My friend was in Texas. This was spring of 2008. Certainly, now, it's no big deal to voice disgust about Bush -- The man has now been all-but castrated. However, even as recently as early 2008, and definitely throughout 2007 you could see many people tiptoe around direct criticism of bush and/or the war in Iraq.
Well, the point is that people were being organized to stomp on Dixie Chicks albums because they disagreed with Bush.
The point of democracy and free speech is that, if you disagree with someone, you should be free to do so openly -- with an intention of opening discussion on the matter. That is completely different than demonizing someone for the simple act of dissent.
The point of the Dixie-Chicks effigy burning was to suppress the dissension (and to discourage anybody else from disagreeing with bush) and not to engage in a sane discussion of why Bush was right or the Dixie Chicks were wrong.
Last year, a friend of mine spent some time down in the US (I'm in Canada) on a course, and she found herself nervous about suggesting to someone that not everybody liked Bush. The scary thing was, that after she made that comment, a number of other people in the course came to her in private and noted that they too were afraid to simply suggest that Bush was unpopular.
That was, I suggest, both the intent and the effect of vilifying the Dixie Chicks over what was simply a side remark about personal beliefs. That intent, and effect are both detrimental to a democratic society... anathema, even.
So many people saw this coming when Microsoft announced monthly updates. Hackers were obviously going to wait until patch Wednesday to start using new exploits because they now know that they're going to have a full month to use it before MS patches --- and to make things even worse, Microsoft is going to soft-pedal the severity of the attacks so that users don't get too worried.
Now the hackers really do have Microsoft on their side!
This is a capitalist society, and the only real reasons why organized (or unorganized, for that matter) crime is trying to keep selling people these drugs is that they're making a profit doing it (an enormous profit) doing so.
The problem that I see is that, if you legalize these drugs, then the crooks who have made such enormous profits by selling this stuff, will continue to make these profits. Thus it is that I propose the following.
make simple possession legal, but carefully control distribution.
have government-controlled entities distribute the drugs... for real cheap (i.e. below cost).
Make distribution outside of government controlled stores illegal.
The point here is to do to the drug dealers what Microsoft did to Netscape. Make it so that it's almost impossible for them to make a profit selling their product.
Now, yes, you'll probably see an initial spike in people ODing, on this stuff, but -- in the long term -- you'll see that there'll be nobody out pushing it into the new markets (mostly young kids), because there will be no profit in anybody doing so.
You will also, however, see a spike in people asking for help in getting off of the drugs because they'll have legitimate people who talk to that they will be able to trust. (at least, this was the result at Vancouver, BC's supervised injection site). In the long term, you'll see more junkie's lives saved, and fewer junkies overall.
The really scarey thing is that that's pretty much the order that I worked on them.... except that Basic was kinda early on in the process. (( consider it a character-building excercise )).
However, my first programming was done on a TI programmable calculator.
Well, most drugs aren't necessary for life support -- just kinda useful. Nonetheless, people will be attempting to board a plane with a doctor's prescription for these things. I just wanna see what happens once this question hits the courts.
In Canada, the rule is that life is deemed to start when the fetus can thrive outside the womb. At that point, it doesn't require the mother to live, and can, therefore be considered to be an entity to itself.
Yes, thie is arbitrary. it's just as arbitrary as 'life begins at conception.
On the other hand, the conservative dissonance that you shouldn't kill a kid inside the womb because murder is so, so wrong, but it's OK to kill the kid outside the womb because, uhm, whatever.
This dissonance is the same for pro-choicers who believe that life begins at conception, a fetus is a life worth killing, but then condemn killing people outside the womb -- however those are rare because most pro-lifers don't believe that life begins at conception.
The real problem with the abortion debate is that the debate over when life begins (conception, birth or somewhere in between) is as much a religious issue as anything else. Most pro-lifers consider it to start at conception while most pro-choicers consider it to begin at birth (or somewhere in between). Once you choose when you think life begins, the rest of the debate is generally a given.
The problem with this law is that it attempts to provide immunity to parties that violate people's constitutional rights. If there are no available consequences for violating the constitution, then you have effectively made it legal to violate the constitution.
For all practical purposes the protections of the constitution disappear in a puff of legal logic.
"
On tonights news, immunity for violating the provisions of Habeas Corpus, the right to remain silent, and the right to presumed innocent."
Yes, and it's perfectly legal for me to have sex with your sister, if she gives me permission. Nontheless, it's illegal to show the latter, and legal to show the former.
Pretty much everybody has sex (well, definitely everybody's parents), but it's illegal to show that. Very few people shoot someone (and far fewer with any legal cause to), but the NRA seems to have locked up the possibility of charging someone who shows film of that to a minor.
