I absolutely agree about saving the baby if it is alive after it is aborted. I doubt you will find anyone who disagrees with that (including Obama). And I know about the intent of the bill and its history.
However, there are plenty of well-intended bills which are badly written enough to cause far more harm than they ameliorate. This was a badly written bill, and it did not pass in the form it was written in 2001 (which required two doctors for every abortion) or 2003 (which had this language). If you believe that Obama was pro-infanticide, then you must also believe that more than half of the Illinois legislature was also pro-infanticide. After some changes it passed in 2005, after Obama had already left the Illinois legislature for the US Senate.
Well, the "(including "movement of voluntary muscles") that practically anything would qualify, such as a dead frog still having muscle contractions, and therefore be absolutely an anti-abortion bill." is dead in the water before it was even a point.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. My point was that the definition of "alive" in the bill was so broad that even a dead frog twitching its legs would qualify as "alive". Therefore it is likely that a great many abortions would result in required lifesaving measures even if the doctor knows that it will not save a life and will most likely simply prolong any pain that the fetus feels. Doctors already have a fairly stringent definition of "alive" in determining whether to declare person dead, so why not simply refer to that instead of trying to institute another definition via law?
I personally do not like abortion much at all, also not for religious reasons. However, I disagree with the pro-life movement in how best to reduce its frequency. Better education, easily available contraception, and reducing the stigma associated with contraception would be much more effective in reducing the number of abortions.
His point, which you seem to have missed, is that eventually we will have artificial wombs where the sperm+egg could grow all the way from conception. I.e. the sperm+egg would be viable from the very beginning, which would make all abortion illegal.
Your very biased link, above, which purports that Obama is pro-infanticide shows no such thing. Obama is concerned that that the doctor who performs the abortion must make the decision on whether the fetus is "alive" or not, and if he gets the decision wrong he could be prosecuted for murder. Also, he is concerned that the bill's definition of what is "alive" is so all-encompassing (including "movement of voluntary muscles") that practically anything would qualify, such as a dead frog still having muscle contractions, and therefore be absolutely an anti-abortion bill.
Besides, if you are anti-choice, don't you consider all abortions to be infanticide? Then all pro-choice politicians (including all the Democratic candidates for president) would be pro-infanticide.
As to where the line is drawn, it is currently at 20 weeks, I believe, according to the anti-late-term abortion bill, since no premature child born before that time has ever lived for any significant amount of time.
Then you say that Obama would not be a total disaster. But is not experience mostly how we look towards the future and this is the most inexperienced candidate in the history of the Presidency.
I see this canard constantly brought out. Yet Abraham Lincoln had less experience than Obama when elected president (8 years in the Illinois legislature, the same as Obama, plus 2 years in Congress, 2 fewer than Obama will have in January 2009).
See, and here I thought Obama was more like Morpheus, who would lead the revolution and find The One, but that ultimately the Real Deal would be a pasty white guy who honestly isn't nearly as cool.
Note that if you switch to the Full version on a Win/Mac Firefox, you will get the full version automatically when you sign in from Linux. You just can't switch to the full version from Linux...
Hotmail does not work with Firefox 2.0 on Linux. You get the "classic" limited version, which tells you the Full version works with Firefox 1.5 or better. On Firefox 2 on Windows or the Mac you have the option to switch to the full version, but not on Linux. Here's Microsoft's response: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/hotmail_doesnt_work_with_firefox_2
I agree with you that a non-removable battery is a deal-killer. My 1.5 year old Macbook Pro's battery is not holding much of a charge anymore, but at least replacing it is not a huge deal. If I had to pay Apple to do it and actually ship my entire computer to them and be without it for days or weeks that would be a huge problem.
Paying in cash does not necessarily work. Look at the recent bill to regulate pseudoephedrine containing products, like the Claritin-D I use for allergies. Regardless of whether you pay cash you still have to give them your personal information in order to buy it (either by scanning your photo ID or for the low-tech stores by the clerk writing your ID info into a big book they keep).
Of course paying in cash prevents retroactive laws like the one mentioned by the GP.
Pentium Dual-Cores start at $75. These are the same as Core 2 Duo E4xxx except with less cache (1 MB shared vs. 2 MB) and a lower clock speed. Still, the low end AMDs will most likely beat this CPU in performance.
The model he ordered was the 1505N which is based on the 1505, which is no longer available on the regular Dell website (only under Linux machines). The 1505 seems to have been replaced with the 1520, so most likely there will be a 1520N soon.
I'm really hoping there will be a XPS M1330 with Ubuntu. That machine would make me ditch my Macbook Pro (I still prefer Linux over Mac OS X, but Mac OS X just works on laptops with things like DVI out, and Linux... doesn't).
