat from time to time. Like brewing your own beer, you probably still buy beer, your beer is probably not as good as some decent microbrews with real brewmasters, but its a nice monthly bonus.
"If drugs were legal, there would be less crime to procure it.." But then don't apply the "if legal" hypothesis to the amount of potential addicts/users and hospital visits.
As a person who has used harder drugs before, and has had friends whose lives have been completely destroyed by them, I disagree with your premise. I'd have rather them, and myself, been addicted to alcohol than other "harder" drugs.
Also...
. This chart [druglibrary.org] shows that tobacco kills 400,000 people per year in the U.S., alcohol about 100,000, and about 5,000 (hard to read the number off the chart accurately, since it's so tiny).
this chart is completely useless. It has no sources or reference, and doesn't define its terms. According to common practice, if I smoke, and die of lung cancer, I died of a "tobacco related cause", whereas if I don't smoke, and die of lung cancer I died of "lung cancer", this completely ignore the fact that lung cancer is a relatively common disease across smokers and nonsmokers, and that there is a consistent "background" rate of incidence, this leads to inaccurate statistics. The same goes with alcohol, if I died in a car accident while drunk, I die of "alcohol related causes", ignoring the fact that not all accidents where alcohol is involved happen BECAUSE of alcohol. I've even seen some statistics where they attempt to say sober people killed in alcohol related accidents are "alcohol fatalities", and even once (when researched bad stats for a psych statistics class) where drunk people in car accidents, WHO WERE NOT DRIVING, were classified as "alcohol related fatalities".
Basically, statistics can say whatever the hell you want them to, by defining your terms in a manner that supports your point.
I am a large fan of legalizing marijuana, even if I don't smoke it. I'd draw the line anywhere past there, though, since the social effects, if not the public health effects, are not worth it. Sure, perhaps lessen how draconian our laws are, but definitely keep the "harder" drugs illegal. Government is not just a game of individual rights, its a balancing act between your rights, and mine, and between our individuals rights, and the rights to society as a whole.
The people refers to the whole, generally in our founding fathers time. Think of it in the "We the People" sense. It refers to the the constituents of an area as a whole, and not as merely a collection of individuals. So if a large enough collection of non-Californian Americans, in this case, decide that marijuana should be illegal, then California must abide.
People often ignore the difference of "the people" versus "persons" when pushing a Constitutional opinion.
The same goes for the second amendment, where a lot of people misread "the people" as "persons", which were two distinct terms meaning different things back when it was written.
"casual, occasional use of MDMA, speed, and weed is pretty safe as such things go, and probably less bad for you than getting trashed on hard spirits",
There is a problem with this. MDMA has some pretty savage long term effects, and is very very rarely pure, its generally cut with speed or heroin (and often is just cut speed or heroin, with no actual MDMA content). Also, while not terribly addictive, MDMA is a social drug, meaning that if your child becomes enmeshed in certain social scenes, the usage will not be causal, and may be in quantities, qualities, and lengths of exposure that would cause harmful effects.
Speed... I know from some stupid youthful experiences (and living in what used to be the methamphetamine capitol of the US) that "casual" use is hard, if not impossible, to maintain. That stuff is more addictive than just about anything short of crack and heroin. Also, even with "casual" meth use, your child will be interacting with addicts (where else do you get it), and meth addicts are not known for their safety or stability. Also meth can lead to rather severe health problems, outside of the whole nasty addiction bits.
Before recommending meth to your children, please head down to your local ghetto and see what it can do to them.
Marijuana... Thats fine. As long as they don't get caught. My personal rule would be "if you get caught, the consiquences are all yours", and "if you keep it in the house, your in massive trouble, like a trip to jail". I say this because YOU as a property owner can lose your house because of the moronic actions of your children.
This just happened to a second cousin of mine in small town Minnesota. While he was out of state visiting my family, and one of his kids decided to try his hand at cooking meth, and dealing it out of his house. The police found out he was dealing, and seized my cousins house, even if he wasn't aware, and was 3000 miles away.
Why are you under the impression that cannabis intoxication is a traffic problem? (There's science done on the subject that I doubt you're aware of)
You're still intoxicated, you're reaction times are still off, etc... While I'd be happy replacing every drunk driver with a stoned driver, but that isn't saying its optimal. I do agree that this is a pretty hypocritical reason to propose to keeping it illegal though. Alcohol = bad drivers = legal, whereas marijuana = bad drivers = illegal.