Psystar was arguing for a steep and slippery slope. Their argument was that Apple had a monopoly on Apple's Operating System. If that was the case, then we'd hear people arguing that QNX has a monopoly on QNX systems, and Canon has a monopoly on Canon cameras, etc. etc. etc.
The predictable result would be obscene.
Happily, German police have announced that they consider it highly unlikely that the vicious thugs who committed this horrendous mass-murder will reprise this act in the future
..... if Microsoft simply decides to fold a DRM API of some sort into future versions of Windows. By virtue of controlling the OS, they would be able to offer equivalent or better DRM than would the third party stuff, with lower likelyhood of breaking things horribly.
It's called Vista, and some people consider it intrinsically broken. The built-in DRM is what results in it being considered slower and crankier. Every part of the system spends time looking for signs of being cracked, and if anything is out of whack, rather than try to work anyways, the system will proactively break.
This may be acceptable for a game console where all you intended to do with it is playing pre-packaged games games anyways, but it really sucks for people intending to use the system for real work (and especially for mission critical work).
Christianity doesn't demand that we take the myths of the bible as fact. It's only fundamental christianity that does.
Some of my teachers in junior high school were catholic priests, and they'd happily describe Genesis as a myth told within the bounds of what people could understand back ten of science. (roughly nothing) and then translated through 2-5 languages (not including the god -> human thought translation process) to get to English... meaning that it shouldn't be taken too literally.
It's not science and faith, it's science and myths that are incompatible.
There's nothing in the bible that says how long one of God's days are (in human years), so there's no definitive date for the age of the earth in the bible -- just the age of 'men'.
That having been said, I would argue that, you could still accept the 6000 year old 'birth' date of adam and reconcile that with a 11,000 year old temple, if you declare that pre-adam homo-sapiens simply weren't officially 'men' from the bible's perspective (Pre-release betas, so to speak)
OK: so it's science and blind faith in myths that are incompatible.
I think that some people were going for a +5Troll rating (first person rates as 'troll' and then everybody else rates as 'underrated', which leaves the 'troll' designation intact). Unfortunately, somebody accidently rated it as funny (probably in reaction to the parent complaint), and the spell may now be broken.
Does anybody have a spare 'troll' or 'underrated' moderation lying about?
In the Vancouver, Canada civic election (next week?) we've got to choose people for about 30 positions (mayor, city councilors, School Board and parks board) from a total of over 100 candidates... that and a number of referenda. It's all done on an OCR sheet which is read in much the way that the GP describes.
... and if something goes horribly wrong, there's always the paper ballots to go back to.
look can find words in a dictionary by prefix. grep can fine tune the search.
for example, to find all words that start with 'life' and end with an 'e':
~$ look life | grep "e$"
life
lifelike
lifeline
lifestyle
lifetime
Then there's units... It can convert just about any unit (either raw or complex into any other equivalent unit. E.g. to see how long it would take a signal to reach a probe 234million miles away:
$ units "234 million miles" "light minutes"
* 20.935956
/ 0.047764717
or to find out how grams of matter you need to convert to energy to get a one-megaton yeild:
~$ units megaton*tnt "1gram light^2"
* 46.553278
/ 0.021480764
(that's about 1.64 ounces (also determined by units)).
I think that the only reason why units isn't included in every Linux distribution is that there's no nice simple GUI interface for it -- that, and so few people know about it.
When a who's who of Computer scientists line up and say "Don't use computers", you know that you've got a Alamo-type stand ahead of you.... Except that people won't be remembering your name fondly.
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My friend was in Texas. This was spring of 2008. Certainly, now, it's no big deal to voice disgust about Bush -- The man has now been all-but castrated. However, even as recently as early 2008, and definitely throughout 2007 you could see many people tiptoe around direct criticism of bush and/or the war in Iraq.
The point of democracy and free speech is that, if you disagree with someone, you should be free to do so openly -- with an intention of opening discussion on the matter. That is completely different than demonizing someone for the simple act of dissent.
The point of the Dixie-Chicks effigy burning was to suppress the dissension (and to discourage anybody else from disagreeing with bush) and not to engage in a sane discussion of why Bush was right or the Dixie Chicks were wrong.
Last year, a friend of mine spent some time down in the US (I'm in Canada) on a course, and she found herself nervous about suggesting to someone that not everybody liked Bush. The scary thing was, that after she made that comment, a number of other people in the course came to her in private and noted that they too were afraid to simply suggest that Bush was unpopular.
That was, I suggest, both the intent and the effect of vilifying the Dixie Chicks over what was simply a side remark about personal beliefs. That intent, and effect are both detrimental to a democratic society ... anathema, even.
Now the hackers really do have Microsoft on their side!
I've got it on a checklist....
er, somewhere....
Now, where did I put that thing.
The problem that I see is that, if you legalize these drugs, then the crooks who have made such enormous profits by selling this stuff, will continue to make these profits. Thus it is that I propose the following.