The Feds have no power over the issuance of IDs. It is not one of their powers in the US Constitution, and all powers not explicitly reserved for the Federal govt. in that document fall to the states or the people. They can only coerce or bribe the states to comply with the Real ID act by giving money or threatening that their residents would not be able to board planes or go into Federal buildings. I find it unlikely the Feds would be able to enforce this at all. Can you imagine airlines going along with an act that would force them to essentially close their entire operations in any state that does not comply with this law? Or essentially forcing the closure of all Federal buildings in New Hampshire (and the other 12 states that have rejected this law).
The Real ID act as it stands is dead in the water. It would have only worked if all 50 states signed on, and since a dozen have rejected it, there is no way it can continue.
Now if only my home state of California would reject it too. But they have no problem with it since California IDs already comply with almost all of the requirements of the Act.
Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA), a member of the Ways and Means committee and chair of its Health subcommittee, is a non-theist (which includes agnostics, etc.).
Digikam is not available via Fink nor via Darwinports. The Digikam authors promise a Mac OS X port sometime soon, but that's been rumored for a year now, and until then, Parallels running Linux is the only way to go.
I've not had great luck with Fink anyway. Trying to use it to install amarok failed (to be fair, Amarok is in the unstable repository).
A large part of the problem is that people have already purchased the game on Windows. I would prefer to run NWN2 on Linux but if they charge another $50 I won't buy it because I've already spent the money on a Windows version. Similarly, my wife bought the Sims 2 when it came it for Windows even though she would have preferred to have it on Mac. If she wants it on Mac now she has to pony up again. And again for each of the expansion packs... What I want to see is pay once, run it on any OS. NWN1 and the Id software games do that - the Linux client works with the Windows version of the game (disc and data). The problem with doing it that way though, is that you don't know how many of your sales are actually to people who run it on Linux, and that makes it hard to justify a port of your next game to the beancounters.
Incidentally, on an 8.5x11 piece of paper I can represent every single possible combination using 8.5x11x300x300x8 bits = 67.3 mbit = 8.4 megabytes of information. If it were really the case that you can store 256 GB of info in that same space, I would have the ultimate lossless compression technique ever!:-)
Your calculations don't hold. 256 colors is 8 bits, not 256 bits. If it were 256 bits, you could have 2 colors simultaneously in the same dot, not possible.
I don't think there are many stocking issues anymore. There were quite a few $400 360s at Target last night. I bought a Gameboy Advance however, because I made the mistake of introducing my wife to Animal Crossing and now I can no longer get any Gamecube time.;-)
Actually, LCD and plasma TVs do not use any less power than CRTs. Here's an article which actually measured the power use of a bunch of TVs of different sorts. Only microdisplay rear-projection TVs use significantly less power than CRTs for a given size, but that is offset by the fact that they are considerable larger than the CRTs which they replace.
Affirmative action is very racist, regardless of whether it's trying to get blacks into the workplace or whites or Asians. It takes race into account when hiring someone, which is by definition racist. You should hire the best person for the job, regardless of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or a host of other irrelevent metrics. Affirmative action in theory states that if you have two equivalent people, you should hire the underrepresented minority. In my many years of interviewing prospective candidates, I have never come across two people who are perfectly equivalent for a given job. One always comes out as best (even if by a small margin).
I said in my post that "multicultural" and "diverse" are loaded words because everyone thinks of affirmative action. In a perfect world, diversity and multiculturality (is that a word?) would come about naturally through hiring the best person for the job. My comments were specifically for non-racist companies (i.e. those companies that do not take race into account at all in hiring). Racism is racism, whether the liberal racism of affirmative action or the conservative racism of bigotry. The GGP's company may be practicing affirmative action, but it's still racist.
Hmm, so never mind those of Indian descent who happened to be raised in the US and are just as American as anyone else here, like me. You'd rather hire a Caucasian directly from Sweden or African directly from South Africa instead? Is this supposed to be pro-American?
And you're saying those of East Asian descent don't need jobs?
Racism is inherently inefficient because you end up with not the best person for the job, so the company suffers. Competitors who aren't racist will outperform and therefore the racist company will suffer. Those who are racist will complain that non-racist (i.e. "diverse" or "multi-cultural", although those are loaded words) companies get plum deals (from govt. or whoever) because they hire minorities and are getting some sort of special treatment. The reality is that non-racist companies outperform those companies which are not, and therefore deserve the deals.
Slashdot Mirror
I absolutely agree about saving the baby if it is alive after it is aborted. I doubt you will find anyone who disagrees with that (including Obama). And I know about the intent of the bill and its history.