Hell, I generally prefer marijuana to alcohol, and I don't even smoke it.
I really can't find any reasons to keep it illegal, outside of the knee-jerk "zomg people on drugs" reaction. Which is odd, since here in America we're on so many drugs that it isn't funny, and this is moving beyond the banal OTC stuff, coffee, nicotine, and liberal quantities of crappy beer.
Odd, I can do that in Firefox 3.5b4. I have a bookmark menu with all my daily visited links, in it Slashdot is "/.". So when I type "/" into the address bar (pardon... "awesome" bar) the first thing that pops up is Slashdot. One quick down arrow, one quick enter... and viola, Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait, didn't that happen last Tuesday, right after the rapture?
Back on topic: I suppose Usenet had to die at some point, just like Gopher/Archie/Veronica. It is kind of sad, but as OP said, there are various other tools that do the same job (albeit not as decently), and are easier to access. Thus its time was sort of inevitable.
Seriously, how many people use Usenet anymore? Mostly aging hardcore geeks, I'm guessing. Which isn't market enough to keep it living.
Sadly, I stopped using it when it became a huge pain to use. My ISP's support is VERY spotty, and doesn't offer access to vast amounts of areas (bin and alt, mostly), and really doesn't offer any easy information as towards how to access it. Last time I set up a connect, I had to call the ISP, and listen to some Indian support guy act confused about the whole idea of this "internet" feature thing, repeatedly asking me the URL for usenet.
I'm not stating that any moron could have done it, the guy obviously had good skills, reflexes, and conditioning (though we could argue pilot error contributed to him having to land in the Hudson in the first place). He deserves an "atta boy", but we, and not just the media, heaped the praise on a little thick. There are tons of people very good at their jobs, who save lives, who are not heroes.
Its like the Firefighters on 9/11. They deserve a lot of respect, especially because they died in the line of duty, or at least risked their lives. But not as much as we heaped on them. I bet 90% of the firefighters in 90% of the cities in the US would have done the same. Its their job.
As for military accommodations... I'm feeling overly philosophical today, so I have no clue. Not that, again, they don't deserve respect (well most of them), but they enlisted for this reason. I suppose there is a gap here, since they're dealing with something, in combat, much worse and harder to cope with than most airline pilots deal with.
Personally, I'd skip the praise, and pay people with such important jobs, and huge amounts of training, more money. They deserve it, they keep things running for all of us plebes, and most of us plebes would probably lie quaking on the ground facing some of what they do.
Autopilots crash airplanes. Pilots crash airplanes.
WRONG!
Pilots crash airplanes. Autopilots autocrash airplanes.
intentional misreading:
Do you only want former airforce pilots who've actually seen combat flying commercial planes?
Yes, only pilots that flew combat missions in 747s would be a plus. But sadly I think it would limit the pool of potential pilots greatly.
My step-brother is a commercial pilot (mostly small hop, but working his way up to big jets), he never was a military pilot (though he was military), but he also didn't hop into piloting a jet straight from a sim either. He had to have a huge amount of actual flight hours before they even let him into a cockpit of a commercial jet. And another largish number of hours before they'd let him co-pilot. Etc..
People flying large passenger jets are skilled and experienced, military or not.
Actually, when everyone was worshiping that guy who crash-landed a jet into a river (Tully? Sully?), I was wondering what the hell the big deal was. I find it odd that our expectations are so low that we merely brand competence and doing your job well as heroism. I would expect most pilots of large passenger jets to be up to similar feats. If they aren't, I'm very scared.
But last time I checked, most commercial airline crashes were due to technical problems, and not pilot error.
Try Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, its one of his earlier works, and is before he got so political. It is an attempt to generally rectify Contintental with Analytical philosophy (basically trying to meld Heidegger to James' Pragmatism, Wittgenstein and some modern epistemology...).
Be warned, he is one of those modern philosophers who seems to enjoy running around proclaiming "philosophy is dead", which is a pet peeve of mine.
Plant a seed, watch it grow. There's many people with messed up soil, but without the seed they probably won't turn into murders/rapists/thieves/etc.
So we should ban anything that a potential, mentally ill, minority might use as an excuse for their behavior?
If someone becomes a murderer, and blames drinking 6 cups of coffee before hand (I'm sure its happened), then we can feel righteous in banning coffee? What happens when people get crazy for their religious texts and say that god told them to do something terrible to another human being? Can we then ban religion?