The point here is to do to the drug dealers what Microsoft did to Netscape. Make it so that it's almost impossible for them to make a profit selling their product.
Now, yes, you'll probably see an initial spike in people ODing, on this stuff, but -- in the long term -- you'll see that there'll be nobody out pushing it into the new markets (mostly young kids), because there will be no profit in anybody doing so.
You will also, however, see a spike in people asking for help in getting off of the drugs because they'll have legitimate people who talk to that they will be able to trust. (at least, this was the result at Vancouver, BC's supervised injection site). In the long term, you'll see more junkie's lives saved, and fewer junkies overall.
However, my first programming was done on a TI programmable calculator.
That doesn't answer the question of whether or not it's adultery, only the question of whether or not you'll get bobbited for doing it.
Just the first that didn't accept Dell's NDA.
Well, most drugs aren't necessary for life support -- just kinda useful. Nonetheless, people will be attempting to board a plane with a doctor's prescription for these things. I just wanna see what happens once this question hits the courts.
sigh. Whemever came up with this idea, deserves to be shot!
Yes, thie is arbitrary. it's just as arbitrary as 'life begins at conception.
On the other hand, the conservative dissonance that you shouldn't kill a kid inside the womb because murder is so, so wrong, but it's OK to kill the kid outside the womb because, uhm, whatever.
This dissonance is the same for pro-choicers who believe that life begins at conception, a fetus is a life worth killing, but then condemn killing people outside the womb -- however those are rare because most pro-lifers don't believe that life begins at conception.
The real problem with the abortion debate is that the debate over when life begins (conception, birth or somewhere in between) is as much a religious issue as anything else. Most pro-lifers consider it to start at conception while most pro-choicers consider it to begin at birth (or somewhere in between). Once you choose when you think life begins, the rest of the debate is generally a given.
For all practical purposes the protections of the constitution disappear in a puff of legal logic.
Although I'm kind of curious what the charge of disorderly conduct was for.
Not rolling over and pleading guilty to an obscene charge 18 months ago.
I feel sorry for this woman. She should be suing the prosecutor, not pleading to a trumped up misdemeanor charge.
We're talking about politics here. You're talking logic.
Go away.
Pretty much everybody has sex (well, definitely everybody's parents), but it's illegal to show that. Very few people shoot someone (and far fewer with any legal cause to), but the NRA seems to have locked up the possibility of charging someone who shows film of that to a minor.
The predictable result would be obscene.
As PJ said on Groklaw, 'That's legalese for "are you kidding??"'.
sleep safe in the knowledge...
..... if Microsoft simply decides to fold a DRM API of some sort into future versions of Windows. By virtue of controlling the OS, they would be able to offer equivalent or better DRM than would the third party stuff, with lower likelyhood of breaking things horribly.
It's called Vista, and some people consider it intrinsically broken. The built-in DRM is what results in it being considered slower and crankier. Every part of the system spends time looking for signs of being cracked, and if anything is out of whack, rather than try to work anyways, the system will proactively break.
This may be acceptable for a game console where all you intended to do with it is playing pre-packaged games games anyways, but it really sucks for people intending to use the system for real work (and especially for mission critical work).
Some of my teachers in junior high school were catholic priests, and they'd happily describe Genesis as a myth told within the bounds of what people could understand back ten of science. (roughly nothing) and then translated through 2-5 languages (not including the god -> human thought translation process) to get to English ... meaning that it shouldn't be taken too literally.
There's nothing in the bible that says how long one of God's days are (in human years), so there's no definitive date for the age of the earth in the bible -- just the age of 'men'.
That having been said, I would argue that, you could still accept the 6000 year old 'birth' date of adam and reconcile that with a 11,000 year old temple, if you declare that pre-adam homo-sapiens simply weren't officially 'men' from the bible's perspective (Pre-release betas, so to speak)
OK: so it's science and blind faith in myths that are incompatible.
(problem is, I'm not sure that I'm kidding).
Does anybody have a spare 'troll' or 'underrated' moderation lying about?
In the Vancouver, Canada civic election (next week?) we've got to choose people for about 30 positions (mayor, city councilors, School Board and parks board) from a total of over 100 candidates... that and a number of referenda. It's all done on an OCR sheet which is read in much the way that the GP describes.
... and if something goes horribly wrong, there's always the paper ballots to go back to.
for example, to find all words that start with 'life' and end with an 'e':
Then there's units... It can convert just about any unit (either raw or complex into any other equivalent unit. E.g. to see how long it would take a signal to reach a probe 234million miles away:
or to find out how grams of matter you need to convert to energy to get a one-megaton yeild:
(that's about 1.64 ounces (also determined by units)).
I think that the only reason why units isn't included in every Linux distribution is that there's no nice simple GUI interface for it -- that, and so few people know about it.
Will be a dire warning, not a rallying cry.