However, there are plenty of well-intended bills which are badly written enough to cause far more harm than they ameliorate. This was a badly written bill, and it did not pass in the form it was written in 2001 (which required two doctors for every abortion) or 2003 (which had this language). If you believe that Obama was pro-infanticide, then you must also believe that more than half of the Illinois legislature was also pro-infanticide. After some changes it passed in 2005, after Obama had already left the Illinois legislature for the US Senate.
Well, the "(including "movement of voluntary muscles") that practically anything would qualify, such as a dead frog still having muscle contractions, and therefore be absolutely an anti-abortion bill." is dead in the water before it was even a point.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. My point was that the definition of "alive" in the bill was so broad that even a dead frog twitching its legs would qualify as "alive". Therefore it is likely that a great many abortions would result in required lifesaving measures even if the doctor knows that it will not save a life and will most likely simply prolong any pain that the fetus feels. Doctors already have a fairly stringent definition of "alive" in determining whether to declare person dead, so why not simply refer to that instead of trying to institute another definition via law?
I personally do not like abortion much at all, also not for religious reasons. However, I disagree with the pro-life movement in how best to reduce its frequency. Better education, easily available contraception, and reducing the stigma associated with contraception would be much more effective in reducing the number of abortions.
His point, which you seem to have missed, is that eventually we will have artificial wombs where the sperm+egg could grow all the way from conception. I.e. the sperm+egg would be viable from the very beginning, which would make all abortion illegal.
Your very biased link, above, which purports that Obama is pro-infanticide shows no such thing. Obama is concerned that that the doctor who performs the abortion must make the decision on whether the fetus is "alive" or not, and if he gets the decision wrong he could be prosecuted for murder. Also, he is concerned that the bill's definition of what is "alive" is so all-encompassing (including "movement of voluntary muscles") that practically anything would qualify, such as a dead frog still having muscle contractions, and therefore be absolutely an anti-abortion bill.
Besides, if you are anti-choice, don't you consider all abortions to be infanticide? Then all pro-choice politicians (including all the Democratic candidates for president) would be pro-infanticide.
As to where the line is drawn, it is currently at 20 weeks, I believe, according to the anti-late-term abortion bill, since no premature child born before that time has ever lived for any significant amount of time.
Then you say that Obama would not be a total disaster. But is not experience mostly how we look towards the future and this is the most inexperienced candidate in the history of the Presidency.
I see this canard constantly brought out. Yet Abraham Lincoln had less experience than Obama when elected president (8 years in the Illinois legislature, the same as Obama, plus 2 years in Congress, 2 fewer than Obama will have in January 2009).
See, and here I thought Obama was more like Morpheus, who would lead the revolution and find The One, but that ultimately the Real Deal would be a pasty white guy who honestly isn't nearly as cool.
Biden?
Jerry Yang has been CEO for only 7 months, not 2 years. Terry Semel resigned on June 18th, 2007.
Note that if you switch to the Full version on a Win/Mac Firefox, you will get the full version automatically when you sign in from Linux. You just can't switch to the full version from Linux...
Hotmail does not work with Firefox 2.0 on Linux. You get the "classic" limited version, which tells you the Full version works with Firefox 1.5 or better. On Firefox 2 on Windows or the Mac you have the option to switch to the full version, but not on Linux. Here's Microsoft's response:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/hotmail_doesnt_work_with_firefox_2
I agree with you that a non-removable battery is a deal-killer. My 1.5 year old Macbook Pro's battery is not holding much of a charge anymore, but at least replacing it is not a huge deal. If I had to pay Apple to do it and actually ship my entire computer to them and be without it for days or weeks that would be a huge problem.
Paying in cash does not necessarily work. Look at the recent bill to regulate pseudoephedrine containing products, like the Claritin-D I use for allergies. Regardless of whether you pay cash you still have to give them your personal information in order to buy it (either by scanning your photo ID or for the low-tech stores by the clerk writing your ID info into a big book they keep).
Of course paying in cash prevents retroactive laws like the one mentioned by the GP.
http://xkcd.com/261/
Pentium Dual-Cores start at $75. These are the same as Core 2 Duo E4xxx except with less cache (1 MB shared vs. 2 MB) and a lower clock speed. Still, the low end AMDs will most likely beat this CPU in performance.
Dear Sir/Madam:
Fire!
Fire!
Fire!
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Maurice Moss
The model he ordered was the 1505N which is based on the 1505, which is no longer available on the regular Dell website (only under Linux machines). The 1505 seems to have been replaced with the 1520, so most likely there will be a 1520N soon.
... doesn't).