I suppose my two issues with this is your punishing the masses because there might be a VERY small minority of people who have mental problems, and might use this as a catalyst for acting out their innate problems. And... we have no way in knowing that they won't just find something different to use as an excuse.
If GTA wasn't around, people would use professional wrestling as an excuse. If that wasn't around they'd use God, our own wars, etc...
So fantasizing about rape is bad, but wishing it on others isn't?
Personally I find violence simulators to be equally distasteful, but our glorious society has decided that shooting each other in the face is pretty much the most awesome thing to do. Rape and violence are about on the same page in my book. Neither of then should be glorified.
That said, I'm not a big fan of censoring things I don't like, much less wishing bodily harm on people for mere "thought crimes".
But then again I'm a social libertarian (not an economic one), so I think society can go jump off a cliff. Society has the right to instill a government to keep order, and keep my rights from infringing on those of others. But has no right to regulate morality.
If you don't like people playing game that glorify rape, sex, violence, atheism, or the international communist party, that is fine. But at no time should you have the right to tell anyone else that they may not. Unless they are your under-18 children.
people like me could vote
People like you can vote, you just choose not to.
You probably wouldn't vote if they made it real easy. Its just apathy, there is no cure for that.
Good thing that's a straw man
It isn't. It is a hypothesis based on available facts, and one that I have used tons of hedge words, and equivocal phrases while presenting. Please go back and reread everything I said while not looking for bias or strong opossition to get indignant at, never did I utter an ontic phrase sans an "if" or a "might".
Truth be told, I'm not sure if she was picked for these reasons or not. I think I've uttered this before, for some reason.
Why do I believe that she might be picked for these reasons? The way Barak Obama introduced her. I don't care about her little gaffes, I've dismissed people picking on those as partisan idiocy.
even then, what exactly is wrong with wanting a court that looks like the United States when the candidate is highly qualified?
I don't care if it does, or not. I don't care if its 100% white men, 100% black, lesbian women, 100% Muslim, I don't care. As long as those people are the highest qualified people. The supreme court (or any other bit of government that has any effect on anyone) should NOT be selected to say a positive message about how progressive we are, or how all of our ethnically diverse population can now grow up and be a successful politician or lawyer.
I suppose the diverity thing worked too well on me, since I really don't care what race you are, what gender, what culture you identify with, etc... I couldn't give a damn. I'm in favor of removing the bit for race and gender from job and college applications, and solely picking on merit. That would be teaching a much better lesson than picking artificially to "match society".
I'm really sick of all racial gobbledygook. Especially now that Obama has resurrected it (not intentionally, probably), and the media decided having a Black guy as president was really awesome. Hillary's followers helped too, by deciding democrats who voted against her are sexist. Framing things in a racial way is the best way to kill rationality.
And yes, I can say she was picked for the wrong reasons (perhaps), and is nevertheless a fit pick for the job (probably). Which I have said before. If you notice, when this whole brouhaha started, I was defending her, and trying to dismiss some right-wing paranoia.
No, it sounds like you've fallen for empty concern trolling.
No, it sounds like your being a partisan troll, looking for things to get angry at.
I stated multiple times in this thread that I have nothing against her, and she SEEMS to be a decent Justice material. She also seems damn smart, both from her record, and from what little we (the public) has heard from her.
I would have a hard time being too indignant if she actually got selected by congress for the the Supreme Court.
My one problem is the possibility that Obama picked her for the wrong reasons. Yes, you can pick good people for the wrong reasons, this is completely possible. Just because she was selected for the wrong reasons (if she was), I still have nothing against her, and she seems, on the surface, to be a good person for the job (though not liberal enough for my tastes).
I stuck all the hedge words in there because I am not a legal wonk. I don't know her full history, and am pretty ignorant of the law. Basically, to restate, I am not fit to judge her, nor is most of the people on /.
I, actually, would prefer that we somehow get Sandra Day O'Conner out of retirement, and force her to serve again.
My main beef with the whole issue is the "diversity for the sake of diversity" thing. Which really has nothing to do with Sotomayor as a person.
Thanks for not flaming me.
Maybe I've just been unlucky, but Firefox, even in its basic installation has always felt sloooow on my machine - not the javascript or rendering, but the UI itself (3 gigs of RAM, so that's not the problem). Once I add extensions for some the functionality I've become used to with Opera, it's just crawling. Also, even with extensions, there are still some interface adjustments that I use constantly that just aren't possible in Firefox (e.g. single-key shortcuts for back/forward and switching tabs). While I'll admit that there are some Firefox extensions I'd love in opera, such as GPG integration with mail, in my opinion, the drawbacks outweigh the benefits.
Truth be told, sometimes I think I'm just lucky. A lot of people have problems with Firefox, especially pre-3.0. As stated, it REALLY sucked on a Mac for some reason, and still did as of the 3.0 beta (stopped using the Mac before 3.0 final, so who knows). The Mac, oddly is the only place I've found the dreaded memory hole, as well, with it soaring to 1.2GB at times. Oddly, this only happened on an Intel Mac, and not my old iBook, even for the same release.
Though it ran great on my girlfriends Macs (both PPC and Intel) of roughly the same specs, just fine.
My copy on of 3.5b on Ubuntu also sucks pretty bad right now, but not nearly as bad as on the Mac. Which is odd since I'm using far less extentions than I am on my Windows box.
This, if you ask me is a weakness of Firefox. Admittedly, I never had a problem with Opera (I've tried every major release since it became free) on any OS I installed it on. If I had the same problems you say you've had, I'd probably hop over to something else, and learn to cope without adblock and the native look (in the end I prefer functionality over aesthetics, though aesthetics is a plus).
Firefox is very heavy for some strange reason. I'm not quite sure why, since it is pretty slim in features. I'm pretty sure it isn't Gecko either, since I seem to remember it being MUCH lighter in footprint a while ago.
At this rate it will be the bottom of the heap again, I fear. Which is kind of sad, since I feel invested in it. It being like my ugly open source child who I got to watch grow up into a slightly less ugly popular adolescent.
I worry because this isn't why you should pick anyone, ever. I'm not arguing that she isn't qualified. Though just being smart and experienced isn't enough to be a Justice, there are TONS of smart and experienced judges out there, but only a handful can rise to the top.
That said, I still have no clue if she is qualified, I'm not the one to judge that, and don't know enough to claim that I even could. I personally have nothing against her.
I don't know if she was picked because of her race or gender (well, more specifically whether they played a roll in her being selected), but Obama's speech introducing her seemed to point towards this as a possibility.
I think Opera ditched the ads in 8.5. Now they make money the same way Firefox does: through the Google search dropdown.
Their mobile market probably far surpasses what Google would pay them for a dropdown.
An when you start with all that firefox extension bloatware to make it really useful - it starts like in 3-4 minutes.
On what, a TRS-80? And what makes it useful? The only "essential" extension I use is ad-block, the rest are mostly visual tweaks (stylish, tree style tabs), that I probably could live without. I don't know how your defining essential here, and I'm not sure you've ever actually used Firefox, since even in the Phoenix alpha it never took 3 minutes to load.
Okay, I realize RAM is cheap and plentiful.. but... Saying that Opera is better because uses 10x the RAM another browser uses is silly.
Firefox 3.5b4 with 5 tabs open, and has been running for around 5 hours, I'm sitting at around 200 meg, this is with around 5 extensions as well. Last time I had a couple dozen tabs open, it was still well short of 1GB, if I remember right, I think it hit around 700MB.
A simple web-browser using 1GB is stretching things a bit there. I rarely can even get Photoshop to hog that much memory. I think even running Fallout3 uses less than that. Hell, I've got Firefox, Digsby, iTiunes, some TSRs, and WoW open right now, and I've barely over 2GBs used. And I'm even using Vista currently, with its basically 700mb overhead automatically on boot.
t has an integrated email/RSS client, content (ad) blocker, user scripting, an IRC client, a Bittorrent client, a real widget engine, browser synchronization (via Opera Link), mouse gestures, voice recognition and face gestures built in.
Outside of ad blocking, none of this sounds essential, much less useful to me. It does sound a lot like bloat. But then I'm of the anti-jack-of-all-trades school. The Opera torrent client, for example, isn't as fast or useful as stand alone options, so why would I use it, when I can just have my torrent client pop open when needed? It does a better job, and doesn't use any resources whatsoever until I actually NEED it. Same thing with mail clients, IRC clients, and RSS readers (though I can see a use for integrated RSS, though I just use Google Reader).
I prefer the Firefox model. Out of the proverbial box it's only good for one thing, and one thing only; browsing the web. But its extensible to do whatever I want, or I can just keep it how it is. With Firefox I could add any of those features, if I had a need for them. Or not.