I'm really hoping there will be a XPS M1330 with Ubuntu. That machine would make me ditch my Macbook Pro (I still prefer Linux over Mac OS X, but Mac OS X just works on laptops with things like DVI out, and Linux
The Feds have no power over the issuance of IDs. It is not one of their powers in the US Constitution, and all powers not explicitly reserved for the Federal govt. in that document fall to the states or the people. They can only coerce or bribe the states to comply with the Real ID act by giving money or threatening that their residents would not be able to board planes or go into Federal buildings. I find it unlikely the Feds would be able to enforce this at all. Can you imagine airlines going along with an act that would force them to essentially close their entire operations in any state that does not comply with this law? Or essentially forcing the closure of all Federal buildings in New Hampshire (and the other 12 states that have rejected this law).
The Real ID act as it stands is dead in the water. It would have only worked if all 50 states signed on, and since a dozen have rejected it, there is no way it can continue.
Now if only my home state of California would reject it too. But they have no problem with it since California IDs already comply with almost all of the requirements of the Act.
Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA), a member of the Ways and Means committee and chair of its Health subcommittee, is a non-theist (which includes agnostics, etc.).
Digikam is not available via Fink nor via Darwinports. The Digikam authors promise a Mac OS X port sometime soon, but that's been rumored for a year now, and until then, Parallels running Linux is the only way to go.
I've not had great luck with Fink anyway. Trying to use it to install amarok failed (to be fair, Amarok is in the unstable repository).
Digikam. iPhoto sucks for large collections residing on a (sometimes) connected network server. No Picasa for Mac either.
A large part of the problem is that people have already purchased the game on Windows. I would prefer to run NWN2 on Linux but if they charge another $50 I won't buy it because I've already spent the money on a Windows version. Similarly, my wife bought the Sims 2 when it came it for Windows even though she would have preferred to have it on Mac. If she wants it on Mac now she has to pony up again. And again for each of the expansion packs... What I want to see is pay once, run it on any OS. NWN1 and the Id software games do that - the Linux client works with the Windows version of the game (disc and data). The problem with doing it that way though, is that you don't know how many of your sales are actually to people who run it on Linux, and that makes it hard to justify a port of your next game to the beancounters.
Incidentally, on an 8.5x11 piece of paper I can represent every single possible combination using 8.5x11x300x300x8 bits = 67.3 mbit = 8.4 megabytes of information. If it were really the case that you can store 256 GB of info in that same space, I would have the ultimate lossless compression technique ever! :-)
Your calculations don't hold. 256 colors is 8 bits, not 256 bits. If it were 256 bits, you could have 2 colors simultaneously in the same dot, not possible.
I don't think there are many stocking issues anymore. There were quite a few $400 360s at Target last night. I bought a Gameboy Advance however, because I made the mistake of introducing my wife to Animal Crossing and now I can no longer get any Gamecube time. ;-)
Actually, LCD and plasma TVs do not use any less power than CRTs. Here's an article which actually measured the power use of a bunch of TVs of different sorts. Only microdisplay rear-projection TVs use significantly less power than CRTs for a given size, but that is offset by the fact that they are considerable larger than the CRTs which they replace.
Affirmative action is very racist, regardless of whether it's trying to get blacks into the workplace or whites or Asians. It takes race into account when hiring someone, which is by definition racist. You should hire the best person for the job, regardless of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or a host of other irrelevent metrics. Affirmative action in theory states that if you have two equivalent people, you should hire the underrepresented minority. In my many years of interviewing prospective candidates, I have never come across two people who are perfectly equivalent for a given job. One always comes out as best (even if by a small margin).
I said in my post that "multicultural" and "diverse" are loaded words because everyone thinks of affirmative action. In a perfect world, diversity and multiculturality (is that a word?) would come about naturally through hiring the best person for the job. My comments were specifically for non-racist companies (i.e. those companies that do not take race into account at all in hiring). Racism is racism, whether the liberal racism of affirmative action or the conservative racism of bigotry. The GGP's company may be practicing affirmative action, but it's still racist.
Hmm, so never mind those of Indian descent who happened to be raised in the US and are just as American as anyone else here, like me. You'd rather hire a Caucasian directly from Sweden or African directly from South Africa instead? Is this supposed to be pro-American?
And you're saying those of East Asian descent don't need jobs?
Racism is inherently inefficient because you end up with not the best person for the job, so the company suffers. Competitors who aren't racist will outperform and therefore the racist company will suffer. Those who are racist will complain that non-racist (i.e. "diverse" or "multi-cultural", although those are loaded words) companies get plum deals (from govt. or whoever) because they hire minorities and are getting some sort of special treatment. The reality is that non-racist companies outperform those companies which are not, and therefore deserve the deals.
I'll shoot the Mac Ten.