That said, I find browser fan-boys to be much sillier (not in the good way) than OS fan boys, or *nix editor fan boys. Its odd how fanatical Opera folk can be every time there is an article on it her. They seem worse than the other fan boys since they are completely incapable, it seems, of finding ANY fault whatsoever with Opera. They also talk about Opera like its the Jesus Christ of the browser kingdom.
I like Opera, I'd use it over Chrome, and obviously over IE. I can't quantify why I prefer it over Chrome though. I use Firefox though, I've been using Firefox since Phoenix point-something-alpha, so I'm used to it. That's the main reason I prefer it, to be honest, I've grown accustomed to its way of doing things. I've also become addicted to extensions, and adblock+ has become my killer app, once Opera or Chrome becomes as good at blocking as that one extension (with easylist), I'll probably hop over. Well maybe not to Chrome, its GUI kind of sucks. Though it will be a hard transition, because Firefox and IE are the only browsers that hold to OS specific GUI conventions on Windows, at least (it sucks on OS X still, though not as bad as it used to). Opera is nasty since its arrogant, and insists on doing things its own way, and having its own look, which annoys me.
I never had a problem with the infamous (and somewhat mythic) Firefox memory hole (except for a few point releases on OS X). Yes, Firefox is heavier, but I don't notice it with my appearently obscene amounts of ram. I say appearently, since judging from the conversations of memory use, everyone on Slashdot only has 512k still. Yes, Chrome/Opera handles Java better and might be a bit more zippy, but were still taking about a few hundred ms of difference (especially with the firefox 3.5 beta), so I honestly don't even notice it. Opera, due to the way it visually loads pages actually seems slower to me, for some reason.
This all is my subjective opinion. You can disagree, and thats fine, but ultimately it doesn't matter. People use what fits them, and because its what their used to, thats fine as well. Its just a bloody browser, they all do the same thing, and roughly just as well.
But then again people who pick the underdog are generally more fully emotionally engaged in their choices.
Reading /., and "cool" in the same sentence?
I'd say in a broad (very very broad) sense your characterizations are correct. Though your quick portrait of Derrida is... overly generous, in my opinion.
I don't know where Heidegger and Foucault, come in. I'm a general fan of them both, but they both strike me as somewhat fatalistic (there is no escape really, only acceptance). And you, of course, run into the problem of asserting that there is no Truth, when you obviously want this to be, and the reasoning behind it, to be accepted as such. This is especially a bugbear in Foucault, he too must represent some power, and thus his works are to some extent not his own.
Yes, I'm being simple.
I haven't touched much on Levinas, outside of his impact on modern social sciences. Perhaps I should go back and read some of his work (it is sitting around gathering dust on my shelves).
Truth, it seems, is indeed a slippery thing. Drawing the line between "hard" truths, like math, physics, and logical deductions, and "softer" truths, like those dealt with by the Continentals.
Have you much experience with Richard Rorty?
You wouldn't have to grow hydro in my closet, though if legal, you could if you really wanted to.
I have friends who have some wild plants in their backyards from discarded seeds, amusingly enough, the local bus depot has a smallish pot plant growing in a planter from the kids who smoke at night, and discard their seeds there. Sure the quality probably isn't as good as someone who wants to throw down a ton of money for it, but it still is marijuana. I know people who grow some small cooking herbs in window boxes, and perhaps a small garden plot in their backyard that they mess with twice a month. And then I know people who are serious about their gardens, who make it full time job. Legal growing of marijuana would be no different.
Heck, I still have some friends (into their 30's) who have small grow rooms set up, but other than that are completely "respectable'. I doubt that their weed is really all that good, but I'm sure it's a nice treat from time to time. Like brewing your own beer, you probably still buy beer, your beer is probably not as good as some decent microbrews with real brewmasters, but its a nice monthly bonus.
You have an error in your thought:
"If drugs were legal, there would be less crime to procure it.." But then don't apply the "if legal" hypothesis to the amount of potential addicts/users and hospital visits.
As a person who has used harder drugs before, and has had friends whose lives have been completely destroyed by them, I disagree with your premise. I'd have rather them, and myself, been addicted to alcohol than other "harder" drugs.
Also...
. This chart [druglibrary.org] shows that tobacco kills 400,000 people per year in the U.S., alcohol about 100,000, and about 5,000 (hard to read the number off the chart accurately, since it's so tiny).
this chart is completely useless. It has no sources or reference, and doesn't define its terms. According to common practice, if I smoke, and die of lung cancer, I died of a "tobacco related cause", whereas if I don't smoke, and die of lung cancer I died of "lung cancer", this completely ignore the fact that lung cancer is a relatively common disease across smokers and nonsmokers, and that there is a consistent "background" rate of incidence, this leads to inaccurate statistics. The same goes with alcohol, if I died in a car accident while drunk, I die of "alcohol related causes", ignoring the fact that not all accidents where alcohol is involved happen BECAUSE of alcohol. I've even seen some statistics where they attempt to say sober people killed in alcohol related accidents are "alcohol fatalities", and even once (when researched bad stats for a psych statistics class) where drunk people in car accidents, WHO WERE NOT DRIVING, were classified as "alcohol related fatalities".
Basically, statistics can say whatever the hell you want them to, by defining your terms in a manner that supports your point.
I am a large fan of legalizing marijuana, even if I don't smoke it. I'd draw the line anywhere past there, though, since the social effects, if not the public health effects, are not worth it. Sure, perhaps lessen how draconian our laws are, but definitely keep the "harder" drugs illegal. Government is not just a game of individual rights, its a balancing act between your rights, and mine, and between our individuals rights, and the rights to society as a whole.
The people refers to the whole, generally in our founding fathers time. Think of it in the "We the People" sense. It refers to the the constituents of an area as a whole, and not as merely a collection of individuals. So if a large enough collection of non-Californian Americans, in this case, decide that marijuana should be illegal, then California must abide.
People often ignore the difference of "the people" versus "persons" when pushing a Constitutional opinion.
The same goes for the second amendment, where a lot of people misread "the people" as "persons", which were two distinct terms meaning different things back when it was written.
"casual, occasional use of MDMA, speed, and weed is pretty safe as such things go, and probably less bad for you than getting trashed on hard spirits",
There is a problem with this. MDMA has some pretty savage long term effects, and is very very rarely pure, its generally cut with speed or heroin (and often is just cut speed or heroin, with no actual MDMA content). Also, while not terribly addictive, MDMA is a social drug, meaning that if your child becomes enmeshed in certain social scenes, the usage will not be causal, and may be in quantities, qualities, and lengths of exposure that would cause harmful effects.
Speed... I know from some stupid youthful experiences (and living in what used to be the methamphetamine capitol of the US) that "casual" use is hard, if not impossible, to maintain. That stuff is more addictive than just about anything short of crack and heroin. Also, even with "casual" meth use, your child will be interacting with addicts (where else do you get it), and meth addicts are not known for their safety or stability. Also meth can lead to rather severe health problems, outside of the whole nasty addiction bits.
Before recommending meth to your children, please head down to your local ghetto and see what it can do to them.
Marijuana... Thats fine. As long as they don't get caught. My personal rule would be "if you get caught, the consiquences are all yours", and "if you keep it in the house, your in massive trouble, like a trip to jail". I say this because YOU as a property owner can lose your house because of the moronic actions of your children.
This just happened to a second cousin of mine in small town Minnesota. While he was out of state visiting my family, and one of his kids decided to try his hand at cooking meth, and dealing it out of his house. The police found out he was dealing, and seized my cousins house, even if he wasn't aware, and was 3000 miles away.
Why are you under the impression that cannabis intoxication is a traffic problem? (There's science done on the subject that I doubt you're aware of)
You're still intoxicated, you're reaction times are still off, etc... While I'd be happy replacing every drunk driver with a stoned driver, but that isn't saying its optimal. I do agree that this is a pretty hypocritical reason to propose to keeping it illegal though. Alcohol = bad drivers = legal, whereas marijuana = bad drivers = illegal.
Hell, I generally prefer marijuana to alcohol, and I don't even smoke it.
I really can't find any reasons to keep it illegal, outside of the knee-jerk "zomg people on drugs" reaction. Which is odd, since here in America we're on so many drugs that it isn't funny, and this is moving beyond the banal OTC stuff, coffee, nicotine, and liberal quantities of crappy beer.
Odd, I can do that in Firefox 3.5b4. I have a bookmark menu with all my daily visited links, in it Slashdot is "/.". So when I type "/" into the address bar (pardon... "awesome" bar) the first thing that pops up is Slashdot. One quick down arrow, one quick enter... and viola, Slashdot.